An intriguing title, don’t you think?! Now for an essay to match it!
In the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, we’re right now in the middle of a five-week journey through John Chapter 6—at 70 verses, it’s a very long chapter. It’s the “I am the bread of life” chapter, because after the drama of the miraculous feeding of 5000 people on the far (eastern) shore of the Sea of Galilee, then some walking on water (verses 1-21), Jesus spends most of the rest of the chapter in Capernaum (on the north-western shore) unveiling the rather marvellous news that he is, yes, “the bread of life”. And not just that he will provide such bread, but that he—his body, his flesh—is that bread. Inviting us, moreover, to eat our fill of it, with great benefit: “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever” (51).
And not just bread/body/flesh either, but blood as well: “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (54). Let’s just concentrate on the bread bit, however: what in the world does Jesus mean when he says he is the bread of life—obviously it’s not literal, physical bread, so exactly what sort of bread is it? And, yes, what has any of this got to do with the long-winded title of this essay?
Now, there’s obviously a connection to Jesus’ death and resurrection here, and our own, potential, future resurrection, which we’ll get to; and also to the familiar ritual of Communion. But let’s first go back to the start of the chapter. After miraculously feeding 5000 people – beautifully depicted in the painting from the Mafa people of Cameroon shown above – with fish as well as bread, the people do what they usually do to Jesus: misunderstand him.
“After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.” (14-15)
This is the persistent reality, right throughout Jesus’ ministry, and, dare I say it, right down to the present day: the people keep getting the wrong idea about the sort of Messiah or king Jesus is going to be, the sort of kingdom he came to bring into the world. They were expecting, hoping for a worldly Messiah to save them from the Romans and make Israel a great nation again, a great military leader, a hero, a king like the great King David of old. But, no, that’s not the sort of king or saviour Jesus is, not the sort of Kingdom he came to inaugurate. The miraculous feeding of the 5000 is, yes, a sign of that Kingdom, but absolutely not what that Kingdom actually is: Jesus did not come to feed us, to give us physical bread to eat, to take care of our personal needs—our physical needs, or our emotional or psychological needs for that matter.
Or, to put it another way, to alleviate the suffering of the world—now, at last a connection to the title! When the 5000 whom he had fed pursued him back to Capernaum, Jesus spent most of the rest of the chapter (verses 25-59) trying to disabuse them of their misunderstanding, a lively discussion which seems to have taken place mostly in the synagogue there (59). The people think that the food Jesus has just provided them with is basically the same as the manna Moses conjured up for the Israelites during the Exodus, about 1400 years previously, and they’re out to get some more of that good stuff. But no, Jesus tells them:
“….. you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves….. Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which [I] will give you.” (26-27)
You’re just thinking of your stomachs, in other words, he tells them, missing the greater thing all the miracles/signs I have been performing point to. “For the bread of God …. comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (33); then, “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (49); finally, “… your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever” (58). Yes, all this is surely a reference to Jesus’ coming death and resurrection, and therefore to a potential future resurrection for us as well beyond physical death. But more than that—much, much more than that—Jesus is talking about a life now that transcends physicality, that transcends our need for manna, for physical bread, for physical sustenance.
Can I state the obvious here: we don’t need God, through Jesus, to provide us with bread, we provide it ourselves, we go down to the bakery or supermarket and buy it, with the money we work to earn; or, yes, we get it from the food bank or soup kitchen, provided by charities or social services. “Give us this day our daily bread”—obviously it’s not physical bread we’re asking God to give us when we say the Lord’s Prayer, but ….. what? A sort of “spiritual bread”, Jesus the bread of life: “he who comes to me will never go hungry… he who believes in me will never go thirsty” (35). But, yes, what does this mean, what does Jesus mean when he tells us to eat the “bread of life” that he himself is? What exactly is this bread, what does it do for us, what does it provide us with?
It’s obviously an action—the eating of the bread, the drinking of the wine—that we repeat in the Communion ritual. Yes, in Communion we eat the bread and drink the wine, which represent and embody Jesus’ body and blood, but what exactly does that do for us, what sort of “sustenance” does it actually provide?
Well, you have to zoom out, look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole: what is the life, the new life, Jesus offers us? The contrast is always between the physical life, the life of the flesh—the life of the manna—which is always for me, me, me … and a different sort of life, a life in the Spirit, a born-again life, a new life, living not just for self, for me, but for others, a selfless life, as opposed to a selfish, self-centred one. When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life”, the life that he is bread for is the life of selflessness, which transcends this ordinary physical life, living not for self but for others; and, yes, one day, beyond this physical life, however long we manage to hang around, a greater life, a resurrection of our own.
“I am the bread of new life,” Jesus says, “a greater life than the one you have when all you’re thinking about is your own stomachs, your own personal physical, emotional, psychological needs.” In our day and age, it’s only rarely that we don’t have enough bread to eat—in fact we usually have too much—but is there not an epidemic of emotional and psychological neediness right now? Anxiety, stress, depression, despair, everywhere you look—and it’s usually not over lack of food, physical lack, but emotional and psychological lack: social rejection, isolation, loneliness, I don’t fit in anywhere, I struggle to make friends, my life seems meaningless, I don’t get on with my family, I can’t find work, other people seem to be happy but I just can’t find it ……
As I’ve said, Jesus didn’t come to provide for our emotional and psychological needs either—he didn’t go through all the trouble of dying on the Cross to make us feel better about ourselves, to make us happy. Or, yes, to put it another way, he didn’t come to alleviate human suffering. He didn’t come to liberate us from the Romans of our time, for example, the social, cultural, political and economic systems that seem to oppress us at every turn: colonialism, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, sexism, sectarianism, you name it. No, he came to liberate us from one oppressor and one oppressor only, our natural-born selfish selves!
Yay! But yes he did—come to alleviate human suffering, come to provide for our direst emotional and psychological needs. The bread that he is to eat is the antidote, the ultimate cure, for all our anxiety and despondency: stop focussing on yourself, let go of yourself, focus on others, focus on the world, try a little kindness, selflessness. Obviously this is incredibly risky—it’s a completely unnatural thing to do—the moment we let go of our self-focus and think about someone else for a change, we’re really risking our own, physical lives, literally. In fact, only through faith and trust, through believing in Jesus, can we truly let go of ourselves, open ourselves up to God’s selfless love in our lives and in the world, eat his body, drink his blood—eat the bread, drink the wine—it’s risky, dangerous, we need the sustenance, the bread, the grace, the spiritual nourishment, to give us the courage to be selfless. But, as I’m sure you know, it is its own reward.
Yes, even when our suffering is caused by physical pain, through chronic illness or injury, or by external circumstances far beyond our control, like an invading army or a corrupt regime in power, the choice is still ours to make, and the relief and freedom in putting others first before our own lives is palpable. But it’s easy for you to say that, you’re probably thinking, in reasonable health and from the comfort of your middle class suburb in lovely, democratic Australia. Well, here are the authentic thoughts of none other than Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from Tegel prison in Berlin, 11 months before he was hung by the Nazis in 1945—sorry for such a long quote:
“We rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep; we are anxious … about our life, but at the same time we must think about things much more important to us than life itself. When the [air raid] alert goes, for instance: as soon as we turn our minds from worrying about our own safety to the task of helping other people to keep calm, the situation is completely changed; life isn’t pushed back into a single dimension but is kept multidimensional and polyphonous. What a deliverance it is to be able to think and thereby to remain multidimensional. I’ve almost made it a rule here, simply to tell people who are trembling under an air raid that it would be much worse for a small town. We have to get people out of their one-track minds; that is a kind of “preparation” for faith, or something that makes faith possible, although really it’s only faith itself that can make possible a multidimensional life, and so enable us to keep this Whitsuntide, too, in spite of the alarms.”
Multidimensional and polyphonous: that’s the sort of life you want, even, or especially, in the direst of circumstances! No, Jesus didn’t come to alleviate the suffering of the world—but oh yes he did!
August 2024
