John 6:22-40: The Bread of Life.

Presented to Nipawin Corps 04 January 2009
By Captain Michael Ramsay

This Christmas season was a lot of work. It was a lot of fun. There were a lot of people who helped the Army serve the Lord by showing our love for our neighbour in the way we do during the Christmas season.

The income from our Christmas campaign and kettles was a record high this year – surpassing even last year which was the previously highest year by far (I believe that Nipawin may have even been the highest givers per capita in the entire province). We are very thankful to all the people and groups who helped with this ministry –standing on the kettles, organising the kettles, helping me count the money from the kettles.

We also had the opportunity to help out a number of people who were dealing with terrible loss this season; the Lord allowed us to provide counselling, emotional and spiritual support as well as material assistance to many in need.

From Nipawin here we coordinated the hampers for the Yellowquill reserve and for Tisdale as well as for Nipawin. I thank the Lord for the help of the Hildebrandts (for their hard work and organisation), the Gages (especially for all their heavy lifting and keeping me company as I headed up and down between the towns) and for all of those who volunteered to pack the hampers.

The Lord used Sheila effectively in coordinating the Christmas meal as well. We had many volunteers, two seatings, lots of food and no one went away hungry.

In our text today, John 6:22-40, Jesus calls himself the ‘bread of life’ and the day before he makes this claim, John tells us that Jesus performed the miraculous feeding with the fish and the bread, where no one needed to go away hungry. Do you remember? Chapter 6:1-15, Jesus feeds as much as the population of Nipawin – even more than that actually, it says there were 5000 men alone – and all these men (and others) were following Jesus around the countryside and they didn’t have any lunch. It says that six months wages would not by enough bread to feed them but one small boy brought a few fish and loaves of bread and as Jesus broke this little bit of bread for his disciples to give out. When they were handing out this little bit of bread and fish, they found out that it did not run out! Not only did they have enough to feed the 5000+ people but they also had twelve baskets of bread pieces left over… this was the miraculous feeding of the 5000, the miracle of the bread (and fish) that did not run out.

In our text today this crowd catches up with Jesus, who had escaped from them in the interim, and Jesus tells the crowd that he knows – verse 26 – that they are looking for him because he fed them and in the miraculous way that he did but that indeed –verse 27– they should really be looking for him because he will give them eternal life.

Answering him, the crowd acknowledges that they would like to do the work of God themselves –verse 28 – if he would just tell them what they must do. Believe in me, Jesus says –verse 29 –believe in me …and then they, these same people who had just eaten the miraculous bread (and fish), these same people who had just been a part of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, these same people who had just tried to seize him and make him king because of this miraculous sign, these same people they ask him for a sign. How short our memories are, it seems…

I know in our own lives this is sometimes the case too, isn’t it? Sometimes, one day we are praising God because He has miraculously fed, clothed, healed, or saved somebody and the next day we are asking – well, what have you done for me lately? This is sad but I fear all too true.

With the crowd in our story, rather than getting mad at these people or refusing to discuss these things with them any further (as he is sometimes apt to do), Jesus addresses their concerns while making reference to this miracle of the bread that he performed yesterday. He compares himself also to the bread from heaven, the manna that God sent down to Moses and the rest of the Israelites in the desert at the time of the exodus. Jesus says that indeed, he himself is even more than these; Jesus says that he is this ‘bread of life’, as it were (v.35); he is this bread of life so that anyone who eats him, anyone who eats this bread will not perish but have everlasting life. Now this is important – but this is also confusing.

What does it mean to eat this bread of life, that once we eat it we are never hungry again? This is an important question to the people of Palestine here as well as to us today. Apparently in general there weren’t too many times in the history of Palestine and of the Israelites when they weren’t on the verge of starvation and in specific these people, we remember, have just been hungry and have just been fed by Jesus himself.[1]

Today there is also this problem across the whole world where people are starving to death (up to 50 000 every day!) [2] and even in Canada, whose parliamentarians pledged in 1989 to end child poverty; even in Canada, which in the past used to be much better off than most first world countries even; even in Canada now, we are not so high on the list of nations who bother provide for the poor and the needy as we should be given our nation’s great wealth[3] (cf. Matt 19:21, 25:31ff, 26:9-11; Mk 10:21, 14:5; Lk 6:20, 11:41, 12:33, 14:13, 18:22, 19:8; John 12:5-8, 13:29).

We know that the poor will always be with us (Matt 26:11, Mk 14:7, John 12:8) We know also that how we treat them is indicative of our nation’s very salvation (Matt 25:31ff) and we will notice as well that spiritually we, in most of Canada now (maybe not Saskatchewan yet), are starving.

Atheism is at an all-time high in Canada; pornography production and consumption has reached incomprehensible rates and more and more people have become more and more desensitized to sex and violence: many here even offer it up to their own children in the form of unsupervised television access and even interactive video games that promote sex, violence and self before others and instead of God - (Children spend more time watching television than any other activity!).[4] Nationally, we are indeed a starving society. But what is the solution?

What is the solution to hunger that Jesus offers to the people of Palestine in the first century? When they ask him about it, he says, ‘eat me’. He says whoever eats him we not perish but will have everlasting life. Well, that is great but what does it mean? It doesn’t mean to physically eat him, does it? I don’t think so.

How can one actually eat Jesus? After all he died two thousand years ago, rose from the dead, and we right now are still awaiting his imminent return; so how can we eat his flesh if we are still waiting for him to return in the flesh? I don’t think we can eat something that is not here, can we? And right now his flesh is not here. Now some people would argue in favour of transubstantiation or consubstantiation saying that somehow when a Lutheran, Roman Catholic priest, or another distributes communion, the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper to his parishioners, that the bread (or wafer) actually turns into Christ’s skin, his flesh, his body; I personally don’t think so. I am pretty sure, at any rate that this part of the Gospel of John is not talking about this kind of thing anyway.[5]

So what does it mean for us to eat him so that we can have life (6:35, 49-50, 53-56)? John says later in this chapter that as well as eating this bread of life, we must listen to it (6:45, 63, 68). How do we do that? How do we eat it and listen to it at the same time? Is it like Rice Krispies – Snap, Crackle, Pop? When is the last time that you listened to your food? How do we listen to this food that will make us never hungry again while at the same time we eat it? What does it mean to actually listen to (and not just hear) this food?

Jesus tells us that indeed, by itself, ‘the flesh is useless’ (6:63)[6]; the bread is the body of Christ but the body by itself, ‘the flesh is useless’ in that it does not provide eternal life.[7] Just like those who ate the manna, the bread in the desert died, and just like those who ate the little boy’s fish and loaves yesterday are hungry already (cf. 6:27, 49) and they are not spared death by eating them, physical feeding by itself at best delays death. Likewise simply listening to the spiritual is no guarantee of life. You can go to a church every Sunday of your life and never go to be with Jesus at the resurrection of the just.[8]

We can’t just hear the word of God; we have to listen to it and to do it. In our world today the equivalent of simply hearing the word without doing it would probably be heading out to church on Sunday, listening to Christian radio, reading Christian books, or watching preachers on TV. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day did the equivalent of all this and more and many of them, it seems from the NT scriptures, will not be by his side on the last day.

We can’t just watch as the bread of life is being distributed and decline to eat it as if we are on some kind of a diet, as if we were partaking of some kind of a fast. We need to consume, we need to internalize the whole life of Jesus Christ. In the book of John alone, we are told many (49) times that we must believe, we must put our actual faith and trust in Christ, if we want to live. We must, John tells us, as recorded in Chapter 15, we must be willing to lay down our lives for God and for our spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ just like Jesus laid down his life for us.

Isaiah 50:10-11 and 55:1-2 calls the bread of heaven the word of life. The Prophet Isaiah (2nd Isaiah) calls the bread from heaven, the word of life. John tells us in Chapter One of this very letter, like Susan[9] preached on last week that Jesus is this word of life and that this word was with God from the beginning and this word that is also the bread of life is indeed God himself. This bread of life that we must eat is indeed the same bread and the same word that we must listen to. This bread and this word is Jesus Christ. So what does it mean to eat this bread? What does it mean to listen to and to eat this bread?

Jesus tells us that if we love him we will obey his commandments (John 14,15) and he commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves. He commands us to look out for the poor, the widow, the immigrant. Doing this, and fulfilling the great commission (Matt 28:16ff), is a physical application or response, maybe even a manifestation of sorts of the spiritual reality that is love for God and that is Christ in our lives.

Eating the bread in this way is how we display that indeed we believe. It shows that we indeed have accepted his salvation and indeed these actions, these works only mean anything if we do believe. Because if we believe the word that became flesh, if we truly believe and consume and internalise his teaching, through prayer and Bible study, if we truly commune with the Lord in this way then we will eat of the bread of life and you will see that we will perform the acts of righteous, and then we will truly enjoy our salvation.

Remember that God did not send His son into the world to condemn that world but to save the world (John 3:17-16) and that whosoever of us believes in Jesus Christ in this way; whosoever listens to the Word of God and consumes this bread of life; whosoever actually believes in the Lord in this way and eats of his eternal bread will not perish but will have everlasting life.

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[1] See also the story of the women at the well in Chapter 4 where Jesus refers to himself as possessing living water; cf. also John 7:37-39.
[2] “At the start of the 21st century 1.2 billion people live in abject poverty, most of them women. More than 800 million people go to bed hungry and 50,000 people die every day from poverty-related causes.” - makepovertyhistory.ca
[3] Cf. makepovertyhistory.ca – “in the midst of wealth, almost 5 million Canadians live in poverty. Poverty is increasing for youth, workers, young families and immigrant and visible minority groups. Poverty among Aboriginal groups remains appallingly high both on and off reserve. In fact, if the statistics for Canadian Aboriginal people were viewed separately from those of the rest of the country, Canada's Aboriginal people would slip to 78th on the UN Human Development Index — the ranking currently held by Kazakhstan.”
[4] Children spend more time watching television than in any other activity except sleep; 54% of kids have a TV in their bedroom.- Huston and Wright, University of Kansas. "Television and Socialization of Young Children." 44% of kids say they watch something different when they're alone than with their parents (25% choose MTV). 66% of children (ages 10 to 16) surveyed say that their peers are influenced by TV shows. 62% say that sex on TV shows and movies influences kids to have sex when they are too young - http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/facts/mediafacts.asp
[5] Cf. For a discussion of this: Gerard Sloyan, “John” in Interpretation. Eds. James L. Mays and Paul J. Achtemeier (John Knox Press, 1988), 76. Cf. Gail O’Day, “John” in NIB IX, Ed. Leander E Keck (Abingdon Press Nashville, 1995), 613, where she argues that the author of John argues for a full spectrum of meaning in the words. Neither author argues for either transubstantiation or consubstantiation.
[6] Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay. “Ulrich Zwingli: the Third Reformer.” Presented to William and Catherine Booth College (October 2008) available on-line: http://www.sheepspeak.com/Michael_Ramsay_History_TSA.htm#Zwingli : “Zwingli argued that when Jesus is recorded as saying, ‘this is my body’ as it relates to the sacrament, the word ‘is’ can and should be translated ‘signifies’. Zwingli, who generally rejected the authority of the church fathers, draws on Augustine, Tertullian, and Origin’s arguments to make this point. He further cites John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is of no avail” claiming that this text renders impossible all views of eating the flesh (including but not limited to ideas such as transubstantiation and consubstantiation). He cites from 1 Corinthians 10:14-22, “we many are one bread and one body”, to argue that by eating the bread we are merely binding ourselves to an oath (much like he argued for baptism) rather than consuming Christ in any practical way. Communion like Baptism is a sign, a symbol.”
[7] Cf. George Richard Potter, Zwingli. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 288;Ulrich Gabler, Huldrych Zwingli: his Life and Work. Translated by Ruth C.L. Gritch, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986),133; and Rillet, 213-225 and Potter, 287-315 for detailed discussions on the differences between the stances of the Reformers Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli on the matter of the Eucharist.
[8] Cf. Gail O’Day, 612.
[9] Captain Susan Ramsay