Jesus as ‘the Bread of Life’ — Bible Reflection for Monday, January 2

Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:

https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-january-2-2023

John 6:35-51

     ³⁵ Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.³⁶ But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. ³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. ³⁸ For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. ³⁹ And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. ⁴⁰ For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

     ⁴¹ At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴² They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

     ⁴³ “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. ⁴⁴ “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. ⁴⁶ No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ I tell you the truth, the one who believes has everlasting life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. ⁵⁰ But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread, they will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

There are things about the Revised Common Lectionary that are a mystery to me, and one of them is why we start the year with the readings that are listed for today. There is a mention of Jesus coming down from heaven, so you might think of the Christmas season that’s ending. But the emphasis of the passage is on the idea of Jesus as “the bread of life.” That brings to mind the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, but it seems to me that there’s more going on in this passage than just a reference to the sacrament.

Jesus calls himself “the bread of life.” Bread is usually understood as symbolizing our daily needs in general. When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we’re asking God to provide, not just bread or even food, but whatever we need to sustain our earthly lives. That’s why in the alternative version of the Lord’s Prayer we use in our morning prayers each Wednesday, we say, “We ask that you would provide for our needs this day.”

But the scholars who study the ancient Aramaic language Jesus spoke tell us that in that language, the word used for ‘bread’ had an even broader meaning. In that language, ‘bread’ also referred to the guidance and understanding we need if we’re going to thrive spiritually as well as physically. So in this passage for today, it seems that Jesus is declaring himself to be the source of everything we need for a healthy spiritual life.

And Jesus says that anyone who comes to him looking for that kind of healthy spiritual life will find it. And what’s more, they’ll share in his eternal life, too. In fact, Jesus says, he has come into this world from heaven for exactly that purpose: to provide what we need to be sustained, not just for mortal life in this world, but also for an abundant and eternal life.

In this reading, the religious leaders who hear Jesus say this about himself are said to “grumble.” To them, claiming to be sent into the world from God was blasphemy. But of course, we know what they didn’t know: Jesus wasn’t just a representative of God – he was actually God in human form. It’s not surprising that the Jewish religious leaders had a hard time with this idea. It took the followers of Jesus something like three centuries to figure this out. The idea that Jesus had “come down from heaven” was just beyond their grasp.

Jesus also says something else in this passage that’s especially worthy of a moment’s reflection. Jesus contrasts himself to the manna the Hebrews ate in the desert on their way to the promised land. Both Jesus and the manna were, in the Aramaic sense, bread from God. But the manna was bread that only sustained the people physically. It kept them alive, but only physically and only temporarily. Jesus, on the other hand, had come to nourish and sustain people spiritually and emotionally as well as physically – and also eternally.

Maybe that’s why the lectionary lists this reading for today. It seems like an appropriate subject for our first Reflection of the new year. I say that because it invites us to open ourselves to receive more ‘nourishment’ from Jesus than we’ve settled for in the past. Jesus invites us to open ourselves to be nourished and empowered for a deeper spiritual life than we’ve ever experienced before – not to settle for a shallow and lukewarm experience of faith and a hope of heaven when we die, but rather to allow Jesus to provide us with a bread that can let us live with a joy and power we’ve never known before.

Let’s pray. Lord, in this new year, move in our hearts and awaken in us a hunger to experience your love more powerfully than ever before. And day by day, help us to open our lives to receive and be nourished by the bread of life he came into the world to bring us. Amen.

A happy, healthy and prosperous 2023 to you and yours!

Henry

(The other readings for today are Psalms 48 and 145; Genesis 12:1-7; and Hebrews 11:1-12. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)