Bread of Life - The Ups and Downs of our faith
Sermon on John Chapter 6
by The Reverend Dr Sam Cappleman
The gospel reading today follows on from John’s account of Jesus feeding the
5000 followed by his walking on the water to cross the lake over to
Capernaum.
When the crowds catch up with Him He’s teaching in the synagogue in
Capernaum and He uses the fact that they’ve come to find Him because He
previously fed them with bread to teach them about the bread of eternal life
He uses the structure of teaching that the Jews in the synagogue would have
been familiar with, the Midrash, which was their equivalent to our standard
three point sermon. The Midrash tradition started with a verse of scripture,
in this case Jn 6 v 31, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’ and then
goes on to explain this in 2 sections, the first part, Jn 6 v 32 – 48, he
explains ‘bread from heaven’ and in the second part, Jn 49 – 58, which is
most of today’s reading, He explains ‘to eat’. Often this explanation (in
the Aggadah tradition of Midrash, takes one word and changes it slightly in
the vowel structure as the are no vowels in the Torah, and comes up with a
different word which explains the meaning of the phase of scripture.
So His teaching started in the reading we had last week and it continues in
today’s reading
And in this passage are several of the phrases that John uses to continue to
indicate the significance of what is happening, the transformation from the
old to the new, with creation, our lives and the spiritual realm in which we
live
The first phrase that draws our attention is when Jesus describes Himself as
‘I am’, a phrase He uses multiple times to describe Himself in the gospel.
Here He declares Himself to be the bread of life, the living bread, with the
words ‘I am the living bread, the bread of life’
In Exodus 3 when God is looking for someone to lead the Israelites out of
Egypt He calls Moses. Moses is somewhat reluctant to take up the mantle and
asks God who he should tell the Israelites has sent him, what’s God’s name?
God replies, ‘Tell them I am has sent me to you’. To the Jews in the
synagogue declaring Himself as the ‘I am’ was declaring Himself as God. No
wonder it caused so much uproar although its interesting to note that the
Jews argued amongst themselves so presumably some agreed with what Jesus was
saying!
The second is that He uses the words we have seen before in John’s gospel of
‘up’ and ‘down’. We saw it in the discourse with Nathaniel where Jesus says
he will see heaven open and angels coming up and down on the Son of Man.
Jesus has come down so that we can go up. With Nicodemus Jesus states that
Nicodemus must be born from ‘up there’
Jesus, the one who came down, gives us access to the kingdom of the up by
being lifted up Himself
Here, Jesus, the living bread, states that He has come down from heaven so
that by eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood we can be raised up
It’s the same structure we see over and over again in John; Jesus comes down
to transform creation so that we can have access to the kingdom of the up
And, as if to emphasise the break between the old and the new the third clue
comes as Jesus uses a structure He’s used in the past by contrasting the old
with the new
In the wedding at Cana in Galilee the reading describes the mother of Jesus,
part of the old regime in the past tense, ‘Was the mother of Jesus there’.
It’s the same with Nicodemus, ‘Was there a man called Nicodemus, a member of
the council party there’
Here Jesus draws the comparison with the bread that came down the Israelites
forefathers, ‘Ate (past tense) our forefathers manna from heaven’
In describing the manna He says that unlike the living bread, manna, which
translates what is it (Hebrew man = what) has no life giving properties and
all that ate it ultimately died, maveth
Jesus is describing a transformation from the old world to the new
And, as in other stories where Jesus describes this transformation that He
is bringing about He makes it clear to His listeners how they too can be
part of this transformation
Because although the passage does point towards the Eucharist, when Jesus
talks about eating His flesh, the bread of live and drinking His blood in
this passage the meaning is clear
Its not talking about being saved through the Eucharist, it is talking about
eating and drinking as a once and for all and personal action through which
we are saved. That is, acknowledging the ‘I am’, the one who has come down
so that we can have access to the Kingdom of the up, the one who is the
living bread, through which we never go hungry
In using the word ‘flesh’ He’s also linking the Eucharist, and all that it
means, with His incarnation
And it’s this which we remember as we celebrate the Eucharist today
We celebrate and share the Eucharist as a memorial to Jesus not to remember
what he said ‘Do his in remembrance of me’ but because of what it signifies,
His coming into the world to transform the old into the new, in all creation
and in our lives
In fact, the whole of John’s gospel is pervaded by the concept of the
Christian Passover replacing the Jewish one
The Eucharist is therefore not just some ‘going through the motions’ but an
active participation in the transformation of God, the one from ‘up there’,
in our lives
As we share in the Eucharist we share in the transformation, a
transformation of ourselves and through us the world in which we live
The Eucharist isn’t just a remembering of the past it’s a calling into the
present the reality of what happened when Jesus was raised up
There are many examples of people being fed in the Old Testament; we had one
in last weeks reading where Elijah was fed. But all of them result in people
still dying
As Christians, as we share in the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy
Communion, as we eat of the body of Jesus and drink of His blood, we are
reminded in a profound way that as we profit and share in the risk that
Jesus took by the breaking of His body and the shedding of His blood, so we
share in His risen life.
His is the life that sustains and transforms us, hour by hour, day by day,
week by week. No longer are we limited by the laws of the Old Testament or
the physical restrictions of our human body, through the Eucharist, and all
that it symbolises for each one of us, perhaps in very different ways, we
are raised up with Christ and share in His eternal glory both now and in the
world to come.