Exodus 16.2-4, 9-15

John 6.24-35

In our readings of late, full of signs and wonders, we seem to have been involved in a lot of eating – from the dramatic banquet in Herod’s palace, an occasion of sordid behaviour and death dealing, to picnics in the countryside attended by huge crowds, life giving occasions that never tire the imagination.

Last week we reached the mid-point of John’s seven “signs”, [1] and, today, we pick up the story when “the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there”. So, they hop into boats[2] and sail to Capernaum “looking for Jesus”. When they “find” Jesus, they don’t seem to comprehend who he is: “Rabbi,” they ask, “when did you come here?”

The scene is set for another “I” saying to appear, yet another of John’s dazzling insights. Jesus replies, somewhat caustically in my view,

Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. (John 6.26)

As Desiree remarked last week, Raymond Brown[3] wrought an illuminating comparison of the dialogue in today’s text and the conversation between Jesus and the Woman at the Well.

Our text offers bread:

“Do not work for the food that perishes,” (John 6:27) followed by, “Sir, give us this bread always” (John 6:34);

The Woman at the Well runs a close parallel with water:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again” (John 4:13) followed by, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water” (John 4:15).

This kind of thematic repetition occurs throughout John’s Gospel. Thus, he frequently uses the phrase, “Very truly, I tell you”. Now, “very truly” is the translation of the Greek amēn, a particularly striking emphasis marker, used in our scriptures to introduce statements of pivotal significance. Modern parlance might say “for sure” or “absolutely” or “definitely”; and that element of certainty is crucial to our understanding of John’s use of amēn. On Jesus’ lips it speaks to an assurance that his message is, as it were, guaranteed by God; for Jesus is both the messenger and the actuality conveyed by the message.

For John then, there is no confusion: Jesus is the bread of life, is the water of life, and at the same time is something greater than life as we know it. That is to say, our own lives are not complete in themselves. “My life,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “is outside myself, beyond my disposal. My life is another, a stranger; Jesus Christ.” [4] In John, Jesus is life itself (John 1:4) and has come so “that they may have life” (John 10:10).

The purpose of John’s Gospel is clearly enunciated – “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”, which leads us to consider yet another important word, “believe”. The Greek is pistis, also the name of the Greek goddess of trust, honesty and good faith. She was one of the good spirits to escape Pandora's box and promptly fled back to heaven, abandoning humankind. [5] So “believe” is a weighty word, and it is unfortunate that in the Western world, the word “belief” has escaped the rigour of its origins.

Now let us move to the OT reading. You may remember the line from last week’s Gospel:

Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. (John 6.5b,6a)

There is a similar dynamic in the OT, in which God is constantly “testing” the people of God. God deals with people in general with understanding and compassion, but when it comes to the covenant people of God there is a repeated theme of critique and testing throughout.

We have a perfect example of that in the Exodus reading, when “The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness”. (Exodus 16.2) God’s response was to say to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them …”

In essence, God then says three things to Moses.

First, God has heard their complaints. Second, in response to their complaining, God will provide for the people, meat (quails) in the evening and bread (manna) in the morning. Third, God tells Moses that it is when the people access God’s provision of food, then they will know who the Lord is, their God.

Our Gospel text says the same thing, except that Jesus attunes his listeners to God’s faithfulness today, in this very moment. The crowd demand, “Sir, give us this bread always.” But what they demand is actually that which they already have – in the actual presence of Jesus: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6.35)

Scholar and preacher Walter Brueggemann, notes a multitude of meanings for bread. [6] Bread has to do with the entire system of creation, from the management of water and soil, to the breeding of good seed, to the economies of the world. Every culture and economic class consumes bread, and if it is not shared, “human life is in jeopardy.” Furthermore, the bread of the Eucharist, that which is blessed and broken, is a potent sign (sacrament) that this “most elemental stuff of the earth is infused with Holy Mystery.”[7]

Bread also connotes cash, the symbol by which we enter the economic world of credit, debt, interest rates budgets, tax incentives, market management and significantly, the high cost of neighbourliness.[8] So “there at the table” of our Eucharist lie issues to do with life sciences, social sciences, theology and economics.

(If you are not persuaded by the reference to economics, you may remember that just after the feeding of the four thousand in Mark, the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Whereupon Jesus cautions them with the words, “Watch out — beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” That is to say the religious and secular power structures of the Mediterranean world.

We meet because our common work is rooted in the several faith traditions that hark back to manna bread. We become aware, I hope, that all bread is wonder bread, and all bread is laden with sacramental significance.

It is our creator who gives bread to the eater and seed to the sower, the same whom we confess inhabits the bread in ways that we cannot articulate. Consequently, none of the widespread views of our faith communities can escape an accountability given by “the very bread itself,” for as Brueggemann noted, “bread is the guarantee of life to the neediest, the least, the last, the most precarious, the ones without leverage or claim or resource.”[9]

All these issues are on the table when we hear the primal verbs of faith, “to take, to bless, to break, to give again.”[10]

 

Amen, Amen.

 

Doug Bannerman © 2021

 

[1] Water Turned to Wine (John 2.1-11)

Healing of the (Nobleman’s) Son Near Death (John 4.46-54)

Healing of the Lame Man at the Pool (John 5.1-17)

Feeding of the Five Thousand (John 6.1-15)

Walking on the Water (John 6:16-21)

Healing of the Man Born Blind (John 9.1-41)

Raising of Lazarus from the Dead (John 11.1-47)

[2] What? All 5000 of them? How many boats were there?

[3] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John: Introduction, Translation, and Notes in The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1966), 267

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics in Ilse Tödt, Heinz Eduard Tödt, Ernst Feil, and Clifford Green, trans. and ed., Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works: Volume 6 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 250.

[5] See Polleichtner, Wolfgang (Würzburg) and Büchli, Jörg (Zürich), “Pistis”, in: Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry. Consulted online on 30 July 2021 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e926200>. See also https://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Pistis.html

[6] Walter Brueggemann Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church (Louisville London: Westminster 2007)John Knox Press

[7] op cit Brueggemann

[8] op cit Brueggemann

[9] op cit Brueggemann

[10] op cit Brueggemann