Last week we began a five-week liturgical cycle of reading from chapter 6 of St. John’s Gospel beginning with the account of the miraculous feeding of the 5000.
This crowd of people must have been tremendously excited after witnessing and benefiting from Jesus’ miracle. They had already followed Jesus out into the wilderness because of his reputation as a great preacher and his ability to cure the sick. But feeding five thousand people with a few loaves was a miracle on a whole other level—levels of magnitude greater than the miracle working prophets of the Old Testament.
In response to the miraculous feeding, the crowd, as we heard last week, wanted to make Jesus their king. After all, he would be able to satisfy all their material needs—that’s a pretty good quality for a king to possess.
But Jesus doesn’t stick around for a coronation; he retreats, for his kingdom is not of this world. Nonetheless, the crowd follows him—they want more from him. And to their delight, Jesus explains that he does intend to feed them. As God fed their ancestors in the desert, as we heard in our first reading, Jesus promises that whoever comes to him will never be hungry. He will provide for their hunger, he will provide for their thirst.
What a promise! And yet, six chapters into John’s Gospel, we know that there must be something else coming because a pattern has already emerged in John’s Gospel. While the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke record many miracles, John records only six. The miracle of multiplication in John’s Gospel is the 4th miracle, the first three being the changing of water into wine at the Wedding at Cana, the healing of the Royal Official’s son, also at Cana, and the healing of the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda. And following those miracles, Jesus gives some sort of teaching, a teaching of who He is—and why He is here—and His mission, is about much more than gaining popular adulation in order to claim earthly kingship.
After the Wedding at Cana, Jesus teaches that he’s not just another party goer who enjoys a jug or two of wine. Rather, he is the beloved Son of the Heavenly Father sent by the Father to speak words of everlasting life. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.” He’s on a mission where the stakes are not about temporal pleasures and frivolity—this mission is about life and death—eternal life or death.
After the second and third miracles, Jesus gives another teaching. He teaches again about his relationship with His Father, and that he has been sent to do the work of the Heavenly Father which is a matter of life and death. And then he echoes the teaching he gave after the first miracle, “whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.”
So, following the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, the attentive reader of John’s Gospel will intuit that there is going to be another teaching—and likely one about some very serious eternal realities. In fact, in the original Greek of St. John’s Gospel, this is absolutely clear.
For the Greek New Testament has two different words for “life”. Bios and Zoe. Bios is natural life, biological life, the physical life of plants, animals, and humans. But Zoe—Zoe is the word for supernatural life—the life of God, the life of the spirit. In today’s passage, when Jesus says, I am the bread of life, which word do you think he uses? Zoe, of course. Εγω ειμι ο αρτος της ζωης. I am the bread of supernatural life.
Just like he did after the first three miracles, Jesus identifies himself with the life of God. He is sent by the Father to be food for us—and not just food that keeps our bodies alive—food that will keep our souls alive.
Yes, of course, God is concerned with our physical needs—and if the world were a little more in conformity with the God’s kingdom—there would be a lot less physical hardship on everybody. But in the Bread of Life discourse, Jesus teaches about a reality more vital than even our physical needs.
Now most people in our modern world say, there IS NOTHING more important than our physical life. Food, drink, shelter, medicine, without these, our frail bodies cannot survive. But Jesus teaches that there IS something more important than even physical life. For it’s one thing for your body to die, it’s another thing for your souls to be separated from God for eternity.
Now even a lot of Christians, these days, have fallen into some serious error. They claim that since God is all-loving everybody goes to heaven. So it doesn’t matter if you pray, or if you go to church, or get baptized or confess your sins, or receive the eucharist. But these are grievous errors that keep us from the life God desires for us—the life he sent us Son to be offered up as a sacrifice in order to obtain.
Rather, Christians must witness to the reality of man’s need for the bread of eternal life no matter what our foolish culture posits. This is why St. Paul writes in our second reading, “I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance, because of their hardness of heart, they have become callous.”
St. Paul is saying that the corruption of a non-Christian society is the result of shallowness in their thinking—futility of mind. One translation puts it, “empty headed thinking”. The depravity, corruption, and disorder in our surrounding culture comes from ignorance—often willful ignorance, hardened hearts and callousness—regarding the things of God. There is a lot of empty-headed thinking about God these days, even among members of the Church.
But our task in the Lord, is to witness by word and deed—through formal teaching and by good example and charitable works—that God calls us to a new way of life in Christ. God feeds us with the Bread of Life that we may have new life in Christ for eternity, and that is to be evident in how we speak and act and how we treat people. Through the Bread of Life we are brought into Communion with the One who is life, the one who desires the flourishment of humanity and provides the means for that flourishment, in this life and the life to come, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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