Jesus, the Bread of Life - Comments on John 6:25-36

This is a passage that very much confronts the reality of our faith, and challenges where we have placed Jesus in our lives.

Is Jesus central to us?
Why have we embraced Christianity?
Why have we become involved in church?

If I might start toward the end of our text and then work back!

Jesus says in 6:35, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty".

This verse is very poetic, with two parallel statements … that highlight the need to express active faith in Jesus if the real spiritual needs of life are going to be satisfied. Those who will lead fulfilling lives will be those who have escaped spiritual hunger and thirst, by encountering, experiencing and believing in Jesus.

To “believe” in Jesus is not just to concede he lived, or give intellectual assent to his importance; to “believe” in Jesus is to place our life in his hands. This is so crucial, because whether each human being realises it or not, their greatest need
is to truly experience the presence of God in their lives. And how would we really expect to survive the pressures of life without Jesus! It’s hard for most people who have come to know Jesus to imagine how one could cope without him!!

John’s Gospel has already taught that Jesus is the “living water”. In chapter 4, a Samaritan woman, having encountered Jesus at a well, began to understand that Jesus could cure her spiritual thirst … like no other thing or person could do – not the water she was drawing from the well, not the many men she had been in relationship with, not her traditional religion or culture – only the person of Jesus himself.

We will begin to understand this more as we consider the lead up to Jesus’ statement here in 6:35. Chapter 6 begins with the incident of the “feeding of the five thousand”. John’s Gospel highlights here how Jesus tested where his disciples were at (at this point in time in their journey). When faced with the need to feed this very large crowd – Philip responded that (even if they had such resources) six month’s wages would not be enough to buy such a crowd even a crumb or two each. Then having discovered a boy who had brought his own provisions of five loaves and two fish, Andrew could not see how that would be of any help in the face of such a huge number of people.

Now, being a fairly rational thinker, I might have thought the same as Philip and Andrew did, so we won’t judge them too harshly; but in the face of the presence of Jesus – this was just far too limited human thinking! “Belief” in Jesus just cannot
be constrained by such human rationality.

We know the result – all the five thousand men, plus the women and children present, were all fed to capacity, with basket fulls left over. The ‘doggy bags’ could now come out, and the ‘left-overs’ would feed other family members and neighbours the next day. The expansiveness of this miracle pointed beyond remarkable hospitality to something even bigger > that Jesus could satisfy the deepest spiritual need within each human being. Jesus didn’t need six month’s wages, nor any substantial amount of food, to truly meet people’s needs.

Whereas the disciples might have been gaining in their understanding, the gathered crowd was not able to interpret this sign for all that it indicated! In 6:14-15, this crowd was identifying Jesus merely as a “prophet” (a significant religious figure) or as a potential “king” (a human political leader) – all too insufficient understandings. Jesus was the very “Word of God”, the source of “light”, the way to Creator God. [Later (v.42), even after Jesus’ compelling testimony, they continued to find it difficult to see beyond the human Jesus … son of Joseph and Mary, to anything more significant.]

This lack of openness to new understanding is intensified by the crowd’s confusion over the incident that followed (“Jesus walking on the water”). It was known that the disciples had taken the only boat and gone to the other side, leaving Jesus behind up the mountain. Yet, the next morning, there Jesus was with his disciples! Even though the evidence was right in front of them, the people were not able to interpret what this really meant.

Jesus knew that the crowd didn’t ‘get it’, and also knew why! When they queried when and how Jesus had got to the other side of the lake (verse 25), rather than explaining, Jesus challenged the reason why they would be chasing Jesus all over the place. And this reason was not to accept the true significance of Jesus and believe in him, but rather get for themselves whatever they could out of him (according to their own human agenda). In verse 26, Jesus answered them: "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs [that you are prepared to interpret correctly], but [simply] because you ate your fill of the loaves [– or because you got your stomachs filled for free]". The crowd cannot see beyond the actual food, to the presence of God in Jesus that this feeding miracle reveals.

If it’s not to indulge our own human agendas, then why was it that God sent Jesus into the midst of humanity? Why is God calling us to Him through His presence in Jesus??

It’s because God wants to deal with what’s happening deep within us (not just our dietary requirements)! And so many people just don’t want to face this concept of inner transformation; they much prefer mere ‘window-dressing’!! Some people will continue to want more and more ‘signs’ of Jesus’ presence and significance (like we see with the “crowd” in 6:30-31), whilst never really being prepared to confront their own (desperate) need.

So it wasn’t the physical bread that was important, but rather Jesus himself – the
very ‘bread of life’ – the one able to address life’s real needs and necessities, not necessarily just our perceived wants and desires.

Jesus says in verse 27: "Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life" – meaning don’t waste your time on ‘window-dressing’ and ‘appearance management’, trust your deepest needs into the handsof Jesus, so that your life can get ‘on track’ – so that life can be experienced in all its (spiritual) fullness. And it’s only Jesus who can do this for us (v.27c)!

What Jesus asks of us is for us to “believe” in him with all our heart (with all our heart, soul, mind and strength) – that we neither look to the right nor to the left, but focus directly on Jesus. Life becomes very difficult and confused if we have half an eye on Jesus, and the rest of our sensory system in other places. This way, we probably would still know how we should live, but find it increasingly difficult to ‘pull it off’!

Judas was a biblical example of not quite having Jesus central as “bread of life”,
still having his own agenda in mind; wanting to in some ways acknowledge Jesus, but still chart his own course. And we know how that turned out!

It’s interesting to note that wherever Jesus calls us to follow him, he does not do so without understanding the temptations of taking a different path. As we read in Hebrews 4:15: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin". This was played out in the gospel story; as Jesus was preparing for his earthly ministry in the wilderness, he was tempted to satisfy his own hunger with bread – but resisted this temptation to succumb to a personal human agenda, remaining committed to the will of God. Matthew 4:2-4 reads: "[Jesus] fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread'. But [Jesus] answered, 'It is written - One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God'". Jesus would multiply bread and fish as of sign so many would believe and come to know God, but would not create bread from stone only to satisfy a personal desire that would tend to disrupt the purposes of God.

“Eternal Life” comes from being wholistically centred on Jesus, allowing all facets
of our life (family, work, study, social, community) to come into under his Lordship – ie. under Jesus’ supervision.

As we look at verse 28, we could understand the people picking up Jesus concept of work from verse 27, Jesus saying that the hearers should be working for “the food
that endures for eternal life” (like the building of treasures in heaven in Matthew’s gospel) – then asking about he nature of that work. The nature of that work is to “believe” in Jesus. And to show us that all the human effort in the world will not ‘cut it’, this work of believing in Jesus is described by Jesus as a “work of God”. In other words it is God working in us that actually allows us to believe in Jesus.

Sure, there are many responsibilities for us to address as followers of Jesus, there is a very large mission to participate in – but our experience of “eternal life” (here and now) can only really begin as we respond to God’s offer of grace to us by believing in Jesus, and focussing all our attention on him.