John 6:35, 41-51 Commentary

Comparisons to manna continue this week. One of those comparisons is subtle, hidden in the description of the people: they began to “complain” (NRSV), “grumble” (TNIV), or “murmur” (NLT) about Jesus. Just like our ancestors had the habit of grumbling about God.

And just like our ancestors, the true Bread of Heaven is being given to provide for God’s people, and so that we will believe, trust, and actively live (i.e.,   “work”) in that trust. Manna sustained the people while they learned to trust in God’s salvific work for them. It was this mysterious yet earthly and temporal stuff that fell from the sky and it required daily belief that what your family needed would be waiting like dew each morning.

We could interpret manna as an example of the promise made in Isaiah 54.13 and spoken of here in John 6.45. Manna was one of the ways that all of the Israelites were “taught by God” who God is. Jesus identifies with this process personally as the bread of eternal life. As is spoken of throughout the New Testament, the incarnated Jesus is the way we are given something to touch, to see, to hear, to follow; Jesus, in flesh and blood, is how we are taught who God is: the perfect picture of the unseen God.

It’s the “from heaven” part that raises the ire of the people. As we encountered a   ago, folks have already raised a stink about knowing who Jesus is based on his family of origin. Claims to come from heaven? We know better than that, Jesus!

To overcome what we think we know, it takes the supernatural power of God. At least that’s what I hear Jesus saying as he speaks of the Father. Instead of explaining how he is from heaven, Jesus explains how they might come to understand.

Those who are drawn by the Father, who are taught by the God, those who take from this experience of drawing close to God and listening with obedience, they are the ones who just might understand the wonder that is the person of Jesus, the Eternal Messiah.

Just like the prophet he quotes, Jesus highlights promises yet to come even as those promises are firmly established and impacting the here and now. Manna was for a season—albeit a long season, forty years—but Jesus is the eternal, living bread. When we “eat” him, we live forever as well as for the day. Eating the true living bread from heaven is like feeding the sourdough starter that is our life in belief.

This only works because Jesus, like manna so long ago, was earthly and in the flesh. The incarnation and Jesus’s humanness is what causes some of our misapprehensions and misunderstandings about God, but it is the way that the Father draws us and teaches, combining our physical and spiritual nourishment in one serving.

To be supernaturally joined to Christ by eating him through faith is to live by faith each and every day until we find ourselves in eternity. Jesus is the living bread which continuously comes down to us (see textual point below) in order that we will feast on him day-by-day, drawn to the table by our loving Father by the workings of the Holy Spirit.

It’s not meant to be a future reservation but the defining habit of our lives. The more of Christ as the living bread we get into us, the more of eternity we will know in the here and now. By eating the living bread we will do the works of our God (last week’s question from the crowd) because belief and trust—even with their doubts—are the perfect meal plans for a discipleship lifestyle.

Textual Point

In verse 50 Jesus says that the bread comes down from heaven, using a continuous present participle—in other words, the provision does not stop. The same goes for whoever believes in verse 47: participation in eternal life begins even now through our continuous act of believing as individuals who are learning (aka know) from God.

Illustration Ideas

Though the Visual Commentary on Scripture pairs it with Exodus 16 (which is about the gift of manna in the wilderness), I am intrigued by this Victorian plate (c. 1850) by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. The message, “Waste not, want not” could set a problematic tone, taking the joy out of eating by reminding us of some sort of stewardly duty. On the other hand, it can also subtly remind us that all of our needs are met in Jesus Christ, the bread of heaven—the bread that came down and took on our flesh in order to meet all of those needs. We “waste not” by eating his life and death and becoming like him, and find that we “want not” for a life with purpose and meaning, both now and forever.

…

Our family was late getting into the Great British Bake Off, only starting it in those delirious first few months of our daughter’s life. One good thing that has come from our binge watching is that it has given us an even better sense of how many different goodies can be produced from the same staples of flour, butter, rising agent, and sugar. And I don’t just mean how appearances are transformed by different coloured frostings or cake molds, I mean just the sheer number of different kinds of things which can be made from what is essentially bread. It is a good reminder that as we eat the bread that is Jesus Christ and become one with him—even as we make it our own through faith—we will have diverse lives that taste better to God than those desserts and savoury bakes taste to us.