John 6:24-35
So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which[a] comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. [John 6.24-35]
We have been reflecting these past few weeks on John Chapter 6 — and perhaps I could suggest that in the quiet moments of this summer, it might be good to take some time with your bible and let the words of chapter 6 do their work on you ……. for I am convinced that any time we spend with God in God’s word are moments of encounter with the divine.
So, let’s take a few minutes to break open today’s Gospel a bit and explore one of its messages…….Jesus has just performed the miracle of the feeding of the 5000+, and he heads off to Capernaum … and those who had been fed, follow him. It’s not that they didn’t understand the significance of what had happened. The allusions to the feeding with Manna in the desert would absolutely not have been lost on them. But in the moment and movements of the experience, they got so caught up on the outside appearances of the miracle, that they forgot the inner meaning. The deeper meaning. And so, Jesus is bluntly honest with the people he had fed the previous day.
He knows they came looking for him because they had eaten their fill of bread. Yet they wanted more. They had seen a miracle. And yet, they wanted to see another one.
You know, despite the thousands of people who saw the connection to the Old Testament miraculous feedings of Moses, and the prophets Elijah and Elisha – I think there was only one person there who really got the message. Just one. It was the little shepherd boy, who offered his five small loaves and two fish to Jesus.
It wasn’t much. Especially when looking at a crowd numbering in the 10’s of thousands when you add the families ….. Yet, he trusted that God would take care of them. And God Did. Just as Moses trusted God, and Elijah trusted God, and Elisha trusted God, and God took care of them. For rather than look to take something from God, instead the young shepherd boy gave something to God. And it was not just his food…. It was his TRUST
Do we trust in God like that? Do we trust that God will take care of us? Or, like the crowds, do we approach God because we are hungry. Because we want something from God.
As humans, it seems we are always hungry. We hunger to be a celebrity, to be affluent, We hunger to feel better than everybody else, or richer than everybody else, or more important that everybody else We hunger to be content, to be at peace We feel that if we are safe and secure, and have enough to eat, and a nice family, and a good job, that will be enough. But you know – it is never enough. There is an even deeper hunger within us.
Something behind of all those hungers that we express — something even deeper that our hunger to feel accepted, to feel wanted, to be loved, For we hunger to know the meaning of our life. And deeper still, we hunger to know the truth of our existence. And when we dive deeper and deeper into what we hunger for, we get to the final hunger and this is what Jesus has come to fill: for the deepest hunger is the hunger for God.The desire, the need, to be at one with God.
Jesus was saying to them that God is not giving you bread so you can live.… God IS the bread of life. The point was that God has come to be our Bread, to be our life. God has come to make us a people. God has come to bring us together that we might experience not only God, but that we experience that we are children of God, brothers and sisters of God. Intimately connected always and everywhere to God. And until we realize this, we will never understand what the words “Bread of Life” means.
For each and every day, we are nourished and sustained by the bread of life itself. In a very tangible way, we feed on the presence of God in our gathering in prayer, the presence of God in the Eucharist, and in Gods word. But we also encounter God in God’s creation, in nature, in people, in the quiet times where we are in prayer. In those moments when we slow down and open our hearts to sense God’s presence. In those times when we realize that it is within God that we live, and move, and have our being.
I wonder how the life of that little shepherd boy turned out. I expect I will find out later. But for now, it is good enough that we are in admiration of his level of trust For to have that degree of trust is to know that God wants only what is best for us in the eternal scheme of life.
And to offer what meagre things we have, our time, our skills, our ability to act as a channel of God’s love – to take these loaves and fishes of our lives, and by offering them in God’s service, to trust that God will continue to work miracles in our world.