John 6:47-50
47 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes on Me has everlasting life. 48 I am the Bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and died. 50 This is the Bread which comes down from Heaven, so that a man may eat of it and not die.
Have you ever smelled or tasted freshly baked bread? My father helped to run a bakery when he was growing up, and while I was growing up, enjoyed baking bread as a hobby. We would make bread every Saturday, especially around Easter, when we made Easter bread, mostly because it has high sugar content and tastes almost like cake.
Many sandwich shops, like Subway, use the fact that they bake their own bread in marketing campaigns. I know that the smell of baking bread has made our family stop at Subway more than once when we had other options available. It’s hard to resist the smell of baking bread, especially when you’re already hungry.
Now try to imagine what life would be like without bread. No sandwiches, no donuts, no cookies, no cake. No hamburgers or cheeseburgers. No peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. No bagels or English muffins. Unless you have a specific allergy or medical reason to avoid bread products, it’s likely that you eat some bread every day. If you do have such an allergy or medical condition, how hard it must be to avoid those things!
Even in our modern world, we depend greatly on bread and bread products in every day life.
In Bible times, people depended on bread even more than they do today. In those days, there was no refrigeration, so it was hard to keep meat or fruit good for any length of time. But bread was still fairly easy to make, and it could be made often, so it didn’t have to keep long. It was nutritious and filling, and you could carry it with you when you traveled. When you didn’t have it, or a way of getting it, you were in danger of starving.
In our text for today, Jesus had just recently turned 5 loaves and two fish into enough food to feed thousands of people – 5,000 men and their families, perhaps as many as 20,000 people, or the entire population of Bentonville.
These people had followed Jesus into the wilderness, because they wanted to hear what he had to say. They had just seen Jesus perform one of his greatest miracles, and they obviously didn’t understand its importance.
In that regard, they were just like the Israelites in the wilderness in the Exodus. Through Moses and Aaron, God had just led the entire nation of Israel out of Egypt, drowning the mighty Egyptian army in the process. They had crossed the Red Sea without getting their feet wet.
And so, about two and a half months into their journey to the promised land, they started to complain. “Did you bring us into the desert to die?” And so on. They mentioned how they were never hungry in Egypt. Were they whining? Yes. Were they ungrateful? Yes. But God provided for them anyway.
Five days a week, for 40 years, this manna would fall to the ground around the Israelite camp. Two quarts would fall for each person in the nation of Israel. On the sixth day, twice that amount would fall, so that they would not have to gather it on the Sabbath. The Israelites used it to make bread, all the 40 years they wandered, until they finally reached the promised land, at which point the manna stopped falling.
To emphasize the need to gather it every day, it would go bad if it was kept or hoarded on any day but the Sabbath.
This manna was so important that God had Aaron, the high priest, preserve a container of it in the Ark of the Covenant, where it rested along with Moses’ staff and the tablets of the Law.
These things point to the fact that manna was a temporary solution by design. Once Israel had reached the border of Canaan, they didn’t need it anymore, since Canaan was overflowing with milk and honey. God provided a miracle for their Israel’s physical needs, even though they didn’t deserve it, and even though they later grumbled and complained about it.
This manna became one of the most recognized pictures of God’s love and mercy in the Old Testament. Because it sustained the whole nation for 40 years, and was tied so closely to both the Exodus and the settling of the Promised Land of Canaan, it has become one of the most recognizable pictures of the Old Testament.
So in many ways, the reaction of the people about Jesus is understandable. “Has the manna come back?” He just fed us all, just as God fed us with the manna. They were even ready to make him
King by force. I wonder how that would have worked…
And so we shake our heads. Those nutty Israelites, they just don’t get it. Could the point be any more obvious? Well, could it?
But then we have to ask ourselves – how would we react? And the truth is, we would probably react the same way. How often do we worry about our physical needs to the exclusion of our spiritual needs? How much of our lives do we squander in worry, when we know that God has promised to take care of us?
We want the Bread King, don’t we? (Or the donut king, or Subway king.) We want to be happy and comfortable in the here and now, and if we are, we’re good with that, aren’t we? We want our food, and the rest can wait. Or can it?
Jesus tells us here: yes, you have food. I can provide that. But I have much more to offer than a day’s worth of food, or even a lifetime of food. I offer you eternity in peace and happiness with God. I can give you life on the Last Day.
So as soon as it’s clear that Jesus is not offering to be the Bread King, the crowd is disillusioned. They’re not sure they want to follow him anymore. Despite seeing him multiply the loaves and fishes with their own eyes, they start asking: Don’t we know him? Don’t we know Mary and Joseph?
So what is it, exactly that Jesus offers? He tells us that he has come to do the will of the one who sent him – that is, the Father. And what is the Father’s will? To show himself to the world, to make himself known, so that we have the opportunity to believe in him, and to give us eternal life. He gives his flesh for the life of the world.
This is possible because Jesus is true God, as his miracles show. Through his perfect life and innocent death, he purchased for us the forgiveness of our sins. For all our ungratefulness, for all our
imperfections, for our impatience and grumbling. Because of Christ, God sees us not as we are, but as Jesus is – perfect and sinless, and deserving to live with him forever.
And God is not miserly with his mercy. He does not give us only a little. Just as the crowd ate and ate until they were full, and there were still plenty of leftovers, so it is with God’s mercy – he gives and gives and gives, and even when we have enough, there is more left over. It is a boundless gift that is bigger than anyone can use, and we never need fear running out of it.
Eating the Bread of Life means hearing this message and believing it. Fellowship with the Bread of Life changes everything for us – even the nature of death. Instead of being the end, and a source of terror for us, it becomes our gateway to eternal life. As Jesus says, if anyone eats of the Bread that comes down from heaven, he will never die.
So here, Jesus offers every single one of us the Bread of Life. Through the preaching of his Word, through Baptism, through the Lord’s Supper, and through our own study of the Word, he offers us the Bread, which he truly is.
This is why we come here, as often as we come here. To eat the Bread of Life. And in the meantime, he will take care of our physical needs as well.
Let us all take eat of that Bread, and never die, according to his promise. Amen.
- Martin Jackson