The scriptures referred to are John 6:24-35.
We have 4 gospels. The first three, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are called the synoptic gospels, from the Greek word meaning “seeing together.” They have their differences but they largely cover the same events and teachings. John's gospel is different. Believed to be the last canonical gospel written, John seems to assume you have read the synoptics and doesn't seek to repeat what they have already said. Thus it starts with John the Baptist but doesn't mention him actually baptizing Jesus. And a good portion of it takes place at the last supper but it doesn't narrate Jesus instituting the Eucharist.
That's not to say it ignores communion. It just talks about it after the miracle all 4 gospels tell us about, the feeding of the 5000. And it places it within the intricate framework of this unique gospel.
The first 12 chapters of John have been called the Book of Signs, because they enumerate 7 miracles or signs of Jesus' identity. They are, by one reckoning, changing water into wine, healing the official's son, the healing at the pool of Bethseda, the feeding of the 5000, walking on water, healing the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus. Jesus also speaks of 4 witnesses that testify to who he is: John the Baptist, Jesus' works, God the Father and the Scriptures. There are 7 statements where Jesus says, “I am...” followed by a metaphor. John's gospel is also built around the Jewish festivals, especially 3 Passovers, which allow us to deduce his ministry lasted at least 3 years. And he dates the feeding of the 5000 to taking place just before the 2nd of the Passovers he mentions.
If you remember last Sunday, Jesus realized the people he fed want to forcibly make him king. So he sends off the disciples and joins them later. Now it is the next day and the crowd tracks Jesus down at Capernaum, his base in Galilee. They ask Jesus how he got there but he cuts to the chase, essentially saying, “Look, I know you were looking for me because I fed you physically; what you should be looking for is to be fed spiritually.” Since Passover is near, the people, looking for some miraculous sign, seize upon the manna the Israelites were provided in the wilderness before getting to the promised land. So they say, “Yeah, give us miracle bread from heaven.” And Jesus takes this idea and uses it to make his point. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Notice the difference between what the people are asking and what Jesus is offering. They want a thing—magic bread. Jesus is saying, what you really need is not a thing but a person: me. And this misplaced priority is a problem that people have had throughout history.
When you have a real need, such as for food or water or medicine, nothing else will do. But humans have the habit of thinking that the answer to all their troubles is to be found in things. And we have stories that go way back in time about people seeking things that will magically solve their problems: the horn of plenty, Aladdin's lamp, Excalibur, the holy grail, the ring of the Nibelungen, the bezoar, the spear of destiny, the fountain of youth, sampo, the silver bullet, the Philosopher's stone, the Book of Thoth, the true cross and a whole storehouse of others. Today we keep looking for technology that will solve all our problems. It can help. But some issues simply cannot be resolved by stuff.
And that's true even if the stuff is abstract. Freedom cannot solve all problems. For some situations, you need certain restrictions. Positive thinking alone will not fix all problems. Sometimes you have to face the ugly truth. Logic is not enough to resolve all issues that humans have. Sorry, Spock and Sherlock! Emotional intelligence is often required. And Jesus is not the answer if the questions have to do with math or engineering or science.
But Jesus is the answer if the problem is moral or spiritual. Although it may not be as easy as “What Would Jesus Do?” For instance, as God, Jesus had the right to make a whip and clear out his temple. We don't, as evidenced by Jesus telling Peter to put away his sword (Matthew 26:52) and telling us all to turn the other cheek. (Matthew 5:39) Often the more pertinent question is “What would Jesus want me to to do?” And since it may be a situation we don't find addressed in the gospels, or even in the entire Bible, we may need to do a lot of praying and a lot of research and then follow the lead of the Spirit of God in Christ.
And I think that touches on what Jesus is saying in this chapter of John. This crowd that wants bread is the same mob that wanted to forcibly make Jesus king. In this case both magic food and a political leader are external solutions to what is really an internal problem. They don't need manna in them or a person over them. They need Jesus in them. Now that's gonna be hard for Jesus to make them understand. But he has to try.
People understood the idea of the Spirit of God coming upon people. But they thought the people involved had to be special: prophets and leaders. As Samuel says to the newly anointed King Saul, “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you in power, and you will prophesy with them [the prophets]; and you will be changed into a different person.” (1 Samuel 10:6) Jesus, the person they want to make king, obviously has the Spirit so that would make sense to them. But the idea that the average person could have God's Spirit in them was foreign to them.
Also they saw the Spirit as enabling military leaders like Samson to kill enemies of Israel. (Judges 14:19; 16:21-30) That was under the old covenant, having to do with the nation of Israel. That's the paradigm the crowd is familiar with. But Jesus is doing something different. Jesus is initiating the kingdom of God, where, among other things, we are to love our enemies. (Matthew 5:44) In fact Jesus will inaugurate the new covenant by letting his blood be shed by his enemies. (Luke 22:20) So he is trying to change old ways of thinking. God is doing something new in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
After all, Jesus is unique in that he is not a man upon whom the Spirit of God has come; he is God made man. Humans were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) but that image has been marred by our sins. Jesus is the very image of God. (Hebrews 1:3) We are to be like him. (1 John 3:2) And to do that, we must be changed from the inside out. Jesus must get into us.
How does Jesus get that through to a very literal minded crowd? He takes their idea of the “bread from heaven” and says, “Yeah, that's me.” Why would he do that?
For one thing, bread was the basic food for everyone. It was considered the staff of life. At the feeding of the 5000 John tells us the 5 loaves the boy has and which Jesus uses were barley loaves. It was cheap bread, the food of the poor. Bread, wine and olive oil were the staples of what they ate, supplemented by nuts, dates, figs, vegetables, dairy products from goats and sheep, and honey. They rarely ate meat and then mostly on religious holidays, like the Passover. But bread was eaten at every meal. So Jesus chooses something they know and need. He is saying, “I am as necessary to you as the daily bread that keeps you alive.”
Later he gets more graphic, telling them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. (John 6:53-57) Eating or drinking blood was not only forbidden in the Torah (Leviticus 7:26), it was repugnant to Jews. Why would Jesus say that?
The book of Sirach would have been known to Jews at that time, though it was not considered part of the canon of the Hebrew Bible. In it, the author personifies God's Wisdom, as was done in the 8th and 9th chapters of the book of Proverbs. But whereas in Proverbs, Wisdom prepares a feast and says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed,” (Proverbs 9:5), in Sirach, Wisdom says, “Like the vine I bud forth delights, and my blossoms become glorious and abundant fruit.... Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more.” (Sirach 24:17, 21) Jesus seems to be playing on that idea of eating of the Wisdom of God, because he is the Word of God. (John 1:14) However, unlike the way Sirach portrays Wisdom leaving people wanting more, the person who has Jesus in him will never go hungry and never be thirsty. This recalls what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well: “...whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) And at the well, Jesus spoke of “living water.” A little later in this chapter, Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” (John 6:51)
Unfortunately, the crowd cannot get past this metaphor and find it repulsive. Even though they were about to celebrate a religious holiday in which a lamb is sacrificed and eaten and, in which its blood was used as a sign that death should pass over them, they couldn't grasp what Jesus meant. Jesus even says about his metaphor, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” (John 6:63) They still don't get it. And we are told, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” (John 6:66)
We're not even sure the Twelve get it. Yet when Jesus asks if they too are going to leave, Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) They trust him, even though they may not completely understand him. We know even they were thinking of Jesus as something more like a king. (Matthew 20:21) Things really didn't change until his resurrection. Then these words, and the words Jesus said about his body and blood at the last supper, made sense, as did Jesus' talk about giving his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45) They had wanted another earthly sovereign; what they needed was a unique heavenly sacrifice.
We still search for that one thing that will make us happy, solve our problems, and give us the life we want. There is no such thing. And even the best fantasies, despite all their magical items, realize that. In The Lord of the Rings, the one ring of power isn't the answer; it must be destroyed at great cost to Frodo who bears it into Mt. Doom. In the Harry Potter series, the villain is trying to live forever by putting bits of his soul into things. Voldemort's name means “flight from death.” But he is defeated by a boy who willingly lets himself be killed. Because of his voluntary sacrifice, Harry can return to life. Ultimately Voldemort's faith in the Elder Wand leads to his death. It is interesting that the authors of these two influential series are both Christians. They know that things cannot save us and that putting your faith in them is a curse rather than a blessing.
And it is sad that there are some Christians who put their faith in things, like prayer cloths, scapulars, relics, prayers of Jabez and the like. It is even sadder that they put their faith in the things of this world, like wealth, fame and political power. Billy Graham actually considered running for president himself at one point. Thank God he turned from that temptation. All those things are idols. What we need to put our faith in is Jesus himself.
Just as we need to consume food and fluids to sustain our physical lives, we need to feed on Jesus. We need to take him into us on a regular basis to sustain our spiritual lives. “Man shall not live on bread alone,” Jesus reminded us, “but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) The Bible is God's written word but Jesus is the living Word of God. If you don't have Jesus living in you—the Word of Spirit and life—you won't understand the written word, any better than this crowd understood Jesus' words. Indeed, that is how people can twist the written word of God; they are not reading it through the lens of Jesus, the incarnate, crucified and risen expression of who God is. When you see that the power of God is in his healing and his forgiveness and his self-sacrificial love, lived out in the person of his son Jesus Christ, you see the world differently. And you realize you don't need stuff; you need Jesus.
As the spiritual goes,
In the morning when I rise,
In the morning when I rise,
In the morning when I rise,
Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You may have all this world,
Give me Jesus.
And when I come to die,
Oh, when I come to die,
Oh, when I come to die,
Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You may have all this world,
Give me Jesus.
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