Jesus: The Bread of Life

jesus the bread of lifeIf you look for the word bread in the Bible, you will find it in 269 verses. This is no surprise because bread is the main ingredient in daily meals in the Mediterranean and the staple diet of common people. Grains provide most of the proteins and carbohydrates for humans for centuries and even millennia. Jesus used bread symbolically as the giver of life and said: «I am the living bread that came from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh - for the life of the world »(John 6,51).

Jesus spoke to a crowd that had miraculously been fed five barley loaves and two fish a few days earlier. These people had followed him and hoped he would give them food again. The bread that Jesus had miraculously given to people the day before nourished them for a few hours, but afterwards they were hungry again. Jesus reminds her of manna, another special food source that only temporarily kept her ancestors alive. He used their physical hunger to teach them a spiritual lesson:
"I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and died. This is the bread that comes from heaven, so that whoever eats it may not die »(John 6,48-49).

Jesus is the bread of life, the living bread and he compares himself to the exceptional food of the Israelites and the miraculous bread that they had eaten themselves. Jesus said: You should seek him, believe in him, and receive eternal life through him instead of following him, hoping to get a miraculous meal.
Jesus preached in the synagogue in Capernaum. Some in the crowd knew Joseph and Mary personally. Here was a man they knew, whose parents they knew, who claimed to have personal knowledge and authority from God. They leaned against Jesus and said: «Isn't this Jesus, Joseph's son, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say: I came from heaven? " (Johannes 6,42-43).
They took Jesus' statements literally and did not understand the spiritual analogies he made. The symbolism of bread and meat was not new to her. Countless animals had been sacrificed for human sins over the millennia. The meat of these animals was fried and eaten.
Bread was used as a special sacrifice in the temple. The showbreads, which were placed in the sanctuary of the temple every week and then eaten by the priests, reminded them that God was their provider and sustainer and that they lived constantly in His presence (3. Moses 24,5-9).

They heard from Jesus that eating his flesh and drinking his blood was the key to eternal life: «Verily, verily, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in it you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him »(Johannes 6,53 and 56).

Drinking blood was particularly outrageous for people who had long been taught that it was a sin. Eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood was also difficult for his own students to grasp. Many turned away from Jesus and stopped following him at this point.
When Jesus asked the 12 disciples if they would leave him too, Peter asked boldly: “Lord, where should we go? You have words of eternal life; and we believed and recognized: You are the Holy One of God »(John 6,68-69). His disciples were probably just as confused as the others, yet they believed in Jesus and trusted him with their lives. Perhaps they later remembered Jesus' words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood when they had come together at the last supper to eat the Passover lamb: “When they were eating, Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you; this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins »(Matthew 26,26-28).

Henri Nouwen, Christian author, professor and priest, often thought about the consecrated bread and wine offered at Holy Communion and wrote the following text: "The words spoken in the service of the community, taken, blessed, broken and given, summarize my life as a priest. Because every day when I meet members of my community at the table, I take bread, bless it, break it, and give it to them. These words also sum up my life as a Christian, because as a Christian I am called to be bread for the world, bread that is taken, blessed, broken and given. The most important thing, however, is that the words summarize my life as a person, because the life of the beloved can be seen in every moment of my life. »
Eating bread and drinking wine at the sacrament makes us one with Christ and connects us Christians with each other. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. We are really the body of Christ.

As I study John, how do I eat Jesus 'flesh and how do I drink Jesus' blood? Is the fulfillment of eating Jesus 'flesh and drinking Jesus' blood depicted in the sacrament celebration? I do not think so! Only through the Holy Spirit can we understand what Jesus did for us. Jesus said that he would give his life (his flesh) for the life of the world: "The bread that I will give is my flesh - for the life of the world" (John 6,48-51).

From the context we understand that “eat and drink (hunger and thirst)” is the spiritual meaning of “come and believe” because Jesus said: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will not go hungry; and whoever believes in me will never thirst »(Johannes 6,35). All who come to Jesus and believe enter into a unique communion with him: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him" (John 6,56).
This close relationship only became possible after the resurrection of Jesus Christ through the promised Holy Spirit. “It is the spirit that gives life; the meat is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life »(John 6,63).

Jesus takes his personal life situation as a human being as an example: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him" (John 6,56). As Jesus lived through the Father, so we are to live through him. How did Jesus live through the Father? "Then Jesus said to them: If you will exalt the Son of Man, you will know that it is me and that I do nothing for myself, but that I speak as the Father taught me" (John 8,28). We meet the Lord Jesus Christ here as a person who lives in perfect, unconditional dependence on God the Father. As Christians we look to Jesus who says this: «I am the living bread that came from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh - for the life of the world »(John 6,51).

The conclusion is that, like the 12 disciples, we come to and believe in Jesus and accept His forgiveness and love. With gratitude, we embrace and celebrate the gift of our redemption. When we receive, we experience the freedom from sin, guilt and shame that belongs to us in Christ. That is why Jesus died on the cross. The goal is that you live his life in this world with the same dependence on Jesus!

by Sheila Graham