John 6:22-35
Please listen with me to a reading from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, beginning at the 22nd verse.
On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except that one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone – however, other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks – when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
So far our text.
In his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in a discussion of our life together in this world, and of the responsibilities we have in society, St. Paul says: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
Captain John Smith applied this principle in Jamestown, Virginia, in the early 17th century.
Many of the men who had come from England to be a part of that colony were spending most of their time digging fruitlessly for gold. Some, as aristocrats, were simply loafing, assuming that the laboring class would sustain them in their comfort and ease.
These men were not doing their share of the work that would be necessary for everyone’s survival: preparing fields for tillage, and planting and tending crops. So, Captain Smith took a page out of the New Testament, and decreed, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
A larger society as well, that does not govern itself according to this basic principle, will soon decay into poverty and starvation.
Hard-working people, and lazy people, are both tempted to transfer their respective ways of thinking – concerning life and labor in this world – into the realm of humanity’s relationship with God. In fact, these issues come up in today’s text, where Jesus is having a conversation with some people from the crowd that is now following him around – after his miraculous feeding of a great multitude, with just a few loaves of bread.
Jesus scolded this crowd with these words: “you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”
The Lord’s feeding of the multitude was intended to be a supernatural sign of a deeper truth. Jesus had not appeared on the scene simply as a attention-grabbing wonder-worker, to fill the empty stomachs of people who were too lazy to work for their own food. Rather, he had been sent from God as humanity’s Savior, to fill the spiritual emptiness of the aching souls of sinners.
That miraculous feeding did have the practical effect of satisfying the bodily hunger of the people in the crowd that day. Jesus does often help us according to our material needs.
We pray for physical healing when we are sick. We pray for a job when we are unemployed. We pray for a place to live when we are homeless. There is nothing wrong with these prayers.
But the fact that Jesus sometimes, or even often, grants such requests, is not the basis for our confidence in him. Relying on Jesus for food and drink, and for house and home, in this world, is not even close to the essence of the Christian faith.
The crowd that was following Jesus, hoping for more free lunches, obviously did not grasp that. And so Jesus, very clearly, and very firmly, began the process of instructing them in what they should actually be seeking from him, and in how they should seek it:
“Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
Even after hearing this, though, there’s a lot that the crowd still doesn’t understand. They do know now that Jesus is not going to be a continuing source of free bread. But they are also now trying to figure out what he means when he speaks of laboring for some kind of bread or food from God.
And so, with a shrug of the shoulders, they give up on trying to get a free lunch, and ask instead about what work they must perform for God, in order to receive whatever it is Jesus is talking about:
Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”
The answer that Jesus gave them is full of irony. The crowd had asked about “works of God,” with the understanding that they were asking about works that they were expected to perform: oriented toward God, and satisfying a requirement of God.
But the answer that Jesus gave turned that around. He told them instead about a “work of God” that is a work performed by God.
Faith in Christ is the necessary “work of God” for our receiving of the bread of heaven, because the creation of faith in the heart of an unregenerate person is a miraculous work that God’s Spirit performs – for us and in us. Insofar as our believing in the one whom God has sent can be thought of as the result of someone’s labors, it is the result of God’s labors, not ours.
We know from elsewhere in Scripture that, as far as the basis for our relationship with God is concerned, faith is the antithesis of works.
St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Galatians that “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ’; and that “we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law.” And Paul asks the Galatians: “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?”
So, when Jesus tells the crowd that believing in him, as the Savior sent from God, is the “work” that allows people to receive the food that God wants them to have, what he is really saying is that this food is not received as a result of human labors at all. This food – this bread from heaven – is a divine gift.
Jesus explains what he means:
“My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. … I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
We spoke a few minutes ago about St. Paul’s axiom, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” The economy of a human society that does not, as a general rule, govern itself according to this axiom, is doomed to failure and collapse.
But there are valid exceptions to this rule if the society in question is a humane society. The elderly and the handicapped, who are too weak to work, are still allowed to eat. If people in such circumstances have not made provision for themselves, or if they have no family to look after them, the larger society will step in and make sure they are cared for.
In the kingdom of God, everyone is too weak to work for the bread of life. St. Paul teaches in the Epistle to the Romans that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”
The bread of life from heaven is Jesus Christ himself. He was sent from God the Father as a gift to fallen and sinful humanity, to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification.
And he is sent as a gift from God the Father to each penitent soul: to dwell within us, to fill our emptiness, and to satisfy the deep longing of our hearts.
In our life here on earth, real bread is not like a painting of bread, that we admire from a distance. Bread is something that we eat and take into our bodies.
And when the bread is inside of us, it does not just sit there inertly, like a coin that a child might swallow. It is digested and diffuses its nourishment throughout the body that it has entered.
The imagery of Christ as “bread” calls all these things to mind. The gift of Christ needs to be received – to be internalized, and taken in – just as literal bread is taken into the body. That is what saving faith does.
The essence of faith, in Biblical teaching, is trust. We receive Christ, and take him into ourselves, by trusting his promises.
Faith is also a resting in God, and in God’s mercy and protection. We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that “we who have believed enter that rest.”
God’s Son promises forgiveness, life, and salvation to those who receive him in faith, because he is humanity’s forgiveness. He is, in his person, the lamb who was slain.
And he is the way, and the truth, and the life. To receive him, therefore, is to receive all these saving benefits, and to be transformed by them.
These are not abstractions or religious theories. He, concretely, is these things for us. And he fills us with them, when he fills us with himself.
And, this is all free to us, and is not a result of our religious or moral labors. As St. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians:
“By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
You don’t have to work for this living bread, or for the spiritual nutrition and inner satisfaction that come from this living bread. But once this bread is in you – once Jesus is in you, energizing you and empowering you – then you will work.
The Epistle to the Ephesians goes on to say that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
The kind of laboring that we do for the food that endures to eternal life is, paradoxically, a laboring that is not laboring. It is a believing in the one whom God has sent.
But the kind of laboring that we do from that food, and as a result of having received that food, is real work. Jesus said to his disciples, not long after his discourse on the Bread of Life:
“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.”
The Christian life is a life that is defined by, and filled with, God’s grace. But it is not a lazy life.
Because God loved us, we love others. Because God reached down to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ – who did not come to be served but to serve – we reach out to others, and serve others.
There is an obvious association between Jesus’ description of himself as the Bread of Life, and the Lord’s Supper that he later instituted. In the things that he said about himself as the bread from heaven, he was preparing his disciples to understand the deeper significance of the sacrament that would come later.
And as we hear these words today, he prepares us, too, for our participation in this sacred sacramental mystery, today. Jesus, who is the very bread from God, is the content of the Lord’s Supper.
That Supper is about him, because it is him. It is Jesus: supernaturally coming to you, and mystically entering into you. This Supper is the gospel, in sacramental form.
To receive this sacrament in faith, therefore, is to receive much more than a small particle of physical bread. It is to receive the bread from heaven: the Savior himself, who is the very source of life for us.
But Christ, the bread of life, is not received only in the sacrament. In the Lord’s Supper you do indeed have a very close and very intense encounter with Christ.
But since the benefits of Christ are received by faith in the gospel, those benefits can be received whenever the message of his victory over sin and death for you, is proclaimed to you. When your faith is renewed by God’s Word – in whatever way God’s Word comes to you – you once again take in Christ, and internalize him.
In these marvelous ways, God our Father feeds us. All emptiness is filled. All yearnings are satisfied. Life and hope are renewed. Salvation, by faith in our one Lord and Savior, is assured.
Lord Jesus Christ, Thou living Bread, May I for mine possess Thee.
I would with heavenly food be fed; Descend, refresh, and bless me.
Now make me meet for Thee, O Lord; Now, humbly by my heart implored, Grant me Thy grace and mercy. Amen.