WHY do we follow Jesus? Because he told us to (John 13.36; 21.19, 22). But what inspired us to obey that command? Jesus highlights two possibilities: “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”
Signs? Or loaves? I used to hear him as reproaching the crowd’s greed. It is an easy assumption to make, not least because the appetite for food is such a primal one. But he is also challenging them for thinking that the effort they had put into seeking him out was meritorious, and likewise the faith that had prompted their search in the first place. The crowds tried to impress him with their dogged pursuit, besides being eager to be fed in the literal sense of the word. But Jesus was offering them a different kind of food: the Bread of Life — himself: nothing to do with filling the stomach.
These verses help us to understand the meaning in last Sunday’s miraculous feeding and walk across the sea, though not by explaining how the miracles were effected. At that level, they are as mysterious now as they must have been back then. Neither made any kind of lasting change to the world or the Kingdom. At least part of their meaning must lie elsewhere.
I used to be puzzled that so many commentators read the Gospel feeding miracles as symbols of the eucharist. Thousands of people sharing bread and fish together, and filling their stomachs with enough and to spare, did not sound similar enough to the overtly sacrificial language of a broken body and spilled blood. But I thought differently after noticing that Matthew and Mark both introduce the Last Supper in language virtually identical to that used of the feeding: “Giving thanks, he broke and gave to them.” John, too, earlier in this chapter (6.12), uses similar language for his account of the feeding of the five thousand.
What the two miracles have done is to confirm Jesus’s power to transcend the boundaries of nature. This point — simple to state, staggeringly difficult to grasp — is not an end in itself, but the means to an end. It is a preparation, in other words, for what follows as this week’s section of chapter 6. For here is where John the Evangelist begins to elaborate his understanding of the eucharist.
This Gospel lection deals only with the first part of John’s elaboration (another 24 verses are still to follow). “Eucharist” is an early name for the meal that we also know as holy communion. I like it because of its great antiquity. I prefer it to other names (such as “the Lord’s Supper”, “mass”, etc.) because it puts the virtue of thanksgiving front and centre of the sacrament. Even after all these centuries, “eucharisto” is still the standard Greek word for “thank you”.
Ever since Adam was cast out of Eden, human beings have had to work for a living: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Genesis 3.19). The necessity of work still holds true, even for the Bread of Life: “Do not work for the food that perishes”, says Jesus, “but for the food that endures for eternal life” (John 6.27).
The Bread of Life to which he refers transcends natural reality. The crowd are able to accept that; for they have encountered miraculous bread before: both personally, through the feeding of the five thousand, and through the historic present of their nation, in their identity as God’s chosen recipients of manna in the wilderness.
In both those cases, the meaning of the bread is still literal: it satisfies the appetite, and sates hunger. The Bread of Life, though, is a world away from this, in the same way that Christ’s resurrection is a world away from the raising of Lazarus. The Bread of Life is once-for-all bread, as the sacrifice of Christ is a once-for-all sacrifice (Romans 6.10; Hebrews 9.12).
It — or, rather, he — takes us to the heart of the incarnation, providing an exegesis of this Bread of Life which recalls John 1.14: “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” We have the coming week to reflect on this connection before next week’s Gospel takes us “further up and further in”.