After feeding five thousand with just five small loaves and a couple of fish, the people find Jesus on the other side of the lake (they know He wasn't in the boats with His disciples and wondered how He got there - but everyone expected Him to walk on water didn't they?).
The crowds haven’t followed Him because of the things He said or the miraculous stuff He'd done in feeding them all. They'd followed Him because (and here I quote Jesus) “You ate the loaves and had your fill!” One of the big draws when it comes to following God is to do so because of what you think you can get - and these folk, having already had, wanted more of the same [hold that thought for a moment whilst we digress a little].
In discussions with a Rabbi, he has told me how he struggles with Christians and the way they are, "Always telling God what He should do and how He should give them everything they want or take away their struggles and trials." As a Jew he says that he looks at what he has or what he needs and then seeks to find the way that he live out that situation with God and, reflecting and drawing upon his faith, live it out in the scenario before him. I mention this as a little food for thought and to provide a reflection on the folk following Jesus were they any different to those living today [theist or atheist]?
So back to the story:
What follows is a conversation on doing the work of God and of bread that does not spoil.
The work of God is: To believe the one God sent [Jesus]. This is something that Church appears to have forgotten. Harsh words but we do seem to be less and less bothered about believing Jesus and the things He taught and more concerned with attracting minorities, affirming sexual politics, seeking young ordinands, and affirming things Jesus and the written word of God appears not to as we seek to convince people that we are open-handed, inclusive and relevant to those outside the Church. We win people for Christ by making Him known as demonstrated by our faith and belief in Him and the Godhead that sent Him.
Far too often Church is seen to leaning out of the boat in an attempt to bring it level when what is needed is for it (and that means us) to stand on the word of God and the lifestyle, ministry and words of Jesus, the Christ, and rejoice as the boat rights itself! Too often we look at the world and its standards, values and methods and give them approval by calling the Church to live by them and look like the world. Take a look at the scandals and betrayal of trust that the Church has engaged in over the past fifty years and tell me where the words and example of Jesus are to be found.
We have food for the body - physical food, and spiritual food - which sustains us spiritually.
Food physically keeps us alive - spiritual food gives us life.
The manna kept the people alive on their journey to the promised land. It was sufficient for the day - after which it spoiled. It was truly 'daily bread' and needed to be gathered again the next day.
Jesus tells them of a bread that does not spoil - one that lasts for eternity, and confers eternity, and feeds the inner spiritual being. And He is that bread! He says to the people: “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
Is Jesus telling us ‘to work’ for this enduring bread?
The answer is both ‘yes and no’ - I have heard many sermons on this which 'encourage or accuse' us to get out there and work for our salvation. But b
no, we do not work to gain our salvation - works do not bring salvation (other than that one salvific work of Jesus, the Christ upon the cross as a 'once and for all' act of Grace!) but the ‘work of God’ we are called to be engaged in is TO BELIEVE THE ONE HE SENT.
And this raises an important question for us: How then are we living? if we believe in Jesus then we follow Him as the Christ - we live with, and for, and because of Him. We cannot win salvation by our acts or our giving or our outward appearance. Salvation comes from God, through God and by God. ‘Good works’ do not bring salvation - God does.
Exodus 16 - (the manna) features large in the expectation of the Jews regarding the Messiah. Bread would fall from heaven as confirmation of the Messiah. The expectation was that bread would fall just as it did in the Exodus when manna - that daily bread - fell and sustained the people. This was the sign the people called for. The Jews wanted to ‘see and believe’ (remember Thomas and 'seeing and believing' in his encounter with the risen Lord?)
An unbelieving people seek signs. It was true in the people around Jesus, true in those Moses gazed upon, it is true today. But a faith based upon signs is a faith that can be conned and causes us to build on sand rather than the rock of assured and steadfast faith. We build by doing the work of God which is TO BELIEVE THE ONE HE SENT
The bread which God sent from heaven in Ex 16 was the manna. But God had, in the presence of those gathered in the countryside with Jesus, indeed sent bread from heaven - but this bread is the living bread that is Jesus. Those who feed in Him will not die as those who ate manna died but will live for ever. Bread sustains physical life but the living bread gives life, life in abundance, for all eternity!
Seven times Jesus speaks of "coming down from heaven". A nod to those who expected the bread to do that as did the manna in the wilderness - made explicit in the words: “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” And yet the people didn’t join the dots using the words they heard Jesus speak.
Seven times Jesus uses the term I AM - what’s that about? The answer is simple for just as God revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus 3: “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
Jesus, God made man, is Jehovah - YHWH - the true and living, triune God! What more is there to say?
Of course the people around Him, on the whole, cannot make sense of what is before them It's not what they expected and so even when it is explicitly proclaimed, they miss it all. There we expecting someone taller - or more powerful - or perhaps riding a charger with armour and cohorts of armed men. They expected something that reflected power in the way Alexander did, or perhaps the Caesar (man made lower-case god).
Isn't this why Church is struggling for we have bought in to the consumer society and the politics of power and the (ab)use of might rather than right!
So how do we as Church make real the kingdom of God in the lives of those who surround us?
It all comes down to one simple reality: Do not work for food that sustains the body yet perishes but work for that food that sustains our spiritual bodies - and that work is what? - TO BELIEVE THE ONE GOD SENT
Remember that Manna- the bread which came down from heaven sustained life - but was there for a day then perished as (eventually) did those who ate it.
Preach the reality of Jesus - the living bread - who came down from heaven and sustains the spiritual body for all for eternity (an eternity which is the reality of those who look to Him and the Cross).
When Jesus uses I AM He is claiming to be God.
So bottom line:
Do not work for food which perishes.
Do not look for signs which can deceive and lead us astray
But look to do the work of God, which is:
TO BELIEVE THE ONE GOD SENT - AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN
This is quick 'splurge' and there's more than a fair chance the edits and the typos will have conspired to make the words a little more challenging than they might be - my apologies. I just needed to dialogue with what was in my head and scribbling helps this happen.
Pax
John 6.25 - 59
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.
Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
“Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
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