A recent meme I spotted on Facebook went, “I decided to try one of those milk substitutes. I don’t know what a magnesia is, but the milk sure tasted awful on my cereal.” But I don’t laugh too much at the proliferation of various “milks,” because my oldest daughter has found, by a process of elimination, that regular cow’s milk causes our infant grandson distress when she consumes it and passes it along in nursing him. So she is currently resigned to one or more of these not-quite-milks in her tea, baking, etc. Lately I think it’s hazelnut milk, so she’s supporting the Oregon economy even while in England.
In the Gospel reading for this week, John 6:22-35, Jesus in verse 37 chides a crowd that has followed him across the Sea of Galilee because he perceives that they are there merely because of the abundant food He provided on the opposite shore. They are hoping He will do it again. So Jesus says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
Jesus, then, asked the crowd to avoid substitutes, even actual bread, for a food that would last longer, that would sustain not just earthly life but eternal life. The crowd makes the connection 31 with the “bread from heaven” found in our Old Testament lesson from Exodus 16, the manna. They are pushing Jesus to duplicate that feat, which they ascribe to Moses, in order to demonstrate His bona-fides as a true prophet. Yet, as Jesus keeps trying to tell them for the rest of the chapter, they are after the wrong thing.
One wonders if we today may be in even more danger of seeking the wrong food as we come before Jesus. After all, with respect to physical food we have become pretty comfortable with all sorts of substitutes for, or less substantial versions of, the real thing. It’s not just milk. “Lite” versions of cheese and sour cream and ice cream fill dairy and freezer sections of our stores. Turkey sausage and vegetable and tofu meat substitutes abound. Non-gluten bread products have their own shelf. Artificial sweeteners are everywhere.
So in a somewhat dysfunctional relationship to merely physical food, we may need to “work” a little harder at receiving true spiritual food. In verse 28, the crowd asked Jesus, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” We might need to ask the same for ourselves.
The answer of course, in verse 29, is that the work of God is “that you believe in him who he has sent,” which is Jesus. As this long “bread of life” discourse will unfold, Jesus is the true and eternal food we are seeking. Verse 35, which will be repeated at the beginning of next week’s reading, gives us Jesus declaring one of the great “I am” sayings of the Gospels, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
As I hope to illustrate in the sermon, and as I intimated last week, that declaration of Jesus as the bread of life is certainly about more than physical food, but we must not imagine that it is about less. Those who believe in Jesus must always follow His example of feeding the hungry and caring for others in need.
Jesus reminded us of the duality of our salvation, physical and spiritual, by believing in Him when He gave us the simple meal to celebrate at His Table, just bread and wine. Let us reflect on that and be lifted both toward heavenly food and eternal life and toward the sharing of the food of this world with those around us. In that perspective may we perceive better the food of eternal life, the Bread of Life, who is Christ our Lord.