Last week in our first lesson from the Book of Exodus, we read that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob gave the Hebrews bread from heaven to sustain them in their wilderness journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the land he promised to their fathers. And when the children of Israel first saw the fragments of the bread of heaven left on the ground after the dew evaporated, they asked each other “What is this?”
They had never before seen anything like what the psalmist called the bread of angels, and they could not understand the nature and purpose of what they were seeing. The Hebrew words for “What is this?” are man hu, which means that our word manna is a simple rendering of their question “What is this?”
The bread of heaven is mysterious and hard to define or even to describe, both for the Hebrews and for Christians. It is unlike anything else we encounter in life, and yet it feeds us on our pilgrimage through this life. The bread of heaven is given to us as waybread, as food for the journey, to keep us going through all adversity and suffering. And that is what the Prophet Elijah experienced on his trek to Mount Horeb, as described today in our reading from the First Book of Kings.
Elijah was discouraged and exhausted and did not want to continue his mission; in fact, he just gave up and asked the Lord for death. But an angel was sent to Elijah, provided bread from heaven, and then ordered the prophet: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you.” Strengthened by that food, Scripture tells us, Elijah then walked forty days and nights to the mountain of God.
Both of these stories would have been well known to everyone who was fed by the Lord Jesus at the Sea of Galilee through the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and this same crowd then followed Jesus to Capernaum in search of more nourishment. Those were our Gospel readings on the past two Sundays, and last week the Gospel concluded with the unexpected declaration by Christ the Lord that he himself is the bread of heaven who gives everlasting life.
Then follows in chapter six of John’s Gospel five more verses which are not in our reading today, verses in which Jesus taught the crowd about his unique relationship with God the Father. But the crowd would not hear him because they were still offended by his claim to be the bread of life, and that’s where our text begins today.
John writes that “The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said ‘I am the bread that came from heaven,’ and they said ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say ‘I have come down from heaven?’” And here, of course, the crowd asks precisely the right questions.
If Joesph were the biological father of Jesus, then everything Christ says about himself, his relationship to God, and his being the bread of life would simply be the ravings of a lunatic. But what the crowd did not yet know is that neither Joseph nor any other man was the biological father of Jesus because the Nazorean rabbi is, in fact, God the Son made man. And this point cannot be made too emphatically: if Jesus of Nazareth had a human father, then Christianity is a false religion.
And that is why Christ pressed on with his effort to teach the crowd about his true identity and about his salvific mission from the Father. “Amen. Amen. I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.”
And there’s that word again: manna. What is it? It’s the bread of angels, the bread of heaven, the bread of life. And Christ, the new and true manna, is the bread who imparts not just strength to endure this life but the gift of everlasting life. Jesus says “I am the living bread that came down 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.”
That’s where our text ends today, and next Sunday we will read the next eight verses which describe the intense debate that this teaching provoked in the synagogue at Capernaum. Then we will read that the Lord Jesus doubled down on this strange doctrine despite the incredulity of the crowd and their offense at him, difficulties that we often share. But, friends, it is far more important that we trust the living God than that we understand all of the sacred mysteries by which he reveals himself and nourishes our souls with his divine grace.
Every day we pray “Our Father, who art in heaven … give us this day our daily bread,” and in this way we ask not only for the nourishment of our bodies but even more for the bread of life which is the Father’s eternal Word. Yes, this is difficult to understand, but let us recall that even as the Hebrews continued for forty years in the wilderness to ask “What is it?,” they were also nourished by the manna from heaven which they could not fully comprehend, and that is how they were able to complete their journey to the Land of Promise.
In Deuteronomy we read that just before the Hebrews crossed the River Jordan into the promised land where they ate the produce of the land and the manna ceased, Moses taught them that “The Lord fed you with manna, which you did not understand, nor did your fathers understand, that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)
And what proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord is the Father’s eternal Word, the omnipotent Word by whom all things were made. In the fulness of time, as we read in the prologue of John’s Gospel, the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
And at the Sea of Galilee, the Word made flesh then revealed that he is also the true bread from heaven who confers eternal life on those who receive him with saving faith. So, it turns out, in Christ we do live by bread alone, the bread of life who is the Father’s eternal Word made flesh.
Everything in the Old Covenant was a preparation for the New, and all the types and figures that came before Christ help us to receive him with saving faith. And now we can see that in the Most Holy Eucharist we receive the Word of God in the form of the bread from heaven, so that all who trust in God the Son may have everlasting life. Even if we continue all our lives long to ask about the Eucharist “What is it?” we must still come to Mass each week on the Lord’s Day to fulfill the command of Christ: Do this in memory of me.
And why should we do this? Because by repenting of our sins in the Sacrament of Penance, by reverencing Holy Scripture not as the word of men but as the Word of God, and by receiving the bread of life and the cup of salvation in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, we are being strengthened for our journey to the Kingdom of Heaven in which the manna, the Eucharist, will finally cease.
And in that day, the Day of the Lord, all the sacraments will cease because we will at last be nourished directly by the eternal Word of God made flesh, whom we will see in the face and by whom we will be changed from glory into glory, because then we will share the divinity of him who humbled himself to share our humanity: the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the text of my homily for 11 August 2024, the 19th Sunday of the Year.
Fr Jay Scott Newman