From last week until the end of August, the Gospel at Sunday Mass is taken from chapter six of Saint John. Last Sunday we read the first fifteen verses of chapter six in which the Lord Jesus was revealed to be the new Moses, who sat down on a mountain to teach and then feed a vast crowd by a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes. In a wilderness and with completely inadequate means, Christ fed a multitude through the hands of his Apostles.
Our Gospel today begins at verse 24 of chapter six, which means that between last week and this we skipped over eight verses. The missing passage tells of Christ revealing his dominion over nature by walking on water during a storm and then describes the puzzlement of the crowd who had been fed by Jesus that he was no longer with them on the eastern shore of the lake near the Golan Heights.
They knew that Christ did not depart for home the previous evening with the Twelve in the one boat they had all come in, and so they could not understand where he went. And all of that is the preparation for what follows in chapter six, beginning with our text today. John writes:
“When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there (meaning the eastern shore), they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea, they said to him ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’”
Notice, their prior encounter with Christ has left them with a desire for more, and they acknowledge his authority to teach by calling him rabbi. But at the same time, they are mystified by Jesus. How did he feed thousands of people with a handful of food, and how did he cross the vast lake without a boat?
John goes on: “Jesus answered them, ‘Amen. Amen. I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.’”
Here the Savior is teaching the crowd to look for something more than free food and a satisfying meal because signs and wonders cannot be the basis of our faith. Instead, Christ wants his people to know the deep things of God by understanding that while he is truly the Son of Mary and the rabbi from Nazareth, he is also much more.
He is God the Son who has come to us as the Son of Man to redeem the human race from sin and death and to restore our capacity for everlasting life. Salvation is a free and unmerited gift which the Lord Jesus gives to his disciples through the obedience of faith in the eternal Word made flesh, who is Christ himself.
Now more than ever the crowd is intrigued by Jesus, and yet they are still full of doubt and misunderstanding. “So they said to him, ‘What can we do to accomplish the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.’ So they said to him, ‘What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
In saying this, the people refer of course to the events described in today’s first lesson from the Book of Exodus. The Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron because they were afraid to die of starvation in the wilderness and wished instead that they had remained in slavery in Egypt where at least they were well fed.
It is worth noting here that the crowd in Galilee which now wants a sign from Jesus had only the night before seen a great sign from him in the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, just as the Israelites had seen many great signs worked through Moses to secure their liberty. But both groups found those signs inadequate because they would not trust the God who revealed himself by such means.
Many people think it would be easier to believe that God exists or that Jesus Christ is Lord if only they could see miraculous signs, but, friends, such signs do not ever make it easier to find supernatural faith, as confirmed by both the Galilean crowd and the Israelites in the desert. And Christ himself warned the Pharisees that only a wicked generation seeks a sign, even as he promised to give them only the sign of Jonah, meaning the sign of his suffering, death, and Resurrection.
But back to the children of Israel in the wilderness. When they grumbled that the fleshpots of Egyptian servitude looked much better than the hardship of their liberty in the desert, then the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sent quail and manna from heaven to sustain the people on their journey from slavery to freedom.
The Lord Jesus immediately understood this reference of the Galilean crowd to the bread of heaven, but he wanted them to see that event in its proper depth and meaning. “So Jesus said to them, ‘Amen. Amen. I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’”
At the beginning of chapter six of John’s Gospel when the Lord Jesus sat down on the mountain to teach, he was revealed as the new Moses, and now he reveals himself to be something much greater: he is God the Son, who in truth is the only way to the Father, and he was sent by the Father to accomplish the salvation of the world.
When the Lord Jesus speaks of the bread of God which comes down from heaven, the crowd whom he fed the previous evening then says to him “Sir, give us this bread always.” And now comes the turn they are least expecting and a teaching they will struggle mightily to understand and accept: “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
Friends, this doctrine is among the many reasons why Jesus of Nazareth cannot be a wise philosopher or moral exemplar if he is not also the eternal Word by whom all things were made. Any man who says of himself “I am the bread of life” must be either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. And as we will see in the coming passages from chapter six of John’s Gospel, this crowd is not yet sure which of these Jesus is. The question we must each answer for ourselves is this: are we sure who Jesus is?
If yes, then God be praised for the gift of faith. And if not yet, then let us heed Saint Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians from today’s second lesson where he writes that we should “put away the old self of (our) former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of (our) minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” The capacity to live that life of grace as a new creation comes to us in Holy Baptism and is strengthened every time we worthily go to Confession and receive Holy Communion.
In the Most Holy Eucharist we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, which he gives to us under the sacramental signs of bread and wine as the medicine of immortality and food for the journey, the journey from our slavery to sin into the freedom of the children of God. And just as with the children of Israel in the wilderness between Egypt and the Land of Promise, our pilgrimage of faith is an arduous journey, but if we trust in him, the Lord will sustain us through all our trials.
In the next three weeks, please read all of John chapter six to hear the full challenge of the Word of God who teaches us that to have eternal life we must share in his eucharistic sacrifice, the sacrifice of the new testament of God’s love. This we do by repenting of our sins and believing in the Gospel and by receiving the bread of life and the chalice of salvation from the Nazorean rabbi, the one who is both the Son of Mary and God the Son, the eternal Word made flesh, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world: the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the text of my homily for 4 August 2024, the 18th Sunday of the Year.
Fr Jay Scott Newman