Friday, January 2, 2015

Friday, January 2, 2015

John 6:35-42, 48-51

The Gospel of John sticks out from the other gospel books in a few ways. One way is that it does not include an account of the Last Supper like the synoptics (the other three), though it does include the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. Another way in which John is distinct from the others is that John’s Jesus always seems to be talking about himself. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke we meet a Jesus who keeps telling people to not tell others about his unique identity. In John, however, there are lots of “I am” statements. In today’s passage Jesus tells his hearers that he is the bread of life (6:35, 6:48). Here he is using metaphor and imagery that relate to the Eucharist (interesting, again, because there is no Last Supper account in John). 

Our ongoing celebration of Christmas reminds us that the Christian message is not about abstract doctrines or secret truths. It is about a person, Jesus, whom we follow as Lord. It’s about people coming together to be transformed by their experience of seeing God in Christ (think of the shepherds and wise men visiting the holy family in the stable, or our congregation coming together to celebrate the Eucharist). 

This living bread does not go stale. Unlike ordinary bread or the manna that sustained Moses and the people through their sojourn in the desert, the living bread does not go bad. Through Jesus’s use of rich imagery, and this call to meet and follow the living God in the person of Jesus, may we have the courage to trust in the one who reassures us that “anyone who comes to me I will never drive away” (6:37). If Jesus is the living bread, and if the Christian message is about encountering God in Christ, then my hope is that our Christian lives be marked by humility in our encounters with one another. May we dare to nurture lives of living faith! Twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich claimed that living faith included, and is enriched by doubt. A total aversion to doubt reflects a stale, lifeless faith. When Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life, it is an invitation to partake in a relationship with God and with others that feeds our hunger and quenches our thirst in a way we may not be able to comprehend. Like the deepest relationships in our lives, we must be open to the unexpected, to vulnerability, and to being changed for the better. 

- Matthew Kieswetter