Tuesday in the Third Week of Easter, April 20, 2021

John 6:30-35

The crowd said to Jesus: “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.” 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.” So they said to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 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.”

“What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?”  Many, perhaps most, of the people in the crowd had been fed by the Lord Jesus in the miracle of the loaves and fishes.  Jesus himself acknowledged this when he admonished the crowd that they had come to him not because they had seen signs but because he had fed them.  Indeed, the people asking for a sign here, still did not understand that the miraculous feeding with the loaves and fishes had been such a sign.  We see their thick-headedness when they even say, “What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert.”  It is as though they wanted him to bring down visibly bread from heaven, on their cue.  They do not care for any wondrous sign he may choose to give them; they want to tell him what wondrous sign he should perform.  They treat the Lord as a traveling magician.  Jesus is patient with them.  First, he corrects their odd notion that Moses had brought down the manna by his own power: “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven.”  He then uses earthly bread to teach them about grace, redemption, and eternal life: “My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.”  That is, my Father — the Father of the Son of Man — gave the manna to the Hebrews, and, though it came down from heaven, it acted as a sign for a far greater reality: “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  That is to say, there is the bread which he gave through Moses, which filled people on a daily basis, and the Bread of God, which satisfies forever.  “Sir, give us this bread always.”  This reminds us of how the Samaritan woman at the well said to the Lord, upon hearing him speak of the saving Water of grace, “Sir, give me this water always” (John 4, 15).  The people, just as the woman, are not thinking of spiritual things, however.  To this, the Lord replies, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

This revelation would have taken the crowd aback.  They were asking for material bread that they would eat and never be hungry again, just as the woman at the well only wanted water that would obviate the need for her to go to the well three times a day.  The people ask for bread, and the Lord offers himself.  More than that, the Lord makes it clear that the Father is offering him to them.  Now the people would have quieted and looked at Jesus, standing before them in the field outside Capernaum and wondered at what he could possibly mean in saying that he was “bread”, or, “the bread of life”.  The phrase itself is interesting because all bread nourishes for life.  Why the emphasis here?  The Lord was telling them that he was the Bread of eternal life.  And yet they had eyes only for the physical, the material, and they would not alter their way of thinking to understand him.

The Lord speaks to us in terms we can understand, using the things of our everyday world in order to teach us about the things of the spirit, the things of heaven.  We must learn, through grace, to look at the world with spiritual eyes so that in recognizing his signs, we may come to the Lord’s reality.