Wednesday in the Third Week of Easter, May, 4, 2022

John 6:35-40

Jesus said to the crowds, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen me, you do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”

Having established, through the miracle of the loaves and fish and his miraculous transportation to Capernaum, the Lord Jesus has established for the crowd that God’s favor rests upon him.  And so he speaks to them in a way that he will not speak again on earth except at the Last Supper: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”  He does not say, “I am as though the bread of life” but “I am the bread of life.”  St. John is the only Evangelist who does not show Jesus telling parables, and it could be because he wants to make it absolutely clear to his readers that the Lord is not speaking in parables now.  We who have heard this passage many times and come to it already as believers should try to imagine how the members of the crowd heard these words.  No one had ever spoken like this: no prophet, no patriarch, no lawgiver.  Jesus elaborates: “whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”  The crowd must have grown silent upon hearing this.  We can hear their thoughts, though: “Who are you?” (John 8, 25).

“Although you have seen me, you do not believe.”  Jesus means that although they see him here where he could not have come naturally, since he did not go with the Apostles on the boat and he could not have walked here in time, they still do not believe his words.  He has demonstrated divine power and they do not believe what he tells them.

“Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me.”  The Greek word is rightly translated here as “everything” because it is in the neuter.  Still, the Lord would seem to mean “everyone”.  Those who come to him, then, are given him by the Father.  It is staggering to think about that.  You and I who have gone to the Lord Jesus have done so because the Father gave us to him.  The Lord will reject no one who comes to him because the Father has given them to him.  He does this out of obedience to the Father: “Because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”  We can feel secure in our belonging to Christ because the Father has given us to him and he will keep us with him out of his obedient love for the Father.  Furthermore, “This is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me.”  He will neither reject out of malice nor lose out of carelessness anyone given him by the Father.  “But that I should raise it on the last day.”  “It”, that is, “him”.  The Lord Jesus keeps those whom the Father gives him in order to raise them up on the last day.  The Jews already had a concept of a “last day” at the time Jesus walked the earth.  It was derived from the Prophet Malachi’s “great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Malachi 4, 5).  Some believed it would be a day of judgment or simply the day when the just would be raised by the Messiah into heaven.  The Lord speaks in detail of this day in Matthew 25.

“This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life.”  The Lord speaks over and over of the Father’s will.  His own will is only to do the Father’s will, showing us how we should direct our own wills.  If even the Son does this, so much more we should strive to do this.  The Lord says “everyone who sees the Son”, that is, to understand who the Son is, and then also believes in him, “may have eternal life”.  Notice how this goes far beyond anything the Jews were promised for obeying their Law.  They were promised prosperity on the earth for keeping the tenets of the Law.  But to gain eternal life, they would have to believe in Jesus as the Son of God.  Preposterous, but for the miracles he had performed to validate his claims.  “And I shall raise him on the last day.”  Thus, “having” eternal life meant enjoying it not here in this world but in heaven with the angels.