THE BREAD OF LIFE
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: John 6: 41-59 New Revised Standard
Elisha & Moses
Jesus is Moses, the Law, and the Prophets
In the first half of chapter six, Jesus feeds a multitude of five thousand people. You know the miracle—Jesus takes some loaves and a couple of fish and divides them until everyone is well-fed. One of the things this indicates is that Jesus is a prophet among prophets, like Elisha from the text Matt just read. [2 Kings 4: 42-44].
You’ll remember that Elisha had a double portion of the spirit of Elijah, who represents all the prophets. So Jesus is, in part, a prophet like Elijah and Elisha.
But he is also Moses—the new Moses—providing bread for the people of God in the wilderness. Jesus is the new Moses—the bread giver—just as he is the Dionysus, the wine-giver, for turning water into wine in chapter 2. Whatever the Jews of Jesus’ day honored and respected, Jesus himself is a better version of—a more complete fulfillment of God’s promises.
So Jesus gives the people bread, but pleasing the crowd quickly goes wrong. Verse 15:
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
The people wanted a breadwinner like Moses. They had their bellies fed and they liked it. Yes, Jesus did feed them—he fed their earthly bodies—but this miracle is not so much a big deal in itself as it is a prelude for what comes after in our text.
Again, Jesus is not only the bread-giver, but he is the bread itself. He is the bread that came down from heaven, the bread that supplies eternal life.
bread of heaven
Jesus is more than the bread-giver; he is the bread. He says, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” Of what does this remind them? In part, it should remind them of the bread God provided for Israel in the desert. The people ate manna every day for their daily bread. That bread “from heaven” kept them alive for 40 years. Even so, the people constantly complained—they murmured and grumbled. They grumbled about Moses, they grumbled about God, they grumbled about the manna they ate, and they grumbled about having to live in the desert instead of Egypt, where they were slaves, but well-fed slaves.
And now, in the synagogue of Capernaum, Jesus says that he, not the manna, is the true bread of heaven.
elaborations
We rightly understand Matthew, Mark, and Luke through the lens of John. John clarifies the Apostles’ tradition.
John, as we’ve said, is the clarifier—he brings back the focus as the early gospel spread into the world and began to take on elaboration and, like a ship at sea, barnacles from other cultures.
We can’t talk enough about the problem of elaboration, because it is our human nature to elaborate. Like the Pharisees elaborated on the Old Testament Law, Christians immediately began elaborating on this new Christianity—adding things in from their own culture—simply because they like them.
Just as Israel kept going back to idols, people love their own elaborations. How long do you think Moses had been up the hill before the people said, “You know, we ought to make a golden calf—not as an idol, mind you, but just as a place for the Lord to sit.” It took no time. The human tendency toward idolatry is immediate and compelling.
It happens in a kind of innocence, like children at play:
“Let’s say that whenever someone lifts the bread, that they face the east because Jesus’ resurrection is like the dawning of a new day.”
“Oooh, I like that!”
“And let’s call the guy who lifts the bread a priest, like the priests of the Old Testament, and let’s call the table an altar, just like in the Old Testament, and think of the bread like the animal sacrifice, broken and divided like a heifer.”
“Yeah—that’s good! We should get some costumes like the Old Testament priests as well—and let’s use the best fabric we can find—put some gold in it.”
“And let’s get a better cup, and a better table…” and on and on and on.
The priesthood itself is a failed elaboration. The book of Hebrews makes clear that Jesus Christ is the only and final high priest—the only priest required. If there is to be any priesthood, it is the priesthood of everyone who is in Christ. Everyone is a priest means no one is a priest.
the worship space
Consider the worship space. The original Lord’s Supper was in an upper room—what amounts to a dining room. The first Christians gathered for two hundred years at a common table, with a common cup and normal plates—if plates at all—but elaborations turned it into an Old Testament altar.
After that, the priesthood decided that the riff-raff (you and me) shouldn’t be allowed to come to the altar, so they raised it up and separated it from the mere believers. Only the priests could go up to the altar, because only the priests were holy enough to do so. Today in Orthodox churches there is a railing or wall—the iconostasis wall—keeping the riff-raff out. It’s a toxic elaboration. Catholics had the same practice, but have revised it in the past century.
In the Mass, the priests, who are holy, turn their backs to the people and lift up the piece of bread at the altar to God. At the moment the magic words are said—hocus corpus—a bell rings, which is the moment the bread turns into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus. After it becomes Jesus, only then, the priest breaks it. You could say that they have turned Jesus into the sacrificial animal to be sacrificed again and again at every Mass.
It is all elaboration—all fabrication—with no resemblance to the communion instituted by Christ.
This sanctuary is designed on the Catholic model. The nave, the sanctuary (priests only), and the raised “altar” are all outside of our Reformed tradition. In America, when Presbyterians built church buildings, they didn’t think theologically—they let the architects build churchy-looking churches. No thought.
When we gather, we—the priesthood of all believers—we all come up into the sanctuary and gather around the TABLE for the meal Christ provides. It is not a re-sacrificing—it is not a sacrifice at all—though it is a remembrance of Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice.
High churches mean to elevate the sacrament. High liturgy is something we invent to express and feel full respect and reverence for God and what he’s given, but we’ve elaborated it out of all sense. What’s worse is that many Christians believe all this stuff and elaboration to be the substance of their faith, which is a pitiable mistake. The high-liturgy worship traditions are more often than not expressions of the power of the priesthood itself—the power of the priesthood over the people. We reject this on the strongest terms and call all Christians to celebrate the sacrament as it was given by Christ and celebrated by the early Church.
I have many friends who are Catholic and Orthodox—and I suspect that many of them are better Christians than I—people of great devotion, deep faith, and whom Jesus loves and saves, but I will not hold back from making fun of their clown outfits and gilded barnacles.
Be clear: the Lord’s supper is necessarily low-church—common, humble—on the bottom shelf.
Verse 51b: “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
That “whoever” is significant. Jesus so often addresses us in the plural, but this means “any individual” or “any single one” is welcome as drawn by the Father.
Our sacrament takes place at a most-common table for the hungry with a common cup from which anyone may drink.
sacrament, not symbol
Briefly, the other failed extreme is reducing this sacrament to mere symbolism. Evangelicals have so reacted against high Catholicism and the inordinate elaborations of Eastern Orthodox traditions that we err on the opposite side, reducing a sacrament to a mere symbol.
Did Jesus say, “This is my symbol”? Did he say, “This is my bread”? No. He makes it emphatic and repetitive that “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” Verse 53:
“Amen, amen, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
The cannibalistic imagery is unavoidable. Jesus doubles and triples down on it, turning the knife in the wound. He holds the puritan’s noses in it. For Jews, it was the ultimate in “unclean”—blood and flesh. It is an intentional offense. Jesus is saying, “You want to keep eating manna with Moses? Then you are dead already. If you want life, here it is.”
We don’t get in on our own terms. We must have Jesus—entirely Jesus with nothing else mixed in—or we are dead. Flesh and blood means the total consumption of Jesus and the exclusion of any other spirituality.
Scripture gives us two sacraments: The Lord’s Supper and Baptism. Catholics and Orthodox Christians long ago elaborated their traditions into seven sacraments—perfect examples of gilding their manmade barnacles with gold and making them the substance of faith.
But a sacrament is more than a symbol. Traditions are manmade; sacraments are from God.
Sacraments are not something we do for God, but they are signs that God has given to us for our good. We didn’t choose to use bread and wine; Christ chose them. We didn’t make up baptism as a way of initiating people into the Church; Christ gave us baptism for our comfort and assurance of his promises.
There are centuries’ worth of arguments about how the bread and wine can be or become the flesh and blood of Christ, but these long-winded arguments are all ultimately unsatisfying. We receive a mystery, and all our manmade explanations necessarily fall short. When we come to the table, we do so in simple trust, simple obedience.
When we come to the table, we receive more than just bread and wine—more than a symbol—we receive the gift of Christ himself. We receive in simple trust his promises. We receive assurance of eternal life. This cannot be manmade, nor can it be improved with gold chalices and lots of liturgy.
simple trust
Here is your “altar call” in the Church that has no altars. Come to the table. Simply trust in Jesus. Stand on his promises. Repent of your sins and your self-generated righteousness. Receive the mystery of the body and blood, and let’s live this life and eternally by the promises of God made known through our Lord Jesus Christ. †
Questions
- What was the context from which Jesus speaks to the rulers in John 5:19-47
- In verses 19-23, there appears almost the idea of apprenticeship between Father and Son. What are some of the attributes Jesus declares are given by the Father?
- What would it look like if we as Jesus’ followers worked as Jesus did and taught?
- In what ways do we see and experience “greater things than these” (signs)? John 14:12
- What are the conditions for eternal life and no condemnation? Romans8: 1-4
- What does Jesus say about resurrection and how do we know this to be true?
- How do followers of Jesus experience the miracle of resurrection before physical death?
- How does the understanding of resurrection help us live in a world of death, evil, and injustice?
- What can help people to trust the evidence of scripture? That Jesus is Lord?
- What can help people to trust the evidence of scripture? Do you have an experience you can share?