Bread of Life Part I –  Life to the World Here and Now:
Proper 13, Year B

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a; Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 51:1-12; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

Even though it seems to be a detour from Mark’s Way, the discourse on bread by John’s Jesus should not be glibly tossed off like crumbs to birds.  With their combination of readings for Proper 13, The Elves put us in jeopardy of doing precisely that.  David humbly acknowledges his sin; Jesus is described as personified manna from heaven; and the Ephesians can rest easy in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”  But King David has blown his entire legacy, notwithstanding Christian claims of Jesus’s royal lineage; the writer of the letter to the Ephesians has buried distributive justice-compassion under the conventions of Empire; and John’s Jesus is reduced to frustrated annoyance: “I swear to God, you’re looking for me only because you ate the bread and had all you wanted, not because you witnessed miracles.”  Five Gospels translation.

John’s extended metaphor on Jesus as the bread of life begins with the feeding of the five thousand, and ends with the imagery that informs Christian Eucharist.  In between, John’s Jesus reacts with impatience to the refusal of the people to understand what he is talking about – including his disciples and the religious leaders.  When the people demand a further sign – apparently unsatisfied with the magical provision of bread they have just witnessed – Jesus says, “I swear to God, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven to eat; rather, it is my Father who gives you real bread from heaven.  What I mean is this,” he says, “God’s bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. . . . I AM the bread of life.”  

Like, “hello!”  

The prevailing culture within which John’s community fought for survival did not accept the idea that Jesus was the longed-for Messiah.  But when John’s Jesus says, “What God wants you to do is to believe in the one God has sent,” he is not suggesting that Jesus’s message for the restoration of God’s justice-compassion has been replaced with “belief” in an interventionist god who will do all the work.  This is especially clear if the phrase “believe in” is understood to mean, “trust.”  “Trust the message,” Jesus says, “because it comes from God.”  In John’s version of the loaves and fishes story, Jesus’s complaint is that the people were more interested in filling their bellies than wondering how such a miracle was possible.  As with Moses and the manna in the wilderness, miracle is either disbelieved or taken for granted.

Meanwhile, back in David’s love nest, the piper is about to be paid.

We might think that Nathan’s Parable, and his declaration that David himself has perpetrated the injustice illustrated by the parable, are unrelated to John’s development of the metaphor of Jesus as the bread of life.  But David has been caught up in the nearly inevitable corruption of royal power; likewise, the people listening to John’s preaching have also been caught in the normalcy of power-grabbing survival.  Both stories are metaphors for the kind of systemic injustice that prevails in human community.

The Elves have their own reasons for not allowing us to see the full extent of the consequences for David’s sin.  It is enough for the Elves (for now) that David acknowledges that he is indeed the one Nathan’s parable is about.  The writer of the letter to the Ephesians would probably agree that acknowledging “sin” is the most important action a member of the body of Christ can take.  But that writer is not talking about the kind of injustice that David confessed to.  The writer of Ephesians is satisfied with a community of “love and peace,” where “sin” is no more serious than petty trespass, and the consequences are the loss of “inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God.”

By the time the letter to the Ephesians was probably written, Jesus had been dead for 60 or 70 years, and Paul for 40 to 50 years.  The Temple had been destroyed and the Jewish people had been dispersed for nearly 30 years.  Christianity had diverged from Judaism to such an extent that the letter-writer felt the community in Ephesus needed some instruction about Jewish practice (Ephesians 2:11-22).  The nearly inevitable progress of normal civilization into unjust systems was well underway in most diaspora Mediterranean communities, including Ephesus.  The letter deals with petty trespass and conventional behaviors, in a context of peace, love, and forbearance.  “Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy” (4:28).  This is a nice pious sentiment, but pales in comparison with Exodus 20:15 (“Thou shalt not steal”); or the parable of the money in trust (Matthew 25:14-28).

The letter spells out what it means to be part of the body of Christ:  “one lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”  Such a community should be dedicated to the work begun by Jesus.  According to the writer, that work is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God . . .”  Reflecting 1 Corinthians 12, this church leader writes, “the whole body . . . as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

That’s nice, but it lacks the passion that comes from dealing with daily oppression, or the conviction that comes from the acknowledgment of the inevitability of unjust systems and corporate sin.  Unless we realize the consequences of falling outside God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion, we cannot possibly grasp the meaning of John’s metahpor for Jesus: “I am the bread of life.  Anyone who comes to me will never be hungry again, and anyone who trusts my message will never be thirsty.”
“Bread” means economic survival.  “Bread” is another word for “money” in contemporary language.  That is not just a counter-cultural slang expression.  Without money, or the economic means to survive, food, clothing, shelter, and medical care are all denied.  What is Jesus really saying here?  Not that GOD sends food, clothing, shelter, and medical care, but that Jesus embodies those basic necessities for life.

Does that mean we literally eat, wear, sleep with, and are cured by Jesus?  We will get to the graphic argument John makes about this over the next couple of weeks.  For now, John’s Jesus is saying that, “What God wants you to DO is to TRUST in the one God sent to you.”  He is referring to his life and teaching as examples of how to bring about God’s kingdom.  Jesus is the incarnate representation of distributive justice-compassion, which assures what is needed for not just survival, but abundant life.  In Mark’s original version of the loaves and fishes, Jesus’s followers are more interested in the miracle.  John takes the misunderstanding even further into the realm of injustice:  In John’s version, having and eating the bread is more important than how the bread was provided.  Even a miraculous multiplication of manna is ignored in the frenzy to gobble up as much as possible.

The consequences for not accepting that Jesus is the Messiah, or for not trusting Jesus’s teachings, or believing what he says, are not readily apparent because they are implied:  Those who do not accept Jesus as the Messiah, or do not trust his teachings, or believe his words will not be included in that “eternal life” that is promised to those who do.  The “bread of life” is denied to those who do not accept it.  Viewing that negative consequence as a “judgment” leading to “hell fire and damnation” is likely a leakage from the Apocalypse attributed to John, which is read back into the Gospel.  But if the writer was talking about the Pharisaic concept of the resurrection of the martyrs for God’s justice into God’s Kingdom, then the consequence for not “believing” the story is simply death and the absence of God.

We never consider the crucial theology found in John 6:36-40.  John’s Jesus is saying that God is the one who gives the people to him, and that Jesus will never reject anyone who does come to him.  In the context of a beleaguered first century community, God himself will move people to follow Jesus, and no one who does so will be denied.  John’s Jesus says that he came not to do what he wants to do, but what God wants him to do.  God has charged him with losing nothing (and no one) that has been put into his care.  On the last day, Jesus says, when God’s justice has been restored to the earth, Jesus will raise up those martyrs who died for justice along with him.  God’s intention, John’s Jesus says, is that all those who see the son of God and trust him will have real, genuine life in this world, here and now.  “[A]nd I will resurrect them on the last day.”  We have heard this kind of impassioned metaphor before, from the Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, who was transformed on the Road to Damascus into the Apostle Paul.

    “Understanding Paul’s theology about the “second coming” of the Christ is important because if [John Dominic] Crossan is correct, and the theology is not about a future moment but a present, here-and-now, ongoing process of transformation, then we are talking about our own responsibility for bringing God’s distributive justice-compassion into being. . . . [W]e have forsaken all other gods, including emperors living and dead, and the theology of empire.  We no longer subscribe to piety, war, victory; instead we stand with non-violence, distributive justice-compassion, and peace.”   See blog.11.09.08 

The consequences of human “sin” as illustrated by the story of David and Bathsheba is not just disaster in this life.  That very sin is a consequence of not signing on to the work of restoring God’s Realm of distributive justice-compassion.  The result is continuing entrapment in unjust systems, and the absence of God, both now and after death.

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