The Bread of Life
AM Psalm 103 • PM Psalm 114, 115
Deut. 8:1-3 • Col. 1:1-14 • John 6:30-33,48-51
In today’s reading from the gospel of John, the crowd, reminding Jesus that “Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness . . . and ate bread from heaven,” ask, “What work do you perform (for us)?” Physical, literal bread, that’s what they want, something they can hold in their hands, raise to their mouths, smell and taste. But what Jesus offers is a different kind of bread: Himself, the bread of life, that “gives life to the world.”
Surely J.R.R. Tolkien was thinking of manna when he created lembas, the Elven waybread that sustained Frodo’s troop on their perilous journey to Mordor. But as with Sam Gamgee, who tired of lembas and longed for simple bread and meats, so it is with human nature to weary of sameness. The Children of Israel tired of manna and begged for meat. We ourselves have all the bread we want, and more meat, vegetables, fruit, and wine to go with it than we need, yet we hunger for something more. Created a little lower than the angels, we mortals have within us a divine spark of dissatisfaction that drives our minds to dream and create marvelous things and our spirits to search for God. As St. Augustine puts it, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
It’s this hunger of the heart that Jesus came to fill within his followers back then and within us today. Jesus understands this restlessness that leads us toward something beyond our daily bread. The writer of today’s reading from Deuteronomy reminds the Israelites that God wanted them to move beyond living “by bread alone” when God fed them in the wilderness (8:3).* Likewise Jesus tells the crowd, “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; anyone who eats of this bread will live forever.” No wonder the people in the crowd, and even more so should we today, yell, “Lord, give us this bread always!”
*In Matthew 4:4 and Luke 4:4, Jesus quotes this passage from Deuteronomy 8:3 when he is being tempted in his own wilderness by Satan.
Written by Kay DuVal
Kay writes this Morning Reflection almost a month before it will be published and prays that in those days between everyone will have had a safe and joyful holiday season.