Drawn to the Bread of Life

AM Psalm 69:1-23(24-30)31-38 • PM Psalm 73
Jer. 22:13-23 • Rom. 8:12-27 • John 6:41-51

In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus’ own teaching about his body and the life-giving quality of it. “I am the bread of life,” says Jesus, “…the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This passage, and the following verses, are part of a tapestry of teachings that help us to see the foundations of the sacramental union with God which Jesus invites us into. It is a comforting doctrine, that Jesus gives his true body to us in a material and mysterious way, in the celebration and offering of the Eucharist.

Jesus mentions that those who ate of the bread in the wilderness died, and they were unable to enter into the promised land. In contrast, he claims the superiority of his bread, because “one may eat of it and not die”. In retrospect, we know that Jesus doesn’t mean that those who eat of his flesh will not die in some sense, we know many who have died and eaten that blessed bread. Instead, I think that there is a distinction between those who were eating bread while wondering in the wilderness and those who are being drawn together towards the bread of life. One eats and continues wondering, spreading out and going everywhere but the promised land. The other, is drawn by the Father around the bread of life and reaches the promised land. To eat Christ’s flesh is for God to inter into us and for us to enter into God.

As Jesus says, “No one can come unless drawn by the Father,” it is never an accident that we find ourselves week after week partaking of one bread and becoming one body. As John Chrysostom once put it, “He has kneaded up his body with ours, so that we might be one distinct entity, like a body joined to a head.” In the mystery of Jesus’ body, God is making us fully his, in love and action. We are being drawn into heavenly places, and we reach life in the promised Kingdom. And that life never dies.

Written by Curtis Moneymaker

Curtis is grateful for the life that God is drawing us into together, through Jesus Christ.