Tuesday, 4/16/13
Today’s Gospel tells
a story from the next day after Jesus had fed the five thousand with the five
loaves. In St. John’s account of that day he wrote that the crowd, in becoming aware of the great miracle
happening before them, began saying, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is
to come into the world.”
They were referring
to Deuteronomy, 18:15 where Moses had promised that at some future date God
would raise up a Pophet like himself to whom they would need listen. When the
people then made a move to make Jesus their king, he slipped away from them. On
the following day when they caught up with Jesus across the lake in Capernaum,
they wanted to know if he really were the Prophet whom Moses had promised
centuries before.
Now, it had become a
belief among the people that when the promised Prophet came, he too would bring
down manna from heaven. To check if Jesus were that Prophet, they asked him
what sign he could give that would be like Moses bringing down bread from
heaven, and Jesus told them that what Moses gave them was not true bread from
heaven.
It is possible that Jesus
based that answer on the historical fact that what their ancestors took to be
bread from heaven was actually a bread-like substance that can still be found in
the Sinai Desert. There are aphids feeding on shrubs there that exude a white,
honey-like, substance that the Bedouins still call “manna.” Like the Bible
manna, it must be gathered in the morning, because at 80 degrees it melts into
the sand.
At the beginning of his
long discourse on the Bread of Life Jesus then said that he was the true bread
from heaven. Later in the discourse he would describe himself as the bread we eat
in Holy Communion, but at the beginning he was saying that through his teaching
he was the true bread which we must believe in for the nourishment of our
souls.
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