Tuesday, 5/6/14
Today’s Gospel
records events the day after Jesus fed the five thousand with the five loaves
of bread. Following on that miracle, he had sent the Apostles off in their
fishing boat, while he had disappeared up in the hills.
The people,
delighted with eating the miraculous bread and fish, spent the evening rounding
up boats to take them across the lake to Capernaum. Arriving in Capernaum
around noon the next day, they were amazed at finding Jesus already there. There
had been no boat that could have carried him across.
Puzzled and
delighted with finding him, they asked, “Rabbi, how did you get here?”
With that, Jesus turned
stern. Chiding them, he said, “You have not been seeking me because you
understood the sign I performed, but only because you want your bellies filled
again. Instead of looking for bread that perishes, you should seek the food
that endures.”
The people had
something else on their minds. They all had heard an ancient saying according
to which when the Messiah came he would make actual manna come down from
heaven. That is what they had in mind when they asked Jesus, “What sign can you
do so that we might belief in you? Our Fathers were given bread to eat in the
desert?”
Jesus told them that
what Moses gave them had not been true bread from heaven. He might have just
been giving them a factual statement. Commentators tell us that in the Sinai aphids
feeding on juniper bushes exude a white substance, similar to the honey
deposited by bees, and the Bedouins who gather it up still call it manna.
Jesus told them “I
am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever
believes in me will never thirst.”
That same Chapter
Six of John’s Gospel records the long lesson that he taught through that
afternoon. At the end of it, speaking of Holy Communion, he would speak of
giving living bread to eat, but here at the beginning he was referring to himself
and to his teaching as the bread that nourishes their spirits.
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