Following the Lead

Gospel: John 6: 35-40

Jesus comes to do the will of God.  He will set an example of how to do God's will so that others might follow this example.  The Jewish tradition had a wealth of laws and rules attempting to legislate how God's will was to be carried out in the world, but few if any examples of how it actually looks in the world.  Rather than provide a law, Jesus sets about to offer an example, consisting of being the mercy and loving kindness of God in the world.

To believe in Jesus, then, is not a matter of intellectual assent to certain propositions about Jesus, nor is it the mere recitation of a creed written long after Jesus' time on earth.  To believe in Jesus is, rather, about an entire way of living as Jesus did.  It is about doing God's will as Jesus demonstrated, in being the mercy and love of God in the world.  It is the submission of one's entire being and person to a way of living in the world.  

Bread is necessary for life in a physical sense.  Jesus is our bread of life in a spiritual sense, in being the ongoing example and inspiration for us to live in the world, in doing the will of God, in being bread for others ourselves.  To partake of this bread is to commit oneself to being like the Lord in our way of life. To accept and receive communion is our act of faith, our credal statement expressed not in words but in deed, to express hope that all our deeds follow the way of Jesus. 

What Can You Do?

Gospel: John 6: 30-35

The crowd has been following Jesus around for quite some time.  They have seen various signs - the water made wine in Cana, healings, exorcisms, and they were fed with the multiplied loaves and fishes.  They know not how he managed to get across the shore.  And yet they ask him for yet another sign.  This crowd has physically passed over to the other shore, but they are unable to achieve the transformation that such a passing over signifies.  

For Jesus tells them that the sign he will give them is a life of total surrender and sacrifice, a life of mercy and loving kindness extended to others, a life that will be given up to death at the hands of the crowd itself.  To partake of the bread Jesus provides is to take up this very life for ourselves, a life this bread enables us to achieve and live out each day.  This is the sign Jesus offers to them, and to us, one that they will not be able to accept.  

But for us there is still time to accept this sign and to live that sign in our lives.  If we are to partake of the bread Jesus offers, then we commit to taking up this life of love and mercy for others.  The crowd chose the way of violence, the way of Barabbas, the way of a political Messiah. Many Christians today do so as well, mocking the way of the Suffering Servant, the Prince of Peace.  The choice is ever before us - Barabbas, or Jesus of Nazareth.  

The Works of God

Gospel: John 6: 22-29

Jesus is leery of the crowd.  He realizes they follow him because they see the bread only in material terms.  They had wanted to make Jesus a king, again seeing the world of religion only in terms of power and self-interest.  Confronted with these realities by Jesus, the crowd then asks Jesus what they must do to perform the works of God.  The response they receive through the rest of the chapter, the meaning of the bread, will be too much for them.

For to do the works of God is to follow the way of the Lord Jesus.  It is to extend mercy and loving kindness to others, people we would rather not meet: the sick and lame, the leper, those possessed by demons, the poor, the marginalized, the foreigner, sinners of every stripe.  Such encounters make us uncomfortable and vulnerable.  They reveal our own mortality and weaknesses, the lack of love and compassion we should have for others.  

So very often we create vicarious practices of religion that are much easier to perform, rituals of all sorts that we then declare to be the central focus of religion.  They require little of us, unless we take their deeper meaning seriously and realize they are pointing us to actually perform the deeds of love and mercy Jesus performed, to live as Jesus did in the world.  This is the meaning of the bread, the meaning the crowd could not accept.