Jesus answered them, ‘Work…for the food that lasts into eternal life, that which the Son of Man will give YOU... ·My Father gives YOU the "bread from heaven"—the true bread. ·For the "Bread of God" is the one who comes down from heaven… ·I am the Bread of Life... ·It is the will of my Father that whoever considers the Son and believes in him might have eternal life...’ ·Then the Judeans [Gr. ioudaioi] grumbled about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven”. ·And they said, ‘Is this not Jesus the son of Joseph, of whom we know both the father and the mother? How can this one now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ ·Jesus said in reply, ‘Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one is able to come to me unless the Father, the One who sent me, should draw him… ·It is written in the Prophets: “And they will all be taught by God” [Is.54:13]. Whoever hears and learns from alongside the Father comes towards me. ·Not that anyone has seen the Father, only the one from alongside God…has seen the Father… ·I am the "Living Bread" which came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread he will live into eternity. Yet the bread which I shall give is also my flesh, which I will give for the sake of the life of the world.’ (John 6:26-27a,32b-33,35a,40-46,51 GH[i])

The Judeans started quarrelling among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ ·Jesus said… ‘Unless YOU eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, YOU will not in yourselves have life. ·The one who dines on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life… ·For my flesh truly is food and my blood truly is drink. ·The one who dines on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. ·Just as the living Father has sent me and I live through the Father, so the one who dines on me will also live through me. ·This is the bread that comes down from heaven… Anyone who dines on this bread will live into eternity.’ (Jn.6:52-58)

He said these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. ·Many…among his disciples…said, 'This word is so harsh, who can stand to listen to it?’ ·…Jesus said to them, ‘Does this scandalize YOU? ·What then if YOU should witness the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? ·The Spirit is what gives life; the flesh is not advantageous to anyone. It is Spirit and it is life, these words that I am speaking to YOU. ·But there are some from among YOU who do not believe… ·After this many of his disciples departed… and no longer walked with him. ·Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do YOU not want to withdraw as well?’ ·Simon Peter answered, ‘Master, towards whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. ·We believe and have known that you are the Holy One of God!’ … ·After these things Jesus…did not want to walk about in Judea [ioudaia], because of the Judeans [ioudaioi] seeking to kill him. (Jn.6:59-64,66-69; 7:1)

During the second part of this synagogue teaching at Capernaum in Galilee, John suddenly introduces a second group of listeners—some ‘Judeans’.[ii] Many Judeans came to Galilee to hear Jesus, but among them were Pharisees and legal scholars who journeyed north to check up on Jesus (Mk.3:7-8,22). And one thing they have been checking up on is Jesus' background. So when Jesus identifies himself as "the Bread of God" who came from heaven, they respond very differently from the Galileans present. This ‘crowd’ interacted with Jesus, asking him to give them this miracle "Bread" (Med.#61). The Judeans, however, only ‘grumble about’ Jesus and his teaching ‘among themselves’; for they now ‘know’ who his real father and mother are. So his claim to have come from heaven is a rational impossibility. Maybe the Messiah might speak of God as ‘my Father’, as Jesus was doing (Med.#D), but a Galilean Messiah was a biblical impossibility (Jn.7:42-43). They never consider the possibility that there might be something about Jesus' birth and family line that they do not know (Lk.2:4-7). Further, they see the idea of eating Jesus' ‘flesh’, in order to gain eternal life, as a physical impossibility, let alone as being religiously and intellectually offensive—as it also is to many of Jesus' disciples.

Still today, modern religious rationalists—both ‘liberal’ and ‘evangelical’—have trouble coming to know the Father because their primary approach to Christian belief is through their minds. Many theologians, especially in the West, find the image of God as ‘Father’ too ‘intimate’ to describe the relationship of human beings to the immortal, invisible Creator.[iii] And Evangelical rationalists tend to see God as only a ‘real’ Father to Jesus, due to the virgin birth. They explain away the New Testament references to God as ‘our Father’ as mere metaphors of how God is ‘father-like’ to us.[iv] He can't be our Father in a ‘real’ way because we cannot see him the way Jesus can. Yet Jesus only says that we have not seen the Father. According to David and Paul, one day we will be able to see him (Ps.11:7; 1 Cor.13:12). Also Job (Med.#E), Jesus (Med.#11) and John (Med.#52). I can hardly wait!

Another thing that modern rationalists do is to separate ‘knowing’ with our minds from ‘believing’ with our hearts. We can't know spiritual truths the way we know scientific facts, they say, so believing requires a ‘leap of faith’. Yet Jesus says that the Father wants us to ‘believe in the Son’ after first ‘considering’ him (6:40). Notice how Peter says that he and the other disciples came to ‘believe’ in Jesus after having come to ‘know’ him as ‘the Holy One of God’. John's ‘belief’ was no ‘leap’ in the dark. Rather, his personal 'fellowship' with the Father through Jesus (relational ‘knowing’) began with physical observation of Jesus (empirical knowing) while walking with him for several years (Med.#52). But he didn't grasp at first that it was the Father drawing him into this relationship, and that through Jesus it was the Father who all along was teaching him—even though he couldn't see him.

So how do we enter into this eternal life with the Father through faith? According to Jesus, we must do so by ‘dining on’ him, by ‘eating from his flesh’ and ‘drinking his blood’. Animist and other non-Western peoples often grasp the significance of this image better than do Western rationalists. When Vincent Donovan tried to explain ‘faith’ in Jesus to a Maasai elder in East Africa, he used the Maasai and Kiswahili words that mean ‘to agree with’. To ‘believe’ like that, the elder responded, was ‘similar to a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance. Only his eyes and fingers take part in the act. For a man really to believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it in his ‘arms’, pulls it to himself and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion kills. This is the way a man believes. This is what faith is.’[v]

Coming to Jesus by faith, means using my body as well as my mind to take his sacrificial death and resurrection life into me. I've done this by submitting to water baptism (Rom.6:3-4). I continue to do this is by ‘eating his flesh’ and ‘drinking his blood’ when I join in Jesus' last Passover meal with his disciples. For as Jesus took the symbols of deliverance from death and captivity in Egypt—the sacrificed lamb, the unleavened bread, the four cups of wine[vi]—he reshaped them into a new double image: of intimate participation in his death, and of eternal meal-time fellowship with him and the Father in the new family kingdom (Med.#67).

But there's more. Jesus also uses the image of ‘dining on him’ to show how we ‘abide in him’. If we want to grow in a direct living relationship with the Father, we must continue to act out our faith in Jesus' sacrificial death by practicing a life-style of repentance when we fall into sin (Med.#54). ‘Dining on’ Jesus is also about ‘living through him’ the same way that he lived here on earth as a Son—‘through the Father’ (6:57, Med.#52). Jesus once used the ‘eating’ analogy for how he lived through the Father: by dining on every word he received from him (Mat.4:4). He also spoke only what his Father ‘taught’ him (Med.#64) and did only what pleased his Father, while laboring to finish the work he saw his Father doing (Jn.4:34 & Med.#26). Thus the Father also imparts eternal life to me through the ‘living bread’ of ‘the Spirit of his Son in me’ (Med.#28 & Med.#4), and through the words of Jesus that he has given us in the Scriptures; because these too are ‘Spirit and Life’ for me as I obey them (Med.#57).

How do you respond to Jesus' teaching? Is your faith just a ‘mental agreement’ that Jesus' sacrificial death gives you eternal life? Or are you engaging your whole body in ‘dining on’ Jesus in a daily living relationship with your Father by his Spirit? Are you feeding on his words by regularly reading the Scriptures? Are you doing his will and finishing the works he gives you to do—as well as returning regularly to the cross? Do you have questions? So do I. But I hold on to the words my mother gave me at age fifteen, that helped me stand up to my rationalist schoolmates: ‘Just because you don't know an answer, doesn't mean there isn't one.’

Father, all things came from you and we live for You. Thank you for sending Jesus: through whom all things came and through whom we live. (1 Cor.8:6)

We receive Jesus as the ‘Bread from Heaven’ you have given us. As Jesus drew life from You, we draw life from him today so we can hear Your voice and learn from You... (Jn.6:32,56-57,45)

…so that our work will be produced by faith, our labor prompted by love, and our endurance and holy living inspired by the hope we have in our Lord Jesus, of seeing You face to face. (1 Thes.1:3; 1 Jn.3:1-3; Ps.11:7)

[i] The Scripture passage is taken from J.K. Mellis, The Good News of the Messiah by the Four Witnesses: pp.105-108,117,122.

[ii] John uses the Greek ioudaioi (6:41,52; 7:1b), to distinguish people from Judea [ioudaia] (7:1a) from Galileans, not to talk about all ‘Jews’.

[iii] Based on an incident reported by Miroslav Volf in his book, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Abingdon Press (Nashville), 1996, p.29.

[iv] Only 16 (6%) of the 276 New Testament references to the Father use metaphorical language.

[v] Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered. Orbis, 1982, p.62-3.

[vi] Traditionally, there are four cups of wine at the Passover meal, each one associated with one of the four promises in Exodus. (1) ‘I will bring YOU out from under the burdens of the Egyptians’; (2) ‘I will deliver YOU from their bondage’; (3) ‘I will redeem YOU with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment’; (4) ‘I will take YOU for my people and be your God…’ (Ex.6:6 -7a RSV). Two of these are mentioned in the gospel account of Jesus' Passover meal with his disciples (Lk.22:17,20) and another one is alluded to (Mat.26:29).