“Not quite what they wanted, or expected”
Meditation – Wednesday, April 2, 2025
John 6: 27-40 (Forward, p. 63) CEV p. 1108
Jesus begins today’s passage quite unexpectedly. He begins with a discussion about ‘work’, clearly emphasizing that His audience needs to work for the food that truly satisfies, that never spoils, and that, in fact, gives eternal life. Here He echoes what Isaiah the prophet had said many centuries before. He is telling them not to put all their eggs in one basket, and the wrong one at that! And Jesus tells them that He is the very one appointed by God to give them this food.
So, right on cue, the people ask, “what exactly does Gd want us to do?” They are thinking of actions, of performance, of carrying out some duty or ritual, given that this is how they have been conditioned to think. Their religion had, unfortunately, become a system of do’s and don’ts, so they were quite ready to add yet another ‘something’ to that list.
Here Jesus throws them for a loop. He gives them neither what they wanted nor expected. He answers, “God wants you to believe, to have faith, in the one he sent.”
Here the crowds respond quite as expected: they want Him to prove Himself, to assist them in having faith in Him, by performing a miracle. They suggest that perhaps Jesus could do something along the lines of what Moses did in the wilderness when he provided them with manna.
Jesus counters this by saying that it is really the Father that gives bread from heaven, and what He gives is the true bread—not, by implication, the temporary and insubstantial bread that was the manna. And this true bread, Jesus tells them, is actually a person. (This certainly not what they wanted or expected!). Then, to make matters worse: He tells them that He is that bread, the bread that gives eternal life. No one who trusts in Him will ever hunger or thirst. In fact, such persons will have eternal life and will be raised to life on the last day. Sadly, as we will see later, this stuck in the craw of many of them. They simply could not, or would not, believe or place their trust or faith in Jesus.
But we are without excuse: we know the facts about Jesus and how He has indeed lived up to His claims. Indeed, He has called us to Himself and drawn us. We are among the ones that God has chosen. And so, we are to trust in Him, to have faith in Him, to rely on Him, not just as a ‘once and for all’ type of thing, but daily and momentarily. That’s where the ‘real crunch comes’—when we must act out our faith in these little decisions and actions. Fortunately, we have His help in this. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’” (verse 35).
“Many of us took up baking bread as a hobby during the pandemic. One very curious thing about that hobby was that people of all ages and stages did it without widespread coordination. I wonder if we were all searching for a way to connect with our roots, remembering past traditions before COVID-19 was a threat.
“There is also the possibility that some of us thought about the ‘bread of life,’ longing for a reminder of the presence of God. I was certainly reminded of holy community each time I discovered another fellow bread baker. I sensed that such activities were successful ways to take our minds off the immediate danger, focusing instead on familiar words like, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’”
Moving Forward: “What activities help to take your mind off immediate dangers and draw you into the presence of God?”