John 6:35 echoes in my ears as a litany sung in mass, bouncing off high ceilings in my childhood Catholic church. Jesus' declaration, "I am the bread of life" is an expression repeated so often that it might become too commonplace to recognize its significance. John’s writer situates Jesus' statement amidst stories of miracles such as healing a lame man, feeding five thousand people, and walking on water.
In doing so, he draws from these stories—especially Christ's miracle of turning five barley loaves and two small fish into a feast—as a way to try to ground His disciples understanding in the tangible. As a book likely written 80-90 A.D.—when many of Christ's original disciples had been put to death—this gospel writer speaks to future disciples, to us. In his book John: The Gospel of Light and Life, Adam Hamilton points out that John's gospel, different from the other synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) draws our attention to Christ as "light and life," as a tangible, accessible form of God who grants us access to eternal life.
We cannot begin to understand something so spiritually complex, yet Christ gives us something we can understand, bread. Bread, historically an essential source of sustenance and something that brings people together, provides for feasting and communing as one body. In this way, Jesus' declaration draws from Old Testament references to bread while it also foreshadows His last supper, a communion we still celebrate as one body of Christians.
PRAYER:
Heavenly Father, help me to reaffirm my belief in Christ, the bread of life, whose sacrifice gives me eternal life and communion with a body of Christians. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment