Sunday Readings: 1 Kings 19.4-8; Ephesians 4.30—5.2; John 6.41-51
The Jews began to murmur about Jesus because he said I am the bread that came down from heaven. It this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose mother and father we know? “How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven. …I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh (John 6.41-42, 51).
Both Jews who follow Jesus and Jews who follow Moses inherit Israel’s scriptural traditions. Murmuring in the gospel is the same word the book of Exodus uses to name ancient Israel’s complaining against Moses and against God for bringing them into the desert without food and water. Their murmuring reflects a testing of their faith in the God who leads them out of slavery.
Jesus asks those murmuring him if God’s revelation is only in the law of Moses and the God who supplied Israel quail and manna in the wilderness, or is he God’s revelation too? Jesus argues that the revelation of God in Israel’s holy history and law ought to lead real believers to recognize God at work in him. Then Jesus escalates the conflict. He contrasts himself with manna. Israel’s ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and died. Those who eat the bread that comes down from heaven will not die.
A double meaning emerges in the conversation. When Jesus speaks of himself as the living bread, he invites faith both in himself and in the eucharistic bread Christians gather, break, and eat to remember him as he asked. Jesus in Sunday’s gospel is the bread of life, the one who gathers us at his table, gives himself for the life of the world, and promises eternal life to those who eat this bread.
- About whom have you murmured? What is the value of holding differences in tension?
- Where do you find Jesus with you in your life?