Sermon on John 6:35-51

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

For a couple weeks now, we’ve been talking about people not really getting what was going on or what Jesus was telling them.

The disciples were stressed out by Jesus’ command to feed the crowd of thousands of people and then scared by Jesus’ ability to walk on water.

Then the crowds, who seemed to understand that something amazing was happening, because they wanted to make Jesus king, still were mostly interested in Jesus for the free food. They chased him across the sea to try to get him to feed them again.

Today’s reading zooms in on a specific subset of the crowds that were following Jesus. Remember that whenever the Gospel of John says “the Jews” it doesn’t mean all the Jewish people in that area. That would include Jesus and his disciples and would be confusing. 

“The Jews” is the term the Gospel of John uses to refer to the group of religious leaders who were threatened by Jesus’ popularity and wanted to maintain the status quo. This terminology has, unfortunately, contributed to centuries of antisemitism. This is one of the many reasons why we read the Bible carefully, look at the context to give us clues about what it means, and consider how our interpretation affects our neighbors.

In our readings so far over the past few weeks, Jesus has either been talking to his closest disciples or addressing the crowds as a whole. But once Jesus finishes his explanation of what it means that he is the bread of life, it says that “the Jews” (or the religious leaders) “began to complain about him.”

It seems they were happy enough to hang around, hear Jesus talk, and eat some free food, but when he started talking about being the bread of life and coming down from heaven, they got suspicious.

They questioned him about how he could be from heaven if they knew his parents. He didn’t miraculously appear—they knew his family!

They didn’t see what Jesus was offering them, so they complained among themselves.

Granted, much like Jesus’ conversations with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well before this in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ explanations are confusing: what do you mean “born from above”? What do you mean “living water”? Or in this case, what do you mean “bread of life”?

Jesus spoke in metaphor, parable, imagery—rhetorical devices that lose their power when categorized, labeled, poked, and prodded.

Still, what might it mean to be the “bread of life”?

Bread was a staple—it wasn’t the fluffy French bread you can get in the grocery store. It was dense, heavy, and filling. It sustained people’s life.

I had a Taiwanese classmate in seminary who talked about Jesus as “the rice of life,” because that was the staple she was used to. I’ve also heard Jesus described as “the tortilla of life.”

Jesus isn’t a nice side dish or a dessert, much to the disappointment of my sweet tooth. Jesus is a staple, an everyday life source, nourishing and filling.

Jesus described himself as the “bread that comes down from heaven,” the manna that God sent to the starving Israelites in the wilderness. Jesus is God’s way of saving us from death and assuring us of God’s provision and faithfulness. Whatever wilderness we are in, God does not abandon us there. God feeds us and cares for us.

And as we talked about last week, the feeding of the 5,000 functions like communion in the Gospel of John. Since this Gospel focuses on Jesus washing his disciples’ feet on the night in which he was betrayed, this is the moment when Jesus took bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples and the larger community of Jesus followers.

Eating the bread that Jesus gave them united them. They sat on the grass, eating together. They bonded and formed community, united in Jesus.

Jesus will go on in next week’s Gospel reading to describe his flesh and blood as bringing eternal life to those who eat and drink it.

Communion is a promise of eternal life in the Reign of God, a sneak peek of the never-ending banquet of the Beloved Community. Through it, we are united with Christ and each other and all the Jesus followers throughout time and space. It is miraculous and mysterious.

And yet, it can also become routine and lose its meaning. When we come to this table every week, eating the same wafers and drinking the same grape juice, we can forget the mystery.

We can, perhaps, forget the gravity of our first communion, whether when we were children, teens, or adults.

We can forget the longing for communion we had during COVID, when we had to navigate new ways of being the Body of Christ without being together in one room.

We can also forget that Christ meets us in every meal and not just here on Sunday mornings. Just like every drop of water can help us recall our baptism, every meal can remind us of our unity in Christ, whether at this table, your kitchen table, or in our parking lot on Tuesday nights.

Some of the most meaningful experiences of communion I have had would not be officially recognized as communion.

The nonprofit I worked for before seminary was the Orange County Conservation Corps. They serve at-risk young adults who get work experience doing environmental projects around the county while finishing their high school diplomas.

On the last day of work before Thanksgiving, when the corpsmembers would come back from their work sites, there would be a Thanksgiving meal waiting for them. We staff members would pile their plates high with turkey, stuffing, and the works. Then, we would serve each other and join them at long tables with plastic tablecloths in the warehouse that still smelled of disinfectant.

It was a humble meal, but a glorious celebration. We were equals at those tables, united in gratitude, laughter, and bellies full of Costco pie.

It certainly was not what most people picture when they think of communion, but among the staples of turkey and potatoes, hierarchies were erased, aching muscles forgotten, laughter and community abundant. If that’s not a foretaste of what heaven will be like, I don’t know what is.

Communion can be found in surprising places.

The bread of life, rice of life, tortilla of life meets us where we are. Jesus sustains our life and connects us with each other.

Proverbs 15:17 says:

“Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is
    than a fatted ox and hatred with it.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a dinner of vegetables. But we can take this proverb’s meaning to be: it’s better to have a simple meal with people who love each other than a lavish feast with people who are acting hatefully toward each other.

Hopefully, that’s what communion is each week: a wafer and tiny cup of grape juice among people who love each other.

That is our manna in the wilderness. That is our feeding of the 5,000. That is our Thanksgiving meal in a warehouse. That is our bread and rice and tortilla of life.

It strengthens and unites us for today and points toward the lavish feast with Love that will never end.

You’re all invited—come and eat.