Text: John 6:51-58
Date: August 22, 2021
Event: The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
John 6:51-58 (EHV)
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52At that, the Jews argued among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
53So Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. 54The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. 55For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. 56The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like your fathers ate and died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
Jesus Is Necessary
Do you know a person who just doesn’t seem to abide by recommended car maintenance? Maybe they run tires until they’re bald or they rarely if ever change their oil. Or maybe they neglect some personal hygiene that is very noticeable. Or they avoid eating some category of food that we would consider necessary for a healthy life. In a lot of cases, not doing these necessary things is probably not done willfully but ignorantly. “Oh, I didn’t know…” “Oh, no one ever told me…” “Oh, we never did it that way growing up…”
Sometimes we need help learning and knowing what is necessary. Maybe you take someone under your wing to help them with car maintenance or to clean up their diet; maybe someone has done the same for you. But we all at times need to be told what is important, what is necessary.
And that is what Jesus is doing in our Gospel for this morning. We’ve had a long run of readings from John chapter 6. It began with the feeding of the 5,000. Despite weariness on the part of Jesus and the disciples, Jesus took the time to minister to the needs of this large crowd, teaching them the important things of God’s kingdom. He focused them on the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
Then Jesus and his disciples left and went to find quiet elsewhere. But still the crowds followed. And so Jesus began to teach them again. But this time, as we’ve heard, he had a bit of an edge to his teaching. He had rebuked the people in our previous lessons that they weren’t seeking him out for the right reasons. They weren’t coming to him because of his teaching, or even because the miracles he did pointed to his authority as God. No, they were coming to him just to have their tummies filled with the free miracle bread that he provided.
The crowd had tried to bait him, comparing Jesus to Moses and pointing to the fact that under Moses’ leadership centuries before the Israelites had eaten the miracle bread, manna, from heaven. Jesus pointed out that the manna hadn’t come from Moses; it came from God. God had provided for their ancestors, giving them what they needed to survive. But manna in the belly was only a minor need compared to the real need they all had. God had sent Jesus to provide for that real need, the need of a Savior.
And this is Jesus’ point. He wants to lift the crowd’s eyes from the mundane to the eternal. “Why are you worrying about what will perish?” Jesus is asking. “Be focused on what endures. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Before we dig into what Jesus says here more deeply, let’s take just a moment to clarify one thing. In the Lord’s Supper we truly receive Jesus’ body and blood along with the bread and wine. Jesus was clear and direct when he gave that to his disciples the night before he was crucified. However, when Jesus speaks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood here, he is not talking about the Lord’s Supper. At the time Jesus spoke these words, we’re still about a year away from Jesus’ death. Jesus gave that supper to his disciples who trusted him; he did not give it to the largely misguided crowds. So while you and I may think of the blessings God gives through the Lord’s Supper in what Jesus says here, that is not directly what Jesus is speaking about, despite the similarity in language between what Jesus says to the crowd here and the sacrament.
So, Jesus has declared himself the bread of life. He said he would give his flesh for the life of the world. But the crowds are not getting that Jesus isn’t talking about a meal they could have right then and there and never be hungry again. The parable, as it often did, went right over their heads because they weren’t thinking spiritual, eternal thoughts. They could only focus on the temporal, physical things. Thus their question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They are talking past each other, or Jesus is not really doing what they want so the crowds are getting a little irritated and obstinate.
So Jesus gives it one last go. “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day.” See, the crowd has a problem. Their problem was not just an ignorance of or obstinance to what Jesus is talking about. The main problem they had was sin. Sin robbed them of life with God. Sin meant eternal death in hell. Without a solution, without the solution, they did not have life inside of them.
Jesus is trying to use their earthly focus to explain their spiritual needs. Why do you eat food at all? For the most basic reasons, you eat so that you don’t die, right? Eating food solves the problem of hunger that eventually leads to death. Jesus applies that paradigm to himself. Why should you eat the Bread of Life? Because eating this food solves the problem of sin that eventually leads to eternal death.
When Jesus speaks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, it’s a dramatic way to talk about believing in him, trusting in him as the solution to sin and the certainty of eternal life. The crowd was chasing after another free lunch. Jesus’ response is something along the lines of, “You are chasing after things that do not last. Do you want to eat and drink something that actually matters? Eat and drink me. You need me and what I will do for you spiritually, not just the miracle food I can distribute on the hillside. Prioritize me to take away your sin rather than bread that can temporarily stave off hunger.”
The eating parable here shows how involved Jesus should be in our lives. He is something to be loved and cherished, something made an integral part of us. Jesus is to be that favorite meal that we cannot wait to eat, cannot wait to make a part of our lives, not that one speciality spice we bought for that one recipe that we didn’t really like and will just sit in the cabinet unused.
But, the more we think about it, the more we can see ourselves in the crowd’s treatment of Jesus, can’t we? Maybe we’re in church regularly. Maybe our devotional life seems healthy and our prayer life even more so. But then, what happens when there’s a little bit of friction? When we have troubles is our first thought, “God will work this for good. He will do what is right”? Or is it stress, anxiety, worry, hopelessness, almost totally forgetting that God exists at all let alone is by our side in hardship and heartache? And when things get busy and frantic in our lives, is our previously healthy life in God’s Word cut short or does it even go missing altogether?
How many people throughout history have gotten busy or worried with earthly matters and because of that just punted their eternal security? How many people have given up the Bread of Life for temporal bread that in the moment seemed really important but turned out to be nothing? Jesus brings the crowd back to the manna in the wilderness. That miracle food, amazing as it was and important as it was to sustain the Israelites, did not last forever. “[I am] the bread that came down from heaven, not like your fathers ate and died.” Likewise, the lunch that Jesus provided the day before had long since run its course. But Jesus is offering something different, something better, something that lasts, something that is enterally necessary.
The result of worry and stress and misguided focus in this life is the same as anything else: physical death. We can’t change that. It won’t be any different unless Jesus returns before we die. But, what happens after death can be changed, but not by us. We need Jesus. Jesus is necessary. For our forgiveness and eternal life, it was necessary for the Father to send his Son, Jesus. For our forgiveness and eternal life, it was necessary that Jesus live the perfect life we could never live in our place, and then apply his perfect life to us so that we are seen as having done all the good things that Jesus did. For our forgiveness and eternal life, it was necessary that someone pay the debt of hell we owed in our sin, and that someone was Jesus when he died on the cross. For us to live eternally, Jesus is necessary. His work for us is our connection to the living Father. His work in our place is our certainty of eternal life.
So we have our priorities, right? We need to be focused on Jesus to the point that he is our food and drink, even the air we breathe. In the end, nothing else matters in the same way because nothing else will solve our sin and give us a perfect life forever. But Jesus does and has. So keep your focus on him, his work, his Word, his promises, because in him you have the solution to every eternal problem. In him you have the forgiveness from every sin and rescue from hell. In him, you have the Bread of Life. In him you have what is necessary for now and for eternity. The one who eats this bread will live forever. Amen.
