“When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”…”From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”

1.  As we know, the Gospel of John is organized around seven signs. Signs are different from miracles. We have many miracles in the other books but only seven in the Gospel of John and they have a particular purpose. They all point to a particular aspect of Christ. None of them are done merely as a response to a situation as you might see in the three other Gospels – like healing lepers, a woman with a hemorrhage, delivering a demon-possessed man, a boy with an evil spirit or calming the wind and waves. Signs are miraculous events with a message at the heart of them and to see the miracle without following the sign is to miss the purpose entirely. Miracles get your attention. Signs get your whole heart and soul.

In this chapter we have two of those signs – feeding of the 5,000 and walking on water. The lesson this morning is about the teaching and the revelation that follows the feeding of the 5,000.

2.  Verse 59 tells us that part of the crowd who had been fed show up the next day for church. This is not the rabble. This is those who are religious and observant and Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. He is not teaching in the open field with parables but to members of a congregation who had come back to hear more. In fact, they are even considering making him king by force (verse 15) after experiencing the miraculous feeding. That is why Jesus begins with “You missed the whole point” in verse 26. You saw the miracle but missed the sign. You saw the food but were blind to the significance of it. You are greedy for the wrong things.

And how do they respond? “If we missed your feeding the 5,000 and walking on water then show us one that will make us believe. We all know that the Messiah will reproduce the miracle of bread from heaven so bring us manna – not just bread and fish. We’re good with your being king but we need a bit more to know you are the Messiah.”

They always wanted a bit more, didn’t they? It reminds me of Gideon. Just one more tiny miracle to make me know I cannot fail. Already they had experienced four miracles – water into wine, healing the royal officials son, feeding of the 5,000 and walking on water – but they wanted more. Think back to Numbers 11:4-34:

The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” The manna was like coriander seed and looked like resin. The people went around gathering it, and then ground it in a hand mill or crushed it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot or made it into loaves. And it tasted like something made with olive oil. When the dew settled on the camp at night, the manna also came down. Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea. It scattered them up to two cubits deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they spread them out all around the camp. But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the Lord burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague. Therefore the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had craved other food.

Kibroth Hattaavah means “graves of craving” and that is exactly what happens when we continuously want more. It leads to dissatisfaction, grumbling, craving and then death. Not always physical death but more often death like the rich man who built more barns – the death of the soul itself.

Once he had described the bread of life to them they responded, “Sir, from now on give us this bread.” In other words, we want miracles as a way of life. We want to have a life that is constantly full and satisfying. We want this for ourselves.

If we look back at the response of the woman at the well in Samaria we can see the difference in her response and theirs. “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” But what does she do? She goes back to the village and many of the Samaritans from the town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. She was not greedy. She even left her water jar at the well in her excitement. That is different from the response of those in the synagogue.

And so different from much of the health and wealth, self-help, plant a seed prosperity teaching today. The abundant life has been distorted to mean a life of having more bread, more miracles, more of everything good and all on demand like a vending machine.

3. Through the ministry of Jesus we can see a progression and it is in this chapter that the turn comes most vividly. Up until now Jesus has done and said things that have been:

Curious: “I have meat to eat you know nothing about.”

“You must be born again.”

Surprising: Walking on water

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

Turning water into wine

Feeding 5,000

Shocking: A Samaritan can be good – even better than a religious Jew.

A man can be healed on the Sabbath.

A woman caught in adultery can be forgiven.

Clearing the Temple

But now, Jesus begins to say things that are offensive – not just curious or surprising or even shocking. He does not talk about his teaching being the Bread of Life but about himself as the Bread of Life that came down from heaven. He was even born in a town whose name – Bethlehem – means House of Bread. He is not just a godly man but God Himself. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If a man eats of this bread he will live forever. This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.”

These are not the words of a heretic but a lunatic. This is a Jonestown moment when the true believers choose to drink the Kool-Aid, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians or Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate. But then he goes on. “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”

Because of these words and their practicing communion together the early Christians were believed to be cannibals. There are many second hand accounts in Roman literature of Christians serving up their children as meals after drinking their blood. Even then there were rumors spread that quickly became facts among those who were fearful of this new cult that did not worship the State, engaged in incest (they referred to each other as “brother and sister”) and met in secret with plans to overthrow the Empire.

This is offensive even today, isn’t it? He really didn’t have to go that far. It was at that point that some of the disciples said, “This is unacceptable” and they left following him. He never says, “I’m just. speaking figuratively here. Don’t misinterpret what I am saying as I am only using symbolism to get my point across.” No, I find it hard to believe that any of them stayed after this. But as Peter says, they stay because they have nowhere else to go. It’s still true today. When you realize the true nature of the Gospel you stay only if you have nowhere else to go. Anything else makes more sense.

But this is the core of the Gospel. It is not teaching that brings eternal life. It is not doing the “works of God” but eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the one who came down from heaven to bring life to a dead world.

“Of course, we have tried to dilute that disturbing statement. First, we have reduced the remembrance of the Last Supper to a ceremony we tack on as an addition to the worship service and not more than a few times a year. It has become a time of personal reflection while we have sanitized and silver plated it. Even the earliest church let it It degenerate into a feast that was an affront to Paul. They corrupted it with excess and we have corrupted it with being superficial. A few times I have thought about standing at the back of the church as people leave before communion and say, “If you don’t stay for communion you have no share in the life of Christ.” I would probably get the same response as Jesus did.”

But, we have done something else as well. We have lost the scandalous nature of His words. We have made Jesus into a great teacher or one who is the best example we have of love and leached out what is disturbing about who He is and what He claims for Himself. There are none of the disturbing claims that made those early disciples wash their hands of him.  I like what C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

We cannot separate his teaching from what he says about himself. Andrew MacLaren puts it this way:

“You cannot separate what Christ gives from what Christ is. You can take the truths that another man proclaims, altogether irrespective of him and his personality. You can take Plato’s teaching and do as you like with Plato. But you cannot take Christ’s teaching and do as you like with Christ. His personality is the center of His gift to the world. ‘I am that Bread of Life.’ That He should give it is much; that He should be it is far more.”

This is the difference between the Christian ethic and the Christian life. The Christian ethic is living by the teachings of Jesus. It is the best kind of ethical life. It is working hard to live up to the ideals of Jesus. But, the Christian life is having traded one life for another. It is not an additive to our life but a new life – a new creation.

The disciples left because they wanted a new ethic but not a new life. They wanted miraculous bread but not the flesh and blood of Jesus. They wanted a king – even a heretic – but not a lunatic.

4.  If you look at bread in the New Testament you will see that it almost always comes with thanks and gratitude. Jesus gives thanks before he breaks the bread for the 5,000. He gives thanks before he breaks the bread at the Last Supper. He gives thanks before he breaks the bread with the disciples at Emmaus. The word for thanks is “eucharisteo” and it is from that word we get our word for the Eucharist. Bread and gratitude go hand in hand.

There is something else that seems common whenever bread is mentioned. It is often in a solitary place or a place removed or a desolate place. The 5,000 were in a desolate place. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were discouraged and alone. The last supper is in a place removed. Manna was in the wilderness. There is a connection between hard times, hard places and gratitude for bread.

And the breaking of bread is always with others. No one breaks bread alone. Sometimes it is two or twelve others and sometimes it is 5,000 but it is never alone. The eucharist is not something we do by ourselves.

I think about this when I read Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 5:16: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

I think that might mean in all things break bread. At all times – good and difficult – break bread. Whatever the circumstances of your life – break bread. Not just find a way to be thankful for whatever comes your way but break bread with others in all things. Don’t withdraw or go into yourself in difficult times but break bread with others.

5.  Finally, let’s go back to his words, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life…” The words of Isaiah are similar. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and you labor for that which does not satisfy?”

Yes, we are to be grateful for our daily bread but I think we are also to be mindful of the things that satisfy, the things that endure and lead to eternal life. I also think those things change over the years. Things we thought mattered drop away and, ideally, are replaced by the things that endure. We don’t look back in regret about those things that were not bread or food that spoiled but the older we get it seems the more interest we have in the things that endure – things that persevere.

It’s interesting to me that when we look at the activities of the earliest church we see exactly that. You can read this in Acts 2:42. “They devoted themselves (the same word for persevere) to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Those were the things that mattered in the early church and they should probably mark our lives as well.