Scripture Reflections

We all have heard (especially the last three weeks) Jesus’ declaration in John 6 that he is the bread of life, but we likely don’t feel what the original audience would have felt when they heard this. After all, most of us probably don’t think of food as integral to our relationship with God. In fact, even the thought that food is integral to our relationship with God is a little weird!

One of the core themes of the Bible is that God feeds his people. In the beginning, God gave Adam and Eve the trees of the garden to eat. When Noah left the ark, God gave Noah the right to eat meat. In the wilderness, God provided manna and quail. Through the prophets, God declared that he would prepare a great feast for his people. Throughout the Bible, God offered food to his people, demonstrating both his care for them and their dependence on him. Food was how God tested and instructed his people—it was how they showed their trust and willingness to obey. With food, he marked them as set apart for him (hence the weird laws about what they could and couldn’t eat). Food was also a symbol of their future, when they would feast with their God.

(All of this is in stark contrast to the various pagan accounts, which taught that mankind existed to provide food for the gods. The Biblical account is the exact opposite of the normal pagan beliefs. That God created man and woman and then fed them would have struck most pagans as backwards, too good to be true.)

All of this food-instruction reaches its culmination in Jesus’ declaration that he is the true food. A Jew listening to Jesus would have heard much more than we do. Jesus was saying, in effect, “All of that was pointing forward to me. I am the true provision, the true place where faith is tested, the true place you are humbled, the true place God cares for you, the true place you are marked as different from the world, the true feast to come.” His words are staggering; they are blasphemous if they aren’t true.

We need our imaginations enlarged! Our God provides for us because he offers himself as food. We are called to consume him in faith so that we become a part of his life, and this humbles us and tests our faith—we want to provide for ourselves, we don’t want to need God. That the provision of life for the world is the Son of God, who gave himself away in death for us to consume, is staggering, unthinkable, humbling. We live because he died. He is the food offered for the life of the world.

Steven+