Untitled Sermon (2)

THE BREAD OF LIFE

Jesus said to them: ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst any more. But I tell you, though you have seen me, yet you do not believe in me. All that the Father gives me will come to me, because I came down from heaven, not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me—that I should lose none of those he gave to me, but that I should raise them all up on the last day. This is the will of my Father, that everyone who believes on the Son, when he sees him, should have everlasting life. And I will raise him up on the last day.’

THIS is one of the great passages of the Fourth Gospel, and indeed of the New Testament. In it there are two great lines of thought that we must try to analyse.

First, what did Jesus mean when he said: ‘I am the bread of life’? It is not enough to regard this as simply a beautiful and poetical phrase. Let us analyse it step by step. (1) Bread sustains life. It is that without which life cannot go on. (2) But what is life? Clearly by life is meant something far more than mere physical existence. What is this new spiritual meaning of life? (3) Real life is the new relationship with God, that relationship of trust and obedience and love of which we have already thought. (4) That relationship is made possible only by Jesus Christ. Apart from him, no one can enter into it. (5) That is to say, without Jesus there may be existence, but not life. (6) Therefore, if Jesus is the essential of life, he may be described as the bread of life. The hunger of the human situation is ended when we know Christ and through him know God. The restless soul is at rest; the hungry heart is satisfied.

Second, this passage opens out to us the stages of the Christian life. (1) We see Jesus. We see him in the pages of the New Testament, in the teaching of the Church, sometimes even face to face. (2) Having seen him, we come to him. We regard him not as some distant hero and pattern, not as a figure in a book, but as someone accessible. (3) We believe in him. That is to say, we accept him as the final authority on God, on all humanity, on life. That means that our coming is not a matter of mere interest, nor a meeting on equal terms; it is essentially a submission. (4) This process gives us life. That is to say, it puts us into a new and lovely relationship with God, wherein he becomes an intimate friend; we are now at home with the one whom we feared or never knew. (5) The possibility of this is free and universal. The invitation is to everyone. The bread of life is ours for the taking. (6) The only way to that new relationship is through Jesus. Without him, it would never have been possible; and apart from him, it is still impossible. No searching of the human mind or longing of the human heart can fully find God apart from Jesus. (7) At the back of the whole process is God. It is those whom God has given him who come to Christ. God not only provides the goal; he moves in the human heart to awaken desire for him; and he works in the human heart to take away the rebellion and the pride which would hinder the great submission. We could never even have sought him unless he had already found us. (8) There remains that stubborn something which enables us to refuse the offer of God. In the last analysis, the one thing which defeats God is the defiance of the human heart. Life is there for the taking—or the refusing.

When we take, two things happen.

First, into life enters new satisfaction. The hunger and the thirst are gone. The human heart finds what it was searching for, and life ceases to be mere existence and becomes a thing at once of thrill and of peace.

Second, even beyond life we are safe. Even on the last day when all things end, we are still secure. As one great commentator said: ‘Christ brings us to the haven beyond which there is no danger.’

The offer of Christ is life in time and life in eternity. That is the greatness and glory of which we cheat ourselves when we refuse his invitation.

Barclay, W. (2001). The Gospel of John (Rev. and updated., Vol. 1, pp. 252–254). Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press.