What is bread? What image first comes to mind when the word bread is said? Is it the loaf you can find bagged at the back of Walmart. How about the appetizer placed on your table at the restaurant as you look over the menu? It’s the biscuit on which is placed the sausage, egg, and cheese, the bun on which you place your all beef patty, the slices you pile high with tuna, chicken, or egg salad, the roll with which you mop up the last bit of gravy or salad dressing, and the tortilla in which you place your beans, meat, cheese, and salsa. It’s a filler food—white, wheat, multi-grain, gluten free, what have you.

Bread is a staple food; it has long been seen as such. It is given by God, granted to all people alike, be they good or evil, but it is a food for which you have to work, as all First Article gifts are. As the curse pronounced to Adam went, “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread...” (Genesis 3:19a), even as St. Paul wrote, “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10b) Bread is a staple food, but much hard labor is required to obtain and enjoy it.

It is into this image of the life-sustaining, laborious staple that our Lord Jesus Christ places Himself. He does it, also, in a way that indicates a fulfillment of the Old Testament usage of bread.

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever...

As much as bread sustains our mortal life, even so Jesus, the Bread of Life, gives and sustains life. Even more so. For the bread that we eat, that mortal, crusty bread we get at the supermarket or the restaurant, sustains life only for the day; “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.” And despite eating this ordinary bread, we die a little just trying to get it. Eating a slice of Wonderbread or Udi’s will not keep you alive forever—just long enough to get your next slice—but anyone who eats the Bread of Life, who is Jesus, will live forever.

Now, you hear that, and if you’re anything like me, your mind jumps to the Lord’s Supper. And that’s good; eating Jesus for eternal life should evoke thoughts of the Lord’s Supper, as the benefits of eating the body of Christ and drinking His blood are forgiveness, life, and salvation. But, that’s not what Jesus is getting at here. As much as I put off talk of His Supper last week, we need to hold of on that for yet another week—at least as regards today’s reading from St. John’s Gospel.

The Lord’s Supper is a very good thing, and I don’t want to make it sound as if I am ignoring it, but as much as it may seem as if we’re heading in the direction of the Lord’s Supper in John 6, especially with the profound statement Jesus will make in next week’s reading, Jesus is not talking about the Lord’s Supper in John 6. To understand that, you must recall what first happened in John 6: Jesus miraculously fed 5000 men plus women and children with but a few small loaves of bread, and ended up with more left over than what He started with. All the talk of bread, manna, and eating in the rest of John 6 flows from that. Furthermore, every bread-y reference from the Old Testament finds its fulfillment in what Jesus has to say in John 6. As Dr. David Scaer put it,

Every page of the Old Testament was opened when Jesus said that He was the Bread of Life...Here was the picture of Eden’s treachery, the wilderness exile, Israel’s Passovers, and the cult of the temple. In a confusion of metaphors, one picture cascaded over another; one story infringed onto the boundaries of another; and each prophet, priest, and king came together. Abraham, Moses, Aaron, the priesthood, the temple, the altar, the mercy seat, the manna, the sacrifices were all bound together in Jesus to find their unification.

After all, as Dr. Scaer also wrote, “It wasn’t as if part of the Old Testament referred to Jesus and part didn’t. It all did.” Even, as we see here, the bread of the Old Testament: the manna of the wilderness, the unleavened bread of the Passover, the show bread of the Tabernacle and Temple, the grain offerings, and all the other images of bread pointed forward to Jesus who is the Bread of Life.

So, here is a man who performed a miracle for a great number of people, and they sought to make Him king for it, that He would sustain them with miracle bread for the rest of their earthly lives. Jesus takes this and, as He so often does, He turns it upside down. In essence, He tells the crowds that this staple food is not the important thing when it comes to Him, but that He is; bread sustains life, but Jesus gives life far greater than any earthly bread—even manna from heaven and all the bread of the Hebrew Scriptures—could ever do. Jesus is the Bread of Life—eternal life. Jesus “was their bread of life on their journey through this life and the food that would sustain them in the next. He was the viaticum, the food for the valley between life and death,” as Dr. Scaer wrote.

Listen to how He puts it:

• And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
• “This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.”
• “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
• “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
• “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.”
• “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever...”

To put it succinctly, to eat the Bread of Life is to believe in the One whom the Father sent, His Son, Jesus the Christ. To believe in Jesus is to have everlasting life. To have everlasting life is to be raised up from death on the last day.

Furthermore, this belief in Jesus, having eternal life, being raised up from death and over death is a free gift from God: “This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day...No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” The Father gives all to Christ, and His will is that He should lose none of them. No one can come to Jesus and eat of the Bread of Life except that the Father give them to His Son. As St. Paul was inspired to tell St. Timothy, “...God our Savior...desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4)

And what does the Son do? Listen to Him again: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” “The bread that I shall give is My flesh,” Jesus says. Again, this sounds very much like the Lord’s Supper, and it is well and good that you should hear that, for His Supper is very much connected to what Jesus is saying, and that is, “I shall give My flesh for the life of the world.”

As much as the gift of faith, forgiveness, life, and salvation are free to you, they did come with a price. The Bread of Life came to offer His flesh—His body—for the life of the world. Jesus is pointing forward to the cross where He would take the place of every Old Testament sacrifice for the sin of the world. “Now all those sacrificial animals, the goats, the cattle, the sheep, and the turtle doves, were pushed to the side so that He could stand in the place of every man, woman, and child who ever lived,” Dr. Scaer wrote. God’s grace to you is free to you—the forgiveness He lavishes upon you comes without cost to you, without any merit on your part, all undeserved—but it cost Jesus His life. He gives His flesh for you on the tree of the cross in order that by God-given faith in Him you would have forgiveness, life, and salvation—being raised up at the last day.

What more can we say about bread? Well, there are diet plans and programs which seeks to remove bread from what you eat. Now, I’m not going to debate the benefits or consequences of not eating bread, but it suffices to say that just as there exists this plan which gradually removes bread from the cupboard and diet until it is no longer consumed, there are those who approach the Bread of Life with such nonchalance. The Bread of Life is so often left out of one’s diet when life gets hectic and stressful. And in these days of ever growing complaints of being so busy, who doesn’t have hectic and stressful lives?

And it’s an easy diet to justify, as it is perceived that the diet consists of only 1 hour of the Bread of Life a week. “It won’t hurt if I miss this one hour this time,” the excuse goes. Oh, the intent might be good to get back to it next week, but as I have often said, the habit of forsaking the assembly of saints (cf. Hebrews 10:25) quickly and easily grows from the first miss to the second, each time being easier than the previous. Before you know it, you hardly miss the assembly, you hardly miss the Bread of Life, because of the blindness and ignorance of and your being bound to sin.

And if one can easily justify the forsaking of the assembly for a mere hour a week, especially because there is no time for it, then it stands to reason that the personal and familial devotion time as well as group Bible Study time in addition to that mere hour would also be a casualty of the diet against the Bread of Life. It is sad and depressing how poorly we treat and with such low regard we regard the Word of God, that we can so easily push it and He aside who took our place under the full wrath of God. Such is the nature of sin; Old Adam be damned.

Oh, but it gets worse. Again, I do not mean to debate or criticize the proclamations of modern nutritional science, but it has been said that bread is of little or no nutritional value. Man can survive on a diet of no bread, they say, and this is proven true by the fact that so many survive from one bread-less meal to another. What I do mean to get at is that just as there are those who say, right or wrong, that bread is an evil or non-nutritional food, so are there those who say so of the Bread of Life. This is most evident in the court of public opinion where the teachings of Scripture find themselves at odds with popular social issues, such as creation vs. evolution, abortion, euthanasia, cohabitation, and “homosexual marriage.” “Those are ancient ideals,” these opponents proclaim, “they don’t apply to our modern society. We have evolved past them.” These hear the good news of the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, and reject it, just as there are those who reject bread as a staple food. Such is the nature of the heart hardened by sin; Old Adam be damned!

God’s will is that Jesus should lose none that He gave Him, but He does not force salvation on man. If man in His sinful will turns against God, so be it. Forgiveness is still there for them; Christ died for them as much as for those who believe in Him—He is the Savior of all men, and especially of them that believe. (cf. 1 Timothy 4:10) So, why are some saved and others not? Because those who are not have rejected the Bread of Life. We are saved by grace, but damned by refusal of grace. Such is the nature of foolish sinfulness; Old Adam be damned!

But it is precisely for these sins that Jesus the Bread of Life took your place before the wrath of God. He suffered and died on the cross for these sins, and all sins, so that you would not have to. Now, the Father draws us to Him who is the resurrected Bread of Life, even as He is the Resurrection and the Life. (cf. John 11:25) This is how God’s grace works for and to you. Listen to Jesus:

And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day...No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.

By these words we learn that we cannot go to the Father. The One whom the Father sent brings the Father to men, and the Father draws men to Him. It sounds circular, but this is the will and work of God, and it is most gracious: Jesus brings the teachings of the Father from heaven to men; the Father uses these teachings to gather men to Jesus. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, “All your children shall be taught by [YHWH].” (Isaiah 54:13a) This is why Jesus would later say, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father...” (John 14:9b) “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” (John 6:29) It is all God’s work, and none of yours—God be praised!

Here you are gathered, dear listeners, not come of yourselves, but gathered by the Father. Were it up to you, you wouldn’t be here, but the Father of all mercies, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father who sends the Bread of Life has gathered you here. It is as you confess, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”

Yes, dear Baptized, the Father has sent the Spirit that you would be gathered into His most gracious presence. For it is here in His presence that the Bread of Life comes to you to give Himself to you. Jesus, the Bread of Life, has taken your place before the wrath of God, and given you faith that trusts in Him solely for forgiveness, life, and salvation, and which rejoices for His death on your behalf; He has given His flesh for the life the world—for the life of you. Here you are taught by God and brought to Christ, for you receive the Bread of Life in Word and Sacrament, and so you have life and salvation—you will be raised at the last day—because you are forgiven for all of your sins. Praise God from whom all blessings flow...to be continued.