The Fourth
Sunday in Lent
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church Windsor NS, AD
2003
“Thou hast the words of
eternal life”
The sixth
chapter of St. John’s Gospel is known as “the Bread of Life Discourse.”
It is an extraordinary chapter with important consequences for our life in
faith. It concerns our Lord’s teaching about himself and about the means of
our abiding in him. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in
me and I in him” (vs.56). The deeper meaning of our refreshment is to
be found in the chapter as a whole. “The words which I have spoken to
you are spirit and life” (vs.63). The last sections of this chapter
(vs.41ff) indicate how hard and yet how necessary are the teachings of our
Lord.
God teaches us
about himself and about our life in him. But these are hard teachings. The
Jews murmur against Jesus because of the identity they perceive he makes
between himself and God, “calling God his own Father, making himself
equal with God” (John 5.18). They murmur against him here “because
he said, I am the bread of life which came down from heaven” (John
6.41). This conflicts with what they think they know about him. “Is
this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”
(vs.42). Their sense of his earthly identity gets in the way of what he
would teach them. And what he would teach them is an heavenly knowledge
conveyed through earthly signs.
He recalls the
point of the prophets, “they shall all be taught by God” (Is. 54.13,
Jer. 31.33,34), and centres it upon himself, “everyone who has heard and
learned from the Father comes to me”(vs.45). They murmured because in
saying “I am the bread which came down from heaven” (vs.41), he
identifies himself with the Father as the one who is “from God”
(vs.46). That is the meaning of his being the Son, the Son of God become
the Son of man.
This divine
teaching has a specific focus: “I am the bread of life” (vs.48),
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven” (vs.51). It has an
even more definite force: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and
drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my
blood has eternal life”(vs.53). The teaching focuses on our feeding.
To put it even
more forcibly, the teaching is the feeding. It is the means of our abiding,
indeed, our living in the teaching of God. “As the living Father sent me
and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me”
(vs.57). God’s teaching centres on this heavenly feeding. “This is the
bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he
who eats this bread will live for ever” (vs.58). Consequently, we can
have no other refreshment in the wilderness journey of our lives.
This teaching
that is feeding, this feeding that is teaching, is the meaning of our
sacramental life. It is the means of our abiding in Christ. The bread of
the fathers was the manna in the wilderness. It was a sign which pointed to
what is here realised in Jesus Christ. He identifies himself with the bread
of heaven. He is what he signifies. It becomes the hard saying for
“many of his disciples”(vs.60), then and now.
The identity of
the Son with the Father centres on his identity with the bread, “the
bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh”, and the
necessity of our feeding on him, “if anyone eats of this bread, he will
live for ever” (vs.51). Even as he had responded to the murmuring of
the Jews about his identity with the Father, in saying that he was “the
bread which came down from heaven”, so he responds to the murmuring of
his disciples about our feeding upon his flesh and blood.
His response
underlies the unity between the teaching and the feeding. Being taught by
God and being fed by him are the same; the teaching is feeding, the feeding
is teaching. How? Because of why. “The words that I have spoken to you
are spirit and life”(vs.63). The Word is God’s Son who identifies
himself in his essential life with the Father. The Word who teaches us
about himself and the Father identifies himself with the bread/flesh
given as the means of our abiding in his essential life. It is the
effective sign of his teaching and the means of our abiding in him.
Yet heavenly
teachings are hard sayings. Will we abide in his teaching or not? The
context of the teaching is the rejection of the one who teaches. There is
the murmuring of the Jews. There is the murmuring of the disciples, but
even more, there is the refusal to follow him about and there is the
foretelling of his betrayal from within (vs.70). “After this many of his
disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (vs.66). Will
that be said about us? Jesus said to the twelve, and through them to us,
even in the hardness of our hearts, “do you also wish to go away?”
(vs.67).
Simon Peter’s
answer must be our response to his teaching and to our living what he
teaches. “Lord, to whom then shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life” (vs.68). He has grasped the teaching and the meaning of the
teaching in the feeding. They are the words of eternal life “and we have
believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God”
(vs.69). He has been taught by God. He has come to Christ. “Everyone
who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (vs.45).
The identity of
the Son with the Father is conveyed to us through his identity with the
bread, his flesh and his blood, which he gives for the life of the world and
which he gives for our abiding in him. The heavenly teaching is our
spiritual feeding, even in the face of the rejection of his words and the
betrayals of his love. Peter, after all, will deny our Lord, only to be
returned in love by him from whom he had turned away. Such, too, are the
words of eternal life. Even the hardness of these sayings only highlights
the necessity of this teaching for our abiding in him whose “words are
eternal life.” This teaching that is feeding is our life in
Christ.
“Thou hast the
words of eternal life”
