As we begin the Lenten season and our journey to Easter, the focus of churches across the world shifts pointedly to the person of Jesus. Throughout the year we may address other topics, but in this season everybody turns their attention to the significance of the resurrection and the person-hood of Christ.
The most apparent declaration as to Jesus’ deity as spoken by Jesus himself comes in John 8:58 in which he declares, “before Abraham was born, I am.” In passing this may not seem like much, but as it was understood by his audience, Jesus was clearly equating himself with God. I am was the same name that God gave to Moses when he asked who he was to say had sent him to the Israelites. What’s interesting is that this was not the only occurrence of Jesus using the phrase “I am.” Throughout the gospel of John there are numerous occurrences of Jesus using this phrase, and that is where I want us to focus our attention from now until Easter.
A few weeks ago we looked at the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. As you can imagine, that event had a big impact on the people there. Looking at John’s account of this event, John 6:14-15 we’re told, “After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.”
John’s chronology of events is quite interesting. In the evening after Jesus fed the people and withdrew to the mountain we’re told that he sent his disciples away by boat across the lake. Later in the night he followed them on foot across the water. In the morning, when the people awoke, they discovered that, though Jesus hadn’t left with the disciples, he was no longer on the northeastern edge of the lake. They began to take boats across the lake to Capernaum in search of him. Upon finding him in John 6:25, they begin interrogating him as to when he had arrived, but in Jesus’ typical fashion, he doesn’t answer their question directly (John 6:26-29).
There’s no beating around the bush with Jesus. He’s direct and to the point. At this point he had amassed quite a following, at least five thousand people were following him around day after day. Jesus basically had a mega church following him wherever he went. Jesus’ ministry on earth lasted approximately three years. For a church to grow from twelve to five thousand in only a few years is quite an accomplishment. A church seeing that kind of growth today would certainly turn heads. You can guarantee that the District Superintendent would be on site, the pastor would be booked for speaking engagements on church growth, and it’d likely make the national news.
However, what’s even more spectacular is the end of the story. After a long dialogue between Jesus on these Jews, many of them fall away. If a church going from twelve to five thousand in a matter of years stirred up national news, you can imagine the publicity that would surround a church going from five thousand down to twelve in a single day. But what was it that caused such a thing to happen? For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the Old Testament to the book of Exodus.
My wife and I like to reminisce about how things were when we grew up compared to how they are now. We joke about how our kids will make a pretend phone and then proceed to pretend that they’re playing games on it. We watched the Mighty Ducks movie a few weeks ago and had to laugh at the excitement of the kids as they climbed into the limo and discovered a cellular phone. Cassette tapes, VCRs, and the old Nokia candy-bar phones, while staples of our childhood, are foreign concepts to our kids.
It’s strange because now with a DVR, I rarely watch commercials. My son will intentionally rewind in order to watch each commercial multiple times. We’ve begun to rely upon him to tell us about new products or movies because he’s the only one that cares to watch the commercials. I might catch the end of the one right before my show comes back on or I might rewind to watch one that is particularly entertaining, but for the most part I try to avoid the commercials.
With this being the trend among the average TV watcher, advertisers have begun trying to make their commercials stand out. Bland commercials with someone merely telling you the details of the product are likely to be skipped. Doritos has done a great job of making entertaining commercials as well have Geico and Snickers.
I love the Snickers commercials because they so accurately capture real life. They’ll typically feature some famous actor like Gilbert Gottfried or Robin Williams. They’ll be loud and obnoxious until somebody hands them a Snickers bar. The tagline says, “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
This is exactly what we see when we look back in Exodus. After being in slavery or over four hundred years, through the power of God, Moses delivers the Israelites out of Egypt. They cross the Red Sea and the people are excited. In Exodus 15 they begin to sing songs praising Moses for how he delivered them. This has got to be the height of Moses’ day. He’s leading a nation out of slavery, they just defeated their enemies, and the whole nation is singing ballads about him. It doesn’t get much better than that.
However, in the very next chapter, after everything they’d just been through, the people immediately start complaining. And what are they complaining about? Food. After miraculously being delivered from slavery in Egypt, they immediately forget about that and started saying, “In Egypt we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.” Doesn’t it just make you want to hand them a Snickers bar? “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
So what does God do? He gives them manna, bread from heaven, and they have their fill to eat. For forty years as they wandered in the desert, the Israelites ate manna. Even after they settled in the promised land, stories of God sending bread from heaven were told throughout Israel. These were the stories upon which these Israelites grew up.
Jumping back to Jesus’ discourse with those following him. After he tells them that they must seek after things that are eternal and won’t spoil and that they must believe in the one whom God sent, they ask him for a sign (John 6:31-34).
Throughout the discussion, it seems like they almost might be getting what Jesus is telling them, but as we can see, they haven’t made any progress. These people were just across the lake with Jesus when he used five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand men. After finding him again he tells them that they must believe in the one whom God has sent, and they immediately ask him for a sign and make direct reference to the bread from heaven. He just fed them the evening before and here they are again telling him to prove he’s from God by feeding them. Jesus tries again to explain it to them (John 6:35).
In order to understand the breakdown in communication here, we need to take a quick lesson in the Greek language. The Greek language, the language in which the New Testament is written, is a much more robust language than modern English. While in English we may say that we love pizza, our dog, and our spouse (albeit to differing degrees), in Greek each type of love expressed used a different word.
Likewise, Jesus is speaking here of life. While we have only one word for life, Greek has two. The first word for life is bios (βίος). You can remember this as the prefix to the word biology. Bios means life and has to deal with physical life and your livelihood. Each of us has bios and sustain our bios by consuming food such as bread.
Jesus is offering them the bread of life. He says that whoever takes this bread will never go hungry and never be thirsty. Again, he’s talking about zōē, not bios. He’s telling them, the bread you ate last night, the things of this world will leave you hungering and thirsting for more. However, the bread the Christ offers fills us and satisfies. We may try to fill our lives with food, family, our job, our hobbies, but at the end of it all, these things will never satisfy. The newness of that new girlfriend will wear off. The excitement about that new job will fade away. The zōē is the only thing that will satisfy, and we can only receive that from Christ, for he is the bread of life.
As the conversation continues, throughout the next few verses, Jesus tries to get this point across to them. He tells them, “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.” (John 6:48-50). He tells them, the bios will fade away, leave you hungry, and ultimately bring death, but the zōē the he offers will satisfy and bring eternal life.
Upon hearing this, many of them leave saying, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Jesus then turns to the twelve and asks, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” At this, Simon Peter, the spokesperson for the group, speaks up. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
It has often been asked, is being a Christian easy or hard? In short, the answer to this question is, yes. Being a Christian is the easiest thing in the world. Everything we need for eternal life in Christ has already been given to us. It’s not in our own power but in his. On the other hand, being a Christian may be the most difficult thing you will do.
The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new life instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Each time we participate in the sacrament of communion, as we hold the bread in our hand and prepare to eat it, Christ says we are eating his flesh, the bread of life, zōē. However, many times as we partake of the bread in one hand, the other hand is holding onto the bread of this world, the bios. While we may eat the bread of zōē, all the while we’re holding onto the bios trying to find fulfillment.
Many people walked away because the teachings of Jesus were hard. So it is today. While we may say that we want the zōē, all the while we’re holding onto the bios until like Peter we say, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Which bread will you choose today? Will you choose the bios that will satisfy for a time but will ultimately lead to death, or will you choose the zōē, the bread of life that is Christ himself? Jesus declared, “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.”
Jesus Christ, the bread of life, is the only way that you will ever be satisfied. This world tells us that if we only had more money, more gadgets, more power, or a better love life that we’ll be satisfied, but Christ tells us that there is no lasting satisfaction in the things of this world. He alone has the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go?