World hunger could have been well and truly sorted out, had Jesus repeatedly been pulling the same trick we heard about last Sunday: feeding the crowd by miraculously multiplying the meagre resources at his disposal. Unfortunately, it happened only once, as reported by all four gospels; Matthew and Luke reported another event of this kind, but it might well have been a multiplication of the story rather than food – let’s leave it to the biblical scholars. The crowds, having been sated so effortlessly, were going to promote Jesus to be king, but – unlike opportunistic politicians – he ducked it by hiding away. Some of those in the crowd seemed really desperate to get hold of Jesus and headed to the town where they expected to find him, Capernaum. This is where today’s gospel begins, and not too well for those who found him: “You are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.”
Firstly, let’s set the stage with some broader context. The Gospel of St John takes a unique approach, being notably short on miracles performed by Jesus compared to the other three gospels. Those reported by St John are rarely self-contained events; each of them serves as a springboard to an extended theological discourse, either in the form of a conversation or a speech. Compiled around the end of the first century, a relatively long time after Jesus’ earthly ministry, the Gospel of St John gives an insight into the formation of Christianity’s theological foundations as well as the internal and external challenges faced by the Christian communities of the time. The greatest of them was establishing who Jesus was in relation to the one and only God of the exceptionally monotheistic Jewish faith. To a great extent, the Gospel of St John was dedicated to proving that Jesus was the Son of God, of the same divine nature. The “Bread of Life” discourse, sparked by the miraculous multiplication of food, was one such attempt. It’s so long that we will listen to consecutive parts of it over four Sundays, including today’s opening passage. It must be said that this is not the easiest thing to read and understand as it’s deeply steeped in the religious and theological traditions of ancient Israel as well as the Semitic way of thinking, both significantly alien to our understanding. From our point of view, the most obvious element of the discourse is its reference to the Eucharist and rightly so. But there’s much more to it than that. Thankfully, the Church authorities understood the difficulties of reading the discourse and have given us a respective first reading for each of the four consecutive Sundays that will draw our attention to a specific aspect of it.
The story of the Israelites escaping the slavery of Egypt and their journey towards the Promised Land was and remains their foundational narrative. Their wandering through the desert was a time of formation of a people dedicated and consecrated to the one and only God. The incident described in today’s first reading was an important part of that narrative. The hungry crowd was complaining about their hardships, wishing to be back in Egypt “when we were able to sit down to pans of meat and could eat bread to our heart’s content!” In response, God promised through Moses to provide sustenance in the form of quails and something unknown then to the Israelites: “a thing delicate, powdery, as fine as hoarfrost on the ground”, so when they saw it, they asked, “What is that?” – in the Hebrew language: “Man hu?” and hence called manna. The nature of that food, a source of extensive studies and speculations, is secondary to the main moral of the story: God, in his love, looked after his chosen people and provided them with what was necessary. However, there was more to that than just giving them food. “Each day, the people are to go out and gather the day’s portion; I propose to test them in this way to see whether they will follow my law or not.” They had to make an effort to collect enough of it for one day (or two before the Sabbath). Those who tried to hoard it quickly learned that it got spoilt. That was their test of obedience to God and learning to rely on Him each day. In a way, the food itself played second fiddle to the far more important aspect of trusting God. It was reiterated in a more direct way in the Book of Deuteronomy (8:3): “He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” The final part of this was used defensively by Jesus when tempted in the desert to turn stones into loaves of bread.
In fact, this is essentially what today’s gospel is about. When we are tempted to judge God on His performative actions to ease our lives, Jesus calls us to trust Him, whatever we are facing: “You must believe in the one [God] has sent. […] I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.” We can answer with the same passion and desire as Jesus’ audience in Capernaum: “Give us that bread always.”
