Title: Living Bread
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: John 6:35, 41-51
What good is bread? Joyce made some wonderful zucchini bread and shared some last Sunday. We had gluten free bread with communion. My dietitian tells me to stay away from bread, eating mostly proteins. I, however, have issues with weight that were essentially unheard of in the First Century. Bread was the basic food for most people, meat was an occasional commodity, eaten at monthly festivals and on feast days. Bread was the staple food, often all one might have to eat. Do we see any meaning from Jesus' speaking of "living bread" come from heaven that extend beyond concerns of survival?
I grew up hearing that the Bible is easy to understand. The notion was that God made sure that the writers of the Bible set down exactly what God wanted to say, and did so in a manner that would be very clear to those God wished to understand it. I also continually heard that John's gospel was the clearest of the gospels in sharing the story and message of Jesus in a manner that communicates well to nations steeped in Greco-Roman ways of thinking as opposed to Hebrew forms of thought. Despite the face that the two notions are contradictory, today's passage is not only a bit difficult to make sense of, Jesus' own contemporaries were having difficulty following his words and their logic. That may be the clearest thing communicated in today's passage. They did not understand what Jesus was talking about.
For all the sermons, Bible studies, memes, bumper stickers, and comments I've encountered over the years, I'm not convinced our contemporaries have understood Jesus, either. That's a problem with twisting symbolic language and repeating it as though its sense were obvious, while never spelling out its meaning or even considering it with much diligent effort, if any at all.
It is rather clear Jesus is using the phrase, "bread of life," "living bread," or "bread which lives," in some relationship with the ...
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: John 6:35, 41-51
What good is bread? Joyce made some wonderful zucchini bread and shared some last Sunday. We had gluten free bread with communion. My dietitian tells me to stay away from bread, eating mostly proteins. I, however, have issues with weight that were essentially unheard of in the First Century. Bread was the basic food for most people, meat was an occasional commodity, eaten at monthly festivals and on feast days. Bread was the staple food, often all one might have to eat. Do we see any meaning from Jesus' speaking of "living bread" come from heaven that extend beyond concerns of survival?
I grew up hearing that the Bible is easy to understand. The notion was that God made sure that the writers of the Bible set down exactly what God wanted to say, and did so in a manner that would be very clear to those God wished to understand it. I also continually heard that John's gospel was the clearest of the gospels in sharing the story and message of Jesus in a manner that communicates well to nations steeped in Greco-Roman ways of thinking as opposed to Hebrew forms of thought. Despite the face that the two notions are contradictory, today's passage is not only a bit difficult to make sense of, Jesus' own contemporaries were having difficulty following his words and their logic. That may be the clearest thing communicated in today's passage. They did not understand what Jesus was talking about.
For all the sermons, Bible studies, memes, bumper stickers, and comments I've encountered over the years, I'm not convinced our contemporaries have understood Jesus, either. That's a problem with twisting symbolic language and repeating it as though its sense were obvious, while never spelling out its meaning or even considering it with much diligent effort, if any at all.
It is rather clear Jesus is using the phrase, "bread of life," "living bread," or "bread which lives," in some relationship with the ...
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