LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: 1 Kings 19:4-8
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 33(34):2-9
Second Reading: Ephesians 4:30 – 5:2
Gospel: John 6:41-51
Link to readings
COMMENTARY
In the third of the Gospel readings taken from John 6 we find ourselves at the centre of Jesus’ long discourse on the 'Bread of Life'. The First Reading, from the Elijah cycle, I Kings 19:4-8, is not actually alluded to in the Gospel. However, the divine provision of sustenance for Elijah on his journey to Sinai (here given its alternative name “Horeb”) provides a background for the Gospel’s sense of Jesus as “life-giving Bread.”
Following his great victory over the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:20-40), Elijah is on the run from the hostility of Queen Jezebel and her weak husband, Ahab. We come upon him here sitting under a furze tree and wishing he were dead, a picture of deep discouragement, if not of severe depression. Particularly human and touching about the story is the way in which when the angel first wakes him and indicates the food and drink provided, Elijah eats and drinks, and then goes back to sleep. Only when the angel repeats the gesture and he has taken nourishment a second time does the prophet set out, strengthened by the food, for the long journey to Sinai. There, in that place where his people first came to know their God in a terrifying way, Elijah will experience God in a new, deeply personal way—a God who is not in the wind, or the earthquake or the fire [lightning]—but in “the sound of sheer silence” (vv. 11-12). The food and drink set beside him has been the sustenance for this journey to fresh revelation and renewal of his life and mission.
The people with whom Jesus is in dialogue and dispute in the section of the discourse appearing as the Gospel for today (John 6:41-51) are now described as “the Jews”. This standard designation for the adversaries of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is problematic in reading and proclamation today. Jesus is a Jew; his disciples are Jews; it is bizarre that he should be set over against his own people in the way that use of this designation suggests. Its use in the Gospel reflects the situation of the Johannine community, now definitively separated from the Jewish Synagogue and engaging in dispute with Jews of their own time because of their claims for Jesus as the author of eternal life over against Jewish claims for the Law of Moses.
A greater problem, however, than that of the Law concerns the claims believers are making in regard to the person and status of Jesus himself. Behind the complaint we hear about Jesus’ claim to be “the bread come down from heaven” lies the whole “offence” of the Incarnation. “The Jews” claim to be well acquainted with Jesus’ human origins (“We know his father and mother”). How then can one so clearly human claim divine origin in this sense?
DIVINE INTENT
Jesus’ response in the Gospel is to point to Scripture, specifically a text from Isa 54:13, “They will all be taught by God” (v. 45). He draws a great deal out of this brief text in the sense of seeing it indicating a divine intent to communicate life to the world through a mode of instruction involving divine-human engagement of unimagined closeness. The Father has sent the Son into the world (3:16) and drawn people to him so that in hearing him and believing in him, they are really being “taught by God” as the prophetic text foretold. In this intensely personal way they can hear the teaching of the Father, which is essentially teaching about the Father given by the only One who has truly seen the Father, namely the Son (cf. 1:18).
To hear this teaching and respond to it in faith is to “have” (beginning here and now) “eternal life.” Hence the rightness of Jesus’ claim to be “the Bread of Life” come down from heaven. Whereas the Manna that the ancestors (“your fathers”) ate in the desert sustained them only for their physical life, after which they died, this “Bread” is “living Bread”, that is, “life-giving” sustenance for eternal life.
EUCHARISTIC OVERTONE
A eucharistic overtone seems to creep in at the very end when Jesus “defines” the bread as “my flesh for the life of the world.” But the primary reference at this point is to his death upon the cross. It is in giving his own life (“his flesh”) for the life of the world that Jesus will most truly be for the world the life-giving revelation of the Father.
The Second Reading, Eph 4:30–5:2, begins with the odd injunction about not “grieving” the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is the mark or “seal” of God’s ownership on believers and guarantee of destiny to eternal life. Believers “grieve” the Spirit by acting in ways clear contrary to this dignity and destiny.
Brendan Byrne, SJ, FAHA, taught New Testament at Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Vic., for almost forty years. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Divinity (Melbourne). His commentaries on the Gospels can be found at Pauline Books and Media