NOTES for Joh 6:35

This sermon of Christ is a very complicated one. It is not accidentally that it provoked the grumbles and the disputes. "The bread of life" - what is it, is it a symbol? It seems so apparently. Bread is indeed a daily food, what is needed every day (remember the prayer "our Father"), something that is constantly necessary. Then the word-group "the bread of life" means what transfigures constantly our existence in a complete life, but it is also necessary to understand that hunger and thirst in a figurative sense as spiritual insatiability (remember the fourth "command of the Beatitudes "). This was interpreted well, isn't it? But Jesus overturns everything after that, He speaks not only of believing in Him, but also that He is the genuine food. Verses from number 48 to 58 don't give us the possibility of a purely spiritualist interpretation. It is said to us so that we eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, - so naturally, as the fathers ate manna, - and at that time, death deserts from us, and we inherit resurrection and eternal life. And now it remains just a little more for us to do: accumulate in our brain and heart these two understandings or conceptions.

How does Jesus Himself understand the tasks before Him? First of all, it is striking that He does not try to formulate any tasks on His own at all. At first glance, the One who contained in Himself all the fullness of God could have been much more decisive, especially considering the decisiveness with which ordinary people sometimes formulate the goals and tasks of their service to God. But Jesus, being the Messiah, sees the meaning of His messianic ministry in having no goals of His own and setting no tasks of His own before Himself. He relies entirely on the will of the Father, and He has no works of His own. And the Father, as it appears, sets before Him one main task, to which everything else is subordinated: to save as many people as possible. This is not about Judgment, not about condemning some and justifying others. Of course, a person's sins hinder his salvation. But, as it appears, even the righteous cannot count on salvation without the help of the Messiah sent by God into the world.

As in any rescue operation, only the rescue of each and every person can be considered complete success. But there are, it appears, certain obstacles that can hinder complete success. The sins a person commits are one such obstacle. There may be others, but they appear to depend little or not at all on the person. But the measure of sin that complicates the rescue operation depends first of all on the person. And this is no surprise: salvation is evidently connected with the possibility of entering the Kingdom, the door to which Jesus opens.

In its present state the world is doomed, and only the one who manages to enter the Kingdom and become part of it can be saved. Here the question of sin and righteousness becomes decisive, for any sin inevitably becomes an obstacle for a person on the way into the Kingdom. But Jesus allows, of course with the Father's consent, everyone to begin again, with a clean slate, making one more attempt to start life over. On one condition: this attempt will be made not in the fallen world, but in the Kingdom. Then, freed from the undivided power that sin has over fallen man, each person can try to begin a new life in the full sense of the word.

"The one who comes to Me I will never cast out." Why do these words give hope? Because we know who comes to Him. Sooner or later, of course, everyone will come, and this in itself already gives encouragement. But we know that among the disciples there was no one truly worthy of his Teacher. Even the closest ones failed to understand much until the very end. Only some "outsiders" understood that Christ was incomparably greater than they were, and yet they came to Him humbly. For example, the father of the demon-possessed boy says to Jesus, "I believe; Lord, help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24). Or the centurion: "Lord, I am not worthy to have You come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed" (Matt. 8:8).

And the Lord truly received them and answered the deepest desires and questions of the heart. He does not merely refrain from casting out those who come. He shows them the way and walks that way Himself. He is the good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep (see John 10:11). He takes us in His arms and carries us against His breast (see Isa. 40:11). He will lead us to the place where we will lack nothing (see Ps. 22:1). He will raise us up on the last day.

In today's Gospel reading Jesus says, "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up on the last day." These words are an answer to the classic question asked by people outside the Church: "What will happen to my friend if she died unbaptized?" The will of the Heavenly Father is that no one should perish. But there is one important qualification: "of all He has given Me." What is this that the Father has given Jesus? It is those who have received Him into their hearts, those who believe in Him.

Does that mean, then, that all unbelievers are doomed? There is no single clear answer here, but we know one thing: the meeting with God takes place in the deepest part of the human heart. No one will ever be able to determine what this particular person's relationship with God truly is, no one except God, who sees hearts. Only the Lord, who knows hearts, can say how close a person was to God. And the will of the Father is that no one should perish, and so we can hope that even the smallest spark of faith, the smallest openness, may be enough for Him to raise a person on the last day.

A very interesting conversation takes place in today's Gospel reading. Jesus says that the true bread from heaven is not the manna that Moses gave the Jews in the wilderness, but He Himself, Jesus. It is perfectly clear that none of His listeners understands Him. The sacrament of the Eucharist has not yet been mentioned. Jesus gives no precise explanation of why or how He is bread. He simply proclaims the truth and gives people the opportunity to engage with this truth themselves. He is not afraid that He will be misunderstood—although, of course, no one could possibly understand Him at that moment. Jesus' word is simply placed in the heart, sown like a seed. In due time it will bear fruit. This is probably important for us: even if we do not understand something in the Gospel, one day His words will become clear to us. Even if the person with whom we are speaking does not understand what we say about God, if that person wants to listen, it makes sense to speak, praying that His word will later be revealed in the heart.

In today's Gospel reading we can see behavior that is natural and common to all people. The crowd, having satisfied its hunger and listening to the Lord's words about the bread of God "which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world," quite understandably asks that this bread never run out. And all the more so if this is the bread that "gives life to the world"! How much this resembles Jesus' meeting with the Samaritan woman (see John 4:5-30). When this woman hears about water that satisfies thirst so that a person will never thirst, she asks Jesus, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."

How alike we human beings are in our desires. When we hear about something miraculous, we want to get hold of it, to have a direct relationship to it, especially when it promises direct benefit. In this way, in any person one can find this thirst for miraculous bread and water that give life. And in both cases the Lord says strange words: that He Himself is the bread in one case and the water in the other. It is precisely the unexpectedness of these words and their meaning that can lead a person to another, deeper level.

Today before us is the first death among Christians, if Ananias and Sapphira are not counted as Christians (see Acts 5:1-11). And the very first dying Christian is a martyr. The world continues to reject Christ and His followers. If the chief priests were afraid to put Christ Himself to death on their own, without the Romans, because He was too beloved by many among the people, then, after dealing with Him, they no longer stand on ceremony with His disciples.

The Sanhedrin, before which Stephen stands, once again hears open accusations directed at it, accusations of the death of the Righteous One. And by now they are thoroughly tired of this: they had already heard it from Peter and John at least twice (see Acts 4:5-12, 5:27-32). But this time they could not hold out. What provoked them was that Stephen honestly told them what he not only knew, but actually saw. He, like Christ, bore witness to the world about objective reality: the world is in sin, but Jesus has brought salvation. And the world has no use for such truth...

When Christ said, "If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you," He also said, "A servant is not greater than his master" (see John 15:20). Stephen, a man filled with "faith and power," a true disciple of Christ, before his death says practically the same words that his Teacher spoke on the cross: he asks the Lord to forgive his persecutors... And the Church, in spite of everything, continues to grow and be strengthened precisely because it continues to act as her Lord commanded her and as He Himself acted.

People rushed to find Christ because they had eaten bread and wanted more of it rather than miracles. Yet many of them also regard miracles less as signs that bear witness to a higher truth than as spectacular displays. That is why the words about the bread of life that comes down from heaven and, unlike manna, satisfies more than bodily hunger remain misunderstood.

It is difficult for His listeners to understand Christ, but He continues speaking to them. If so, why does He preach? Is He not sowing His seed to the wind?

No, not to the wind. He is sowing for the future, and days will come when what has been sown begins to sprout in those very hearts that still seem unreceptive. To the age-old question, “What should we do?” Christ gives an unexpected answer, one that many people still find hard to grasp: believe. Not because He rejects deeds, but because, amid our bustle and our attempts to put contrived plans of our own devising into practice, it is all too easy to lose sight of whether what we have planned should be built at all.

Faith, however, gives us a point of reference that helps us act.

Is it not strange that the One who comes from heaven takes care to feed crowds of His listeners and followers with bread? Is that what He came for? And yet the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves for five thousand people is the only miracle described by all the evangelists, and that means it is especially important. It is this miracle that serves as the starting point for the conversation about the true bread by which a person truly lives, the bread of life.

We have heard since childhood that a person does not live by bread alone. But if we try to understand what makes up our spiritual diet, will we find in it what can truly satisfy the heart, rather than a substitute that leaves only a hangover and nausea?

The Lord offers us this kind of bread. It is not teaching, not commandments, not faith in God - the Jews already had all this, and it exists in many spiritual schools and religions. Jesus speaks of the bread that truly comes down from heaven and gives real, eternal life. It is He Himself.

Today's reading helps us better understand what is usually called Jesus' "messianic secret." In speaking of it, people mean the fact that Jesus Himself, until the last days of His earthly ministry, almost never spoke directly about His messiahship, at least not openly. The evangelist's account takes us back to the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves (vv. 1-14). And the reaction to it, as we can see, was an attempt to proclaim Jesus "king," to make Him the leader of a new messianic movement (v. 15). This is no surprise: according to the commonly accepted ideas of that time, the Messiah was to become king, restore an independent Jewish state, and introduce in it laws corresponding to the Torah. But Jesus, of course, was not going to become the leader of any religious-political movement.

But Jesus had another, more important reason to conceal His messiahship. He Himself speaks of it directly to those who went looking for Him in Galilee: most of the people seeking a meeting with Him did so not because they thirsted for the Kingdom, but because they wanted, in time of need, always to be able to receive free bread (v. 26). Jesus, however, speaks with them about eternal life and about the main thing without which one cannot partake of it: trust in the One whom God sent into the world to give people the Kingdom (vv. 27-29).

But they do not understand Him. They ask Him: where are the proofs that Your words are true (v. 30)? And at once they give an example of what proofs would convince them: manna from heaven, as in the days of Moses in the wilderness (v. 31). Jesus again tells them that the Kingdom is greater than any miracle, and that the bread of the Kingdom is more important than manna (vv. 32-33). And again they do not understand Him.

His listeners cannot grasp that with the Savior's coming into the world a new era has begun, and that what happened to them on the shore of Lake Gennesaret was not a miracle in the sense in which manna was a miracle. Simply by being with Jesus, they found themselves in the Kingdom and lived for a while according to its laws, but, as we can see, they did not understand fully what had happened to them. That is why they ask Jesus for bread and expect to receive it just as their fathers once received manna from God (v. 34). And Jesus again and again tries to explain to them that the point is not bread, but the Kingdom and that fullness of God's life which is given there to everyone, so that no manna will be needed there anymore.

A miracle is the Kingdom's invasion of our world, the manifestation of its laws where completely different rules usually operate. But now the Kingdom is entering the world, transforming it, and the times of miracles are passing. The time of the Kingdom is beginning - open to everyone who seeks it and wants to enter.