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John 6:47-51
48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 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.”
I recently caught a few minutes of a podcast called Last Meals. The premise was simple enough: sit down to ask someone what their last meal would be if they knew the end was near. It’s a game many of us have no doubt played in some form or another, now popularized and monetized it online. But before we get too cynical about the podification of every possible discussion topic under the sun, the premise did ring true. “We’re here”, said the host during the introduction, “because two things are true of all human beings: everybody eats and everybody dies”. Even from world of celebrity podcasting, that’s something to chew on.
Everybody eats, and everybody dies. What many of us take for granted, routine nourishment, juxtaposed with the looming reality of which is a challenge to compute, the inevitability of death. The everyday of eating, the any day of our mortality. It’s enough to make us both salivate and tremble.
The questions of life, death and eating are on our menu today. Questions of substance and subsistence. These questions arise naturally for every human being, and therefor also in the Scriptures. This summer we’re turning to John’s gospel as we wrestle with these questions of substance. We’ll focus on some of Jesus’ key self-descriptors, or what you could call identity claims throughout the book.
These are known as Jesus’ I Am statements (I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the door of the sheep; I am the good shepherd; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the way, the truth and the life; And I am the true vine). We’ll hear from seven different voices reflecting on each of these statements from Jesus. Let’s start today, however, by asking why these identity claims matter and how they make sense of our questions of substance and subsistence, then dig into the first of Jesus’ I Am statements for this week, “I am the bread of life.”
On John and the I Am Statements
We begin with the Gospel of John itself, the wider book and context from which these sayings from Jesus emerge. Scholars agree that of the four gospels in the New Testament, John’s came last. The other three gospels (or ancient biographies of Jesus) were in circulation by the time John’s gospel was penned; Mark, Matthew and Luke already shaping the imaginations of the early believers. Then came John’s slant. John gives us a very different gospel, even a different Jesus, not in accuracy, but perspective.
It’s widely accepted that John was uniquely close to Jesus, even among the twelve disciples, and reading his biography it’s clear he painted Jesus like no other. The iconic image which typifies John’s relation to Jesus is found at the Last Supper. As was customary in ancient near eastern culture, while eating folks would recline around a low table. The night before Jesus’ death, John was the disciple reclining directly next to Jesus, taking in every theme and detail shared by Jesus over the meal. John gives us a kind special proximity. Quite literally at Jesus’ chest, you could say that no one gets closer to Jesus’ heart than John. In fact, throughout the Gospel of John, the author describes himself as “the disciple Jesus loved”. That is not to say Jesus cared any less for his other disciples, nor that John considers himself any better, but simply reflects John’s place within the inner circle. Only an apprentice with a special kind of access would define their relation to their teacher as such.
So transformative was Jesus for John that he waited to the end of his life, probably in his eighties or nineties, before finally writing his biography of Jesus. You could call it Gospel of the Beloved, or as I have grown to see it, the Good News About God’s Heart. John’s role among the disciples would be to impart something unlike anyone else, passing on what had been handed him especially. Picture John, reclining with his master and friend at table, his ear inches from Jesus’ ribcage. John knows the sound, the rhythm of his Lord’s heart. And if we’re to believe Jesus is who he said he was, then John’s gospel relays to us the very heartbeat of God.
It’s no surprise, then, that when reading John’s gospel many have had profound experiences, as if they’re being introduced to God himself, alive in the pages. John’s gospel is also an unrivaled literately feat. It could very well be argued that John chapter one alone is the most influential piece of literature in history. Famously, the waters of John’s gospel are crystal clear but fathoms deep. Augustine is credited with saying that John is shallow enough for a child not to drown, yet deep enough for an elephant to swim. Martin Luther called it the chiefest gospel. Reading it in Braille Hellen Keller was profoundly challenged and changed by John’s prologue.
There’s a clarity and depth about John’s gospel, and about the big questions of life and death. Jesus’ words in particular land with not only poetic punch, but existential power. What if Jesus truly was God among us? What would God say to us? What would we say to God? What would God do with us? What do we do with God?
It stands to reason, then, that when Jesus speaks of himself, and certainly in John’s I Am statements, we should pay close attention. What language does Jesus employ? What images does he select and why? This summer we’ll hear Jesus’ words about himself – who he is, and what that might mean for us. We’ll try to get to the heart of Jesus, which, for John, means we’re getting to the very heart of God. Doing so, we’ll plumb our own hearts too.
I am the bread of life
We begin, then, with the first of the I am statements in John. In John 6 Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” Let’s come back to that podcast for a moment: “Two things are true of every human being. Everybody eats, and everybody dies.” In John chapter 6, we’re faced with this very reality. Jesus is in his home region of Galilee, near the sea of Galilee itself, with a large crowd following because of the signs and wonders he can perform. A large crowd is putting it lightly, because scholars tell us the crowd was at least five thousand people, but probably triple or quadruple that. This’s a crowd which could fill most of Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
With that scale in mind, we might hear Jesus’ question to his disciples with more weight. Seeing the overwhelming need of the gathered multitude, Jesus asks, “Where will we buy bread for these people to eat?” Out in the middle of nowhere, the disciples know the answer. There’s no way they can feed the crowd, even if they had the money (which they didn’t), it’s not as though there was a Costco nearby. Jesus, of course, asks his disciples this absurd question intentionally, and it’s then we read about his feeding of the great crowd by multiplying five loaves of bread and two fish. The message is clear. Even with help from Jesus’ disciples the great crowds can’t feed themselves. But he can and he does.
The feeding of the multitude is the only one of Jesus’ mighty deeds, or signs, recorded in all four gospels, the scene parallelling another famous feeding from ancient Israel’s history. Following their liberation from Egypt, out in the middle of nowhere, totally exposed, the Israelites had nothing to eat, and the Lord God provided. Manna in the wilderness. The themes of God’s provision continue in the histories following the Exodus. Manna, meat, water – impossibly, powerfully, at scale. The message is consistent: the Lord God provides for those in his care. This is the template from which Jesus draws. Who does signs and wonders, liberating the masses from bondage, feeding them in the wilderness? Everyone knew the Sunday school answer to that question: the Lord God, of course. Here is Jesus doing the same and without breaking a sweat.
The feeding of the multitude is the sign couching Jesus’ later saying, but we’ll come to that in a moment. Following the mass feeding, the people are so impressed they want to take Jesus and make him king by force. In other words, they have designs on him. Wouldn’t it be great to have a ruler who gives what we need when they need it, they think. Jesus could solve their material and political problems with ease, bring on the kingdom of God they’d been so desperately waiting for after centuries of oppressive and occupying regimes. But Jesus’ evades their designs for him, withdrawing to the mountain alone. Jesus knows who he is. A provider, certainly, but more than the means to a free lunch. He will not be a provider fashioned in the people’s own image.
As night falls Jesus’ disciples can’t find him, so, presumably based on earlier instructions, they set off in a boat to the other side of the lake. The famous scene following is of Jesus also crossing the lake, catching up to his disciples, only he doesn’t need a boat. After the feeding of the multitude, John describes Jesus’ with such a command of the natural word that he not only transforms or creates food and drink as he had done also at the wedding at Cana, or heal bodies, as he had done earlier in John 5. Jesus manipulates the elements. He is in command of even the most unpredictable and unknowable aspects of creation. Jesus walks on water.
So alarmed are the disciples by the sight of someone approaching them astride the waves in the middle of the night, that Jesus must tell them not to be afraid, it’s only him. They end up letting him into the boat, which then, according to John, immediately, reaches the shore where they were heading. Feeding some 15,000 people with next to nothing, walking on water, inexplicably and immediately transporting a boat of at least 13 people from the middle of a large body of water to shore. All that’s in John chapter six alone.
What follows the next morning is an intricate back and forth between Jesus and some from the crowd who have apparently tracked him across the lake. They’re baffled about how he’s crossed the 16km stretch of water, since they knew the disciples had set off alone. Jesus directs the discussion away from what seems somewhat trivial to him, to deeper matters. They’re focused on signs and wonders. He asks them to what the signs and wonders point.
John 6: 25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” 29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” 30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” 35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Let’s start by noticing the almost comical request for yet another sign from Jesus. They reference Moses and manna in the wilderness, just hours after the mass feeding. Is anyone paying attention to more than tummy rumblings, how many more signs do they need? But this is of course John’s point as he lays out his masterful narrative. Jesus is greater than Moses, in fact the very power behind Moses. All signs point to him being someone beyond a rabbi, prophet or king. But people can’t compute his greater identity among them. Later, Jesus will speak more plainly: “I and the Father are one.” (10:30) and “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (14:9), but John is building to that. What we’re reading in John 6, at this point, is both profoundly complex in relation to Israel’s scriptures, but also somewhat simple.
Jesus is both provider and sustainer (as seen in John’s opening prologue), and he is also that very provision itself. Jesus himself is the life sustaining, direct provision from God. Jesus himself is sustenance. In John’s terms, Jesus has life in him. The people need food, as people always do. The people want direction, like they had in Torah, like manna also come to them from heaven. The people want a king and a Godly kingdom, because their world is out of sorts. They’re well aware of their needs, just as we are today. But do they know the measure of their eternal lack, the deeper depravity of all creation wallowing in desperate need of life? John puts to us that Jesus holds provision for that cosmic, eternal need within himself.
Everybody eats, and everybody dies. Two universal realities. John lays that same reality on the table. If you want to live, you need the bread of life. Later in the passage, many feel Jesus goes too far and abandon him. They are comfortable with a prophet, maybe even a king who meets their present needs. But Jesus insists he’s more, come to provide on a scale beyond imagining. Manna in the wilderness is nothing compared to Jesus’ himself, thetrue bread come down from heaven. The bread of life, which trusted will satiate hunger and thirst for eternity.
This is a moment in John’s gospel when the rubber hits the road. And we’re hitting that reality right away, on week one of our series. What could be more important than the matters of sustenance in our hierarchy of needs? Our hunger is a matter of life and death. But as hungry as we are for provision, to have our here and now needs met, Jesus insists on more than a free lunch. Jesus is more than a provider in whom we trust, even in good relationship. He is provision and sustenance itself. For John, Jesus is the source, the origin of life itself. You might come to him for bread (either literally or figuratively) but take him seriously and you’ll get a whole lot more than you bargained for. You get God. God come down, brimming with life among us. Not just bread for the here and now, but life the there and then. The bread come down from heaven, manna-like, to fill not only a temporary stomach but an eternal essential. John tells us that there is not only no bread without Jesus, there is no life. That’s John’s Jesus – “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life… (John 1). Everybody eats and everybody dies. Not so fast, says Jesus. Subsist on me and you’ll be flooded with life even a life beyond death.
Beyond the Self
I’ve noticed a couple of trends in the last few years in conversations with both believers and others alike. On one hand, there is desperation to get real. There’s more interest in some of the weighty questions of life, death. So we’re asking them, even podcasting the questions, plumbing the depths of our existential need. In turn, we’re measuring our self-awareness, going to therapy, becoming more open to the spiritual. We accept that we’re flawed, we want to receive and grant forgiveness. In a sentence, I think I lot of folks are going deeper.
Yes, we’re distracted by our phones, still grossly materialistic, but we are going deeper. Many folks are joining in with all kinds of spiritual practices, including Christian ones, reading spiritual writers, the Bible even. It’s become somewhat alternative, even cool, to talk about Jesus openly, searching the Bible for philosophies and modes of operating all in service of a betterment of self. We’re admitting our hunger, and we’re sniffing out bread. Door-dashing Jesus’ teachings, and Podcasting it all in near real-time.
On the other hand, we want bread on our terms. What can this bread give me? How can it improve me, add value? Our search, driven by legitimate hunger, remains self-revolving, rooted in a self-centered view of the cosmos. That’s the post-modern west, so acclimated to the waters of me that we’ve grown gills. Self-awareness, self-improvement, self-fulfillment. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some bread which satisfies the self? Maybe Jesus can give us that. And does he provide a gluten free option?
When we come to Jesus hungry, we are not unlike those people in John 6. They’re need is real, their entry point to Jesus is legitimate. And he doesn’t dismiss their hunger but provides. But when designs on him are set, Jesus retreats. He will not be taken on their terms, only on his. Reading John’s gospel rightly means we end up wrestling with the fact that Jesus is not only more than a free lunch but may well resist our designs for him. He’s more than a provider on our terms.
When reading John and hearing Jesus say, “I am the bread of life”, we’re given a choice. The choice is this: a relation to Jesus based on what he can give, a relation as provider on our terms; or, a relation to Jesus on his terms, as provision itself, sustenance itself, eternal and present nourishment. Life itself. So strong is this sense in John that later Jesus will tell his disciples that “apart from me they can do nothing”. Cut off from Jesus, there is no life. That is his claim. Not a little less life. Not a different sort of life. No life at all, because he is the very source of it. The true bread come down from heaven, provision in our wilderness.
In 2026, self-improvement is just fine, self-awareness is great. But if we are to take Jesus as he truly is we’ll more than we bargain for. In Jesus’ own words, “food that does not spoil”, because he does not spoil, cannot be bought or earned. But, as John’s gospel will put it, he can be trusted and received. Our relation to Jesus, then, goes beyond the material or even spiritual transactionalism of which we are accustomed. Jesus offers no such transactionalism. He holds out relation to out very creator. More than what he can give, we are offered relation to the one who made us and a hope beyond death itself. Often enamoured with the trappings, the bread in the wilderness, we must turn our attention to the source. Self-awareness is all well and good, but Jesus draws us beyond our self-awareness into a transformative God-awareness.
Jesus’ I Am sayings creatively and clearly reveal his true identity, character and purpose. They are crucial to our understanding of him. And when we see Jesus more clearly, we can also expect more clarity on our own identity, character and purpose, not only as believers but as human beings. Among Jesus’ I Am statements, our big questions have room to breathe, but are also given a bearing from which to navigate. With Jesus’ as our point of origin, we begin to make sense of our humanity and even the world itself.
What sustains you? What will sustain you as you face the big questions of sustenance and provision in life, or even in death? Questions to chew on. And in doing so, maybe to find yourself not merely relating to Jesus via a string of requests for bread, but to relate to him more so like John. To hear Jesus’ heart, the very heartbeat of God, to grow in your trust of him in the very depth of your being. And to find yourself able to say, without hubris or guesswork, “I am the one that Jesus loves, and I am satisfied.”
Luke Knight 