Kaleo reading - week 19
This is actually last week’s kaleo reading which I am catching up on so I don’t feel like a big goof at my kaleo group meeting tomorrow. Will post this week’s reading in the next couple of days. I have highlighted a couple of lines that jump out at me, and my brainstorming initial reactions follow. This is pretty much stream of consciousness stuff, where I am trying to get my own reactions down but I won’t be winning any prizes for theological insight here.
35Jesus replied:
I am the bread that gives life! No one who comes to me will ever be hungry. No one who has faith in me will ever be thirsty.
41The people started grumbling because Jesus had said he was the bread that had come down from heaven. 42They were asking each other, “Isn’t he Jesus, the son of Joseph? Don’t we know his father and mother? How can he say that he has come down from heaven?”
43Jesus told them:
Stop grumbling! 44No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me makes them want to come. But if they do come, I will raise them to life on the last day. 45One of the prophets wrote, “God will teach all of them.” And so everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him will come to me.
46The only one who has seen the Father is the one who has come from him. No one else has ever seen the Father. 47I tell you for certain that everyone who has faith in me has eternal life.
48I am the bread that gives life! 49Your ancestors ate manna [a] in the desert, and later they died. 50But the bread from heaven has come down, so that no one who eats it will ever die. 51I am that bread from heaven! Everyone who eats it will live forever. My flesh is the life-giving bread that I give to the people of this world.
I am the bread that comes down from heaven. Reminds me of that Fatboy Slim song which I won’t repeat here. Bread from heaven. Bread of life, a gift from God. Who has seen the Father? Repetitive, circular. I started reading this without fully noticing where it was from. Only took a few lines to realise that it was John. This is why I find John frustrating. In small pieces it (more than the other gospels) seems strange and repetitive and circular. I used to hate to read John. Jesus seems to speak in the riddles that pompous ministers used - jargon and “in” references.
Stories are easier to understand, for those that have ears. I am the bread come down from heaven. Jesus has a sense of both past and future in John. You know that he has come from God and is going back to God. In the synoptics, Jesus is more of an itinerant preacher. Still hard to understand, but somehow more a part of the real world. The Jesus of John inhabits a different space. In modern day times this brilliant messianic gifted and slightly incomprehenisible personality is not always shown in positive people - Charles Manson, Jim Morrison - perverted echoes and cheap reflections of the true messiah.
But Jesus in John is hard for me to grasp. If I heard a preacher with this message, I would dismiss him.
I am bread come down from heaven. I am the bread that gives life.
August 24th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Yes - I think if it was around today (and isn’t it?), I would probably dismiss it too. You can see why there were rumours of Christians being cannibals and drinking blood and so forth..
I guess it’s about the search for truth. He was speaking to those who would be seriously interested in finding spiritual truths but the language seems to be all mixed up. Those who have ears…or those willing to create some sense of it - it’s like people’s interpretations of a painting or a sermon - everyone gets something different - maybe even nothing of the artist’s or preacher’s intent. Fraught with danger I’d suspect. Like the disciples said - why, mate, don’t you just speak plainly??
“I am the bread that gives life! No one who comes to me will ever be hungry. No one who has faith in me will ever be thirsty.” v35
Bread that gives life would have been meaningful perhaps as the staple of life - but what level was he addressing. Simple people might have thought he meant magic, no food shortages, always water in the jug. But is this true even on a spiritual level…? Who hasn’t had a ‘dry’ time in their faith, in spite of continued believing? What believer hasn’t hungered for more understanding or insight or comfort at some time or other, if not often?
I think Jesus speaks to those who seek spiritual truths and you have to walk the walk to find them….it’s experiential or nothin’. There may be some other level of understanding that can be given to the Word He gave us, for all I know - but it sometimes doesn’t seem too accessible or transparent to an ordinary 20th Century person once you start to seek the meaning, relevance and truth of Jesus, without the patriarchal judaic cultural context, the in-jargon and church cliches.