This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever

 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"  Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.

- John 6:52-50

In Saturday's reading, we were told that the leadership then complained about Jesus, because He taught in the temple at Capernaum, "I am the bread which came down from heaven."  And they said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How is it then that He says, 'I have come down from heaven'?"   Jesus therefore answered and said to them, "Do not murmur among yourselves.  No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.  It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.'  Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.  Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.  I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." 


 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"  Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.   We remember that in John's Gospel, the term "the Jews" most often refers to the religious authorities.  My study bible suggests:  "Christ was crucified in the flesh and His blood was shed on the Cross, and on the third day He was raised in a glorified state.  We receive the grace of Christ's sacrificial offering by coming to Him in faith and by receiving Holy Communion in faith.  In Communion, we truly eat His flesh and drink His blood, and this grants the faithful eternal life, with Christ abiding in us and us in Him."  Hilary of Poitiers wrote, "There is no room left for any doubt about the reality of His flesh and blood, because we have both the witness of His words and our own faith.  Thus when we eat and drink these elements, we are in Christ and Christ is in us."

"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.  Jesus speaks here about a relationship of total dependence.  He is dependent on the Father for His very life, and in this "eucharistic" relationship, in which our very food is comprised of His substance, so we gain a life beyond our understanding.  Actually in the Greek, the words translated here as "live forever" literally mean "live to the age."  What we are hearing is about an eternal age to come, a "time" when this world is transformed by the life He gives into an abundant life we can only imagine.  But that "eternal life" is dependent on Christ who is the bread, the food, just as He is dependent upon the Father for His life.

On today's passage, my study bible points out that John never reports the details of the Last Supper such as those found in Luke 22:19-20, but instead, he reveals the significance and truth of these events (events that were already known to his hearers) by reporting here Christ's own words.  This mystical reality is revealed in this Gospel in the ways in which Jesus speaks of dependence and relationship.  Our lives are added to by His life, just as His live is sustained by the "living Father."  It's really amazing how this depth of relationship is portrayed in John; this Evangelist gives us at once the mystical reality of Christ into which Jesus invites us:  into relationship with the Father and the Son, a relationship characterized by its interdependent nature.  Jesus, as the bread of life, is that food that adds life to us, life to our lives, and promises that through the bread of heaven we will live to the age:  in an eternal time where "life in abundance" truly manifests in fullness.  The message is always life, life itself, the mysterious substance that comes from the Father, through the Son, and links and embraces us as we are fully dependent upon it.  It's a mistake, I think, to speak about "spiritual life" although we are talking about the bread from heaven.  But just as Jesus is God in the flesh, Incarnate, so the essence of our understanding of the "bread of heaven" must be that this is life that increases life in all ways in us, that informs life in every form in our own lives.  To speak of "spiritual life" would be to split this life in ways that are inappropriate from all the life in us:  mental, spiritual, physical, emotional.  It's the same as loving with God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength:  whatever life we have is fully enhanced by the bread of heaven into a greater life, even as we await the life in the age to come, the fullness of transfiguration.  What we can understand is the depth of this life added to our life in dependence on Christ through faith, right in the here and the now.  There are times when our faith adds such beauty to our understanding of life, and joy, and peace that doesn't really make sense, and a kind of confidence that surpasses our own "meager resources."  This is a life that revives hope when there is no hope, and provides a way when there seems to be no way.   It helps us cope with life when it's limited by pain or toil; it gives us mission when we lose our purpose.  This kind of dependence is the difference between a sort of limitation of life to our own strengths, and opens up the doors to what is beyond us, that which helps us in ways we can't call "our own" alone, giving us added life to what we have and transforming who we are.  That is the bread of life and what it does for us, helping us to overcome what limits and disappoints in this world.

He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him

 Then some of the Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying:  "Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies, without children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.  Now there were seven brothers.  And the first took a wife, and died without children.  And the second took her as wife, and he died childless.  Then the third took her, and in like manner the seven also; and they left no children, and died.  Last of all the woman died also.  Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become?  For all seven had her as wife."

Jesus answered and said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.  But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.  But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'  For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him."  Then some of the scribes answered and said, "Teacher, you have spoken well."  But after that they dared not question Him anymore.

- Luke 20:27-40

In yesterday's reading, after Jesus had told a parable against the leadership,  we read that the chief priests and the scribes that very hour sought to lay hands on Him, but they feared the people--for they knew He had spoken this parable against them.  So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor.  Then they asked Him, saying, "Teacher, we know that You say and teach rightly, and You do not show personal favoritism, but teach the way of God in truth:  Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"  But He perceived their craftiness, and said to them, "Why do you test Me?  Show Me a denarius.  Whose image and inscription does it have?"  They answered and said, "Caesar's."  And He said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."  But they could not catch Him in His words in the presence of the people.  And they marveled at His answer and kept silent.

  Then some of the Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying:  "Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies, without children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.  Now there were seven brothers.  And the first took a wife, and died without children.  And the second took her as wife, and he died childless.  Then the third took her, and in like manner the seven also; and they left no children, and died.  Last of all the woman died also.  Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become?  For all seven had her as wife."   My study bible says that the Sadducees are the high priestly and landowning class which controlled the temple and the Jewish Council.  It says, "In a striking difference with the Pharisees, the Sadducees rejected the resurrection of the dead and they came to Christ to dispute it." 

Jesus answered and said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.  But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.  But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'  For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him."  Then some of the scribes answered and said, "Teacher, you have spoken well."  But after that they dared not question Him anymore.  My study bible tells us that Jesus' answer is "concise and irrefutable.  Since God is not the God of the dead but of the living, both those who are physically alive and those who are deceased, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all live to Him."

Jesus' answer is a startling one, and remains so, if only because He tells us something about the age to come, and the difference between the world we live in and the one we await.  There's a clear difference between values and ways of seeing and relating in this age and in that one.  We ourselves are transformed; even the nature of our most basic relationships are changed.  There is no marriage.  The children of the age to come, those who are worthy of that life -- and in the language this is presented as an attainment to something wonderful -- are equal to the angels and children of God.  Immortality is a key to this change:  to be equal to angels and children of God, not to be given in marriage at all, is linked to this timeless, deathless state.  But there is more to it, because God has already declared, even to us who live in this world, as was declared to Moses, that God is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  Therefore, immortality -- or life in abundance, as we may call it -- lives already.  We may think of the age to come as precisely that, in our terms, an age to come in which we may participate.  But that is because we live in time and our lives are regulated by it.  Time gives us time to repent and to change, to come to God, to become "like God" and children of God in this pattern in which we grow and learn and love through Christ, participating in the Kingdom in faith.  But the "age to come" is of a different nature altogether, in which time does not exist as we know it.  "Life in abundance" then, in its true nature connotes this immortal time, this eternal time, in which everything is always present.  "Life in abundance" is that life in which all live to Him, which "breaks through" into our world in the form of Christ, and in revelation -- for example, in the burning bush, in which this God of the living, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, breaks through into our world, into time, and gives us a glimpse of God's reality, the one in which all life is contained, including our lives in the age to come.  To have life in abundance is to attain this place where everything is changed, where the abundance of life adds to us a nature that renders us like angels, a state of being children of God, a life ageless and timeless, life eternal, in which there is no death.  This is one of the clearest glimpses Jesus gives us of what this age to come is like, what the children of resurrection will experience.  Jesus' Transfiguration was another glimpse, as He stood on the mountain speaking with Moses and Elijah.  Let's not forget that while we may experience this, and it is told to us as the age to come, it is a living reality in the communion of saints and in the liturgy which we celebrate even with the angels in heaven.  This age to come is present and "breaks through" in vivid revelation recorded in Scripture, in the lives of the saints, in images such as the burning bush.  The Kingdom is within us and among us, even as we await its fullness.  Prayer intersects us in the communion of all the living, of all those who live to Him and worship.  Let us remember what we call upon when we put our faith in prayer -- and what the tremendous fullness of life in abundance really means.