August 12th 2012: Sunday Gospel Reflection

John 6: 41-51

In today’s Gospel Jesus says ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven’. What does it mean that Jesus is our food? The quick Catholic answer is, of course, that Jesus gives Himself to us in the Eucharist. But why is the Eucharist important, why is Jesus present there in a different way than in the sunset or in the embrace of friends?

Bread is an important symbol and human reality. When the Jews were slaves, Moses had them celebrate Passover with bread that didn’t have time to rise because they had to flee slavery the next day; God frees us from slavery and death. When the Jews were freed and wandering in the desert toward the Promised Land that God had set out for them they grew hungry and grumbled against God preferring slavery to freedom because at least in slavery they had regular meals. God sent down manna that came from the sky that they found covering the ground like dew-fall; God nourishes us in our time of need.

In today’s Gospel and in the larger text that we read from (John chapter 6) Jesus makes a radical claim not just that we should eat bread but that He is the living bread come down from heaven and that they bread he gives will make no one be hungry again and will allow people to live forever. What is this special meal? It is the flesh and blood of Jesus as He tells us later in chapter 6: my flesh is true food, my blood is true drink.

In the Jewish tradition on the Sabbath day the Jews would go to the temple to sacrifice an animal as atonement for their sins as a peace offering to God. The person would donate some of the meat to the temple, burn some as an offering to God and then take some home to eat so that they become one with the sacrificial offering. What Jesus references in John 6 is this regular Jewish practice that finds its fulfillment for us as Christians at the Last Supper and the Cross. 

At the Last Supper, celebrated on the feast of Passover, Jesus gathers to celebrate the Passover meal but instead of sacrificing a lamb he took bread and wine and said these peculiar words: take and eat; this is my body...take and drink this is the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’. Jesus Himself is the lamb to be sacrificed. After dinner Jesus went out to the garden to pray, was arrested and the next day was forced to carry a cross and was crucified for us. This is where the Passover meal ends.

After Jesus died and rose from the dead his disciples gathered each Sunday, the day Jesus rose, to celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the new covenant relationship that they had with God in Jesus. They broke the bread and drank of the wine to share in the meal that Jesus gave them to make his sacrificial love present to them, to do what Jesus told them to do. This is what the Eucharist continues to do 2000 years later, continuing the tradition that Jesus set out for us to remain close to Him and to cleanse us from our sins.

Photo Credits 1 (Marc Chagall, A Wheatfield on a Summer's Afternoon) and 2