The Gospel of John, Chapter 6:22-71
Is it a bit comical that the crowd now traipses off to follow Jesus again? My! people come and go so quickly here!
I struggled with this part of Chapter 6. It includes most of what I haven’t liked about this gospel.
1) continued use of broad metaphors.
2) continual emphasis on believing in Jesus.
3) continued use of the pejorative “The Jews”
The great parts
1) lots of traipsing about on boats (and also, some walking on water)
2) The famous words “I am the bread of life.”
Metaphor
This gospel, perhaps more than other parts of the Bible, is extremely metaphor heavy. Having gotten this far in this gospel I am astonished that anyone could read the Bible and say that it all must be taken literally. There is almost nothing that Jesus has preached on so far in this gospel that is not related to a spiritual metaphor. I am viewing this gospel as “permission granted” to read any part of the Bible as metaphor or allegory, just as the ancient Christian scholars did.
Belief
To modern ears, the word “belief” / “believe in” seems to mean “I am going along with a certain set of axioms about life.” In practical terms, belief could be inconsequential. The crowd asks Jesus “What must we do to perform the works of God?” and Jesus said, “Believe in him whom he has sent.” The way we define belief, it doesn’t involve any work at all. Belief seems to us to be the thoughts that churn around in our minds and that come out of our mouths, not what we do.
Diana Butler Bass recently wrote about this, in her essay “I Believe Ted Lasso and Marcus Borg.” I don’t know what yinz think about Marcus Borg, but this quote in Butler Bass’s article speaks to me:
Prior to the seventeenth century, the word “believe” did not mean believing in the truth of statements or propositions, whether problematic or not. Grammatically, the object of believing was not statements, but a person. Moreover, the contexts in which it is used in premodern English make it clear that it meant: to hold dear; to prize; to give one’s loyalty to; to give one’s self to; to commit oneself. It meant. . . faithfulness, allegiance, loyalty, commitment, and trust.
Most simply, “to believe” meant “to love”. Indeed the English words “believe”and “belove” are related. What we believe is what we belove. Faith is about beloving God…. To believe in God is to belove God. Faith is about beloving God and all that God beloves. Faith is the way of the heart.
The Message translation prefers to translate Jesus’ admonishments to “believe in me” as “align with me”. Or ‘be loyal to me”. That makes more sense to me. Going forward in my reading of this gospel, I will try to substitute “belove God and all that God beloves” when it talks about believing in Jesus.
The Jews
The author’s use of “The Jews” as the term for Jesus’ enemies still seems anti-Jewish to me. I have not seen anything so far to dissuade me from my view.
The Boats
For all the high and lofty speechifying Jesus does, for all his speaking of himself obliquely, for all the annoyances of the anti-Jewish language, there is the story. Just picture it - these people are so taken with what Jesus is saying that they are continually chasing after him in boats. Across the sea one way, and then back. Jesus is constantly on the move.
The Bread
Jesus said:
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” - John 6:35
Throughout the centuries, these have been comforting words to believers.
My description of the story, for those who want more
The Gospel of John, Chapter 6:22-71
In the previous verse, the disciples and Jesus had escaped the crowd during the night, by crossing the Sea of Galilee back to Capernaum. Now it’s the next day and the crowd, finding Jesus missing, commandeers some boats, setting off for Capernaum to look for Jesus.
The crowd finds Jesus, who says to them, you are only looking for me because I fed you. Jesus again talks about food as a metaphor for eternal life. The crowd asks “What must we do to perform the works of God?”
Jesus replies, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” Or maybe you prefer The Message: Jesus said, “Sign on with the One that God has sent. That kind of a commitment gets you in on God’s works.”
The crowd asks for a sign, so that they can believe him. Oy, even though he had just done the gigantic sign of feeding them all, using just a few loaves of bread & some sardines. Maybe they are just trying to get some breakfast sandwiches out of him.
The crowd, who know their Bible stories, remind Jesus that their ancestors “ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus replies, “It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Now, reminiscent of Jesus’ speech to the woman at the well in Chapter 4, Jesus makes this famous statement:
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” - John 6:35
This is one of the “I am” statements featured in this gospel. It is perhaps meant to recall the moment when Moses asks God what God’s name is, and God says to Moses “I am who I am.” (Exodus 3:14)
In the next verse, Jesus gives a fair assessment of the crowd: “But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.”
Jesus then makes a speech that eventually ends up with: believe in me so you may have eternal life.
Jesus’ speech in verses 37-40 is one that confounds me, as is often the case in the Gospel of John. It uses small, easy words, but is hard to add up. Here it is in the NRSV:
37 Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38 for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”
I find it easier to understand The Message interpretation:
“…Every person the Father gives me eventually comes running to me. And once that person is with me, I hold on and don’t let go. I came down from heaven not to follow my own agenda but to accomplish the will of the One who sent me.
39-40 “This, in a nutshell, is that will: that everything handed over to me by the Father be completed—not a single detail missed—and at the wrap-up of time I have everything and everyone put together, upright and whole. This is what my Father wants: that anyone who sees the Son and trusts who he is and what he does and then aligns with him will enter real life, eternal life. My part is to put them on their feet alive and whole at the completion of time.”
Okay, so Jesus essentially calls himself the bread of heaven, equating himself with God. Guess who doesn’t like that?
Enter “The Jews” - the Bad Guys Of The Gospel of John. (Let’s remember that Jesus, the disciples, and probably most of the crowds are Jews. But this is not what the author means by “The Jews”.) “The Jews” say that Jesus is just a regular guy, the son of Joseph; how can he say he has come down from heaven? Jesus repeats the speech he gave to the crowd. Jesus offers himself as the living bread: “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Some of the verses seem to support the Calvinist notion of “the elect” - God picks you, not the other way around.
Verse 44: “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.”
“The Jews” take it literally, but Jesus is speaking metaphorically. Jesus takes it a step further, saying provocatively, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;.... Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” (verses 6:53-57)
I take this passage as permission to interpret the Bible (any part of it) as metaphor, as allegory, as poetry. Interpreted literally, this passage is just glorifying cannibalism, and completely misses the point. Already in the previous chapters, Jesus has taken to task those who blindly interpret what he says literally.
Four times, Jesus has said ‘eat my flesh; drink my blood.’ It’s like he’s rubbing their face in it. The disciples even have trouble with this blunt statement equating Jesus with the bread of heaven. Some of them give up being his disciples. But the twelve main disciples say they are sticking with Jesus. Jesus says, I chose the twelve of you, but one is a devil. This is foreshadowing - he is talking about Judas.
The top ten most frequent words in Chapter 6:22-71 are (in order)
bread, Jesus, life, come, Father, one, heaven, give, believe, and eat.
Whew. That was long.
Metaphors: bread, flesh, blood
Images and themes: bread of heaven = bread of life
People/Beings: the crowd, Jesus, “The Jews”, the disciples, Judas.
Places: Sea of Galilee, boats, the synagogue at Capernaum
