I Am the Living Bread

As mentioned in previous weekend posts, the Church asks this week to focus on the gift of the Eucharist, albeit with a different teaching.  Those who questioned the statement from Jesus when he told them, “I’m the bread that came down from heaven,” were incredulous. Part of their suspicion was that they knew Jesus as he was growing up, apparently like any other person. They knew his father and mother, and there seemed to be no indication during this part of Jesus’ life that he was indeed the Son of God.

Knowing that those around him were murmuring, Jesus told them to stop and said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day.” Unpacking this sentence reveals many theological threads. By claiming that no one can come to him, Jesus asserts that he is not just an ordinary person but someone different. He is in union with the heavenly Father in a way no other person can claim. The intimacy reveals that Jesus is already somehow in the divine sphere, a relationship the average person is not privy to.

Including His heavenly Father, Jesus suggests a process by which human beings can enter into a relationship with the divine. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Insinuating that the Father must first draw somebody is another way of saying God is the initiator; his life and truth are first given to a person, and in response, the person can either accept it or reject it. We have come to know this dynamic as having faith in God. Faith is not something a person has the power to conjure up; instead, it is a gift from God we accept or deny.

After the person has been given the gift of faith, it extends to believing the Father is God and his Son, by definition, is God. Once the truism is accepted, Jesus can tell his listeners and us that he, as God, can defeat our deaths and raise us to eternal life.

Exactly how Jesus gives us the gift of eternal life is answered by him in the following pronouncement. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Reaffirming his divinity by saying “I Am” goes back to Moses’ time when he asked the Lord what name he should use to address him; God stated, “I Am who I Am.”

Jesus affirms that he is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike the manna, which also came from heaven, bread was the precursor to the Eucharist but contained within itself the very life of God. Only when Jesus becomes the bread of life is divinity contained within. If the bread that comes down from heaven is Jesus, and we partake in the meal, then we must agree that the bread (Eucharist) is the source of eternal life because Jesus has a divine nature and defeated death in his human nature by his death and resurrection.

What has been just said is the sticking point in Christianity. Many of our brothers and sisters who believe in the Trinity have a tough time acknowledging that the Eucharist is the body, soul, and divinity of Jesus. Those who doubt contend the Eucharist is nothing more than a symbol of our eternal inheritance and not actual Jesus’ resurrected body. How can this be since Jesus states explicitly that the bread he gives is indeed his flesh for the life of the world?

There is no empirical evidence suggesting that Jesus feeds his people with his body in the form of the Eucharist. In essence, belief in the Eucharist is the epitome of faith. Just as his early listeners could not come to understand what Jesus was teaching them, so too do many find his words hard to believe, even today.

Remember what we suggested before: faith is a process that originates from God and is accepted or discarded. The gift is an invitation to suspend our skepticism and accept that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts nor his ways our ways. If we believe this, why wouldn’t God give his people the gift of the Eucharist?

When we receive the Eucharist in faith and believe it is the Body and Blood of Jesus, we begin to live forever as Jesus told his early disciples. The Eucharist then becomes the pathway by which we already, although not entirely, live in the life of the Trinity. The bread that came down from heaven is God’s eternal expression of his love, which draws us to him more perfectly.  

But first, we must accept God’s gift of faith.