“So Much Better than Day Old Bread”

Over the past month, a lot of churches have been reading through the 6th chapter of John’s Gospel, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about the events of that chapter and how applicable they are for our world today.

In the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John there is this crowd of people who follow Jesus to Capernaum and when they find him Jesus talks with them about the work that God is calling them to do and their response is:

What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?  Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ (John 6:30-31)

Here’s the thing you need to know about this group who is asking Jesus for a sign: they actually aren’t that interested in Jesus performing a sign so that they can be reassured and commit their lives to the Mission of God.  No. They are actually just trying to coax Jesus into giving them a free meal.  

Earlier in John chapter 6, Jesus miraculously feeds 5,000 people, and this group that followed him to Capernaum, the ones asking about manna in the wilderness? They were part of that 5,000!  They are following Jesus around because they want more miraculous bread and they aren’t being at all subtle about your hopes and intentions.  

Sometimes in our walk of faith, we start thinking like this group of people.  We start longing for the day-old bread that God once provided. We look to the past and talk about how great it once was and we try and find ways to get back to it.  In not-so-subtle ways, we’ll ask God to return us to the “miraculous” days of yore.

Here’s the problem with this type of thinking – it focuses on the substance of the miracle and not the one who brought the miracle about.  

When that group asks Jesus for some more bread, Jesus responded by saying “I am the bread of life.”  Jesus was trying to remind the group that the meal they had miraculously experienced wasn’t the point, it was His love and His presence in the world that truly matter.

When we think about the “glory days” or the “mountain top” moments of our faith, or “the way things used to be”, we can get caught in a difficult cycle of dissatisfaction. These moments and memories are important, but only because of what they reveal to us about God.  The loving, ever-present God who authored those glory days and mountain top moments should be our focus.  

If our attention is only on the miraculous moments of the past then we are forgetting Jesus. As we head into a new school year where things are guaranteed to be very different, I pray we can all learn to see the presence of Jesus at this moment and this day. I pray that we don’t fall victim to the temptation of looking for day-old bread when The Bread of Life is still with us and guiding us and blessing us in new ways each morning.