Fr. Stephen De Young:

We’re going to get started in just a moment here. We’ll be starting at the beginning of chapter 6 of the Gospel According to St. John. To get us really quickly caught up, because we were actually at a chapter break and at a break in the text last time, so we don’t need quite as much build up to where we are now as we have when we stop sort of in the middle of things.

We’ve just come to the end of a longer story that involved a confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem after his healing of a paralyzed man, which, as we talked about, you wouldn’t think would get people upset. But because after healing him, he told him to carry his bed home, and he told him to carry his bed on the Sabbath day, that caused a big problem.

And so, Jesus used that as an opportunity to rebuke those Jewish leaders, but not simply to rebuke them in the sense of, “Go away, I don’t care about you,” but to try to reason with them, to try to appeal to them, to try to win them over to the correct understanding. And we made that point that Jesus continues to converse with these people, even these people who want to kill him, like the Pharisees, in the hopes that they will still repent and come to salvation.

And so, at the very end, he concluded that discussion with them. And as we’re going to see, as we pick up here in chapter 6, he has now left Jerusalem and gone back to Galilee. We talked in the past about how in St. John’s Gospel, Jesus goes back and forth and back and forth. In the other three Gospels, in St. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s, they’re structured around just one trip of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem to kind of make the point that he’s on this mission that culminates in the cross and then his resurrection, whereas St. John is kind of taking his time. As we mentioned before, he’s writing last of the four, so the other three gospels already exist, so he can kind of go back and fill in some blanks and take his time and expand on some things that are covered only briefly in the other gospels. And so he presents a more full picture of Jesus’ ministry. And there are actually several… there’s at least a three-year cycle here, there are at least three Passovers involved where Jesus will return to Galilee where he grew up and where most of the disciples are from and then come to Jerusalem usually for feasts, not only Passover, but for other feasts, as we’ll see as we go through.

And so, now he has returned to Galilee, as we pick up in chapter 6 verse 1. Unless anybody has any questions before we start left over from before or just in general? Okay, we’ll go ahead and start chapter 6, verse 1:

After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.

We mentioned before how St. John, because of course he’s writing considerably later, he’s writing probably at least in the 80s, maybe even in the 90s. So, he’s writing several decades later and he’s writing from the area around Ephesus, if not Ephesus itself, which is in Asia Minor, which is now Turkey, he tends to go back and explain things in Judea and Galilee because a lot of the people reading his Gospel haven’t been there. And so he refers to the Sea of Galilee here that he mentions, “Oh, it’s the Sea of Tiberias” because that’s the Roman name. So the people who aren’t from there would know it by the name. Sea of Tiberias is another place where he sort of explains…

Interlocutor: The first Gospel was Mark?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, St. Mark’s Gospel was written first, and that’s according to Saint Irenaeus in the second century, he was a companion of St. Peter in Rome. And so he heard St. Peter’s preaching and the stories he told about Jesus and what had happened in Jesus’ life. And after St. Peter was crucified in Rome, was executed by Nero, St. Mark went to Alexandria in Egypt and worked in the church there and wrote down what St. Peter had told him about Christ. And that’s what became St. Mark’s Gospel. That was in the 60s. So, St. Mark’s Gospel is probably written… St. Peter was executed around 64, so most people think St. Mark’s Gospel is written around 68 or 69, a few years later.

Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased.

And notice again, this for St. John is an important word, this word sign. He doesn’t use the word “miracle”. He talks about signs. And he’s picking up on two things there. He’s picking up on the language that was used in the Torah, in the Pentateuch, particularly in the Book of Numbers that talks about the signs that God did in the wilderness through Moses. So he’s picking up on that language, but also he’s pointing out that Jesus’ miracles weren’t just sort of displays of power, sort of, “Oh, look at the neat things Jesus could do”, but that they signified something, or should have to the people who saw them. Namely that Jesus was the Messiah. He’s the Christ. And that now that he’s here, sort of this new, this new thing is happening, this new work of God is happening.

And that sort of parallels, we’re going to see this as we get toward the end of St John’s Gospel. He’s going to sort of put in parallel Christ’s death and resurrection and the Passover. The Passover, as the Israelites came out of Egypt, was sort of the big display of God’s power in the Old Testament. And so now he’s going to say, now this is a new and even greater display of God’s power and who he is.

And so, when Jesus is healing people, he’s not just healing people to be kind to them, he is being kind and compassionate to them by healing their sicknesses and their injuries, but he’s also doing it as a sign that now he has come into the world and that he is the Messiah, and now things are going to change.

And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.

This is parallel to what happens in St Matthew’s Gospel, beginning in chapter 5, where Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount that begins with the Beatitudes. Here Jesus sits, and St. John doesn’t give us the sermon.

Interlocutor: What mountain is this?

Fr. Stephen: It’s not specified in any of the Gospels. And the word here that translated mountain… I mean, we think of mountain… this may have just been sort of a hill or a ridge or just a higher point. If you’ve got a big crowd, a huge crowd, and you don’t have amplification and you need to get a little higher up so that you could speak to them. And so they didn’t build stages, like we do, or a podium, but so you go up onto a rise.

But yes, St John doesn’t record the Sermon, but he doesn’t have to, because St Matthew already has by this time.

Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near.

And so this explains probably why there are these big crowds. They’re probably getting ready to travel to Jerusalem and so they’ve sort of stopped by to see what Jesus has to say.

Interlocutor: So this is a group of pilgrims so to speak?

Fr. Stephen: Right, who were intending to go from Galilee down to Jerusalem, but they sort of stopped to hear what Jesus has to say on the way.

Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?”  But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.

This is another thing St John does a lot, is he’ll sort of give us these little editorial comments just to clarify for us, lest you think Jesus really doesn’t know how these people are going to be fed. No, he’s saying this to Philip to sort of see what Philip will say, to gauge Philip’s understanding, because the disciples have had front row seats for all the signs that Jesus has been doing. So if anybody gets it, who Jesus is and what he’s doing, it ought to be them.

Interlocutor: But it usually isn’t.

Fr. Stephen: It usually isn’t, [Laughter] but it ought to be them. So Jesus asked him this, “Hey, where are we going to get food for all these people?”

Philip answered Him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little.”

Philip answered him, 200 Denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may have a little a denarius. And denarii is the plural, a denarius was the regular pay for unskilled labor for a day’s work, one denarius. So if you were a farm hand or day laborer who did whatever, you would get paid one denarius a day, sort of the equivalent of minimum wage at the time. So you say 200, almost a year’s work, 200 denarius worth of bread wouldn’t be enough to give each one of these people. That’s how big this crowd is, right? If we just give them a little shred, it costs more than 200 denarii, which obviously is money Jesus and the disciples do not have. So if Phillip was being tested, did he just pass or fail?

Interlocutor: He flunked.

Fr. Stephen: He just failed, right? “I don’t know, we don’t have that kind of money, Jesus, what are we going to do?”

One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?”

So Andrew gets maybe a D. [Laughter] He tries to make a helpful suggestion. “Well, there’s this kid here who brought a sack lunch, he’s got five loaves of bread and a couple of small fish, but I don’t think that’s going to go around. That’s not much food.”

Then Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand.

Now the reason they’re telling us how many men there were, is at this time men are the head of the household. So saying 5000 men, specifying men there, means it’s not really saying 5000 people, it’s saying 5000 families. Right? So it’s not just 5000 people, it’s 5000 families. So you got to figure with women and children, there’s probably 10 or 12,000 people here who need to be fed.

And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.

So there’s a couple of things here. Jesus gives thanks beforehand, and that language is important. It’s literally, in Greek, the verb there is, and this isn’t pronounced correctly for Greek, but so you’ll get the point. It’s eucharistasos, is the word eucharist that we use to give thanks. So Jesus gives thanks, which is the same language that we use, that Jesus gave thanks and took bread and broke it. He gives thanks first and then he doesn’t give it directly to the people, he gives it to the disciples and has the disciples go and give it to the people.

Interlocutor: He’s foreshadowing the church.

Fr. Stephen: Right. And we’ll see as we go forward to this chapter, it’s going to become even more clear than what he’s talking about. But so he feeds the people through his disciples. He does the sign through the disciples. And notice also that they don’t just go and give everybody a little piece. “We need to make this go rip off a tiny little okay, that’s yours and that’s yours”, right? Everybody gets as much as they want.

So when they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost.”

So he says, “Go and get all the leftovers, collect them together, we don’t want to waste any food.” And so they go and gather up all the fragments.

Therefore they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten.

So they collect that. Now we don’t hear that there’s any pieces of fish left, but from the five loaves there’s twelve baskets of bread left over. You’re supposed to see the irony. There’s more bread leftover than there was originally. On top of all these thousands of people being full.

Then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, “This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.”

Once again, this is a sign, or should be.

Interlocutor: They mean something very specific, right?

Fr. Stephen: Right. Because it’s the prophet, not this is a prophet. Surely this is a prophet because he did this miracle, right? That’s what they say. Surely this is the prophet. The prophet is referring to the prophecy at the end of Deuteronomy, which says that God is going to send them a prophet like Moses who will lead the people. So this is the prophecy of the Messiah. So even though the disciples kind of flunk the test, the people there who just got fed look and say, “This has to be the Messiah, this has to be, because we’ve never seen anything like this.” This is surely a sign, the people being fed.

Now there’s more symbolism here, but some of that’s going to be explained later in the chapter. So I’m going to postpone that discussion until we get there.

Interlocutor: But there’s something I’ve heard countless times, even from Protestant pulpits, that drives me crazy and that’s when they say, “Well, actually everybody had a little food with us and so they shared.” And then because the people were nice and shared, there was plenty for everybody and I just want to shake them because this is so clearly not the point. And it’s trying to turn the story into something the story is not.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, it was very popular, especially in the 18th and early 19th centuries, to try to come up with sort of explanations for miracles. I never really understood the point, because if it wasn’t a miracle, why don’t you just say it didn’t happen? If that’s what happened, if everybody shared their bread, why is that worth remembering or recording?

And we’re going to see Jesus walking on water here in a minute. And their explanation for that is, there was a sandbar, [Laughter] going out into the Sea of Galilee. The disciples couldn’t see it, but Jesus walked out on a sandbar. Again, if Jesus walked out on a sandbar, why is the story important? You might as well just say, okay, it didn’t happen, at that point, if you don’t believe it, but especially here with St. John’s telling of this story, that explanation might work with the way St. Matthew or St. Luke tells it. But the way St. John tells it, if they just all shared their food, if they all secretly had this food that they didn’t want to share and then ended up sharing it with everybody, why would they conclude from that that Jesus was the Messiah, right? “Well, I shared my food, and so everyone had enough. He must be the Messiah.” Because we don’t even see Jesus suggesting that, right? Jesus didn’t tell them to share? And even if he had, would that be enough to convince you that this was the King of Israel who’s going to deliver the people because he said you should share?

So, yeah, that doesn’t really work. In order to give an explanation like that, you have to deny so much of the text that you might as well just deny the whole thing at that point.

Interlocutor: The underlying denial is that anything supernatural can’t happen. And if you’re… as I say, I’ve heard it from Protestant pulpits. If you’re in a church pulpit with that assumption, why are you there?

Fr. Stephen: Well, yeah, if there’s nothing supernatural about Jesus, if Jesus isn’t God, if he was just a Mediterranean peasant who told people to share and love each other, he’s not really a relevant figure. I can show you lots of Greeks and Romans and Chinese philosophers and people all over the world who said, “share and love one another”, who are just human beings who lived and died. There’s no meaning or point at that point, if you reject that. And you especially lose, again for St. John, these are all signs. They’re not just miracles, they’re not just supernatural happenings. They’re always at this interesting, but these are signs of who Jesus is and what he is doing.

Interlocutor: And in this case, as Peter was pointing out, this is also a foretaste or foretelling of the Eucharist.

Fr. Stephen: Right. Which is part of the explanation we’re going to get into a little here, a little later in the chapter.

Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone.

So Jesus again, for St. John, can always tell exactly what’s going on because he knows who these people are and he knows their hearts, and he says, okay, they’ve come to the right conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah, but they have a wrong idea of who the Messiah is, remember, they think he’s this political figure who’s going to overthrow the Romans. “They’re on their way to Jerusalem. They’re going to grab onto me and hoist me up and take me there and try and start a revolution against the Romans.” And that’s not why Jesus is there. And so he departs, steps away, goes further up the mountain, over the ridge to be by himself, to let the people kind of disperse and go on their way.

Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum.

So they’re sailing back home.

And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them.  Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing. So when they had rowed about three or four miles,

So the idea here is there’s heavy winds, so there’s waves. This is why we hear about them rowing. So they’re kind of frantically rowing to try and move forward against the wind and against the waves. They managed to go 3 or 4 miles.

They saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid.

As one might be, if you saw someone walking towards you across. Right? And this isn’t just, again with our sandbar or surface tension… the point is there’s a storm going on. The seas are choppy, there’s waves, right? And it’s night, it’s dark. It’s not just that Jesus is walking across water. This isn’t placid. This isn’t your swimming pool. This is choppy seas, and he’s moving toward them. And part of this that we have to understand is the significance that water had in the Middle East, not just at this time, but for centuries beforehand. We tend to think of, well, maybe here, because water was not only… for the most part as modern people, we think about water as for cleansing, washing. Water gives life because we need to drink it. We have these positive connotations with water.

But for most of the cultures of the ancient Near East, water was scary and deadly, especially when you had large quantities, because they experienced flooding on a regular basis, they’re still at the beginning of making boats and ships. So the sea in particular is very scary. We hear about, like we’ll hear about in the Book of Acts, St. Paul sailing to these different destinations. But at this point in history and for some time afterwards, they never went more than about a mile away from shore. They sailed along the shoreline because if you tried to sail out, people never came back, and they still experienced… St. Paul, we’ll see later, he was shipwrecked multiple times, even sailing like that. So being a sailor was a very dangerous enterprise. Lots of people were lost at sea. And so when you look at the mythology, like ancient Babylonian mythology and Canaanite mythology, they usually involve some kind of god or demonic type spirit of the sea. For example, Yom, which is the word for “sea”, is in Canaanite mythology, this sort of demonic, evil god that gets conquered and defeated by the good gods, sort of this monster. Same thing in Babylonian mythology, the sea is a dragon that has to get killed. So, the sea sort of represented to them chaos, destruction, these kind of dark.

And so that’s why we’ll see at the end of the Book of Revelation, St. John makes this comment that in the new heavens and the new Earth, there is no sea. And you think, well, why? Why wouldn’t there be a nice ocean with a beach? Well, what he’s saying is there’s no chaos, there’s no evil in the new heavens of the new Earth. Everything is…

Interlocutor: I’ve read that the root of this in the ancient Near Eastern culture was that there was no swimming. They did not have no any such thing, because they figured if you were in the water, you were going to drown. So that was bad, right? And there are Assyrian warriors who used inflated bladders to float. You can see them carved on slabs in the British Museum. But this was a specialized warrior group that had to have inflated bladders.

Fr. Stephen: And they were seen as exceedingly brave to do that. And if you look at, like in the Persian wars, the Greek boats were essentially just these flat sort of barges that a bunch of their soldiers would be standing on, and they sort of sail up next to an enemy boat, try and climb on and fight, but it’s still a very dangerous proposition because somebody sinks your boat, that’s about it.

But yeah, so we have to keep that in mind. So when they talk about Jesus is not just on the sea, but on a stormy sea, Jesus is just sort of strolling, right? He’s not walking. He’s just sort of strolling out to their boat. This is a much clearer sign to them of who Jesus is. And it goes beyond just the Messiah. This is why they’re afraid, because in all of those mythologies and even in, I mean, you even find this in, like, the Book of Job in some of the imagery, it’s only God who has the power to control the sea and has dominion over the sea and everything in it.

And so, they ought to get the point. But this is why this is such a stunning thing to them. It’s not just, again, like a neat magic trick “Oh, wow, you could walk on water.” But this is this display of even sort of the worst of creation can’t phase Jesus and who he is and what he’s doing.

Interlocutor: I have a trivial question that’s always nagged at me on this passage and that is why did they go off and leave Jesus to begin with?

Interlocutor: Well, they were trying to get home because it was dark. And Jesus, we’re told, went off by himself here. We’ve already been told at least one other time in St. John’s Gospel that he went off by himself to pray. And it mentions Jesus had not sort of caught up to them yet. So it seems that this is just something Jesus would do from time to time, is go off by himself to pray or to be by himself. And so they had sort of accepted this and so they said, “Well, it’s getting dark, time to head home,” expecting Jesus to sort of catch up with them, just not in this particular way, to come out to them on the water. So they see Jesus and they’re afraid.

But He said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.

So there’s this picture that they managed to go up here for a mile and rowing and rowing. As soon as Jesus gets into the boat, they’re where they need to go because again, the sea can’t hinder Jesus and his mission.

Interlocutor: How wide is the Sea of Galilee?

Fr. Stephen: It is… if you have an Orthodox Study Bible, I think there’s a map in the back that shows it’s about… I mean, the long way it’s about 10 miles, and the other way it’s about eight. So if they’ve gone three or 4 miles, they’re sort of smack in the middle. This is the idea in the middle of a storm, which is not where you want to be.

Interlocutor: This doesn’t have Peter walking.

Fr. Stephen: No, not in St. John’s.

Interlocutor: Which Gospel is that?

Fr. Stephen: St. Mark’s. And that’s one of the we have testimony from outside the scriptures that St. Mark was speaking for St. Peter. But once you know that when you read St. Mark’s gospel, you see all these little things with St. Peter that pop up in his Gospel and not in other places. And you say, “Okay, well, that’s where St. Mark got that was from St. Peter,” who would have known firsthand, about the things that involved him and went out of his way, apparently based on St. Mark’s gospel, to not make himself look very good because St. Peter comes off I mean, the disciples in all four gospels come off looking pretty bad. Not very swift and not catching on very well, but especially St. Peter in St. Mark’s Gospel, he really seems to have emphasized the fact that he didn’t get it… in is humility, his preaching.

On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except that one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone.

So the big crowd that was there basically sees oh, Jesus is gone. Because the sun rises the next morning, it’s light out, and see Jesus is gone. But the disciples took off first. And then St. John adds:

however, other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks, when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.

So, all this is to say, they woke up, Jesus and the disciples aren’t there. They figured out, “Oh, they must have taken the boat back to Capernaum because we heard that’s where they’re from.” And so they decide they get on boats and they all follow Jesus up to Capernaum, which, notice, is the opposite direction from where they were originally going, right? They divert. And this is why, this is because based on this sign that they saw, they decided Jesus is the Messiah. And that’s a hotter ticket than going to Jerusalem for Passover. That’s a more important thing that we need to go and find out about.

And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?”

Because they had the impression that the disciples had taken off without him, right? But then when they get to Capernaum, well, there’s Jesus. So they say to him, “Rabbi, teacher, when did you get here? How did you get here ahead of us?”

Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”

So he’s saying to them, is now, eating the loaves were the sign, but his point is it’s not that you understood what I was doing and so you came here to find me.

Interlocutor: They’re looking for another meal.

Fr. Stephen: Right. It’s just I fed you when you were hungry, you got full.  You thought that was great, and so now you’re here.

“Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

This is similar, remember to what he said to St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well about the water. You shouldn’t be worried about this water, you should be worried about the living water which I can give you the same kind of thing. You labor, you work every day to get enough food to eat. You should be more focused on laboring to get the bread that will give you eternal life. That’s what you should be more concerned about working towards.

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

So they at least partially understand. They say, “Okay, we should work to get eternal life with God. Okay, that sounds good. So what should we do in order to work for that?”

Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

So the way, again, that you receive eternal life in St. John’s Gospel is by believing in Jesus as the Messiah whom he sent. And remember we talked about that word, believe is sort of a deeper word than the way we use it today. We use believe today, someone tells you something and you say, oh, yeah, I think that’s true. And that’s believing, right? That’s not what belief means. The word belief entails several things. One of the most important ones is trust or reliance. Meaning I’m not relying on myself and my own devices. I’m not relying on some other God. I’m not relying on some kind of superstition. I’m not relying on this or that or the other. I’m not relying on the fact that I’ve kept all the Pharisees’ rules. I’m not relying on any of those things, but I’m relying on Jesus. Here we have a very concrete way. I’m not relying on my own work and my own effort to get food for my stomach, but I’m relying on Christ to feed my soul, For my life, for my wellbeing.

Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do?”

They were doing okay for a minute. But then they said, “Okay, well, if you want us to trust you, you want us to depend on you. You want us to believe that you’re the one who God said, well, what you got? Let’s see something now.” Apparently feeding 10- or 12,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. That was yesterday, that’s old hat. We’ve already seen that, right?

Remember, I mean, when Moses, when he went to Pharaoh, God gave him these signs to do. He threw down his staff, and it turned into a snake, and he put his hand in and came out with leprosy, put it in again and it didn’t come out with leprosy, gave him these signs to show that Moses from God. Like, “Okay, Jesus, you say you come from God. Yeah, show us something. What you got?” They even give a suggestion now.

“Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

As I mentioned, this language of sign is used particularly in the book of Numbers in the wilderness. I remember the manna they’re referring to manna. Literally means in Hebrew, what is it, ma-nah, it’s “What’s this”? Because they weren’t sure exactly what it was, but it was this white bread-like substance that came down every morning and they collected it and ate it. “What-cha-ma-call-it, stuff”. And if they tried to keep it for the next day, remember, it rotted instantly. They got enough. They got what they needed each day except for on Friday. On Friday, they got twice as much, and they were able to save some for the Sabbath so they wouldn’t have to go out and work and collect it on the Sabbath. And God just provided for them every day. And they had to trust, right? They had a trust that was going to be there the next morning because they couldn’t take extra. So they say, “Well, look, Moses, we know Moses came from God because Moses fed them out in the wilderness.” So, as you already mentioned, they’re looking for another meal now, right? Like, “Okay, you fed us yesterday, bring us some bread out of the sky now and we’ll buy into it. We’ll accept that you’re the Messiah.”

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.”

So first of all, he says, “Wait a second, we have to qualify here. That wasn’t Moses’ doing. Moses didn’t have the power to bring bread out of the sky. That wasn’t some ability Moses had. That meant you should follow Moses.” It’s God who provides for them. If they’re putting their faith in Moses, they’re putting it in the wrong place.

“For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

So he’s saying, “Look, you want me to bring bread from heaven? God’s already sent you something better from heaven, namely, Jesus Christ himself has come into the world. I’ve come into the world, and rather than seeing me and understanding who I am, you want me to make bread appear. And then you’ll have faith, supposedly?” So there’s a huge misunderstanding here. There’s a huge misunderstanding here.

But again, it’s very easy for us to look at these people and sort of laugh, right? “Dummies, they want bread and they’ve got Jesus.” But how often when we pray is our prayers basically a list of demands? “God, here’s all the things I want, right? Please protect me from this. Please make sure this doesn’t happen, and please make sure I get some money. Here’s all the things I need, God, as if you don’t know, we’re going to list these all out for you. And then if I don’t get them all, I’m going to say, well, ‘God isn’t answering my prayers and God isn’t listening to me,’” right? And that’s essentially the attitude that they’re showing. God is offering them Himself, and they’d rather have stuff. And all too often, we take the same attitude God offers us himself, and we respond by saying, “Well, okay, yeah, it’s nice to know you, God, but I’d really like a new car, and I’d really like to pass this exam, I didn’t study for. I’d really like, XYZ, ABC.”

Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”

So again, we’ve seen this theme in St. John’s Gospel, where Jesus tries to tell you and they sort of don’t get it. Remember St. Photini, the woman at the well? He said, I can give you water and you wouldn’t have to come back to here. She says, “Well, hey, give me that water. That sounds good. I don’t want to have to come draw from the well.” And remember, Nicodemus, Jesus says to him, “You need to be born again or born from above.” And he says, “What, I’m supposed to crawl back into my mother’s womb?” The same understanding, right? “Yeah, we’ll take some bread from heaven!”

Interlocutor: Always, a steady supply.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, just like the manna, right there every morning. We don’t want to have to go out and work and make money and then go buy bread. I mean, forget that noise. Just, you know, just give it to us.

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.  But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

We’ll pause there for a second. So Jesus tries to make it very clear. He says, “I am the bread of life, and I’m talking about myself. I’m not talking about literal bread, folks, talking about myself.” And so because Jesus is the bread of life, the one who has Christ, he’s not saying, you can stop eating and drinking if you have Christ, but he’s saying, if you have Christ and you put your trust in Christ, these other things will be taken care of. Because, remember, that’s what he told them originally. What he told them originally is what you need to do, if you want eternal life, is believe. Trust in me. This is what he’s continuing to try to get them to understand. And then he repeats what he said before that, “You have seen me, and yet do not believe.” Because they came to Him, not because they understood who he was based on the sign. They came to Him because they got hungry again after getting a nice full belly yesterday with all the bread and fish they could eat, and now they want more.

He says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out” Now, what does that mean? Who are the people then, who the Father gives Him? We’ve talked about this before in St. John’s Gospel that for St. John, whether you recognize Jesus or not, understand who he is, is based on the condition of your heart. So the people who have been following God, people who have been trusting in God and the people who, as we saw a lot of Jesus original disciples, the people who went out to see St. John the Forerunner and were repenting of their sins and being baptized, these people who have been following God, already, they’re already followers of God, all become followers of Jesus because when they encounter him, they recognize Him. So these are the people he’s talking about. Those people who have been following God. He is given now to Christ. He has given to Christ, to follow Christ. He’s saying, “So all of those people, all of the people who truly know God, who are truly following God are going to come to me.” And he says, “Anyone who comes to me, I’m not going to send them away.”

Which is important because lots of people would come to the Pharisees and get sent away. Lots of people would try to come to the temple and get sent away because they were sinners, they were this, they were that. And so the attitude of the Pharisees and the temple authorities at this time was, “You fix yourself and you become righteous and you go through all the rituals and then you’re worthy to come and approach God.” Whereas what Christ is saying is, “No, the people who are longing after God, following God, are going to come to me and I’m not going to send them away because coming to me is what’s going to feed them.”

Interlocutor: And they may be very imperfect people like St. Photini was.

Fr. Stephen: Right. And by coming to me, that’s what’s going to be then transformative. It wasn’t up to St. Photini to become a saint first and then come to Jesus. It’s by coming to Jesus as the person who she was that she becomes a saint.

Interlocutor: But there’s something in her that enables her to recognize Him. A longing for God, I think you said. So those who are hungry for God will recognize Jesus and come to him whether they have been righteous fully or not.

Fr. Stephen: Right. And pretty much they all have not. Everyone has not. Remember part of the problem with the Pharisees the Pharisees don’t go to St. John the Forerunner for baptism. Why? Because they don’t think they have anything to repent of. They don’t need forgiveness of sins. They’re not sinners. So they don’t need to, in their minds.

Interlocutor: My wife had an aunt like that actually claimed never to have done anything wrong.

Fr. Stephen: Well, there you go.

Interlocutor: Her son became an alcoholic.

Fr. Stephen: Well, that was one of those dangerous things. Every once in a while, you’d see some preacher who would be giving some sermon about sin, and they’d run through a whole list of sins. And then to try and make a point, they’d say, “Is there anybody here who’s never done any of those things?” There’s always somebody who raises their hand, even if they’re just being a smart aleck. So never do that.

But these people are here, what Jesus is saying to them is he’s going deeper into the… “You’re here to get a full belly. You’re not here really understanding who I am. You’re not really here to draw close to God. You’re not really here to draw close to me, to change your life, to repent, to doing these things. You’re just looking for another free meal in perpetuity if you can get it.”

He says, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

This is connected to why the Father is giving Him these people. Remember, he pointed out already, it wasn’t Moses who brought bread down from the sky where you should be following Moses. He’s saying, I’m not here to exalt myself. Jesus has come, why? To reveal who God is. He is God. To reveal who He, The Father, the Holy Spirit. To reveal God to the world and to bring the world to God. That’s why Jesus is here. And so that’s why the people who have been following Father are going to follow Him, because he’s doing the Father’s will. You can’t separate the two. He’s going to go into more detail about this later, because he’s going to talk to another group of Jews who are going to say to him, “Well, we’re following God. We don’t know who you are.” Right? And he says, “It doesn’t work that way. If you don’t know who I am, then you don’t know who God is.” You can’t… It’s not possible to separate the two. So he says he’s come to do the will of the Father. And then he continues:

“that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.”

So this is again, not only will he not send someone away who comes to Him, but someone who comes to Him… Remember, the issue is that they’re to trust in Him, there’s to rely on Him. And he’s saying, “I not only won’t turn you away, but if you come to me, you will be mine until the end of time.” And when the end of time comes, I’ll raise you up, meaning both from the dead and the idea of reward, the idea of, you know, and so if you trusted me, you won’t have anything to be afraid of, not just hunger and thirst, but anything else.

“And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

So now he ties it all together. If you see me, not just physically, you walk up and look at me, but you see Jesus for who he is and you believe in Him and put your trust and your reliance in Him, then you will have life that will not end. He will raise you up on the last day.