Living at the Table
Passage: John 6:48-58
Last week we considered how to be Christians who live under water, under the water of our baptism. We said as water is essential for physical life so water is essential for spiritual life. We talked about daily living out our baptism by remembering it and by improving it.
This week it is appropriate to consider how to be Christians who live at the table of our Lord. Food and drink are essential for physical life and food and drink are essential for spiritual life.
Some of us don’t really consider how important this meal is and what it signifies. For some of us this may be an empty ritual.
I remember when I was a child and thought like a child, when I would come into church on a Sunday morning with my family and saw the table piled with plates, I would think, “Oh, great, the service is going to be long this morning.”
I didn’t know Jesus, I didn’t understand the things of the spirit. I didn’t know my spiritual need. I was no better than the Jews who didn’t understand what in the world Jesus was talking about.
John 6:48-58, The Bread of Life Discourse of Jesus.
The Gospel of John is the only gospel that does not have an account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper by Jesus in the Upper Room on Passover. But John is the only Gospel writer to give us an account of a major teaching of Jesus about His body and blood as bread and drink.
Jesus makes Himself plain to us by using parables, metaphors, analogies, earthy illustrations of spiritual truth. He often uses things drawn from our life, and not just random things, but things that are very common and important to us.
This discourse comes after Jesus had miraculously fed the five thousand.
They saw a great miracle and they are fixating on the miracle. It makes them think about another great miracle, a greater one really. The feeding not five thousand, but millions, and not once but every day for 40 years. Show us another miracle.
They weren’t looking at the person who did the miracle. They wanted a useful Jesus, a genie in the bottle Jesus, a Jesus who gives them what they want.
Jesus obviously cares about our physical needs after all He fed the five thousand, but Jesus is much more concerned about our spiritual needs.
From the conversations taking place around Him it is clear the people are seeking earthly and perishable food when what they really need is the imperishable Bread of Life that is standing in front of them. The issue is not bread but Jesus.
They ask for bread and Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” Jesus didn’t come to give bread, He came to be bread.