![[Graphic of the bread of life]](https://www.deankwilson.com/Blog_images/bread_of_life.jpg)
| Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” |
| —John 6:35 |
As you read this blog post, if you happen to be someone who regularly attends church, you will have encountered the sacrament of the Christian faith that we call the Eucharist or Holy Communion. Your particular church may celebrate this sacrament every time the believers gather for worship. Or, in your particular church, you may celebrate the sacrament once each month or on other special occasions. Whatever practice your church employs, you have likely become quite familiar with this sacrament.
Our dearly loved brothers and sisters, who worship Christ in the Roman Catholic tradition, believe that the elements of the Eucharist—the bread and the wine—become miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Almost every other Christian tradition has come to believe that the elements of communion represent Christ’s body and blood in an actual spiritual sense, but do not believe that a literal, actual transformation takes place upon the consecration of the elements. Whatever Christian tradition to which an individual may belong, the concept of partaking of a sacramental element that joins us to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ becomes a very precious and important part of our walk of faith.
To grasp the entire context of the verse at the beginning of this blog post, it seems helpful to understand that the event follows the occasion where Jesus fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes given by a young boy from the lunch his mother had packed for him. Let’s carefully read and meditate on the entire passage of Scripture from which this verse is taken:
On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.
When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever 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 whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 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. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.
“As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
Because before the foundation of the earth God has called us to belong to Himself, so we have the great privilege of partaking the sacrament of Holy Communion or the Eucharist. How blessed we are to have this opportunity to remember the life, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of our blessed Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of God the Father, making intercession for us. And, who has given us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us as our guide along the pathway that God has laid out before us.
Come, dear ones, let us worship and adore the God who loves us with His everlasting love.
