I once served a church in the mountains of North Carolina, where one of the older men always greeted me the same way. His standard salutation was not “How are you?” or “How’s it going?” or any of the more common pleasantries we use. Instead, he always said “Gettin’ enough to eat?” The gentleman had grown up poor and lived through the depression, when finding food enough to survive could be a day’s work. For him, as long as you were getting enough to eat, anything else was gravy.

Most of us have never thought about life in that way. Although we know that serious hunger exists in some parts of the world, food is so available to us that we’re more concerned with how to eat less than with how to get more. [DD] [DD]

The people who study eating disorders – whether the issue involves overeating or under-eating – understand that we have a tendency to use food as a means of comforting ourselves or subconsciously dealing with parts of our lives that are out of our control. We may eat to console ourselves after a hard day, or even to please somebody else. We may eat to feed hungers that have nothing to do with our stomachs: loneliness, disappointment, pain.

There are many reasons why we may choose to eat too much or too little, but ultimately, all of us have to eat in order to survive. Our bodies need fuel in order to operate, and if we don’t provide the fuel, the bodies will stop working.

That truth applies to our spiritual lives as well as to our physical lives. If we want to overcome our deep internal emptiness and enjoy spiritual health, we have to feed our souls – and with something more than “soul food” like fried chicken, collards, and cornbread.
Somewhere along the way, we need to find some real soul food. Maybe that’s why we like to recall Jesus’ description of himself as the bread of life.

Hungry people (vv. 22-24)

That brings us to our text for today. It’s a narrative account of a conversation between Jesus and some of his would-be followers. It follows John’s account of how Jesus fed five thousand men and even more women and children by means of a miracle that began with only five little loaves of bread and two pickled fish.

After the meal, Jesus and his disciples disappeared, and it was too dark to go looking for them. The next morning, some members of the crowd walked down to the Sea of Galilee and saw skid marks on the shore. They surmised that Jesus and the twelve had left by boat and guessed that their most likely destination was the fishing village of Capernaum, on the northwest coast of the sea, known to be home base for several of the disciples.

John says there happened to be some other boats present that had come across from the city of Tiberias, on the western side of the sea, and many in the crowds persuaded the sailors to ferry them over to Capernaum in search of Jesus. In time, they found him there, apparently teaching in the synagogue (vv. 24, 59). [DD]

Misguided questions (vv. 25-31)

The people’s first question was probably a roundabout way of expressing curiosity about how Jesus had gotten away from them the evening before. They asked, “When did you come here?” Jesus saw through the vacuity of the question and recognized that many had come to see another miracle, or to seek a free lunch (v. 26).

Jesus challenged them to focus on their souls instead of their stomachs, to seek the kind of spiritual food that lasts. Jesus had fed the multitude once because he had compassion on them, but he wasn’t interested in becoming a traveling cafeteria manager. He recognized their many needs: not just hunger, but also loneliness and insecurity. They needed more than a satisfied stomach. Jesus wanted to fill their souls with a more meaningful life (v. 27), and he knew that the only place they could find that kind of soul food was in him.

So, Jesus said “Work for the food that lasts,” and we can imagine the people saying “Okay, and how do we do that? What must we do to work the works of God?” (v. 28). And Jesus said “Believe in me. This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v. 29).

You’d think the crowd might have been happy to hear those words, but they were apparently obtuse, obstreperous, obstinate people – in other words, people like us – and even though they had just experienced an incredible miracle by eating loaves and fish that Jesus had multiplied, they responded by asking for another miracle.

“What sign are you going to give us then,” they asked, “so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?” (v. 30).

What sign? If Jesus wanted them to believe, they apparently wanted Jesus to convince them that he was worthy of their belief. Could he give them bread from heaven, as Moses did in the wilderness? Someone offered a mangled proof-text from Psalm 78:24: “As it is written,” they said, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” [DD] The wandering Israelites had eaten manna for years, but Jesus had only fed the crowd once. “Moses gave us bread from heaven,” they claimed. “What are you going to give us?”

The people were so hung up on the material side of things that they couldn’t see the spiritual significance. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw in which a teacher was standing before his Sunday School class, which was evidently studying the story about the gift of manna. In the cartoon, the teacher looked a little frustrated as he answered a question from the class: “No, Mary Beth, the Bible doesn’t say how many calories there were in a serving of manna.”

Everlasting bread (vv. 32-35)

Jesus responded with two statements. The first was a simple reminder that it wasn’t Moses who had provided bread from heaven, but God. They needed to get that straight from the get-go. It was God who had provided manna in the wilderness, and it was God who would give them the true bread, “that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (vv. 32-33).

Did the people still not get it? Were they still looking for a permanent meal ticket? “Sir,” they said, “give us this bread always” (v. 34). But Jesus was not talking about biscuits, pitas, tortillas, matzah, bread sticks, white bread, brown bread, corn bread, gluten-free bread, or homemade yeast bread.

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus said. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (v. 35). This is the first of seven “I am” statements that the Fourth Gospel attributed to Jesus. [DD]

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus said. But did the people get it? It appears that many in the crowd were standing there with their hands out rather than with their hearts open. They understood bread made from flour and water. The notion of bread made from flesh and blood made no sense to them.

In essence, Jesus said “You want bread? You want life? Here I am!” But he lost them. There may have been a few who caught the vision and followed Jesus for Jesus’ sake, but there were many others who were more interested in a free lunch than a fulfilled life. And they left hungry.

The story leads us to ask, of course, if our own spiritual quest is still leaving us hungry, or if we have found the true source of life that lasts. The congregation that came to Jesus in this story went to a lot of trouble to find him and sit at his feet, even as we go to some trouble to get up and clean up and drive up on Sunday morning to be a part of worship in our local churches.

That congregation came hungry – they came looking for something. And, so do we. The question is: what are we looking for? What kind of hunger are we seeking to fill when we come to church?

Many people come to church looking for friends, people who know their names and miss them when they’re gone. Church is a great place to make friends, if we’re willing to put forth the effort to be a friend ourselves. But if we come to church in search of someone to join our car pool and fail to discover what a friend we have in Jesus, we are missing out on the main reason for being here.

Many people come to church looking for someone to teach their children about God, and that is certainly a worthy goal. But, if we come looking for a Sunday School teacher and fail to hear the words of the ultimate Teacher, we’ve missed the point.

Many of us do come to church wanting to be spiritually fed. We sense a certain emptiness within, and we have learned that worship with our sisters and brothers helps to put us in touch with the One who is the bread of life that comes down from heaven.

Those who are spiritually mature know that when we come to be fed, we must come with our hearts open rather than with our hands out. We come knowing that the presence of Christ is most real and our life with Christ is most meaningful when we are serving rather than being served. We come knowing that as we feed others with our friendship and our teaching gifts, with our administrative abilities and our faithful tithes, we are also being fed with the bread of life that endures forever, and yet is eternally fresh. That’s real soul food.