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| The Bread Line -- Grigorij Grigorjewitsch Mjassojedow (1872) |
- 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 and Psalm 130 •
- 1 Kings 19:4-8 and Psalm 34:1-8 •
- Ephesians 4:25-5:2 •
- John 6:35, 41-51
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life”. Taken in isolation,
and stripped of its familiarity, this seems an exceptionally strange utterance.
What can it mean? The Gospel for this Sunday selects a few verses out of a
longer passage which really needs to be read as a whole, since it provides the
context within which this strange claim is to be understood. Earlier in the
chapter, Jesus chastises the people who have been pursuing him. This is the
same crowd of “five thousand” that was miraculously fed from a few loaves and
fishes. Jesus rebukes them because they had seen this, not as a spiritual sign, but as a marvelous source of
free food.
It is against this background that he makes his assertion,
and goes on to contrast the “bread” he has to offer, not just with the free
bread the crowd was seeking, but with the manna that saved the Israelites from
starvation in the wilderness. The key difference, we might say, is between the
means to sustain life, and the source of life itself. It is a deep spiritual
error to mistake the bread our bodies need with the “bread” that “endures to
eternal life”.
This is a mistake that can be made with the best of
intentions. The reference to Jesus as the bread of life is sometimes invoked in
connection with Christian action for the alleviation of poverty and destitution -- as it is with the inclusion of Mjassojedow's picture of 'The Bread Line' in the Vanderbilt Library page for this week of the Lectionary. This is an indisputably worthy cause. Yet, the spiritual life that Jesus offers
is needed by, and available to the poor no less than the prosperous. Wealth is
no guarantee of salvation, everyone agrees. But conversely, being on the breadline is no
insurmountable obstacle to it. Everyone
needs to remember the Mosaic injunction with which Jesus repels the devil –
“Man does not live by bread alone”.
John’s Gospel takes the thought further. There is a quite
different kind of bread for which we ought to hunger, and it is to be found
supremely, and uniquely, in Christ Jesus. Prosperity matters, but not as much as 'the riches of his grace'.
I believe that part of the problem with many who attempt to derive some social ethic from the story of the giving of bread, and other similar gospel accounts, is that the emphasis is placed too heavily on the "bread" and not on the "giving". As long as the poor are physically satisfied, whether through soup kitchens or public policy, there is no more to be done. It seems to me that the worth of these acts derive from their ability to bear witness to the life and character of the source of life.
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