John 6:24-35

This passage occurs in the RCL "Pentecost"/"Ordinary"/"Proper" Season, Year B, most recently Summer of 2015.
 
Summary:  The reader of John's Gospel should find little surprising in this passage. Jesus brings together lots of themes and words he has used before.  One could bridge "sending away and staying" or "seeking and finding" in some neat ways.  The granddaddy phrase though is that faith is a "work of God"; we must return to Greek 101 for some translation help here.

Two word pairs very common in John's Gospel
Seek and find [ζητουντες & ευροντες (seek and find; 25 and 24)]  From the very beginning of John's Gospel to the end, Jesus asks people what they are seeking (including even Mary Magdalene after the resurrection).  Jesus is constantly being sought too.  (If you look up the word, it appears nearly every chapter).  Likewise, people are finding Jesus (Nathaniel in John 1 and Peter finding fish and discovering Jesus in John 21).  Yet Jesus is also good at avoiding detection.  Always sought; sometimes found.

I have not explored this fully, but I think one could argue, quite well, that Jesus only is found when he chooses to let himself be found, when he takes the first step, for example, by calling the disciple's name.

Send away and stay [αποστειλεν (from αποστελλω, "send" 29) and μενω ("abides", 27)]  One cannot say enough about the importance of these two concepts in John's Gospel.  We could put them together and say that in Jesus Christ, we will be still yet conquer the world.  This is a powerful image of a Christian, one who is moved yet finally unmovable in the core.  Sermonize away...

destroy vs life [απολλυμενην (participle form of απολλυμι, meaning "destroy" or "perish", 27) and ζωη (life).]  απολλυμι is a strong word used in the Bible at key points.  Jesus says if you want to gain your life, you must "lose" it; Paul says that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.  While John's Gospel does not focus on the word destruction, it certainly puts forward a strong motif of "life."  The whole of John's Gospel (and New Testament) is a strong contrast between life in and outside of Jesus.

Present tense:  Just a note that so many of the verbs in this passage are in the present tense:  

• My Father gives (continually) the true bread from heaven
• This is the work of God, that you are believing (continually) in the whom he has sent. 
• The bread from God (continually) comes down from heaven...
  

The point Jesus is making is that this is not pie in the sky, but bread on earth, as heaven enters into our reality!  Always.  Continually.

Grammar review:  subjective genitive
το εργον του θεου (29)
We could translate this genitive in a number of ways:  "The work done by God" or "the work which belongs to God" or "the work which is offered to God."   You could probably squeeze most theological arguments into how we understand faith -- is it a work for God or a work from God.  I vote with the later one generally, and definitely in this case, where the whole emphasis is on Jesus, the true bread, coming from God.

Grammar review: ου μη
ου μη  (35)
This is the strongest denial possible in Greek.

John 6:1-21

This passage occurs in the RCL "Pentecost"/"Ordinary"/"Proper" Season, Year B, most recently Summer of 2021, for July 25, 2021.
 
Summary: 
John 6 is vital for understanding the ministry of Jesus and the church.  First, Jesus' work builds on the Old Testament.  With this story, Jesus revisits the Passover.  Yet Jesus renews and redirects the OT tradition.  In the case, Jesus presents himself as the one who provides the bread.  The Gospel message is not found simply by making this academic comparison, but by driving it home toward proclamation: God provides, he becomes the Passover lamb, taking away the sin of the world, for you...even when all you felt like was a wasted fragment.

Links to Passover:
The key to this passage, I offer, is John 6:4, where we learn the Passover is near.  Further links to the Passover:
*The last verse of chapter 5 also references Moses and people not listening to him (whole book of Exodus)
*Jesus and then others cross the sea because they have seen the deeds of power (Red sea crossing)
*Jesus feeds the people from basically nothing (manna in the wilderness)
*Jesus even uses the food from the smallest boy (akin to a passover!!)
*John refers to this meal of bread with the term Eucharist

Key words:
χορτος ("hay" or "grass", 6:10):  They are sitting on grass.  They believe themselves in a forsaken place, but are surrounded by God's bounty!

συναγαγετε ("gather"; 6:12):  It is interesting here because Jesus tells the disciples to gather the missing pieces.  This is in the mission of the church, to gather the missing pieces. What intensifies this connection is the verb for gather, which is literally:  synagate -- synagogue them!  Lead them into the community centered on the Word!

κλασματα ("fragments"; 6:12):  It seems strange the bread fragments are so valuable.  Was Jesus a spend thrift??  It seems that Jesus has a spiritual meaning here.  I think it is fair to say the fragments represent us, broken pieces, whom God has blessed, broken and then gathered into one.

ευχαριστω ("give thanks"; 6:23):  While neither the words "Holy Communion" nor "Eucharist" appear in 1-14, the word Eucharist does appear in 6:23:  "The place where they had eaten the bread after Jesus had given thanks [eucharisted]"  Christians took up this word in a different manner -- Paul begins this in 1 Cor 10:16.  They transformed the word for Thanksgiving and turned into a significant meal -- much like America's November holiday!  In this case, Jesus is taking the world's oldest Thanksgiving meal and giving it new meaning.  The full meaning of this meal will not be clear until Jesus dies and rises.

απολλυμι ("perish" or "lose"; 6:12):  Fascinating here -- Jesus discusses the collecting the fragments, lest they get "lost".  The word here for lost also means "perish" as in John 3:16 or John 18:9, "I did not lose a single one whom you gave me."

Two other tid bits:
6:9 The words for bread and fish here (krithinos and opsaria) denote common bread and fish, almost like "cheap bread and fish tidbits"

6:17 The word σκοτια is darkness; that is what is occurring here; yet, John 1 said the darkness could not grasp/overcome the light!

John 6:35-59

This passage occurs in the Narrative Lectionary, Year 4, Lenten cycle, most recently Feb 16, 2014.

Here is a link to another John 6 post on the bread of life:
http://lectionarygreek.blogspot.com/2012/08/john-63541-51.htm
The themes of John 6 manifest themselves in every portion of the chapter.  This conclusion just drives home a few points, again, stated in the rest of the chapter (if not the whole book!).  A few ideas for sermons:

- eternal life is a present (its a gift):
        Jesus says that he will give διδωμι (6:51) the bread of life.  Everlasting life is a gift.

- eternal life is present
       The verb εχω ("have", 6:54) is in the present tense:  "The one who eats/drinks HAS eternally life CONTINUALLY" is how this passage should read.  There is a dimension of eternal life that includes the resurrection of the dead, but this is not when life begins.
       I think also worth dwelling on here is that the eternal life comes through the flesh and blood, the bread and the wine.  Jesus uses earthly things, even broken things, to give eternal life.  To get to eternal life, we've got to get into earthly life, to put it another way.  Much to ponder and many directions here for a sermon!

- eternal life is a presence
        Jesus says that those who eat μενω ("abide", 6:56) in him.  This is a key theme in the Gospel of John, in fact, one of the opening questions -- where are you abiding? (John 1:38).  Eteneral life is the same thing as staying with Jesus.  So what does eternal life look like?  Well, it looks/feels like that amazing feeling of knowing that we are in the presence of God.

John 6:35,41-51

This passage occurs in the RCL "Pentecost"/"Ordinary"/"Proper" Season, Year B, most recently Summer of 2015.
 
Summary:  What else can one say:  Jesus is the bread of life.  Three words, actually verbs, pop out this week for me.  All three (καταβαινω, πιστευω and εχω) where likely memorized in the first weeks of Greek 101.  John employs them powerfully here to make three points:  Jesus came down to earth; Jesus came down to earth that we might believe; Jesus came down to earth that we might belive and thus have life.  Here.  Now.  Also, this week I include a quote of the Small Catechism to solve a thorny issue...

Key words:
καταβαινω ("descend" or "go down"; it appears seven times in chapter 6: 16, 33, 38, 41, 42, 50, 51, 58 in various forms). The use of this word throughout John and especially John 6 reminds us that John is an incarnational Gospel (as are all the Gospels!).   While John 6 pushes this in a new direction, the idea of God moving toward earth, coming down, has occured already in John:  The Spirit descends at Baptism (1:33); Jesus refers to Jacob's dream where angels descended at "Bethel," foreshadowing Jesus; Jesus also "goes down" to heal an official's son (4:47) and lastly, Jesus simply said he descended from heaven (3:13).
One could simply be reminded that Jesus in John's Gospel is not an eagle like philosopher above it all; Jesus is not some gnostic or docetic savior; rather he is a flesh and blood, incarnate Son of God.  Yet I think it worth pressing the point further.  John 6 is all about the Eucharist; and the Eucharist is the summation of all things.  In this case, the Eucharist is the summation of all other downward movements by God.  It includes the Spirit empowering, it includes heaven's gates opening; it includes healing of mortals.  In Jesus, Bethel (house of God) becomes Bethlehem (house of bread).  Jesus is full divine yet fully flesh (σαρξ)

σαρξ ("flesh"; just about every verse in section 6:51-63)  Jesus says two puzzling things:  First, that σαρξ is useless; but that on the otherhand, we must eat of his σαρξ.  I do not think John's Gospel is anti-flesh; yet it wisely points out the limits of flesh.  So why does Communion help?  As Jesus says,"It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life."  Jesus words make his flesh, the Communion, have life and Spirit!  To put it another way, courtesy of Luther:

"It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is simple water and no baptism. But with the word of God it is a baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost, as St. Paul says, Titus, chapter three: By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, that, being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying."  http://bookofconcord.org/smallcatechism.php#baptism

πιστευω ("believe"; the word appears 85 times in John's Gospel).  This might just be the most important word in John's Gospel.  Worth noting is that faith only appears as a verb:  It is always an action.  In otherwords, "Faith" doesn't exist in John's Gospel, but believing does.  It is not by intellectual assent that we live, but fully trusting in God.  Sadly, it often takes us to get to that moment where all hope has been lost that we actually begin to trust...

Grammar:  Present tense and εχω
I have written this many times on my blog.  But here is the deal.  The present tense means something is happening right now and on-going.  Jesus says, "the one who believes is having eternal life."  It does NOT read "the one who believes will have eternal life."  It simply says, "the one who believe HAS eternal life."  Eternal life begins here and now in a relationship based on believing in Jesus Christ.