The Sign of the Loaves (II): Bread from Heaven
Proper 13/11th after Pentecost; John 6: 24-35
“Signs” in John’s Gospel, such as the loaves and fishes story, are often followed by exchanges with onlookers and further elaboration by Jesus. These interactions typically involve incomprehension on the part of others present, perhaps for two reasons: one is that John is depicting a world in which many people will not understand or accept Jesus; second and more positively, the misunderstandings often give Jesus the opportunity to elucidate, for the other characters and for the reader, what the sign had embodied.
Some will recall how in Mark’s version the crowd comes around the sea in great number to seek healing. John however implies they are trying to solve the mystery of how Jesus had travelled across the sea (cf. vv. 23-24, which we don’t read). Their question about how Jesus had got there, with which our Gospel passage begins (v. 25), reflects not just ignorance of his mode of transport, but of what they could have learned from it about him. As Catrin Williams put it in a recent presentation to a major gathering of New Testament scholars about John’s signs, the Jesus who had walked through the storm after the loaves and fishes story is not just as someone who can feed a crowd, but reveals the power of God as creator and deliverer.1
Yet John’s Jesus himself ascribes another motive to this enthusiastic huddle when they arrive:
Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for 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 for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal (6:26-7).
Jesus indicates they did not really “see” the sign; they witnessed and participated in the feeding miracle, but there was a kind of “seeing” beyond the immediate or obvious which went begging. Jesus says they were interested in the food instead, equating their flat-footed curiosity with a lack of discernment.
He distinguishes now between two kinds of food, that which “perishes” and that which “endures for eternal life.” The bread distributed to the crowd the day before is different from another sort of “bread” related to faith. Jesus had already introduced this issue cryptically during the feeding story, when instructing the disciples to gather the left-overs in order that “nothing should perish” (v.12)—the NRSV has “lost” instead of perish, but the verb is the same in both cases—so even this action was part of the “sign.” The failure to receive the more desirable, imperishable bread is the failure to see what is really happening and who Jesus is.
The misunderstanding is elaborated in the conversation, first in relation to “works,” and second to how this event relates to the giving of manna in the desert with Moses. The crowd asks, when Jesus criticizes the “work” they are doing for the perishable bread (v. 27), what work(s) they should be be doing instead. He answers that “this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v. 29). The reader knows by now that this is a clear answer; Jesus has now moved past signs to reveal the truth. Yet the crowd instead want to hold the (imperishable) truth at arm’s length, and instead seek for further (perishable) “signs,” and more bread.
This incomprehension is however not just a case of failing to see anything “spiritual” in the bread episode. Remember that the initial reaction of the crowd to the feeding had actually been quite pious: “When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world’” (6:14). Jesus’ accusation that they still really just wanted bread is a value-judgment about the superficiality of their response; not to see the whole reality of Jesus’ identity in the sign (or to ask for more signs, when the reality itself is on offer) is about as profound as chewing on crusts.
This does not mean that the material things in question were irrelevant. The importance of avoiding this mistake is made clearer by the focus on the foundational (and very material) story of Moses and the Exodus in the next verses, which for Jesus and for the crowd alike represents something essential about Israel’s relationship with God. God’s deliverance of Israel from oppression was a very concrete and political matter, and included material provision. The onlookers invoke that story, and even quote scripture at Jesus (a reminder that the ability to quote the Bible is no guarantee of truth and love; cf. Matt 4:1-11): “he gave them bread from heaven to eat,” from Ps 78:24. Whose sign is better, they ask? Can he do another?
The same Psalm the bread-seekers quoted to Jesus had however also told the story of Israel’s failure to respond with faithfulness to God’s gift during the Exodus; the crowd are repeating that aspect of the sign, even as they ask for the bread itself to reappear.
Jesus does not bite. It is not that either the manna episode, or Moses himself, or Jesus’ own feeding miracle the day before, were unimportant; rather the call for the repetition of the sign is itself a sign of incomprehension. In both cases, the fundamental and unchanging significance of feeding hungry mouths had also been a means of offering relationship with the God, who (not Moses) was the true giver—which Jesus points out, correcting any attempt to make him and Moses rivals in a great wilderness bake-off: “‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven” (24).
Without diminishing any of the material “signs” here—Moses, manna, his own copious bread, or the human hunger that always remains such a potent sign and challenge—Jesus insists that the point of the sign is not to repeat it, but to participate in it. And in this case both the ancient appearance of manna from above, and the more recent unlikely multiplication of barley loaves in Jesus’ own hands, are signs that invite or insist on something beyond themselves without losing their material significance,.
The exchange reaches an initial high point where this passage ends: “‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (v. 35). Jesus has now gone even further to explain what the sign of the loaves conveyed. The reader of any time and place must decide whether to see the sign, and to accept its invitation to live fully in a world created by the one whose power was evident in the miraculous feeding, in the midst of the storm, and uniquely in the person of Jesus.
“Signs, Scripture, and Divine Manifestation in the Gospel of John,” Major Paper at the SNTS meeting, Melbourne, July 26 2024
This sentence: “Jesus insists that the point of the sign is not to repeat it, but to participate in it.” Has deep implications at a theological and practical level. Theologically, the sign goes beyond the physical need by integrating a holistic view of Jesus’s ministry. At a practical level, reading the passage this way impacts our faith practices connected to feeding the hungry and philanthropy. Everyone ought to participate in the kingdom. I will be chewing on this one for a while.