Last Sunday we began a series of four readings from Saint John’s Gospel which, together, are called Christ’s Bread of Life Discourse.  Last Sunday we interrupted the reading of Saint Mark’s Gospel to be told by Saint John . . . that the day after Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, . . . some of the crowd that Jesus fed followed Him to Capernaum, . . . and Jesus says to them, “You know, you mustn’t follow me around because you ate your fill of bread yesterday.  Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures for eternal life.”  . . . Jesus doesn’t tell the crowd that God plans to improve their lives (economic recovery and health care for everyone).  Jesus says that it is the Father’s purpose not that human life be better . . . but that human life be different.  It is the Father’s purpose that humanity achieve a new identity, . . . an identity which has God as its object and not food or homes or jobs; . . . an identity that is sacred . . . and sanctifies everything it touches.  . . . And so, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

    I observed last Sunday that what Jesus is reminding us, by this saying, is that He is the God Incarnate; . . . that when I place the Communion Bread into your hand and tell you that it is the Body of Christ and the Bread of Heaven, . . . I am telling you the literal truth.  Just as Moses did not create the manna which fed the Israelite people in the wilderness for forty years; . . . just as Moses did not created the manna from a formula God gave him, so the words I say over your Communion Bread do not make it the Body of Christ.  It is the Body of Christ because Jesus (Who is God) promised that it will be His Body when we bless and break the bread in Remembrance of Him.  And so, the words I say over your Communion Bread are words by which we remember; . . . they are words by which we remember that the Incarnate God is faithful and keeps His promises; . . . that the Incarnate God is Present in the Bread to change the focus of the life of each one of us.

    Today Jesus continues His Bread of Life Discourse by telling us that the change which His Presence effects; . . . the difference Jesus, the Incarnate God, can make in each of our lives is twofold:  . . . it is sapiential and it is sacramental.  . . . Now, what do I mean by the term “sapiential”?  Well, Moses is a help to us here in his address to the Israelites which we hear from the Book of Deuteronomy this morning.  Moses tells his people that the Lord God Almighty

humbled you and let you hunger and [then] fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.

Moses tells his people that the Lord God Almighty humbled them with hunger so that they might discover a crucially important piece of knowledge; . . . so that their minds (and, hence, their manner of living) might be enlightened; . . . so that they might think and live with Wisdom, . . . with sapience.  And the sapience the Israelites gained from their experience of miraculous manna, harvested daily according to the instructions of God; . . . the sapience which the Israelites gained from all of that . . . is that everything God says is worth doing, . . . because it makes life better.

    And so, Jesus says to us today,

All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and him who comes to me I will not cast out.  For I have come down from heaven [as if I were manna]; 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 everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

You are brought by God the Father to God the Son for a double purpose:  so that you might live a sacred life which honors God and which is a blessing to the individuals and community among whom you live; . . . a sacred life which conveys God’s grace to simply everyone.  This is God’s sapiential purpose.  And the second reason you are brought by God the Father to God the Son is for a sacramental purpose:  so that you might benefit from the Father’s regard for you by becoming organically united to the Son; . . . so that you might become an eternal creature … whom the Son shall raise up to life at the end of history; . . . on the last day.

    Now, being in Capernaum and speaking publicly, . . . there were not just some of those whom Jesus had fed the day before among the people who were listening to Him.  There were a number of Jewish scholars as well, Saint John tells us.  And these begin to murmur about some of the things that Jesus is saying.  “What is this new teaching we are hearing,” they grumble.  “Is this not a mere carpenter’s son?  He may have come down from the hills of Nazareth, but he certainly hasn’t come down from heaven.”  . . . But Jesus says, “This is not a new teaching.  This is the old teaching (the Old Testament) perfected!”  . . . And then Jesus makes reference to the Book of Genesis (the first Book of the Bible); . . . Jesus makes reference to Genesis, Chapter Two; Verses 16 and 17, which reads

the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Jesus makes reference to this text by saying to the Jewish scholars who have murmured, “This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.”  Jesus (Who is the Incarnate God, remember); . . . Jesus tells the murmuring scholars that He is the sapiential bread Whose Presence communicates and conveys knowledge of God; . . . which conveys a sanctifying Wisdom that overcomes the first sin; . . . that overcomes the effect of the forbidden fruit.  . . . Jesus is the sapiential bread to Whom the Father brings us all . . . that we may eat of Him and not die . . . but live.  . . . Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and were expelled from Paradise to feel about the world as if they were dead people; to feel about the world hindered by their darkened minds, clouded by a confusing knowledge of every kind of good . . . and every kind of evil.  . . . But the Father now calls the children of Adam and Eve; . . . the Father now calls all of humanity to Jesus, . . . Who one might eat of . . . and not die . . . but dwell upon earth as creatures of Heaven, full of light, . . . and at the last day be raised up to the place that has been prepared for them from the beginning.

    For emphasis, Jesus repeats Himself:  “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever” . . . and then Jesus says, “and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” … Jesus will have more to say about that next Sunday.