JOHN 6:41-51 NOT SAFE BUT TRUE

41 At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.

47 I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

The controversy about the “historic Jesus” started long before the nineteenth- and twentieth-century theologians began their quest. Jesus claimed to have come down from heaven and the Jews countered that they knew his parents. Human beings are always more comfortable thinking in material terms which we can easily grasp rather than spiritual terms whose meaning we can easily miss. To understand something fully is to have control over it. It is the difference between having a wolf in your tent and sleeping with the family German Shepherd at home.

To make things worse, in Jesus’ explanation to his antagonists he describes himself in divine terms. He will “raise [the righteous dead] on the last day.” Jesus is “the one who is from God.” And he is the object of the belief that leads to “everlasting life.” This unnatural progression leads to the conclusion that he is the divine bread to which the manna pointed and which God gives to his people in this earthly pilgrimage to nourish them toward the eternal Promised Land. As the Hebrews had to gather the manna, God’s people must seek Jesus if they are to be nourished by God.

Do you seek a domesticated Jesus or the Jesus as he is revealed in the Bible? We must not answer that question too quickly. If we are comfortable with our concept of Jesus and confident of our understanding of who he is and what he does, we are probably limiting him within the boundaries of our expectations. Jesus will never do anything contrary to Scripture, but remember that he is the Word, and therefore, he is the ultimate arbiter of its truth. When you seek Jesus, cleanse your mind of human expectations and exercise your faith in him. What wonderful things he has for those who truly believe in him.

Break through my expectations, O Jesus, and reveal to my heart your true and life-giving nature. Purge me of any tendency to domesticate you through my limited understanding. Open my mind to receive you as you really are. Amen.