The story of the Exodus of God’s People from Egypt is in many ways the basic story of faith for both Christians and Jews. God saves from slavery the People he has chosen to be his own, and brings them into the country he has promised to give them. On the way to freedom, they encounter God and are given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai; they rebel against God and are reconciled to him; God provides for them in the desert and they learn to rely on him.

The gift of manna in the wilderness is one of the memorable ways in which God provides for Israel during the journey. You know the story: the People are hungry, and they complain to Moses. In response, God provides for them a mysterious substance, the "bread of angels" (Ps 78:25) or "bread from heaven" (Ex. 16:4); "manna" as it’s called, given daily to satisfy the People’s need. As Moses says in our first reading today, manna is a gift given to the People to make them understand that "one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deut. 8:3). Through this gift the People of God learn to rely upon God alone.

It is to this gift of manna that Jesus refers in our Gospel today, when he calls himself "the bread of life". In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks immediately after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, a sign that he himself is able to provide for the crowd. The significance of the miracle, and the word that he now speaks, is that Jesus is the one whom God has provided for us; he is the Word spoken by God by whom we are to live. God’s Word is like bread, sustaining the People in their journey; and so is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ himself. He is our manna, who provides those things that we need in our journey through life.

Jesus is our bread, our manna, as we enter into relationship with him and allow ourselves to be fed. Our liturgy centers us on two primary means of grace and relationship with God; two ways in which Jesus is our bread. The first (of course) is the Eucharist itself, the bread and wine that are the powerful and effective signs of Christ’s Body and Blood. In this Sacrament, Jesus is made our food and drink, showing himself to be our bread. We even say this at the Eucharist: "The Body of Christ, the Bread of heaven". Through our sharing in the Eucharist, we are given God’s grace, God’s power and presence in our lives, and enter more deeply into relationship with him.

The second way in which Jesus is for us "living bread" (Jo. 6:51) in the liturgy is in the Scriptures that we hear read. This isn’t quite as obvious as the Eucharist itself; yet Jesus himself implies that the bread of which he speaks is his teaching by the apt quotation of the prophet Isaiah, "And they all shall be taught by God" (Jo. 6:45; cf. Is. 54:13). Scripture is a banquet of sorts to which we are invited to share the bread of life. Gregory the Great once observed that Scripture "is a letter from God Almighty to his creature; in it we come to know God’s heart through God’s words" (Reg. Epis. 4,31). It is one of the reasons we stand for the reading of the Gospel: to remind ourselves that when we hear those words we are in the presence of Christ. All the Scriptures are a way in which God speaks to his People and enters into relationship with them; they are one of the ways in which Jesus is for his People the bread that comes down from heaven.

If the Scriptures are going to sustain and feed us, then we are going to have to listen to them. In the most basic way, we do this when we hear them read in Church; but we also listen when we read them ourselves in Forward Day by Day, or when we join in one of the weekly Scripture studies we have on Tuesday or Thursday, or a Sunday or Wednesday class at Christ Church. If we listen, then we will need to contemplate the Scriptures: in other words, dig deeper in them to discover the love of God that is within, and make that understanding a part of our own lives. Mother Pamela is starting a contemplative prayer group this Fall; what a good way to take some time in peace and quiet to do contemplate what God has done. And if we listen and contemplate, then we will need to act; to apply the Scriptures to our own lives and our own situations. As the Letter of James says, we need to be doers of the word, and not hearers only (Jas. 1:22).

The point is transformation. Jesus died and rose again to give us new life; the "eternal life" (Jo. 6:47) of which he speaks in our Gospel today. The manna which God supplied to his People in the Wilderness sustained their earthly life, but now God gives us bread which is more deeply nourishing. We who eat Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist are meant to be transformed by it into this new life; we who share in the banquet of the Scripture are also to be transformed through the teaching of Christ. Jesus, who is the Bread of Life, is a manna that is meant to sustain us into eternity. God gives us these good gifts of Sacrament and Word, to bring us to the promised land.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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