July 25: 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Bread from heaven

2 Kgs 4:42-44; Ps 145:10-11, 15-16, 17-18; Eph 4:1-6; Jn 6:1-15

With this Sunday’s readings we begin a key chapter of John’s Gospel that will stretch out through a good bit of August. It begins with the account of the multiplication of the loaves that we hear today and will be followed by a long discourse of Jesus on the “bread of life.” 

While the Lectionary draws on each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) over a three-year cycle, these readings from John occur every year, signaling their importance.

Throughout his beautiful Gospel, the evangelist draws on fundamental symbols to express the full identity of Jesus. Jesus, who is declared the “word made flesh” at the beginning of the Gospel (Jn 1:14), reveals the “glory” of God.

As Pope Francis has said more than once, “Jesus is the human face of the Father’s mercy.” 

One way John’s Gospel proclaims this fundamental conviction of Christian faith is that Jesus bears the divine name, “I am.” This is the mysterious name of God revealed to Moses in the dramatic scene of the burning bush. 

Repeatedly in his Gospel, John couples Jesus’ divine name with basic symbols of human longing. Thus, Jesus declares, “I am the truth,” “I am the way,” “I am living water” and so on. 

Here in this chapter, Jesus will declare “I am the bread of life.” Surely in every culture and epoch, bread is the most basic symbol of the human need for nourishment.

Human hunger longs for bread. And bread stands for all the nourishment we need, both physical food and even the spiritual nourishment necessary for us to thrive as human beings: love, support, protection, purpose and meaning. 

Without bread, physical or spiritual, our life withers. That is the powerful message that begins to unfold in this Sunday’s readings.

The first reading from the Second Book of Kings recalls how the great prophet Elisha instructed his servant Baal-shalishah to distribute 20 barley loaves among a crowd of 100 people. The servant protests, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” But Elisha persists, confident that God will feed the people and there will even be leftovers.

This story of God’s providence prepares for John’s even more remarkable account of Jesus’ feeding over 5,000 people. The drama is similar.

Philip, a disciple of Jesus, protests: “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” But present in the crowd is a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish. While it not enough for so many, as another disciple, Andrew, laments, it is enough for the power of Jesus and his commitment to feeding God’s people. 

So the vast crowd is fed and once again, there are leftovers, “12 baskets of fragments.”

As is always the case with John’s Gospel, this scene is shot through with symbolic meaning. It is near the time of Passover, John notes, and thus Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves recalls God’s feeding the people with manna during the Exodus. 

Jesus’ actions also forecast the Eucharist: Jesus’ giving thanks over the bread and the collection of fragments left over are terms used to describe the Eucharist in early Christian literature and a reference to the Eucharist will follow in Jesus’ discourse.

But above all, this account reveals a fundamental truth about Jesus and the divine presence he embodies that God cares for the people who are hungry. He cares for the poor who experience physical hunger and, as well, those who are spiritually hungry and lost.

Commentators note that barley loaves were known in Jesus’ times as the food of the poor. This is the truth Jesus impresses on his disciples, then and now. 

As so often happens in John’s Gospel, people miss the depth and intensity of Jesus’ message. Here the crowd wants to make Jesus a king because he provided food. However, they miss the point about God’s enduring care and the need to nourish our whole being, body and spirit.

In the discourse that follows, the Johannine Jesus offers himself as the true “bread” that ultimately satisfies all human hunger.