I was reading John 6 this morning, which begins with an account of Jesus feeding bread to over 5,000 people. After, they seek Him out, try to make Him their King, and demand that He keep feeding them. Jesus asks, “Why are you here? Because you saw or because you ate?”. That seems like a rude question at first, since Jesus performs a miracle but when the people want more miracles He critiques them. What’s going on in this story?
First off, Jesus says that the real bread that they need is Him. They have two options here, and to some degree, they may have to pick between the two. Do they want the miracle bread that Jesus can give them or do they want the living bread that He actually is?
The 5,000 wanted Jesus to feed them, but they didn’t want to have Jesus become their new source. As weird as it may sound, they didn’t want to feed on Jesus, so they walked away.
I’m fascinated by some of the Greek that is used at this point in the Bible. Throughout the whole chapter, Jesus has been inviting people to believe (a word I always like to subconsciously replace with trust) and follow Him, but they end up leaving Him because they have a hard time accepting what He is saying. Notice the contrast in the words. Jesus invites them to pisteuo (trust) and they have a hard time akouo (accepting, comprehending, or hearing). Jesus’ invitation is to trust, but the road block for them was that they couldn’t get their minds around it. That’s not to say that trusting Jesus comes without any thinking, but maybe that is to say that trusting Jesus often precedes comprehending Jesus. The chapter ends with many people leaving Jesus. The 5,000 wanted Jesus to feed them, but they didn’t want to feed on Jesus, so they walked away.
I read those words, closed my Bible, and moved on with my day. But all of a sudden a thought hit me—the miracle was likely pretty quick. Jesus fed the people, and made it happen. It was probably a little flashy. I mean how can feeding over 5,000 people not be a little flashy? Everyone ate and received their fill of bread, but Jesus really wanted them to eat of Him, their daily bread. What Jesus was offering them was not a quick, one time meal (like a miracle). He’s not just saying, “Take a bite, get full, and go on your way ’til you’re hungry again.” Jesus is saying, “let me be your whole new diet.” It’s one thing to get a quick meal from Jesus, it’s another to regularly partake of Him as your whole new food.
It’s easy to be someone who just gets a quick fix from Jesus. It’s easy to come for a quick miracle meal. To be more candid, it’s easy for me to wake up and do my devos or have my quiet time in the morning, but Jesus is not wanting that. Jesus is actually wanting me to be a person who feeds off of Him all day long. Jesus wants me to be a person whose whole life is “munching” on Him (interesting that Scripture is meditation literature; meditation is about chewing on something for a while). More vulnerably, it’s easy for me to come, read a Scripture, get the Jesus fix for the day and then keep going on with life until I get the next one, but Jesus isn’t wanting us to do fast feeding off of Him.
What Jesus is inviting us to is a life of abiding, where He is who we keep eating and drinking from all day long. Jesus doesn’t want to be a snack (lol), He wants to be source and sustainer. He doesn’t want to be a quick daily fix, but instead an all the day long chew. Followers of Jesus are called to not simply check in with Him in the morning but abide in Him all the day long. Don’t take these words as an attack on your time with Jesus. Instead hear them as a simple invitation to what I am discovering: there is more. We like to say that and sing that and even pray it in altar calls, but let me tell you, there is more than what a lot of us have ever had. We don’t have to settle for a quick few miracle minutes where Jesus feeds us as fast as possible. There is more. There’s an opportunity to abide, to live off the living Bread, to keep eating and drinking, to taste and see that the Lord is good, to never go hungry or thirsty again.
Maybe that’s the difference between wanting Jesus to feed me and me wanting to feed on Jesus.
