Getting Lost in the Woods

  Let’s talk about the Gospel of John--broadly speaking.  The author was familiar with the earlier synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The overall structure of John’s gospel, and many of the stories, are the same.  Yet there are notable differences in content.  As one commentator put it,  “The Gospel of John celebrates Jesus, albeit differently from the other Gospels.” *   For our purposes today, I would like us to pay attention to the varying differences in how we understand the nature, role, and person of Jesus. For John, it’s clear that Jesus has always been divine.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” **   The Jesus we meet in John’s gospel has been described as uncreated and imperishable.  * In this framework, Jesus comes from God, descending to live amongst u...

  We are over halfway through our five week journey with John 6.  It is hard not to notice the theme of “bread”.  Throughout the entire chapter ‘bread’ is mentioned 18 times.  Of these: 5 instances are disciples or members of the crowd referring to literal bread.  1 instance is Jesus responding to their reference to literal bread.  And a whopping 12 instances is Jesus referring to himself as metaphorical bread.  In fact, in today’s passage alone: Jesus says  “ I am the bread of life…”   3 times.  And then in the final verse he describes himself as the  “living bread” .  This was a common practice for Jesus, to take familiar, everyday items or practices and use them as metaphors and parables when teaching.  It was an incredibly effective tool in getting his message across.  There are some references that were familiar to his original audience that are no longer familiar, and this can leave modern day readers turning to...