Bread of Life Part 2.

So here we are in week two of Jesus the Bread of Life. It is helpful to remember that this story is set at Passover – the festival commemorating God’s liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, and holding the hope of liberation again; and that this conversation occurs after Jesus walked on water - as the Israelites were led across the Red Sea,  and after he had fed 5000 in the wilderness – as the Israelites were fed with manna in the wilderness after they had murmured and grumbled against God. John is interpreting Jesus through all these stories and presents Jesus as the bread of life, the new manna from heaven. Just as those ancient Israelites learnt to trust God and to learn the ways of God through the giving of manna, so too we are invited into God’s ongoing work of liberation,  learning to trust God and to know the ways of God. And what are ways of God? The ways shown in the opening stories, ways of deep compassion for hungry crowd, generosity in feeding them, ways of justice and life. Jesus met their hunger, and then offered to meet their deepest hungers. He offers the same to us.