The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: They shall all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.” (John 6.41-46)
On this Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we continue our trek through Chapter 6 of John’s gospel, a section that goes by the familiar title, “the bread of life discourse.” Anchored in the feeding of the multitude at the start of the chapter, the discourse allows Rabbi Jesus to speak to the people about the living bread that he wants to offer them, a bread that endures, unlike the bread that perishes.
Of course, he is speaking about a spiritual sustenance, not a physical one. As John tells the story, the people listening to Rabbi Jesus are stuck in the physical realm and find it difficult to stretch their minds into the spiritual sphere as Jesus asks them to do. We saw that resistance last week when they implored Jesus to give them the bread that does not perish, thinking it to be something physical, although he has told them that it comes down from heaven.
Today, the failure to understand or the unbelief continues, now the people murmuring against Jesus because he has identified himself with the bread that came down from heaven. Again, they remain stuck in the physical world, quick to say that they know Jesus’ parentage, rendering his statement that he has come down from heaven improbable, if not impossible. In their murmuring, they ask, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother?”
John, attentive to the story of the Hebrew slaves wandering in the Desert of Sinai and intent on using it as a backdrop to this story of a similarly unbelieving people, connects the two episodes by use of the word murmuring, also translated as grumbling. It is the same word that is used in the Book of Numbers when the dissatisfaction of the Israelites is described: “All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, the whole community saying to them, ‘If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we would die here in the wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land only to have us fall by the sword?’”
So, as in the previous verses where the connective tissue was manna or bread from heaven, here it is the grumbling that the crowd does when Jesus tells them that he has come down from heaven, a problematic parallel with the Israelites in the desert who were quick to grumble about their circumstances, wanting to return to Egypt where they were slaves to Pharoah.
For our reflection today, I would invite us to look more closely at the words “come down from heaven,” a phrase that Rabbi Jesus uses multiple times in this section of John’s gospel. Its meaning is obvious, even to the crowds who find it incomprehensible that someone who is physically standing in front of them should espouse the position that he came down from heaven.
However, Jesus continues to say he is “the bread that came down from heaven,” a phrase meant to identify him in much the same way as when he tells the crowd, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.” Both phrases are stating the same thing. Jesus’ origins are with God “who has sent him” to earth. He has come down from heaven at the behest of his Father.
Here, I would like to allow myself a bit of poetic license, looking at that phrase “come down from heaven” from a slightly different angle, in this way perhaps allowing us a deeper understanding of its meaning or, at least, seeing it in a new way. What if we substituted the word “stretched” for “come down,” the two words saying much the same thing, except “stretched” allows us to see the effort made in the movement from heaven to earth, something the word “come down” does not do, the phrase suggesting it simply was a hop and a skip.
Paul did much the same in his Letter to the Philippians when he described Christ Jesus’ coming down from heaven in these beautiful words, “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” It is easy for us to see, I believe, that Paul’s poetic imagery provides a much more powerful description of the cost of the incarnation than we find if we simply say “he came down from heaven.”
The same is true here if we substitute the word “stretched.” As we know, the word “stretch” means to extend our body to its full length or limits in order to reach something. So, were we to say that coming from heaven to earth required a big stretch emphasizes the effort that was necessary. It called for God to go to the full length of his love. Whenever we have to stretch to reach something on the bottom shelf of our cabinet, we know it is neither easy nor comfortable. It takes something more from us.
Understood in this way, the incarnation becomes God stretching his heart to its limits, sending his Beloved Son to earth, in this way “reconciling us to himself through Jesus Christ,” as Paul tells the people of Corinth. Much the same as ripping away part of his heart, God sent his Son into the world as a peace offering, erasing the enmity that had grown over the ages because of human insolence, declaring in this move a fresh start between heaven and earth.
Parents, I believe, understand very well how their hearts have had to stretch from the moment their child was born, extending further and further, forced to expand with each sacrifice that they had to make. At the start, it was the mother’s love pumped from her heart through the umbilical cord into the unborn child, giving it life. And it was only the beginning, the heart continually asked to stretch as the child required even more love once it entered the world.
One such parent, Tara Bulger, spoke of the stretch that parenting requires in a personal essay she wrote some months ago for “The Christian Century” newsmagazine. She described it in this way, “To be a parent is to exist with your heart outside your chest. It goes out into the world with your children. It goes to the first day of kindergarten with its attendant tears. It goes with them to their first sleepover while you lie sleepless, wondering if they are okay. It goes on their first solo car drive and their first date.”
She continued, “Your heart stretches and stretches as it lives out in the world away from its home in your chest. How could something stretch so wide and not break? It never does, though, and in all the stretching, with every day that passes, your love grows stronger still.” She concluded, “So much of your life has been about holding them close that it seems impossible you will now be asked to let them go [as they leave for college]. But you do. Because you love them, and you can’t wait to see them grow and flourish. But your heart has to stretch wide to accommodate this leaving. You wonder if you will survive it.”
I know we would all agree with her and I would also suggest that it was much the same with God when his Beloved Son left his side in heaven to come down to earth. His love for his Son was immeasurable, but his love for his children on earth also was immense. And if he was to save those on earth, his son would have to enter the world, walk among his creatures on earth, and urge them to return to the ways of the Father in Heaven if they were ever to make it in this world. Would the world love him as he loved him? Would the world understand the stretch of his heart that his son’s coming down from heaven would require of him?
The gift of his Beloved Son was an incredible stretch on the part of the Heavenly Father, his heart to the breaking point, matched only by the stretch made by the Beloved Son when he was nailed to the cross, his left and right arms stretched the width of the cross beam, his self-sacrifice erasing all doubt as to the cost he was willing to pay to do the Father’s will, his heart stretched to the breaking point as love for humanity poured out in water and blood from his side.
Apparently, the world did not show the same love for his Son that the Father had shown. And, painfully, the world made it clear that it not only rejected his son, but also rejected the Father’s love. More would be required of the Father as he watched his Son’s body put into a tomb. His heart would have to stretch even more, his capacity to love limitless even in the face of all the pain that the world had inflicted upon it.
Read in this way, understanding the phrase “came down from heaven” in terms of God’s heart stretching because of the love that was called forth from it, and seeing how the Beloved Son’s heart also was required to stretch, his love flowing continuously from his heart as he experienced and took upon himself the pain of the world, we surely read this passage from John’s gospel in a deeper and different way.
And we understand, perhaps, the pain that our own rejection of the ways and words of the Beloved Son inflicts upon the Father whose love for us continues, undeserving and unappreciative as we are on a daily basis. Our waywardness and our downright ugly ways calls forth from God more patience, more forgiveness, more hopefulness, the love in his heart stretching from heaven to earth, reaching out to us and calling us to live as his children, not as slaves to Satan.
We hear the Beloved Son say today, “Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.” His choice of words seems to suggest that we also may have to do some stretching if we are to return to the Father. The way back to heaven will ask that we stretch our hearts in the same way that the heart of God stretched and the heart of his Son stretched, reaching out with love for the likes of us, unworthy and undeserving as we are.
As the Son stretched from heaven to earth, now we must stretch from earth to heaven, making our way back to the Father as our heart ever expands, its love increasing, encompassing and embracing all our brothers and sisters as we journey through this world, our eyes set heavenward where the Father awaits our return as he awaited the return of his Beloved Son who had come down from heaven as the living bread for us.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 