Fifth Sunday of Epiphany: Panen Vitam

The bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never  hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst."

Jn 6. 33-36

The last five weeks have taken us on several different Epiphanies of the One Great Epiphany. Christ is the Epiphany of God in this world and in our human lives. Epiphany if the Meeting of God in his flesh and in our flesh, one reason why the week focusing on the Temptation in the Desert is a week in Epiphnany, but not an Epiphany. We see have seen Christ as Infant, Christ as Initiate in Baptism, Christ as Wedding Guest and now Christ as Teacher and Provider. Christ as Bread and Sustenance.

The Jesus of a few weeks ago was reluctant to work a miracle. He was reluctant to go into his work almost. This Jesus feeds the five thousand and then declares that a miracle is not simply sometign amazing, but something to be seen into. It is a lesson. A parable worked in wonder. This is the Jesus who not onyl makes wine but declares that if we eat his flesh and drink his blood we will be united to him and he wil lbe in us. This is something more than a teacher. This is promising more than a kingdom. This is more than service before God. Jesus is speaking of union, and in the most mindbending of ways.

Jesus is in fact speaking more like Dionysus than like Jeremiah. He is, in this speech , doing a new and intentionally different thing. John says the Jews grappled to conmprehend it and rejected it and well they might, but he leaves out the fact that Christians react the same. Jesus, here, loses many disciples, not only he loses many causal followers, uth e loses dsicipels. Pehrpahs he gained some as well. There is already a nascent church within these Gospels.

This is a birth of the Church. The Church isn't born just once or in the same way in every Gospel. Here arather than before hte Transfiguration, Peter declares Jesus the Christ and says for them all, to whom would we go. You have the words of eternal life. These are the people bound to Jesus as more than teachers, as very God and very bread and meat and drink.

I am finishing up the Gospel of Mark and as I read it I see that Jesus is always with disciples They are always traveling in tow. The number is not told. It is not simply the twelve. Children are with them. Families are with them. And I think part of this is because the the Gospel does not tell a past story, but a present story, a story that leaves time, and so when we ready about Jesus and the unnumbered follwoers traveling with him to Jerusalem we can number ourselves in that crowd. As he sets out we are told that the dsciples followed in fear and those most afraid were furthest behind. Still, they followed. Pane Vitam Sunday invites us into this family of Jesus that follows, sometimes close, sometiems far, sometimes hanging back a few days, far more than an insstitution or an organization, beyond small congregations or denominations or even orthodoxy or heterodoxy. Jesus says, those who are not against me are for me. The only test is that we be for him, and that we be for each other, that we be living in love. He does not ask that we not be afraid, only that fear not define us.