Thomas J Parlette
“The Jesus Diet”
John 6: 24-35
8/4/24
If you’ve been thinking about trying to drop some of those unwanted pounds, you certainly have no lack of options. Just google “best weight loss programs”, and you’ll get lots of suggestions. Noom, Simple, Reverse Health, Weight Watchers, Keto Cycle, Better Me and Nutrisystem are just some of the programs that you can subscribe to to help you lose weight.
Many people aren’t so keen and subscribing to programs though, and opt to follow some basic dietary principles in their quest to slim down. Again, the options are numerous. You can follow a Keto diet, which stresses high amounts of fat, moderate amounts of protein and very few carbohydrates. Typically, a keto diet will be heavy on things like butter, cheese, eggs, meat, nuts and oil. That may sound good, but keto is also very low on fruits and vegetables, potatoes or any other carbohydrate – rich foods.
Others may prefer a Paleolithic diet, or caveman diet. It’s based on the idea that obesity is caused by eating modern food loaded with sugar, fat and highly processed ingredients. Instead, we should get back to how our ancient hunter/gatherer ancestors ate – meat, vegetables and fruits.
Lately another option for dieting has popped up called Intermittent Fasting. IF, as it’s known, is a dietary routine that regularly alternates between periods of eating, and periods of fasting- sometimes for to 40 hours at a time.
Because I’m on a variety of mailing lists, every once in awhile I get an email about the Biblical diet, or sometimes the Christian diet. In one of these emails, a dietician noted that, “you can’t go wrong eating foods we find mentioned in the Bible, like fish, grapes, olives, olive oil, flax, whole grain bread, pomegranates and figs.”
It would be very similar to the Mediterranean diet, that many people try to follow – heavy on fish, fruits and vegetables and olive oil and low on red meat and carbs. Add some bread and that might be pretty close to the way Jesus and his followers actually ate in the first century.
Today, we have the well-known story of Jesus describing himself as the “bread of heaven.” This part of the “Bread Discourse” as scholars have nicknamed it, follows right on the heels of Jesus feeding the 5,000. In that story, we are introduced to the Jesus diet – a simple eating plan, bread and fish.
At the end of the meal, the disciples gathered up 12 baskets full of the leftover barley loaves, and presumably left them for the people to eat later. That night, they crossed back over the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum, and the disciples witnessed another sign – Jesus walking on the water.
Our story for today picks up the next morning, when we see that the people from the picnic have found Jesus again. But Jesus does not appear too impressed that they’ve shown up again. They ask, “Rabbi, when did you get here,” and Jesus answers, You’re not interested in signs or in any of the work I’ve done – you’re just looking for more bread.”
Maybe so. That could be why the crowd followed him. They wanted to see what else might be on the Jesus diet menu. Moses fed the people quail and manna in the wilderness, so what might Jesus have in store for them.
Then Jesus gets a bit philosophical – “Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food. Work for food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your whole life, food the Son of Man provides. That food will last.”
To that the crowd says, “Well, what do we do then to get in on God’s works.”
“That’s easy,” says Jesus, “Listen closely – Throw your lot in with the One that God has sent. That kind of commitment gets you in on God’s works.”
The crowd then asks for a sign again – they want some proof. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message – “Why don’t you give us a clue about who you are, just a hint of what’s going? When we see what’s up, we’ll commit ourselves. Show us what you can do. Moses fed our ancestors with bread in the desert. What have you got for us?”
Then Jesus offers an explanation for what happened in the desert. “The real significance of the Scripture is not that Moses gave you bread from heaven, but that God is, right now offering you bread from heaven, the real bread,” said Jesus, as I imagine he tapped both hands on his chest, to signify – “Me.” But they didn’t get it.
“The Bread of God came down out of heaven and is giving life to the world.”
“Give us this bread always.”
As I picture it, Jesus leans back a little, hands on his knees, and takes a deep breath. He takes a long, look around, catching everybody’s eyes, and slowly says – “I am the Bread of Life. The person who aligns themselves with me will never be hungry, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus’ identity as “the bread of life” is very important to John. He spends a whole chapter on developing this part of who Jesus is. John 6 has always held a special place in the hearts of theologians. St. Augustine once described the significance of the things recounted in John 6 as in magno sacramento, “a grand symbolism.” (1)
And what does this grand symbolism mean. What does it mean to say that Jesus is the bread of life. St. John Chrysostom, the “golden-tongued” preacher of antiquity once said of Jesus’ words here – “By his words, he was all but saying this, “It is not the miracle of the loaves that has struck you with wonder, but the sense of being filled.” (2)
As O. Benjamin Sparks writes in Feasting on the Word, “As a Christian church, what we have to offer – on Christ and by Christ and because of Christ – first and foremost is “soul food.” Food that lasts forever and does not change with the changing circumstances of the church or the world. It is this soul food, the bread of heaven, that we desire, and it is this soul food in which we will rejoice, long after our bellies are full.” (3)
So it is not the quenching of hunger or thirst that Jesus is talking about here – it’s more about meeting the emptiness we face even after we’ve had our fill. The Bread of Life continues to meet the needs we have beyond mere rumblings in the tummy.
Sara Miles is someone who has found this to be true. In the prologue to her book “Take This Bread”, Miles wrote about the time she wandered into a church one cloudy day when she was 46 years old – ate a piece of bread and took a sip of wine. “A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans – except that up to that moment I’d led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.”
“Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food – indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do – feed people.”
“And so I did. I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I had experienced. I started a food pantry and gave away literally tons of fruit, vegetables and cereal around the same altar where I’d first received the body of Christ. I organized new pantries all over my city to provide hundreds and hundreds of hungry families with free groceries each week. Without committees or meetings or even an official phone number, I recruited scores of volunteers and raised hundreds and thousands of dollars.” (4)
And so begins the unlikely spiritual memoir of one 21st century Christian. And it all started with communion. The great Reformer John Calvin was once asked to explain the Eucharist, what we call Communion, and he said that he would “rather experience it than understand it.” (5) And when we do, we are empowered for great things.
The Jesus diet of the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation is what nourishes us for the life of faith, and empowers us to do great things for God in this world. So, let us come to the table and share the Bread of Heaven.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Christopher Morse, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, Westminster John Knox Press, p310.
2. Ibid… p310.
3. O. Benjamin Sparks, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, Westminster John Knox Press, p310.
4. William Willimon, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, Westminster John Knox Press, p313.
5. Sara Miles “Take This Bread”, Ballantine Books, 2007, prologue xi-xii.
