I am the bread of life: the feeding, the sea and the hard saying at Capernaum

The Gospel of John is anonymous in its text. Christian tradition ascribes it to the apostle John, and the book points to 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' as its witness (21:24). Some scholars accept the apostle's authorship, others a circle of his followers, and Richard Bauckham argues for an eyewitness outside the Twelve. The traditional date is the late first century, with the earliest copied fragment (P52, from John 18) from the early second century. John says he wrote so that readers may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life (20:31).

Chapter 6 leaves Jerusalem, where chapter 5 was set, and moves to Galilee. John notes that the Passover was near (6:4). This is the middle of three Passovers in John's account (2:13; 6:4; 11:55), about a year before the cross. The feeding of the five thousand is the one miracle of Jesus that all four Gospels record (Mark 6:30-44), which suggests its place in the early preaching. Galilee was a region of villages and fishing around the lake, which John calls the Sea of Galilee or Sea of Tiberias, after the city Herod Antipas built on its western shore. Capernaum, on the north shore, was the base of Jesus' Galilean ministry. A crowd drawn by his healings, a hillside, Passover and a shortage of bread would recall Exodus for any Jewish listener, and John makes the connection his theme.

The chapter ends with a crisis of faith. After a sign that thrilled the crowd comes a discourse that drives many away.

John 6 pairs a sign with a discourse that interprets it. The sign (6:1-15) is a physical event and the discourse (6:22-59) tells what it means. John's usual method of double meaning is at work. The crowd talks about bread that fills the stomach, and Jesus speaks of bread that gives life. The discourse is built around a quotation from Scripture (verse 31, which draws on the manna story of Exodus 16 and Psalm 78:24), followed by an exposition of its key words. Peder Borgen argued that this resembles synagogue preaching, a comparison that fits the setting John gives, a synagogue in Capernaum (verse 59).

The chapter is soaked in Exodus. There is a mountain, a Passover, a crowd fed in a place that is not a town, a crossing of water, the 'grumbling' of the people (verse 41, the word used of Israel in the wilderness), and a question about whether Moses or God gave bread. Reading the chapter well means hearing Exodus underneath it.

The hardest interpretive question is how to take the language of eating flesh and drinking blood in verses 51-58. Jesus uses the ordinary Old Testament picture of eating as taking in and being nourished by a word or a person (Jeremiah 15:16; Ezekiel 3:1-3; Proverbs 9:5), and then pushes it into a startling form that causes offence (verse 60). Christians have read it as pointing to faith, to the Lord's Supper, or to both. The tradition note sets out the main views. The class follows the reading that begins with the whole chapter: Jesus is the true bread, he gives himself in his death, and one receives life by trusting him.

Verses 1–15

A large crowd follows Jesus because of the signs he did for the sick. He takes his disciples up a hillside, and he asks Philip where bread can be bought. John adds that he asked this to test Philip, because he already knew what he would do. Andrew finds a boy with five barley loaves and two small fish and says they are nothing among so many. Jesus has the people sit on the grass, gives thanks, distributes the food, and everyone eats as much as they want. The disciples gather twelve baskets of fragments. Barley was the bread of the poor, and the story recalls Elisha's feeding of a hundred men with twenty barley loaves (2 Kings 4:42-44). The crowd concludes that Jesus is 'the Prophet' who is to come, the figure of Deuteronomy 18:15, and they mean to seize him and make him king. He withdraws alone. The people want a king who will supply bread, which is a misreading of the sign.

Verses 16–21

That evening the disciples set out across the lake toward Capernaum. A strong wind rises. About three or four miles out they see Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near, and they are afraid. He says, 'It is I', and tells them not to be afraid. The Greek is ego eimi, 'I am', a phrase that can be an ordinary self-identification and that also echoes the divine name (Exodus 3:14). John leaves both possibilities in place. The Old Testament says of God that he alone treads the waves (Job 9:8; Psalm 77:19). When they take him into the boat, they reach the shore at once.

Verses 22–27

The next day the crowd finds Jesus at Capernaum and asks when he arrived. He answers that they seek him because they ate bread and were filled, not because they saw signs. They should work not for food that perishes but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give.

Verses 28–40

They ask what works God requires. Jesus replies that the work of God is to believe in the one he has sent. They then ask for a sign like Moses' manna. Jesus corrects the premise: it was not Moses but his Father who gave the bread from heaven, and the Father now gives the true bread, who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They ask him to give them this bread always, and Jesus answers, 'I am the bread of life' (verse 35). Whoever comes to him will not hunger, and whoever believes in him will not thirst. All whom the Father gives him will come, he will never cast them out, and his will, which is the Father's, is that he lose none of them and raise them up on the last day.

Verses 41–51

The listeners grumble: they know his father and mother. Jesus says that no one can come unless the Father draws them, and he cites Isaiah 54:13, which says that all will be taught by God. He repeats that he is the bread of life and contrasts himself with manna: the fathers ate it and died. He is the living bread, and the bread he will give for the life of the world is his flesh. This is the first mention of his flesh.

Verses 52–59

The listeners ask how he can give his flesh to eat. Jesus answers that unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood they have no life in themselves, and that the one who does has eternal life and will be raised on the last day. His flesh is true food, and his blood is true drink. Whoever eats abides in him and he in them, as he lives because of the Father. This is the true bread from heaven, unlike the manna. John adds that he said this in the synagogue at Capernaum.

Verses 60–71

Many disciples find the saying hard and many turn back. Jesus tells them that the Spirit gives life and the flesh is no help, and that his words are spirit and life. He asks the Twelve whether they too want to go. Peter answers for them that there is nowhere else to go, since Jesus has the words of eternal life, and that they believe and know he is the Holy One of God. Jesus replies that he chose the Twelve and that one of them is a devil. John explains that he meant Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, who would betray him.

The chapter draws together several of the Bible's central themes. The first is God's provision. In Exodus 16 God feeds a grumbling people in the wilderness, and Deuteronomy 8:3 states the lesson, that people do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. John 6 takes this lesson to its end: the true bread from heaven is a person, and the word that gives life is Christ himself. Isaiah 55:1-3, with its invitation to come, eat and live, is another background.

The second theme is the relation of divine initiative and human belief. John 6 says both that the Father gives people to the Son and draws them (verses 37, 44, 65) and that everyone who sees the Son and believes has eternal life (verse 40). Reformed readers take this to teach that God's choice precedes and secures faith. Arminian readers stress that the invitation is to everyone and that the many who left were responsible for leaving. All must reckon with the fact that the chapter ends with a faithful few and a betrayer.

The third theme is the Son's flesh given for the life of the world. The chapter connects the incarnation (1:14) to the cross. The bread must be broken, and life comes through his death. The rest of the New Testament links Christ's body and blood to the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:23-26). How that link is to be understood belongs to the tradition note.

John 6 presents Jesus as the one who fulfils what Moses and the manna foreshadowed. Jesus names the connection himself. The manna was bread from heaven that sustained Israel for a time but did not give final life; the fathers ate it and died (6:49). Jesus is the true bread from heaven who gives life to the world (6:32-35, 51). In the language of typology, the manna is the type and Jesus is the fulfilment. The crowd's guess that he is 'the Prophet' recalls God's promise to raise up a prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15), and the New Testament later applies that promise to Jesus (Acts 3:22; 7:37). The chapter shows him as greater than Moses, since Moses did not give the bread.

The nearness of Passover (6:4) is an echo that points forward. Later in the Gospel Jesus dies at the time the Passover lambs are slaughtered (John 19:14, 31, 36). His flesh given 'for the life of the world' (6:51) is the cost of the new bread. Paul's reading of the Lord's Supper as a sharing in Christ's body and blood (1 Corinthians 10:16; 11:24-25) shows that the early church linked the chapter's language with his death.

On the sea, the 'It is I' of verse 20 is best read as an echo and not as a settled fulfilment. Together with the picture of one who walks on the waves, it points to the God of Job 9:8 and Psalm 77:19.