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'?"
During the exodus from Egypt the Israelites murmured against God and against Moses in the desert. They failed to trust in Moses to lead them and in God to provide for them and protect them. There was in Jesus something much greater than Moses. God had worked through Moses to feed the crowds with food that perished. Most of them did live to see the promised land. But in Jesus the Father was offering something to the world that even Moses could not give. This was the reason the crowds were reluctant to believe Jesus without considering what would qualify him to make such a claim about himself. He said he was given to them as bread from heaven by God the Father. Yet, as far as the crowd could tell, he came into the world the way all children do. This was a natural assumption, but one we know to be wrong.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,
and I will raise him on the last day.
Thinking about Jesus on a merely human level was insufficient. Peter only penetrated the depths of the mystery of his identity when it was revealed to him by the Father in heaven. It was not something flesh and blood could reveal. When he reverted to a merely human mode of thinking he quickly stumbled and became and obstacle to Jesus. During the exodus it was only when the people put their trust in God that they were successful against their enemies and made progress on their journey. Similarly, this crowd could only hope to accomplish the work of God in their own day by believing in the one whom he had sent. Only by doing so could Jesus feed and strengthen them, leading them on a new exodus from death to eternal life. Murmuring and grumbling against him were demonstrated to result in detours at best and death at worst.
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.
Moses was only permitted to see the back of God as he passed. But Jesus was from the Father and beheld in face to face. Only he could communicate the message of the Father to the world. He had this vision of the Father that also guaranteed his identity with the Father's message. We become more and more like God as we see him more and more truly as he is (see First John 3:2). But Jesus has always been the perfect image of the glory of the Father, the exhaustive word of the Father beyond which he has nothing more to say.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (see Colossians 1:15).
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (see Hebrews 1:1-2).
Jesus came to give himself to the world for the life of the world. He came to feed the hungry, not only with bread that would fill them for a day, but with food that would strengthen them unto eternal life. He wanted to ensure that, unlike most of the ancient Israelites, the pilgrimage of the people to whom he came would be successful. He desired to bring them safely to the true promised land. And to do this he would give not a symbol or even an extraneous spiritual gift. He would give himself. The consequence of this fact is that there was no way to receive only the gift while ignoring the preeminence of the giver. He offered himself, and they could take, or sadly, as most chose to do, leave him.
We tend to fault the crowd for turning away from such a great gift. But they couldn't come to terms with why that gift had to be a particular individual with a particular face and a specific history, some of which they knew. For something designed to give life to the whole world he seemed oddly specific. But such was the plan of the Father. It was a plan that was so particular precisely because he wished to reveal it, not in a textbook, but to individuals, if only they would let themselves be taught.
We who acknowledge the gift we have received in Jesus Christ, and in his gift of himself in the Eucharist in particular, do we not still tend to neglect or undervalue this gift? Don't we still find ourselves complaining like Elijah, murmuring like the crowds, without the strength or wherewithal with which to make the journey? Let's not neglect the gift. It is able to do much more for us on our own pilgrimage than the bread the angel gave Elijah.
He got up, ate, and drank;
then strengthened by that food,
he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.
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