Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Aug. 2, 2015

Bakers mixing and kneading dough and filling bread molds, from a painting in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

From God’s gift of manna to God’s gift of grace through Jesus, our readings focus for several weeks on bread – the bread of life – as metaphor for God’s abundant love. In last Sunday’s First Reading, when the Prophet Elisha fed 100 people with a few small barley loaves, he recalled God promising the people that “They shall eat and have some left.” Today we read the verses of which Elisha spoke: the story of God providing ample manna. feeding the people their bread in the desert.

Psalm: Psalm 78:23-29

The Psalmist remembers God’s gift of manna and gives thanks to the Creator who saw the people’s need and rained down on them all the bread and meat that they could eat. God filled them up; God gave them what they craved. Now think about this: In the first part of this Psalm, which we do not hear today, the Psalmist recalled how God led the people out of slavery in Egypt. We remember how God cared for them, and ultimately overcame God’s own anger and fed them with love in spite of their ungrateful complaints.

Second Reading: Ephesians 4:1-16

The author of Ephesians offers life lessons in poetic language in today’s reading. Do you remember Paul’s memorable verses in 1 Corinthians, in which he speaks of the church as Christ’s body, within which each of us acts according to our gifts? Here, too, we are all called to work together with humility and gentleness, in unity as one body and one spirit, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”

Gospel: John 6:24-35

Huge crowds continue following Jesus back and forth across the Sea of Galilee, looking around the lake shore and villages until they find him. Having watched his miraculous healings and shared in the bountiful loaves and fishes, they are surely fascinated by Jesus. They want to know more and, Jesus suggests, they probably want more bread. Jesus then begins an extended discussion that will take us through the next three Sundays. The world’s bread does not last, he tells them; but Jesus, the bread of life, endures forever. Those who come to him will never hunger nor thirst.