Don't miss the message because of the messenger!

John 6:41-51

Then the Jews began to murmur against him because he claimed to be the Bread from heaven. “What?” they exclaimed. “Why, he is merely Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know. What is this he is saying, that he came down from heaven?” But Jesus replied, “Don’t murmur among yourselves about my saying that. For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him to me, and at the Last Day I will cause all such to rise again from the dead. As it is written in the Scriptures, ‘They shall all be taught of God.’ Those the Father speaks to, who learn the truth from him, will be attracted to me. (Not that anyone actually sees the Father, for only I have seen him.) “How earnestly I tell you this—anyone who believes in me already has eternal life! Yes, I am the Bread of Life! When your fathers in the wilderness ate bread from the skies, they all died. But the Bread from heaven gives eternal life to everyone who eats it. I am that Living Bread that came down out of heaven. Anyone eating this Bread shall live forever; this Bread is my flesh given to redeem humanity.”

Food for thought!

Again Jesus makes one of those revelations of his: "They will all be taught by God; Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me." It means that the Father teaches through the teaching of Jesus. Are we listening?
It is said that God gave us two ears and one mouth so we may listen more and talk less. We do well then to learn to listen. This is the first and necessary condition for being disciple of Jesus. The words, student, pupil, disciple and learner mean basically the same. All represent the same fact: willingness to learn. “If you love to hear, you will receive, and if you listen, you will be wise”, says Ben Sira, a Hebrew scholar.
A student, a pupil, a disciple and a learner with a shut mind is a contradiction in terms. As long as we live, we must adopt a learning attitude. Learning is not a one time event; it is a life long journey leading the learner deeper and deeper into truths. The learner who feels that he has nothing more to learn he has not even begun to learn.

This passage shows the reasons why the Jews rejected Jesus, and in rejecting him, rejected eternal life. The Jews listened, but they did not learn. There are different kinds of listening. There is the listening of resentment; there is the listening of superiority; there is the listening of indifference; there is the listening of the man who listens only because for the moment he cannot get the chance to speak; there is the listening of criticism. This is the kind of listening of the people in today's gospel reading.

Their reaction in face of Jesus' teaching was to produce the fact that he was a carpenter's son and that they had seen him grow up in Nazareth. They were unable to understand how one who was a tradesman and who came from a poor home could possibly be a special messenger from God. We must have a care that we never neglect a message from God because we despise or do not care for the messenger. God has many messengers. His greatest message came through a Galilaean carpenter, and for that very reason the Jews disregarded it.

The Jews argued with each other; they kept murmuring. They were so taken up with their private arguments that it never struck them to refer the matter to God. They were exceedingly eager to let everyone know what they thought about the matter; but not in the least anxious to know what God thought. It might well be that sometimes we would be better to be quiet and ask God what he thinks and what he wants us to do. After all it does not matter so very much what we think; but what God thinks matters intensely; and we so seldom take steps to find it out.