Ephesians 4:32-5:2 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
John 6:35, 41-51 (NRSV)
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
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Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
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"[An] important word in this lection is “draw” (vs. 44): “No one can come to me unless *drawn* by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.” [...] The notion of drawing has a similar feel to it as an attraction, as a craving. It is important to note, I think, that Jesus doesn’t take away our need for bread; he offers us a bread of life, rather than a bread of death. And Jesus doesn’t take away the craving to be drawn together in community; he gives us another basis for doing so. All the peoples of the earth will be drawn together in true community when Jesus is lifted up, when Jesus comes into his glory (from the Johannine way of speaking) by suffering the apparent victimization of the cross."
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from "Reflections and Questions" on the Giradian Lectionary page for Proper 14B (link in comments below)
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"“No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father.” This is a very gentle verb. Jesus is bringing out that the pattern of love that is behind this, the desire of the 'model', is what points to him. We follow the desire of the Father, and if we find ourselves following the desire of the Father we actually find ourselves being drawn to Jesus. [...] And the one way to be absolutely sure that we cannot be drawn by that love is for us to have been drawn into being able to join a gang of complainers, grumblers, people who are looking for someone whose fault it all is. That's the pattern of desire in which we're going to be heading for a scapegoat, we're going to be heading to do real harm to some 'wicked' other.
"And Jesus is, of course, the one who's come to occupy the place of all our 'wicked' others, so as to set us free forever from having to do that again. He's going to teach us that that's what he's going to do, he's going to give himself to us so that we can begin to step out of that world. But the one who's making all that possible is the Father who draws us. That for me is the gentle central line of this: “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” In other words, the pattern of desire makes available a model, a sign we find ourselves being drawn in to be able to perceive and therefore follow the sign, the One who is being made alive in our midst.
"Jesus then continues this: “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” So, saying that, that all being taught by God, is true, this is to be found both in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jesus is talking about the way in which the Holy Spirit comes between us and enables us to be taken into the fullness of God's teaching so that there's nobody above us, we're all alongside each other. And we're all learning how not to be caught up in lynch mobs and ganging up over against but rather how to be drawn to the One who has occupied that space - occupied the space of the victim, occupied the space of the scapegoat - so as to enable us to have life. [...] [O]nce you say yes, yes I can see that the entire shape of the power and dynamic of God the creator who brought everything into being is made available to us in this One going to his death as the scapegoat, as the cast out one so that none of us needs ever be caught up in that again. And so that we can learn how to live forever, we can share the age that is to come, share the life of God.
"[...] [T]he manna in the wilderness wasn't something to open [the Israelites] up to life for good. It didn't even get them into the Promised Land. It was an energy boost in order to get them through the wilderness. But because they grumbled and complained amongst themselves they were not able to get into the Promised Land. It was the grumbling that kept them out. Why? Because grumbling is the way in which you create bonding and belonging together, and that's always over against someone, and that means you're failing to come to life. It's when you see that the one who is being thrown out is the one who is the representative of how God loves you, that then you are to be given a belonging that's of an entirely different sort. And so you're able to be brought to life.
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"Again the difficult thing with this passage is how much more down to earth Jesus is being that it's difficult for us to imagine. The words sound so celestial that it's difficult for us to see him constantly trying to get people to concentrate on what is before them, what is being acted out before them. Someone who is going to undo the way of being together that is, if you like, dominated by grumbling, by complaining. Someone who is going to occupy the space of the grumbled against and is going to open up life forever."
- James Alison, from "Homily for Sunday 19 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XDw9f1WUrI)
[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote, and for further discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper14b/]
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