Better than a Bagel

John 6:52–69

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
• "my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink"
• "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?"
• "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life"

Applying the Word to My Life:
I love donuts — probably more than I should — but I am not a fan of bagels. Stacey and the kids like them, but I just can't get there. It goes back to when I was in first or second grade. My parents took me to a place that had the biggest donuts I had ever seen. They brought back a six pack to the table and I was excited. I grabbed one and took a big bite, fully expecting that soft, sweet, yielding texture.

What I got was a bagel.

The chewy, bread-like reality of it was such a letdown that it has colored my opinion of bagels ever since — irrationally, I know. The bagel had done nothing wrong. It was a perfectly good bagel. But it was not what I was reaching for, and the gap between expectation and reality was wide enough to leave a mark.

We can have that same problem in our faith life — we have an idea of what we want, what would be perfect to us, and we get fixated on that. God then gives us something different and, rather than stopping to really look at what we received, we focus on what we didn't get. But a loving God who knows all is probably in a better position to figure out what we really need than we are. But do we trust him with that?

The crowd following Jesus doesn't seem like they can get there. They were there when he fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, they ate until they were full. They are hungry again and expect more of the same.

What they get instead is Jesus telling them his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink.

They are dealing not only with their expectations — the very idea would have been appalling to someone who was Jewish at that time. The consumption of blood was completely forbidden.

The gift on the table was immeasurably greater than the one they were asking for. They couldn't see it because they were still looking for the other thing.

The result is that thousands of people who had been following Jesus and seen the miracles leave him. Jesus doesn't soften this teaching. He doesn't say he was speaking figuratively or offer a gentler reading. He doesn't chase the crowd or revise the teaching to keep them. He acknowledges it is hard. And he lets them go.

There are a lot of people today who have a hard time with this teaching and it is easy to understand why. If people who were there found it too hard to believe, I can understand why someone today, two thousand years removed, would have the same difficulty. It took me a while to finally believe in the real presence in the Eucharist.

The Apostles teach us that believing and understanding aren't the same thing. And Jesus shows us how important this is to him.

Jesus asks the Twelve if they want to leave too. Jesus is willing to let the Twelve leave instead of changing his teaching. These are the people he selected to carry his mission and build the Church. If they leave, history changes.

Peter cannot explain what Jesus just said any better than the crowd that left. What he knows is that there is nowhere else to go. That the one standing in front of him has something no one else has. That the relationship is worth staying for even when the teaching is hard.

That is not a confession of comprehension. It is a confession of trust — the kind that holds precisely when understanding runs out.

The crowd that walked away wanted the bread they knew. What Jesus was offering was himself — present, real, given across every generation on every altar.

Sometimes the disappointments in our life are opportunities to see the times when God is giving us something much better than we imagined.

My Response for Today:
Today I will approach the Eucharist — or make a spiritual communion — and receive it not as what I came looking for, but as what God is actually giving.