Arulvakku

28.04.2020 — Manna as present reality

3rd week in Easter, Tuesday – 28th April 2020 — Gospel: John 6, 30-35

Manna as present reality

This section begins to explain how the manna God gave previously is now available to them. It is a story about What God is doing in the present. Jewish people of John’s time viewed Moses’ as the ultimate source of manna. Instead, Jesus says not “Moses gave,” but “my Father gives” it (6,32). Jesus says, don’t interpret the subject, “he” as Moses, but as God. Further, he changes the verb tense from “gave”, the past tense, to “gives”. John identifies four times that both the realities of bread, past and present (twice each), as “bread from heaven”. In the remaining part of this chapter this phrase occurs six times referring to Jesus himself as that bread. In his discourse, Jesus emphasizes that manna is not simply a story that resides in Israel’s past, but it is an on-going gift of God in the present. It is available to Jesus’ listeners even now. In the same way, the story of God’s liberating power was not something confined to the past but claimed as present action in remembrance of Passover. Further, Jesus adds that manna is present gift from God, originates in heaven but contains life-giving power for all humanity (6,33).