Follow Jesus Christ

It was the second year of Jesus’ ministry. Behind him were miracles of healing and the miraculous feeding of five thousand. Yet Jesus made it plain that he did not intend to become a Jewish king, as the Messiah was widely expected to do. By and large people did not understand his preaching of the Kingdom of God as “within each person.” He knew well that many of his superficial supporters were slowly and irrevocably preparing to abandon him, while the committed disciples, though fewer in number, were growing firmer in their faith. All this is related in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.

Jesus was preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, where there were probably prominent rabbis from Jerusalem — in other words, a kind of official commission similar to the one the Sanhedrin had sent to John the Baptist. They were there to determine once and for all what official circles and all the synagogues would make of Jesus. It was a turning point in his ministry. Everyone listened to him closely: friends and foes alike, and the wavering fellow countrymen. Jesus surprised them all.

He began his sermon by again condemning people’s low, material ambitions and their complete neglect of spiritual truth. The day before had occurred the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, when several thousand people were fed. Jesus intentionally sought to reverse the wave of popular enthusiasm. He said: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” To the rabbis’ question, “What must we do to do the works of God?” Jesus answered clearly and unambiguously, in the presence of that high-ranking commission: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he has sent” — that is, in Jesus himself.

Then came Jesus’ unforgettable words that he is the Bread of Life, which stunned everyone without exception. Instead of calling for fidelity to the Mosaic law — as any rabbi would have done — Jesus called people to accept his personal teaching as the Word of God. John writes that after these words the Jews “murmured” against Jesus. He does not say that they “did not understand,” “asked a question,” or “doubted.” He says they “murmured,” which signals an existential and moral problem. By using the verb “murmured,” John deliberately places Jesus’ listeners in the same spiritual category as Israel in the wilderness: a heavenly gift is set before them, yet they respond not with faith or with inquiry but with murmuring — a form of inner resistance.

Unsurprisingly, both secular and religious authorities rejected his call, each for their own reasons. They could not surrender power to Jesus voluntarily. It was this sermon that led hundreds, if not thousands, to turn away from him, calling him a heretic and an apostate from the law of Moses. Apparently Jesus was expelled from the Jewish synagogue after this incident in the Capernaum synagogue. The Gospels do not say this directly, probably because the first Christians tried to preserve ties with the Judaism of their time. Yet in the Gospel of John we read: “The Jews agreed that if anyone confessed him as the Christ he would be put out of the synagogue,” “many believed in him but did not confess it for fear of being put out of the synagogue,” and “They will expel you from the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God.” These passages refer to his followers, but the logic is clear: if disciples are expelled for confessing Jesus, then Jesus himself has long been outside the system.