When Renaissance painters painted depictions of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they did a sort of odd thing. Normally speaking Matthew, Mark, and Luke would be looking one way and John would be looking another (often staring off into space). This was an artistic way of communicating the similarities of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and the difference of John.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the “synoptic” Gospels, if you break that apart, you see “syn” for “with” and optic “one eye/view”. So the synoptic Gospels look at Jesus “with one eye” but John looks at Jesus with a different eye. John has some different stories, doesn’t include other stories, and generally has a different outline as the synoptics. One of the ways of understanding John’s outline is that it revolves around eight “signs” and seven “discourses”. The “signs” are generally speaking miracles that point to Jesus’ divinity while the “discourses” are Jesus’ teachings that point to divinity.
Starting this Sunday at University Lutheran, we’re going to be looking at one of those discourses, the Bread of Life discourse from John 6. The Bread of Life discourse is a conversation that Jesus has with the crowds that are following Him about who He is. What Jesus says to these folks is controversial – Jesus ends the conversation by telling the crowds that if they don’t eat His Body and drink His Blood, they have no part in Him. This discourse ends up causing several would-be disciples to leave Jesus behind, He’s just too controversial. But the disciples that stay recognize both the controversy and the the reality when they say, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Join us over the next 3 Sundays as we look into the Bread of Life discourse and find in the reality that there is no one else to go to for eternal life besides Jesus, the Bread of Life.