The Revised Common Lectionary is clearly in love with the sixth chapter of John, which is the RCL's insertion in the Markan narrative, the otherwise designated gospel course for Year-B. John 6 is the most eucharistic chapter in the New Testament. It is a major vein from which Christian orthodoxy mines much of its Christology.
 
Beginning with the 1st Kings reading, continuing with the responsory psalm and Johannine passage, the emphasis this week is to be on the benevolent disposition of the biblical deities toward human beings.

 
That disposition is to tend to the care and feeding of mortals, the strophe from Psalm 34 (v. 8) enunciating that idea in lyrical form: "Taste and see that Yahweh is good; happy are they who trust in him!" Tell that to the fellow at the top of the freeway ramp carrying a sign saying, "I will work for food."

Elijah's hike into the wilderness occasions a kind of loaves-and-fishes surprise all of its own, no human mediator being involved. It is said that "an angel" or intermediary of Yahweh provided "a cake baked on hot stones" (the kind of stone that might have figured into the touching of the first Isaiah's lips in Isaiah 6) and a clay jar of water. Twice this is said to have occurred, giving Elijah the strength to go on in his arduous but necessary journey away from the murderous Jezebel. It is not without significance that his next stop was the cave at Horeb in which he encountered the numinous presence of Yahweh in the "sound of sheer silence" (19: 8-12).
 
Food and drink and conversation with the deity go together. See Luke 24: 13-31.
 
In the aftermath of what we have come to call "the feeding of the 5,000," John's Jesus is attempting to make clear that the bread on the hillside was not the real thing -- that he himself was the real thing, the bread of life. There is once again an allusion to the "manna" discovered in the same kind of wilderness through which Elijah had trekked. While in the Exodus story we are given to understand that the manna enabled Moses' flock to live another day in their journey to the promised land, John's Jesus is now saying that, even though they ate the manna, they eventually died anyway. John makes his Jesus say, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread shall live forever."
 
If the student of Ancient Philosophy 101 does not hear distinct echoes of Plato in this, he or she is not paying attention. John is saying that the actual "manna," the actual "bread" given in the former instance to the migrating Israelites and in the latter to hungry pilgrims were what Plato called "shadows" or inadequately misrepresented realities of "forms" that abided eternally beyond the senses. John's Jesus is claiming, in effect, to be the actual Platonic "form," the real thing. "Eating" or in some way taking him in is the key to living beyond the phenomenon, beyond the senses.
 
Who, to paraphrase Paul, shall deliver us from this body of airy and insubstantial theology? Maybe the one who, Pauline in spirit, wrote the epistle to the Ephesians and in particular this verse: "Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy" (4:28).
 
There is something of an incandescent stroke of light. The text is saying that one of the ends of honest work is to have "something to share with the needy." Maybe, regardless of his overarching theological agenda, John wanted his readers to think that some of the people he depicted following Jesus to the other side of the Galilean sea made the trek without provisions, and that some actually thought ahead on that score. Those who didn't were "the needy" under those circumstances. Those who did obviously shared with them.

Elijah's cake, the lad's five barley loaves and the "something to share with the needy" were real foods prepared and meant as daily bread to be eaten by hungry human beings to enable them to get on with their daily labors. None of that food came from another universe. It came from seeds planted, crops harvested, grain refined and mixed with water to make dough, and dough baked into loaves or cakes. Human beings had everything to do with it, having discerned if not completely understood the process of seed germination. They planted, cultivated, watered, harvested and otherwise manipulated nature to make bread to eat . . . and to share.
 
The homiletic prompts here are promising: A class in bible might be directed first to the Ephesians verse cited above, then be led back to the I Kings text and forward to the Johannine reading. In each instance the need for food and its appearance are the twin themes. The more evangelical the class and its leader, the more evangelical the preacher, the more the exposition will deal with the Christ figure as the real bread of life. The more humanistic will focus on the idea of human beings sharing with other human beings.
 
It could be said that "the bread of life" or "living bread" is bread that is shared rather than hoarded or eaten in private. It could further be said that, like manna, the elements necessary to the making of bread occur naturally in the biosphere and that the bread itself, being a product of the biosphere, belongs not only to its human baker and to the human planter and harvester but to any and all human beings, just as does water from rivers and aquifers.
 
You can just hear the second Isaiah in the background chanting, "Ho, everyone one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come buy and eat. Come buy . . . without money and without price . . ." (55:1).