In today’s Gospel we heard the beginning of the Bread of Life Discourse. This is kind of the core of this Gospel in John 6. Last week we heard the feeding of five thousand, and this Gospel reading we just heard followed that, but we skipped a few verses in between.
We just heard from the Gospel of John, chapter 6, my favorite chapter of scripture in the Bible. We will be hearing from this chapter for three more weeks, so you will begin to figure out why I like it so much.
Jesus said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” The Apostles had just returned from their mission and were talking about how successful their work was, but Jesus doesn’t tell them to get back out there and go again, He invites them to rest, to find some peace and quiet. He asks them to take a little retreat with Him.
A fun conversation that I like to have with other athletes is, “who is the most famous person you ever played against?” I guess I called myself an athlete there, which might be generous, I guess I should say, I played a lot of sports in high school and occasionally now, so whether I am an “athlete” is debatable.