35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
It was a COVID-era funeral. The saint had not died of COVID, but the virus affected almost everything we did that day. We were a small group, just the family. Large gatherings were prohibited, and this was especially enforced for funerals. We gathered at the graveside. This was better than some places. One of my colleagues spoke of jumping over the cemetery fence and surreptitiously meeting with family members to share a few verses of Scripture and words of comfort at the side of their mother’s grave. In that place it was not permitted even to meet outside. We counted ourselves blessed to be there with a small group.
The weather was cool. I wore a heavy suit jacket, the wool one which she had complimented me on the last time she had come to church a few weeks before. She noticed things like that. We gathered next to a shaft dug in the earth and the mass of a coffin which lay upon the straps which would be used to lower it into the ground. The sky was overcast and gray. We heard these words, among others, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Jesus speaks those words through John to us, today. Through a life of love, service, worship, marriage, parenthood, career, and more, she had partaken of that bread which came down from heaven, Jesus the Christ. He had fed her over and over. We were sad but not broken that day. Christ’s promise was made to her and to us. He is the living bread that comes down from heaven that anyone who eats it does not die, not really. We can speak of her in the present tense still. She lives in Christ.