Book of Common Prayer

Faith that looks beyond death

¹³ All these people died in faith. They hadn’t received the promise, but they had seen it from far off, and had greeted it, and had recognized that they were strangers and wanderers in the land. ¹⁴ People who say that sort of thing, you see, make it clear that they are looking for a homeland. ¹⁵ Had they been thinking of the place from which they had set out, they would have had plenty of opportunity to go back to it. ¹⁶ But as it was they were longing for a better place, a heavenly one. That’s why God is not ashamed to be called “their God,” since he has prepared a city for them.

¹⁷ It was by faith that Abraham, when he was put to the test, offered up Isaac; yes, Abraham, who had received the promise, was in the very act of offering up his only son, ¹⁸ the one about whom it had been said that “In Isaac shall your family be named.” ¹⁹ He reckoned that God was capable of raising him even from the dead; and, in one sense, he did indeed receive him back from there.

²⁰ It was by faith in the things that were to come that Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau. ²¹ It was by faith that, when Jacob was dying, he blessed the two sons of Joseph, and “worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.” ²² It was by faith that, when Joseph was coming to the end, he spoke about the exodus of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his own bones.

⁴¹ The Judaeans then grumbled about him because he had said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven.”

⁴² “Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son?” they said. “We know his father and mother, don’t we? So how can he say ‘I came down from heaven’?”

⁴³ “Don’t grumble among yourselves,” answered Jesus. ⁴⁴ “No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them—and I will raise them up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the prophets, ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to what comes from the father, and learns from it, comes to me. ⁴⁶ Not that anyone has seen the father except the one who is from God; he has seen the father.”

Eating and drinking the son of man

⁴⁷ “I’m telling you the solemn truth,” Jesus went on. “Anyone who believes in me has the life of God’s coming age. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors in the wilderness ate the manna, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that people can eat it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread, they will live forever. And the bread which I shall give is my flesh, given for the life of the world.”