It has been said that reading the Bible is like peeling an onion; every time you unpeel one layer, you find another one underneath. In other words, there are often several different levels of understanding to be found even in such a simple statement or verse. With this statement from the Gospel record of John, Jesus stirred up the Jews, causing no small amount of dissent, yet what did Jesus mean by it? "Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?" [ John 6.60]

Why did Jesus choose the symbol of the bread? Well, bread was a staple food for the Jews, just as it is today. Everyone understood bread was essential to life and hunger was something experienced by most people in those times. At its simplest, this quotation of Jesus means that just as bread is vital to mortal life, so Jesus is essential to everlasting life. We can see then that the hunger referred to, is a spiritual hunger and the thirst, a spiritual thirsting. These represent our longing to understand, to make sense of this life.