It's fitting that Bread of Life should be the first of Jesus' great "I AM" statements. Bread in those days was the basic food, at the heart of life for ordinary people. The ones God is always closest to. No bread, no life. It's still as simple as that for those of us who see things through Jesus' eyes: He is basic to life. At the heart of the ordinariness of life.

The "I AM" declarations have always had a deeper sense for me since I learned to understand them in Capitals. I have no doubt Jesus was playing on the divine "I AM". Because YHWH is "I AM", Jesus is "I AM". Because Jesus is "I AM, "I am" & "we are" too, at the human level. we can say "WE ARE the Body of Christ" & mean it at each Eucharist.

Despite our love affair with JN's Gospel, our life has to be a sign, an "I am" of God's love affair with us in a totally down to earth way. JN may be on about philosophical, metaphysical understandings, but Jesus isn't. He's too earthed for that. In one of the late Anthony de Mello's books there is a Buddhist meditation in which a disciple is encouraged not to talk about fire but to become fire. Why don't we Christians stop talking  about bread & become bread for those who are hungry? Wasn't it Mother Theresa who said, "To pray 'Give us this day our daily bread..' and then refuse to share it, is blasphemy"?

Jesus still gives his life as bread for the world, but it doesn't happen till you & I become bread too & give ourselves as sign that Jesus is "I AM" & therefore "we are".