Jesus the Bread of Life

CALL TO WORSHIP

In a world where so many people are driven by revenge, pain and hurt, we gather today to reflect on our own actions, to receive forgiveness, and to pray for peace. Amen.

HYMN

493 Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.

GATHERING PRAYER

Creator God, thank you for the freedom you have given to us all. Forgive us for the times humankind has abused that freedom and caused hurt, breeding resentment, anger and revenge. Help us to see again your love for us all and to commit ourselves to seeing your kingdom come on earth as in heaven. Amen.

Father, we adore you for your faithfulness. You have faith in us when our faith in you falters. Son, we adore you for showing us the way. You are the way, the truth and the life. Holy Spirit, we adore you for comforting and counselling us. You are God’s gift to us. Amen.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION

Father, we confess that we find love difficult and complicated, especially when it comes to our nearest and dearest. We often grieve the hearts of those we love the most, and, in doing so, we disappoint you, for you are love. We are sorry for all the times we have let our loved ones down, and fallen short of the standards you set for us. Help us to love with your generosity of spirit, your loving acceptance and unselfish intentions. Amen.

Assurance of forgiveness

Forgiveness comes so easily to you, O Lord, while for us it is often difficult. May the knowledge of your forgiving nature be our solace, our example and our goal. Amen.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name,

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done.

On earth as it is in heaven,

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those that trespass against us,

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,

Forever and ever Amen.

HYMN

533 The King of love my shepherd is.

READING 1

1 Kings 19: 4-8

READING 2

John 6: 35 and 41-51

HYMN

390 Meekness and Majesty

SERMON

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35

In Tanzania the staple meal includes something called ugali. Ugali is a traditional staple food in Tanzania. It is finely ground cornmeal that has been boiled and made into a porridge/paste-like substance.

In Taiwan, it is rice, or noodles. In Southern China, rice is their traditional meal accompaniment; places like northern China, where wheat is more available, noodles become the main staple.

Jesus, being in Israel, said, “I am the bread of life.”

Bread was essential for life in the Middle East. If Jesus had been in Tanzania, he would have said, “I am the ugali of life.” In Asia, “I am the rice of life; or the noodles of life.”

If you go into any of these different cultures and ask the locals, they will say they do not feel full or satisfied unless they have their bread, or their ugali, or their rice or their noodles.

Each culture feel that they need their bread, or the equivalent to physically live. These are necessary to survive.

So, what does Jesus mean when he says, “I am the Bread of Life?” Well, simply put, he means that we are not satisfied spiritually unless we know Jesus; we are not spiritually satisfied unless we have Jesus in our lives. Or to be another way, we cannot survive spiritually without Jesus.

Today’s reading follows the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, so, bread is on the people’s minds, will there be more free food today as they seek him out in Capernaum.

I think Jesus used the experience of providing food to them bringing out in his teaching that he has something to share, something far more import than supplying temporary relief from physical hunger, what he had to give was something that feeds the spiritual hunger which is worth far more.

When the Jewish leaders who had been listening to Jesus asked, ‘Who does he think he is?’, they had conveniently forgotten that their own history that was full of unlikely people, chosen and empowered by God to do God’s work.

Their assumptions about the nature of the long-awaited Messiah that he would be a warrior King like David to lead the Jewish nation and drive out the hated Romans, they would expect him to be born in a powerful family, not a poor one from a nowhere town, this above all prevented them from recognising Jesus when he came.

They in a sense where so bound up in rules and regulations that they missed the bigger picture.

If you ever look at a painting by one of the great artists and look to closely at it all you see are brush strokes, that may be good to see how the artist actually applied the paint, the way he created the picture, but we don’t see his intentions and his talent until you step back allows you to see the bigger picture that the artist had planned when he applied the paint.

God throughout the Bible and today chooses those who appear the least likely to do the job on their own, testing our faith in him and in ourselves.

In a similar way, we heard how Elijah in his despair had declared himself ‘no better than my ancestors’.

Yet out of his tiredness and hunger God spoke to him, fed him and sent him off to do great things well beyond the limits of what he could have achieved in his own strength.

God offers the same to each of us, because of our relationship with Jesus there should be no limits to what we can do together.

But are we to quick to limit ourselves and others.

We all live within the constraints of our assumptions, quickly judging people and situations on really very little evidence.

If you were there, would you have recognised Jesus in his earthly ministry as the Messiah, the ‘bread of life’?

Do we recognise him today?

Do we allow others to be God’s messengers to us?

Do we see Jesus in the lives of his unlikely disciples,

and is he recognisable in us?

Jesus referred his listeners back to the manna that God had provided from heaven, when the chosen people wandered in the desert this manna came daily to feed all the people their physical needs. The manna that was provided lasted for just one day, in fact if they tried to keep it by the next morning it was no good, it had rotted and full of worms.

No, the next day God provided a new lot of manna to feed them.

The bread of life that Jesus offers is to be enough for each day, but it is also part of the long-term diet plan that builds us up and sustains us for the journey of eternal life. That we all travel on.

This is done by making time studying the Bible have you noticed how you can read the word one day, and then another day it will have something new? It’s also crucial that we spend time in prayer, but even more importantly making time to listen, listen to what God wants to tell you.

We need to ask ourselves how we are seen by those outside the Church.

What might be the assumptions that are made about the Christian faith and what goes on in any of our churches?

Are looked as, as oddballs living in the past? Following a God who they find hard to expect or even feel no need for in this modern world.

Or are we seen as relevant in today’s world, with something to offer to those around us.

Are we recognised as having the very nature of God in his Son, and so have become open to a whole feast of possibilities?

Are we open to God like Elijha, willing to risk ourselves allowing God to use us for the benefit of others.

Or are we a little like the Jewish leaders. to bound up in the peripheral things to see the bigger picture that we are called to.

We need to examine ourselves.

As followers of Christ this should be evident, but do we show God’s love.

To those around us.

If not, this is what we should be doing.

Is the love of God on show when people enter our building?

Do we show the living bread that we have within us, does the everlasting water fill us completely that it flows out from us to those around.

The issue for the world is If left to our own devices, we will try to fill ourselves with things that don’t satisfy our deepest longings. Each and every person has a God shaped hole in their lives, they just don’t know it, so they try and fill their lives with all things. But they can never fill this hole.

You see in the end it’s not about what you have that truly satisfies in reality everyone has a need to belong, to have a purpose, to be loved, but so many people today are looking to the wrong places to satisfy that need.

Eventually we become slaves to those things.

But each of us here today Jesus has a message he tells us, “I am the bread of life.” He will feed all our needs.

God’s desire for us is to be part of his family, not a servant, not someone who come to him out of fear, or tries to gain acceptance by our actions. No, he wants us as his children that is the great news that Jesus brought to us, God want you and me to be his children.

We may not see clearly now so we need to ask God to help us see the bigger picture instead of just the brush strokes.

HYMN

546 There’s a quiet understanding

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

This week, as we pray for other people, let us ask God to help us see them from his perspective, rather than making assumptions.

All-seeing and ever-loving God, help us to see others as your children, cherished by you.

Lord, we lift to you our world leaders. It is so easy to be critical of them, to believe what we read in the papers or on social media rather than seeing them as people just like us with needs like ours.

In an increasingly unstable world, we ask you to give them wisdom and integrity. Help them to put the needs of their country before their own desires. We pause for a moment of silence now, as we try to imagine what it must be like to walk in their shoes.

All-seeing and ever-loving God, help us to see others as your children, cherished by you.

We pray for countries at war or suffering long periods of unrest, particularly Europe and the Middle East. It’s so easy for people to take sides and fight rather than try and see the world from the perspective of others. We pray that a new desire to love and treasure others may sweep this planet, bringing in a new reign of peace.

All-seeing and ever-loving God, help us to see others as your children, cherished by you.

Lord, we pray for our communities and all who live and serve in them. We thank you for those who sweep our streets, empty our bins and clean our shops, workplaces and hospitals. We pray for your strength and reassurance for our over-stretched NHS and for tired teachers.

We pray for the unemployed and those on zero hours contracts struggling to make ends meet. And, Lord, we pray for the ‘onlys’, the people overlooked by society or considered insignificant. We ask that we, as a church, may find ways to help the disadvantaged in our communities in the short-term whilst praying that our government may have the courage to find long-term solutions.

All-seeing and ever-loving God, help us to see others as your children, cherished by you.

We come before you, Lord, in sorrow that so many people in our world are abused or neglected because of their race, colour or gender. We ask your forgiveness for any part we have played in preventing your world from being a place of harmony and stability. We lift-up the millions of refugees fleeing unsafe homes. We pray for the migrants trying to cross the channel. We ask you to give strength and courage to all those fighting for justice in our world. We ask you to give us all the eyes to see everyone as made in your image with equal worth.

All-seeing and ever-loving God, help us to see others as your children, cherished by you.

Finally, Lord, we commit to you those who live around us. We picture them in our minds now as we bring them to you for blessing: our friends, our neighbours, the people who walk their dogs past our house, those we say ‘hello’ to in the street or at the station or on the bus but don’t know their names. We pray for those who live behind closed doors that we never see, those we used to spend time with who, for whatever reason, we don’t see anymore. And we pray for those whom we avoid... Lord, you know them all by name and we thank you for each of them and for the way they touch our lives. Give us the grace to be good neighbours, willing to go the extra mile for all these people who are, underneath it all, just the same as us.

All-seeing and ever-loving God, help us to see others as your children, cherished by you.

Help us to serve one another because we are all made in your image.

Help us to bring your love to everyone we meet this week. Amen.

HYMN

89 Faithful one

BLESSING

Almighty God, we thank you for the freedom you give us. Guide us in the week to come. Through our actions, may we share your love and kindness and draw people closer to you. When we make mistakes, help us to make amends quickly so your grace is still seen. We give this week to you and ask that your will be done. Amen.