Proper 14

John 6:41-51 - At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.

It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Jesus is a master at taking the ordinary and infusing it with spiritual meaning.

Or is it that every ordinary thing has spiritual meaning if we’re spiritual people?

Either way, God has worked in such a way as to give us reminders of himself in the created order

So that as we go through life the things we encounter point us to him

when you look at the flowers in the field remember god’s care for you

when you see a sparrow, do the same

when you light a lamp think about how you offer love to the world

when you see a fig tree or an olive tree think about what it means to bear fruit in your life

when you see a sheep think about God going after each one that is lost

when you sit to eat bread, remember that I’m offering you life

Because what does bread do?

It nourishes.

It sustains life.

We lose some of the punch of the biblical imagery in our modern world when most of us have lived lives of relative abundance

for the majority of human beings throughout history having food for the day was not a given

that’s true right now, both around the world and in our neighborhoods

if you see photos of the Great Depression the long lines people are standing in are bread lines, set up by local charities to keep people alive

the provision of bread is not just a nicety

like your going to an awesome dinner party flowing with wine and a charcuterie board before you even get to the spread of whatever and someone brings bread to go on the side

for most people bread is life-giving in the truest sense of the term

bread has been used before by God to teach his people, and Jesus references the story here

after God liberated his people from Egypt they found themselves in the in-between place of the desert

already out of slavery, not yet to the feast

and the desert is a place of testing and deepening dependence on God

Jesus himself was tested in the desert, with Satan telling him he should conjure up some bread rather than depending on the Father to care for him.

the Israelites are tested in the same way and God teaches them (and us) by providing bread from heaven

not costco warehouses of bread

enough bread for the day

daily bread, which Jesus tells us to pray for later on

But when Jesus references that he says, “look that’s profound, but the people who ate that bread didn’t gain eternal life from eating it.”

Jesus says, “I’m not offering you life-giving, nourishing, sustaining bread … the kind that when you eat it you won’t have to go searching for more and you won’t be hungry. It’s the bread that satisfies that hunger you have that goes deeper than your bellies. That hunger that keeps you chasing everything in the world to find meaning and connection and purpose and joy and peace but you have to keep running because all the stuff you think will satisfy you turns out to be just empty calories and five hour energy shots or decadent treats that satisfy only for a night.”

If you have kids, perhaps you have the conversations like we do where the kids are looking for something to eat and they’ve had a popsicle and some chips and some fruit snacks and they ask if they can have a cookie and we say, “no you need to have some real food”

Jesus is the real food.

And I want to make a careful distinction here.

It’s not that Jesus offers some idea or product of service, he offers himself

In the Gospel of John in particular Jesus makes a lot of “I am” statements to POINT OUT that HE is the thing

Jesus doesn’t just share some bread, he is the bread

Jesus doesn’t just have a word, he is the word

Jesus doesn’t just point the way, he is the way

Jesus doesn’t just shed some light, he is the light

Jesus doesn’t just open a door, he is the door

Meaning Jesus isn’t just our guide to the thing that satisfies, he is the thing

He is the endgoal.

He is the well from which we drink.

Himself.

Satisfaction and the life that is truly life is found in union with him, being caught up into his life, when he lives in us and flows through us like we are the branches and he is the vine

Last week I argued for a faith that is contemplative.

This is a picture of it.

Yes, we do things for Christ. There is an active outworking of our faith and many sermons will emphasize that dimension of our faith.

But those actions have to flow from the nourishment we find in eating the bread of life.

I want to share this quote from Thomas Merton to illustrate it better.

“If in all things I consider only the heat and the cold, the food or the hunger, the sickness or labor, the beauty or pleasure, the success and failure or the material good or evil my works have won for my own will, I will find only emptiness and not happiness. I shall not be fed, I shall not be full. For my food is the will of Him Who made me and Who made all things in order to give Himself to me through them.

“My chief care should not be to find pleasure or success, health or life or money or rest or even things like virtue and wisdom—still less their opposites, pain, failure, sickness, death. But in all that happens, my one desire and my one joy should be to know: “Here is the thing that God has willed for me. In this His love is found, and in accepting this I can give back His love to Him and give myself with it to Him. For in giving myself I shall find Him and He is life everlasting.”

Amen.

In light of all this perhaps we find deeper meaning in Jesus saying to his disciples, “this bread is my body, broken for you.”

there are layers of meaning here.

yes Jesus’s body was physically broken

but bread is broken to be shared and offered to others for their nourishment so that they can have life

Jesus says, when you eat the bread do it in remembrance of me

and when you drink the wine remember my blood, which is offered as a sacrifice to cover sin

which means there’s nothing you need to do to earn God’s love and favor or be restored

In his book Faithful Presence David Fitch talks about how in many traditions people aren’t allowed to TAKE the bread and wine, they can only receive it.

The reason for this is to emphasize that all of this is gift.

We don’t accomplish it, we don’ make it, we don’t TAKE it, we just receive.

Do that now.