The Bread of Life

Sermon for August 9, 2009 Proper 14 Text:  John 6:35-51 Title:  The Bread of Life A.   Not long ago I saw a bumper sticker that said, "If it's true that you are what you eat, then I must be fast, cheap and easy."  We laugh at that, but I've got to tell you, it does hit a little close to home.  I saw the results of a survey a few years back, reporting the answers to the question "What are the two biggest categories of nonfiction best sellers?"  As it turned out, number one was cookbooks.   We love to eat well.  Number two was diet books.  Evidently, we page through cookbooks, searching out the most tempting and succulent recipes. Then we race right over to the diet books to find out why we can't eat that stuff!   I hope I'm not making you hungry, between last week's discussion of grits and now this week beginning my message with fast food and cookbooks.  Obviously eating is an important part of life.  It's certainly an important part of life in the Bible.  Eating together is the height of social acceptance in the Middle East.  Even today, in the more rural parts of this country, if one is invited over to share a meal, it means you will be friends for life.  Jesus got flack from the religious establishment because he ate with those that they considered to be the wrong kind of people, namely, tax collectors and sinners.  But the Master was basically saying to the unacceptable by this action, 'You will be my friends for life.  You are acceptable to Me!'   And the staple of life in First Century Palestine was bread.  Bread was baked in clay ovens, removed from the family dwelling to prevent any danger from fire.  As I said in my mid-week meditation, baking bread was a family affair.  The kids gathered wood to stoke the fire, while mom prepared the dough.  And after the wonderfully smelling, bubbling concoction was cooled, it was eaten throughout the day.  Bread was essential for life!  So both they, and we, can appreciate what He means when He begins this morning's passage of Scripture with, "I am the Bread of Life."   B.   Last week we looked at the passage in Exodus that talked about God's gift of manna to His people, wandering in the Wilderness.  The word 'manna", as we noted, means, "What is it?"   We still don't know what it was, but in the corporate and historic psyche of God's people, it quickly took on the characteristic of bread.  Manna physically sustained the people in the Wilderness, just like bread.  And it was God's good gift.    In the verses immediately preceding this morning's passage, the people hear Jesus talking about God giving bread from Heaven, and they confuse it with the manna their ancestors received.  They asked of Jesus, "Sir, give us this bread always".  They were poor and hungry, impoverished people living in an impoverished land.  They were after ordinary food, food that perishes.  It was all they could think about.  But Jesus taught them to stretch their spirits to something even more important than physical bread.  He was offering imperishable food, food that provides lasting sustenance regardless of who you are, where you've been, or what your circumstances might be. Because the crowds failed to understand immediately, He explicitly declares 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."   It's no coincidence that Jesus uses the image of bread to describe the most basic element of spiritual health.  Believing in Jesus, following Jesus and relying on Jesus form the foundation of a healthy, whole and eternal life, just like bread functioned as the foundation for a healthy physical life for the people to whom He was speaking.  Jesus is life sustaining, like the manna of their ancestors in the wilderness.  But while manna was the basis of their sustenance, it couldn't make them eternally healthy. "Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, and they died," said Jesus.   Why?  In part, it was because they didn't believe God's promise and chose to grumble rather than receive the manna with thanks.  In like manner, whoever does not receive Jesus, the true bread of heaven, while living in the present age, will die. The Gospel of John is very clear, and I want to be just as clear:  there is only one way to eternal life, and that way is through faith in Christ!!   But if they (and we) believe in the one whom God sent, the one who "is the bread that comes down from heaven ... [they] may eat of it and not die.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever ...", because whoever listens to Jesus — that is, "eat[s] the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink[s] his blood" — that one will not die but will have eternal life, both now and hereafter.   This is not the prettiest of images.  Throughout the history of the Christian Church, those who opposed or who didn't accept the faith thought this language referred to cannibalism.   Frederick Nietsche, an incredibly influential philosopher of the 19th century, used to refer to Christians as being a strange type of people, who ate flesh and drank blood.  Now, we don't have time today to discuss all the theological nuances of Holy Communion (let's save that for another time), but suffice it to say that this language is sacramental, not literal.  Jesus instituted the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which is a channel of God's forgiving grace.  Bread and wine mysteriously become more than what they appear at the Table of the Lord.  And this Table is a time of communion with the Risen Christ.   So it is obvious that Jesus was offering was the kind of nutrition that will fuel us spiritually, and which shall never run out or become ineffective.   "I am the living bread that came down from heaven," He said.  "Whoever eats of this bread will live forever". The foundational spiritual nutrition of Jesus' own life, death and resurrection is what sustains us in our own journey out of sin and death and into the promised land of God's kingdom.   We also see in these verses that crowds were skeptical about Jesus.  Was He really what He claimed to be?  "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?"  Jesus, however, is not deterred by their skepticism.  Instead, he confronts it when he commands them, saying, "Do not complain among yourselves.  No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day". Not only does Jesus tell them to stop complaining, he also states emphatically once more that "the Father" — his Father — is actively at work in his ministry. It is by the Father's power that a person hears Jesus and believes in Him.   Those who hear and believe the Son's divine teaching receive an astonishing, amazing gift, for Jesus says, "Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life". In the past, God spoke through Moses and the Scriptures, but now he is speaking and working through his Son.   But Jesus' promise of life for those who believe in him demands an unprecedented, personal sacrifice on his part. Not only is he "the living bread that came down from heaven" — the one who can provide bread for the hungry — His own flesh is, in fact, "the bread that [he] will give for the life of the world". He is "the Word [that] became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth".  Jesus had to die so we might know life.  And His Resurrection proves that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.   C.  It's not always easy to believe this.  So much in life seems to argue against faith in a good God. You may know the story of the man who fell off a cliff, but managed to grab a tree limb on the way down. The following conversation ensued:   "Is anyone up there?"  "I am here. I am the Lord. Do you believe me?"  "Yes, Lord, I believe. I really believe, but I can't hang on much longer." "That's all right, if you really believe you have nothing to worry about. I will save you. Just let go of the branch."  A moment of pause, then: "Is anyone else up there?" You know, maybe it's me, but I think the hardest spiritual truth to swallow is that God could love me (substitute your own name here) enough to die for me.  Oh, I'm not talking about intellectually believing it; I'm talking about believing it with our hearts, all the way down to the core of our beings, all the way down to where it makes a real difference in the foundations of who we are.  When John talks about believing in Jesus, what He is actually saying is that we must trust Jesus with our lives.  That can't happen if we don't think God loves us enough to do what is best for us.  Circumstances in life oftentimes seem to go against us, and we wonder if God is really up there, and really on our side.  We try to control everything and everyone around us, but that only leads to a realization of how out of control we really are.   At it's core, therefore, this passage is all about believing without seeing.  That's what Jesus meant when He said, "I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven…Whoever eats of this bread will live forever."  Nourishment by Jesus means having a strong and intimate faith in Jesus.  Now I know, it's not always easy to trust the Lord like that.  But not trusting Him doesn't make Him less in control of things.  God can bring good out of evil.   Jesus invites us to "eat" of Him.   To consume him. To devour Him. To feed on Him.  In other words, to take His Words and His actions and really believe in Him, really make Him a part of our lives and who we are.  Truth is, "consuming" Jesus is good for us. It's healthy for us.  And when Jesus says this leads to eternal life, He means not only life to come but life right now.  We are aligning our lives with that of the Creator and Sustainer of the entire world.  To do so is to have joy, peace, and a real purpose in life.   Think about faith in terms of being like a bottle of medicine.  If someone takes a bottle of medicine from the medicine cabinet, and looking at the instructions on it, this person says, 'I'm sure they're correct. I have all confidence in the source of the medicine. I know who wrote these directions. I believe everything about it. I know this will relieve my headache, if I just take it,' but then takes the medicine bottle and puts it back on the shelf, this is not real faith.   The person who needs the medicine doesn't lose the headache. It continues on. Yet even though the person says that he or she believes in that medicine, and still won't take it, then it's not of much use. Real faith takes in the object of faith.  Like bread.  Like medicine.  Are we hungry?  Amen.       Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com