Text: John 6:24-40 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
24 So when the people saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Caper′na-um, seeking Jesus.
25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see, and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”
36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; 39 and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
The great chef James Beard once said that “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods.” Throughout human history, bread has been more than just a staple – it has very often meant the difference between life and death. The Bible itself refers to bread as the “staff of life.” No other food has the same status. Every human culture has bread in various forms. You might even say that bread really is the common denominator of humanity. When I think of bread, I think of how wonderful baking bread smells, how comforting it is to sink my teeth into a nice warm piece of bread, and how it fills my stomach and satisfies my hunger.
It’s no accident that Jesus uses bread to signify his body at the first Communion service. As bread gives strength and life to the body, so does Jesus give life to the soul.
“I am the bread of life.”
When Jesus says these words, however, he gives the word “bread” an entirely new meaning. He takes the concept of bread as the staff of life and extends it into the realm of spirit. Physical bread feeds our bodies, but sooner or later, we need to eat again.
These people Jesus is talking to are a case in point. Just a little while before, they had been pretty desperate when they were over there on the other side of that lake; but now their stomachs are full. Their situation has improved, at least for the moment. That miracle with the loaves and fishes had really been something remarkable – something truly new to them – and now they were sticking to him like glue, following him wherever he went, not giving him a moment’s peace. They remembered the manna in the wilderness that had saved their ancestors. “Could this be the new Moses?” they wondered. “Do you think he’ll work another miracle or two for us if we wait around long enough?”
They missed seeing the forest for the trees. Their expectation had more to do with gratification of the senses than with the life of the spirit, more to do with carnival than incarnation. Despite what they had just witnessed and been a part of, they just wanted Jesus to do a few more conjuring tricks for them. “Give us some more heavenly bread, right here, on the spot.” And Jesus says, no. Instead, he gives them something better – he gives them himself as the bread of life.
The problem, though, is that they’re not quite sure what Jesus means by calling himself “the bread of life.” They maybe thought, “Well, yes, he just gave us bread which helped to keep us alive – maybe that’s what he meant.” They had already been knocked out of their everyday experience, so they’re kind of reeling from it all and not quite up to understanding what Jesus is talking about. They’re too surprised, maybe, to take it all in.
That’s how Jesus worked then, and works today. He will take something that is so commonplace, like bread, and use it to surprise, and to utterly rearrange the reality of, those around him.
I am not the world’s greatest fan of surprises. I used to think I was, but the more I look back on even my early life, I find that I was much more comfortable with a predictable routine, with being able to plan ahead, or at least to know what was coming next. Surprises – even pleasant ones – did cause a certain amount of discomfort and anxiety. That massive surprise about the new grandchild on the way, for example, thrills me beyond belief and I can’t even describe how excited Katie and I are about that baby – but on the other hand, I have spent the last week mentally adjusting to this new reality; so, if I happen to seem more out of kilter than normal, it’s because I am!
That’s what surprises do – they upset the apple cart. They call into question old assumptions. They reconstruct our world.
So we can put ourselves right in the midst of that crowd who heard Jesus say for the first time that he is the bread of life. And even though we have had two millennia to come to grips with it, it still trips us up.
Have you ever wondered why God does that? Among many other things, I think it’s because God wants to get our full and undivided attention. There’s nothing like a surprise to make us focus totally on the moment.
The crowd hears Jesus tell them that he, the man standing right there in front of them, is ‘way more than a man, ‘way more than just a gifted rabbi, ‘way more than just a healer; and, after the initial shock wears off, they collectively seem to say, “OK, we’ll accept this – but what do we have to do to get this eternal bread of life? What’s the catch?”
The answer is deceptively simple. “Just believe,” Jesus says, “just believe that I am the One God sent.” At this point, there might have been some who decided to take the opportunity to slip away and go home. Others who remained doubtless wondered just who in the world this Nazarene thought he was. After all, Jesus is holding out the Golden Ticket, the first prize. He’s offering the food of myth and legend, the stuff which grants life eternal.
The crowd can be forgiven, I think, for being just a bit skeptical. They certainly wanted to believe in him and in what he said – they wouldn’t have followed him around that lake if they hadn’t; but somewhere in the back of their minds, there was the fear: What if we’re wrong? What if it’s all just smoke and mirrors?
That right there is what is so hard about the gospel and the sacraments. “For they come into our lives, disrupting the neat order we’ve arranged, and surprise us, even shock us, by making these audacious promises of life and wholeness. And that’s hard. For on a day-to-day basis, most of us have gotten pretty good at defending ourselves from the pain and frustration and hurt and despair of life in this world. And then these promises of God are announced to us and they only betray the foolishness of our self-reliance and at the same time promise us more than we could have ever hoped for.”[1]
So much for our plans and routines. The Apostle Paul puts it a different way when he talks about our daily attempts to control our world and derive some sense of order out of chaos: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
“For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” (I Corinthians 1:25-30, RSV)
Back when Katie and I were in seminary, a phrase that was popular at the time was “let go and let God.” The idea behind the phrase was that God was and is in charge, so we need to give up our sense of control and allow God to work.
This is hard for us. How can we live, we ask ourselves, if we don’t keep our eye on the ball? We have to make plans, don’t we? We have to “take care of business,” right?
Of course we do. But what’s going on here is that Jesus reminds us that our plans and goals, our self-reliance, may be important for our day-to-day existence, but in the end, it is God who will fulfill his promise of abundant life far more than we can even conceive, and that we need to keep that in mind so that our planning doesn’t become a kind of neurosis and our self-reliance doesn’t become selfish arrogance.
Consider what we are about to do this morning. In a few minutes, we will come forward to take into ourselves that very Bread of Life and the Blood which is the cup of salvation. As we do so, we affirm God’s promise to be with us forever, to go with us wherever we may go, to hold on to us through all that life throws our way – including even death – and to grant us in the end nothing less than life eternal. Now there’s a promise! Each time we come to the Lord’s Table, we are promised nothing less than forgiveness, acceptance, wholeness, which is to say, life, both now and forever.
And the thing about forgiveness and acceptance and the like – is that such things, as we know, just can’t be gained or earned, coerced or accomplished. Like love, they can only be given as a gift by one person to another.
That is the heart of the sacraments. Communion and baptism are God’s external and objective words of love and forgiveness, given in a form which we can receive – external meaning outside of us, and objective meaning they exist completely apart from us. The sacraments are God’s physical, visible words for God’s physical, visible people.
Just as with Jesus’ words to the crowd, a promise like that is as frightening as it is comforting, for it raises our hopes and expectations really beyond anything we can imagine. John reports that the people naturally ask, “what miracle will you perform so that we may see it and believe you?” In other words, “Show us what you got, Jesus.” That certainly sounds familiar. Faith would be so much easier if God acted liked a cosmic vending machine and just gave us miracles whenever we plunked in a quarter.
But God rarely does what we expect, not least because what we expect is so mundane, so predictable, so common, even – dare I say it – boring. Our God is so far above the common and mundane. Ours is a God of mind-blowing surprises. Ours is a God who upsets the apple carts of our lives. Ours is a God who turns our world upside down. And so rather than do what we expect, God does the unexpected. And boy, are we lucky that that is the case! For instead of slamming down the gavel of righteous judgment in the face of our sin and selfishness, God offers mercy. Instead of the justice we deserve, God offers love. Instead of condemnation, God grants us forgiveness. Above all, God gives us his own self in the Person of Jesus Christ. “For as Martin Luther would remind us, the whole of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are summed up both succinctly and eloquently in the two words we hear when coming to the Table: ‘for you.’ This is Christ’s body, given for you. This is Christ’s blood, shed for you.”[2]
This is the heart of our faith. Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word who was with God and is God from the beginning; the Christ who was active in the creation of the heavens and the earth is the same Lord who cares so desperately for us that he gave his life for ours on the cross and gives himself still in the bread and wine.
What we are about to share this morning contains nothing less than God’s own self, given freely for us, that we, too, might have abundant and eternal life with him.
So, unlike those in that crowd who stood, slack-jawed and confused, let’s live into the surprising, even audacious, but ultimately life-giving promise God grants us today. Let us hear anew God’s unexpected word of forgiveness and mercy. For it is true that those who come to Christ and are in Christ will never be hungry, and that those who believe in Christ will not thirst.
That is the incredible, surprising, awesome and life-giving promise of God.
Let us today take into ourselves the Body and the Blood of his Son, Jesus Christ, and feel them renew us, refresh us, and empower us to go forth and share that unbelievable surprise of God’s love to the world.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Lose, David, “Pentecost 10 B: The Surprise of Our Lives”, “…in the meantime,” http://www.davidlose.net/2015/07/pentecost-10-b-the-surprise-of-our-lives/
[2] Ibid.