11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 5, 2018
24When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were beside the sea, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ 26Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is the Son of Man that God, the Father, has sealed.” 28 Then they said to Jesus, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one whom God has sent.” 30So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” 32Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35Jesus 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 6:24-35
**With thanks to Lauren Winner and her fantastic book Wearing God. The list copied in my sermon below and some of the inspiration for this sermon come from that book on pages 94-95.
What kind of bread is Jesus? As Jesus begins to explain the miracle of feeding a large crowd with only a few loaves and fish, he makes a rather startling claim, the first of the “I am” statements in the gospel of John. Before he proclaims “I am the light of the world, the good shepherd, the true vine, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth, the life,” Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.”
Which makes us wonder just what kind of bread Jesus might be. Pastor and author Lauren Winner wondered just that and posed the question to a group of people she was meeting with regularly. And they came up with this list, which she records almost as if it is a poem:
A bagel
Rye
Toast with jam
Morning glory muffins
Chocolate tea bread
Rosemary ciabatta
My grandmother’s sourdough
My grandmother’s challah
French toast
A crusty baguette
What do you think the bread of life tastes like? What bread do you crave right now?
We make a lot of the fact that Jesus identifies himself with an essential food that more or less exists in every culture around the world. From naan to tortillas to injera to mantou, the list goes on. It’s a basic staple, in many cases one of the most affordable and available forms of sustenance. Jesus identifies with the basic food that helps us survive. It’s the bread we need to exist. We cannot live without it. It’s part of the reason we don’t generally just grab any old food to share at the communion table – we are remembering the essential, life-giving Jesus.
But we also remember that life is more than sustenance. The kind of life that Jesus brings is more than just enough, more than getting by, more than just the basics. If Jesus comes to bring abundant life, than daily bread, the bread of life, is about more than just keeping us alive.
For those who have been ill, hardly able to eat, sometimes the bread of life is just a saltine cracker, something so easy on the stomach that it can be tolerated by those who can’t keep anything else down.
For those who have been lonely the bread of life might be a loaf of banana bread baked by someone just for them, brought over and shared along with conversations.
For those who are grieving, perhaps it is the family dinner roll recipe that has been passed down to a new generation that brings both comfort and tears to the surface when eaten around a holiday table at which some of our loved ones no longer sit.
For those who have denied themselves food out of shame or anxiety, the bread of life might be a rich pastry finally eaten with joy instead of fear.
For those who have just run a long-distance, a stale bagel at the finish line can feel like the bread of life.
Sometimes the bread of life tastes like freedom after years of oppression, like truth-telling in the midst of secrets, like a moment of relief from chronic pain, like a word of grace to someone bearing the weight of guilt. Maybe, as in the first reading today, for someone like Bathsheba, assaulted and widowed by a powerful man, the bread of life is that God notices and cares, even though real justice is never achieved. The bread of life tastes like life offered even in death.
Whatever the bread of life tastes like for you today, I can imagine God standing in the kitchen, apron on, kneading the dough or carefully layering butter into a pastry crust, flour drifting up to God’s hair and dough sticking to holy fingers, preparing just what we need for the day and all the while singing a little tune and remembering each of us, the memories of who we are and how God has taken delight in us.
Jesus’ claim in today’s gospel is more than just bland sustenance, and more even than making sure each person is fed. The claim Jesus makes is about the kind of abundant life we all hope for and the way in which God is working to make it happen.
But, too, we remember that we do not ask God to give me mydaily bread, that instead God teaches us to enjoy the bread of life in community with one another and that in offering us this bread of life God invites us to become bread for the world ourselves. Fed and nourished, we are sent out again. We are empowered to serve so that all might have their daily bread. And like the bread that Jesus provides, we are not all just the same. Each of us is formed and shaped and flavored differently. Each of us has particular gifts that that help feed others, both literally and metaphorically. Each of us has something the world needs. Each has a gift to offer.
And this, too, is part of how God responds to our pleas to “give us today our daily bread.” God calls us together into communities where we become bread for one another. This is who we are as church, called to offer ourselves and our gifts for the sake of feeding others even as we are fed. That’s the gift of church. That’s a gift I cherish as a pastor – the ways in which we have been for one another the bread that keeps us going, the bread that shows us abundant life. This congregation has always needed the many and varied gifts of all the people who are a part of this community, of all the people who have been here and helped sustain this ministry over many decades and of all the people who come even for a brief moment to worship in this place. That is always true, and yet this time of pastoral transition is a time that will make it more clear the ways in which everyone is needed to help the ministry continue to thrive and to serve and to share the love of God with one another and the world.
This community will continue to feast together. And God will continue to feed you the bread of life. But in feeding you, God will also use you to feed others. So as you receive communion today, it will be the same wonderful, homemade bread baked just for this assembly that we share every week. But imagine as you taste it that it takes on the flavor of just the bread you need to receive today. And then as you go from the table, begin to imagine what flavor you might offer to this community and this world, that you may also begin to realize the ways in which God has called you to be part of feeding the hungry world.
-Pastor Steven Wilco
Stewarding the Word 