August 13, 2006
(Tenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 14)

The Bread of Life

by The Rev. Bryan England, Deacon

Deuteronomy 8:1-10  •  Psalm 34 or 34:1-8  •  Ephesians 4:(25-29)30-5:2  •  John 6:37-51
(From The Lectionary Page)

Over the past several weeks, our Gospel readings have centered on Jesus’ early ministry in Galilee, with the Sea of Galilee acting as a central hub around which all the stories take place. They have also centered around the concept of feeding, of people being fed in one way or another. It also plays a central role in today’s Old Testament lesson with Moses reminding the Hebrews of how God fed them in the wilderness and the promise of eating their fill in the land God is giving to them.

In the Gospel reading three weeks ago, Jesus had compassion on the crowd he had taught all day in the wilderness, and when evening came five thousand men were fed with five loaves and two fish.

The next morning the crowd noticed that Jesus and the disciples had slipped way across the sea, so some of them got into boats and crossed to Capernaum, where Jesus was living in his early ministry. When they found him, they asked the question that was foremost in their minds, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” They knew he didn’t leave the night before in the boat with the disciples, and he surely hadn’t walked across the sea. How had he gotten to Capernaum?

In his usual fashion, Jesus ignored their question and got to the root of things. “You’re looking for me because I gave you bread in the wilderness, and now you’re hungry again. But you’re concentrating on the wrong thing. That was just bread. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which I will give you.”

Well, this is what they’d been after all along, isn’t it? This is what they followed him across the sea for. “Sir, give us this bread always,” they said.

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty,” Jesus replied.

“Huh? What do you mean, you’re the bread of life? What do you mean you’ve come down from heaven? You’re the carpenter’s kid right, the son of Joseph and Mary? How can you say you came down from heaven, we know your parents!”

They didn’t understand what Jesus was telling them. And who could blame them, really? They weren’t living in a Eucharistically-centered culture wherein they grew up with someone placing a wafer of bread in their hands while intoning the words, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”

It was a hard metaphor for them to accept. Bread was the staple food in their culture, the cornerstone of their diet. The little meat or other vegetables they could afford was just to provide a little more flavor or nutrition to a meal that was otherwise made up entirely of bread. Without bread, starvation was inevitable.

Take Jesus’ remark and place it in a different culture, in a different time, and it would sound outrageous to them, and to us, as well. In China he would have said, “I am the rice of life.” In Ireland, before the famine, he would have said, “I am the potato come down from heaven.” Make your own analogy for modern America.

But what did Jesus mean, “I am the bread of life?” Jesus meant that he was not sent to provide food for the world, like God provided manna for the Hebrews in the desert. He was the food. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” He was not the messenger, as Moses was. He was the message. Jesus meant that he is the staple of our relationship with God, of our relationship with each other (as Paul said, “we are members of one another.”). He is the staple of our very human existence. And without Jesus, we will surely starve.

But with Jesus, we will thrive. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus is like a spiritual all-you-can-eat salad bar. Just take a new plate, and pile it high again. “Sir,” we cry, “Give us this food always!”

But what must we do?

Did you ever see the movie Hook, with Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook and Robin Williams as a bizarre Peter Pan? Peter had grown up and forgotten that he was actually the Pan, but he suddenly finds himself back in Neverland, trying to reclaim his title. While he’s in this process, trying to reclaim his lost youth and his leadership of the Lost Boys, they call him to dinner. He sets down at the table with everyone else, but there’s nothing on the table. No food, anywhere.

“Use your imagination, Peter,” he is told. “Believe, Peter.” When he does, when Peter succeeds in using his imagination and believes, suddenly the table in front of him is piled high with every imaginable kind of food. Peter learns that belief, even faith, is an act of will. We choose to believe. We choose to have faith.

“This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life.” “Believe, Peter.” And when we do, suddenly we are no longer hungry, no longer thirsty. Our table is piled high with everything we could ever need.

Here is a quiz is asked the 5:00 p.m. congregation three weeks ago to see how well they were listening to the Gospel lesson. How many people did Jesus feed with the five loaves and the two fish?

The text said there were five thousand men there, but it makes no mention of women and children. I once heard someone speculate that the reason women and children are not mentioned is because the women had enough sense not to go into the wilderness without food and drink, and they fed the children.

But the answer I want to leave you with is, “None.” When the disciples came to Jesus and told him to dismiss the crowd so they could find something to eat, he told them, “You give them something to eat.” When they protested that they couldn’t feed all the people with the meager five loaves and two fish they had, Jesus took them, blessed them, then gave them back to the disciples, who fed the five thousand.

If Jesus is the living bread that came down from heaven, if he gave his flesh for the life of the world, just as surely he calls us to share that bread with the world. “You give them something to eat,” he says, to us. Having believed, we must act accordingly and share that belief. Having eaten, we must share with those who hunger, until we all join in that heavenly banquet, of which this is only a foretaste.

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Wastelands

by The Rev. Bruce Hall, Deacon

First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter 1:21)

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. (John 6:44)

These two verses, one from last week’s Epistle and the second from this evening’s Gospel are very familiar to me as I and at least 60 other students were required to memorize them our first semester of college. The translation was a little different but I remember well the flash cards carried by many that fall as we sought to pass Biblical Foundations, one of the 12 required bible classes needed for graduation.

Biola College was the descendant of a bible institute, one of may founded in the early 20th century, dedicated to the proposition that God could be best known though study of the scriptures, preaching, and ceaseless evangelism. The bible was the source of all truth and from its pages all the answers we might need about God, ourselves, how to live with others, were to be found. Little had changed when my uncle attended in the '50s or when I arrived in 1980. From the start, all of us were asked to seek an understanding of our faith from the bible alone. The Word of God was to be our sole foundation and we were promised it held all the answers, was divinely inspired, and without error of any kind. Grounded in literal interpretation and biblical inerrancy our professors drilled into us the tenants of predestination where only the “elect” can be saved and with earnest conviction instructed us as to the dispensational beliefs of the “end times” well before Tim LaHaye was a best selling author. The word of God was clear and unambiguous and if we, like the people of Israel, would only be obedient to its commandments, this would prove we had made a genuine commitment to Christ, secure for all eternity, and would have a good earthly life in the meantime.

As a gay person I sought to be faithful to what I found written and heard from my pastors. There was some comfort in having what I perceived to be God’s exhaustive rulebook in my hand. Everyone around me affirmed that indeed, the bible was all I needed. But they were mistaken. I needed God.

In each of today’s lessons we are asked to think deeply about obedience and what means to be truly aware of our need for God. Both the Old Testament and Gospel reading reflected upon the meaning of Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. Moses is recorded as admonishing the people to observe the many commandments God had given and to remember how God had led them during this period of testing. In the desert they were confronted with the hardships of living in arid conditions where water and useable land were scarce. An accident, or the simple act of becoming lost could be fatal as the environment was uncompromising and indifferent to the needs of those traveling through it. Visitors to the national parks of the southwest have been cautioned by more than one park ranger to remember that, “the mountains don’t care.” Which means, wear the right shoes and clothing, use sun block, have a map and compass, and drink plenty of water during your visit. In short, this is a hard place and it can kill you if you’re not prepared to provide for yourself.

In the wastelands of the Sinai Peninsula a newly freed people were challenged to confront some of the most difficult living conditions while remaining obedient to the very God that had placed them there. Moses reminds the people that

“the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

God was both the source of their wandering and their means to survive it. God alone through the symbol of manna was how they would endure. It was not the animals that took or the water rationed in the heat, but God, their creator and sustainer that would provide.

At some point all of us must enter a wilderness where our weakness and dependence on something higher than ourselves is thrown into stark relief. Some of you may be in the wilderness this evening, searching for the means to survive the mountains in life that “do not care.” A child born into addiction enters such a wilderness, while a widow may enter another. Those experiencing the loss of divorce, employment, or enduring illness may also find something of an indifferent, lifeless wilderness all about them.

It is difficult, is it not, for us to accept that God is creator of our wasteland as well as the well of our survival? But there it is.

It is in these times where we may become reacquainted with our true nature and what we really need to live well. When all the material things in which we place our hope of well being are subject to change—for change they will, that is their nature—we may realize the true source of our survival and that is God.

This is what I hear Jesus trying so patiently to teach His those around Him, that we are not simply biological organisms whose well-being is derived by material conditions in a comfortable environment. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” You can be miserable in the land of milk and honey just as easily as when dodging scorpions. To “live” must be something more than just respiration, or digestion, or conversation with others. To live in keeping with our true nature we must be mindful of our utter dependence on God. So dependent that even God must draw us to the awareness of God and our need for Grace.

26 years ago in a wilderness of my own I mistook dogma and doctrine for the Living Christ. Today by God’s providence, I know the true source of my salvation. Now, I can look upon my creator without shame and while I don’t always feel “radiant” as in the Psalm, I certainly feel at peace in the love of God.

The children of Israel had the Law and the word of God it contained. Jesus brings God to us in His flesh—the Living Word, the bread come down from heaven—this is our bread today. We are called to nothing less than to seek God in the person of Jesus Christ. Whatever means we may use to get there, scripture, reason, tradition, or revelation, the ultimate object of our search is the same. Just as every one of us needs to eat, each of us searches for the “bread life” that in life’s wilderness’ can feed the whole of us and not just our bodies. The Gospel of the Christian faith is that Jesus was born, died, and is resurrected and has become this very bread. In the Eucharist we remember both His sacrifice and our enduring need for His saving power. All are invited to a gift freely given with the promise that,

“Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the work is my flesh.”

At this altar we seek and find the Risen Christ, present in the Eucharist and in the Body that is this congregation. Whatever your journey, no matter how desolate your wilderness may be, come, eat, here is the bread come down from heaven.