John 6:24-35
“Living Bread”
Preached August 4, 2024
“This is the JOY for me! I. love. bread. I love bread!” So started a Weight Watchers commercial featuring Oprah, sharing her passion for bread. And while I’m not a Weight Watchers person myself, this commercial resonated with me. Oprah loves bread? So do I! But probably most of the world loves bread - I think that bread is the ultimate comfort food. Now, I know a lot of you are gluten-free. Some of you are due to medical reasons and many due to choice. And friends, I have respect for you, I pray for you, and I marvel at your discipline! AND I wish you nothing less than the JOY that Oprah gets from bread in whatever fuels your diet. Because bread brings me so much joy. And bread is so versatile and comes in so many forms. From a good wheat sandwich bread, a sourdough, focaccia, pita, tortillas, naan, brioche...to the Eucharist, that is, the bread on our altar table, the bread we bless, break, and eat together.
When I think about my love for bread, I think about bread on two levels. There is the level of eating bread for sustenance, nourishment, strength, and comfort. And then there is the level of sharing in the Lord’s Supper in which I eat the body of Christ and share in the cup for sustenance, nourishment, strength, and comfort. I cannot separate the bread on my dining room table and the bread on our altar table. They both are integral parts of my life. One satisfies my body, the other satisfies my soul, and today’s Gospel reading talks about both kinds of bread.
See, John often operates on at least two levels, talking about two things at once and that’s what’s happening in this conversation between Jesus and the crowd who had followed him. And in order to understand the conversation, we have to look at three different stories about bread.
The first reference to bread in this passage is the reason the crowd followed Jesus, the miracle he had performed in the first part of this chapter in John. We looked at it last week but allow me to refresh your memory: Jesus had crossed to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and a large crowd followed him because they knew of his miracles, how he cured the sick. And so when Jesus saw the crowds he asked his disciples, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” And in disbelief his disciples answered him that it would take six months wages to feed the crowd and even then, barely! Many would probably leave hungry. But a young boy had five barley loaves and two fish. Jesus had the crowds sit and he gave thanks for the bread and distributed it. 5,000 plus people ate their fill, as much as they wanted, and were satisfied. After the meal was over, the disciples gathered up the leftovers and had twelve baskets full of bread. And the people were amazed and what he had done - so much so that they wanted to make him king! And so Jesus withdrew from the crowd...and then, of course, the crowd followed him again.
Because wouldn’t you follow a person who cured the sick? That’s the reason this crowd of 5,000 came to him in the first place! And then that same person, that same man, fed them until they were full! Of course they wanted to make him king! A politician today who supported good healthcare, worked with a little and gave a lot, and made sure all were fed? All were satisfied? They’d have my vote! But Jesus didn’t want to be king and he wasn’t running for political office. He just wanted to feed the hungry, to break bread together with them. I think this is an amazing thing about Jesus, about our God, that he asks, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Jesus sees the hunger in the crowd, the physical hunger in the bodies of 5,000 people and he doesn’t just say, “Where are they going to get food...on their own?” or “What am I going to eat?” He said, “How am I, how are we - going to feed them?” Jesus is the ultimate dinner party host, attentive, caring, gracious. And from this story, we can learn that Jesus cares about physical hunger. Jesus cares about the bread, or lack thereof, on our dining room tables, on the tables of our neighbors. Jesus cares about the tables of 44 million Americans and 2.4 billion people worldwide who are food insecure. And to those of us who have bread, even if it’s just a handful of barley loaves, Jesus is asking, “How are we to feed them?”
This is the first story of bread in our reading today, the foundation of what we are talking about: Bodies, hunger, bread, physical bread. And this is the reason the crowds followed Jesus and he said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of loaves. Do 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 on him that God the Father has set his seal.” And here the crowd and Jesus have a little back and forth discussion. The crowd is looking for signs to believe in Jesus, to follow him, to take him for his word on who he is and what he has to offer. Apparently, healing the sick and feeding 5,000 weren’t enough. So they say 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? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
This is the second story about bread, and it brings us back to the book of Exodus: The Israelites had been led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses. They left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and were now wandering the desert, in the area that we know as the Sinai peninsula. They were journeying toward the promised land and gave God the credit for freeing them from slavery. This release from Egypt was an impactful, defining moment for the Israelites, an event that continues to shape and define the Jewish people even in our modern day. But, after two months wandering in the desert, well, it’s easy to get a little forgetful, a little disgruntled, a little hungry. Perhaps even a little hangry. And so they called out, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” They were hungry and God took notice.
So God told Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you.” And God delivered. Every morning in the desert after that, for forty years, when the Israelites woke up, there was bread from heaven, manna, on the ground like morning dew on the grass. They ate their fill of a bread that tasted like wafers with honey, and their hunger was satisfied.
Once again, God notices hunger and does something about it, God provides bread, manna from heaven. And, there was something more than quenching physical hunger, something more than bread that God gave to the Israelites in the gift of manna. In manna, in bread, the Israelites were reminded to whom they belonged. They remembered their salvation from the land of Egypt, from slavery and oppression. In the gift of bread, they remembered that they had a God who would not abandon them, that they had a God who liberates and gives them freedom, that they had a God who cared about their physical AND spiritual hunger - a God who gives manna, bread, in the wilderness, sustenance for body and soul, when it’s most needed.
And the crowd that followed Jesus on this day, they were looking to Jesus for something like manna, a sign of who he was. And Jesus replies, saying 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. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Jesus was reminding them that manna was more than food, more than bread, it was sustenance in the wilderness for their bodies and souls.
And as those in the crowd are reminded of this, they realize they are hungry. But as they say to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always,” they are not asking for physical bread. The hunger they have is not necessarily in their bodies, but in the souls. They are seeking the bread that will give them sustenance in the wilderness. That will remind them of the promises of God, grace and love, liberation and salvation. They are asking for bread because they’re spiritually hungry and they are looking for something that will satisfy their every need, satisfy their hungry hearts.
And Jesus says 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.” And this is the third story about bread in this morning’s Gospel reading. The God who cares about our physical hunger, the God who gives us bread, the God who gives manna in the wilderness, who sustains and liberates God’s people - Jesus is claiming to be that God. Jesus is claiming that through him, the gift of manna, of satisfying spiritual hunger in the wilderness, was not just available to the Israelites in the desert, but is available to the crowd before him, and by extension, to all, including us here today.
This is why on the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, gave it to his disciples and said, “Take and eat. This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me as often as you eat it.” Jesus is bread for the world, Jesus is the bread of life, that sustenance which will satisfy every spiritual hunger we have, that will satisfy our hungry hearts, that will give us a taste of freedom, of liberation, of grace, of love, of joy! This is the joy! Not just that we love bread, physical bread. The joy is that the Bread of Life loves us! That Jesus is the bread of life! And that bread is available to all, and those who partake of it shall never grow hungry or thirsty again.
So as you come to the altar table today and partake in Communion. And as you go home and you eat bread at your dining room tables. As you feed others bread. As you support Richard Brown Food Pantry as our monthly mission this month ...remember, all these breads are connected. From our dining room tables, to the bread we feed others, to the bread we bless and break together - Christ is here, present with us, present in our hearts, present in the bread. Christ is the Bread of Life, offering us that which will satisfy our hungry hearts, that which will guide us through the wilderness, that which is Love - for God, for self, for neighbor. So come, come to the table, eat the bread, and remember all that the Living Bread has done, is doing, and will do for us.
Amen.
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