"Jesus is the Bread of Life, In Many Varieties" sermon for 8/9/2015

“Jesus is the Bread of Life, In Many Varieties”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 14, August 9, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: John 6:35, 41-51


“I am the bread of life.”

Well, that’s not confusing, right?

I mean, we’re hip. We know what’s going on. We understand all things that Jesus says. So we can just let that pass and move on to something a little more digestible, like, worrying about What is the minimum skirt length that Jesus approves of? or, What kind of people does Jesus want us to make wedding cakes for? or ask the question asked here, How can he say that he came down from heaven?

But, no, Jesus is rarely specific.

He likes to toss out these teaser phrases like, “I am the bread of life.”

I can imagine the crowd around Jesus, and I’m sure this included his disciples as well, sitting there listening to him, that when he says “I am the bread of life” they are probably greeting him with vacant non-comprehending stares and maybe motioning like, “we’re gonna need a little more than that, Jesus.”

“That doesn’t really help us, sir. Say a little bit more.”

And so he says a little bit more. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.”

And if the people were me, I’d still be sitting there, going, “Okay, um... go on….little bit more…”

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Well, that clears it up. Yeah.

Not specific, not very clear. He’s working in metaphors here. He is not saying that he is literally a loaf of bread. But there is a beauty in Jesus’ teaching in that so much is open-ended. He uses these metaphors. Phrases and symbols that people would recognize and would understand. Everyone is eating bread. We all have experience with eating bread.

And I think he knows that people would prefer specifics: a list of rules, a list of dos and don’ts, or a flowchart, something to spell out exactly what he wants from us and what he means. But because Jesus knows that’s what we want, he intentionally refuses to give it to us. Because it would make it too easy. He is not offering an easier path of faith, but looking for an incarnational embodied life of faith. A lived faith from people.

So he doesn’t go into a lot of detail about how to do things. He offers a lot of “in general” kinds of things: “What I want from you is to live with justice,” but he doesn’t say specifically what that has to be. He leaves it up to us. “What I want from you is for you to love your neighbor; what I want from you is to take care of one another, especially the poor and powerless, and those who are hurting and suffering. But how you do that, well, that’s going to be up to you. I can’t tell you how to do that,” -- and here I can envision saying this -- “I don’t want to tell you exactly how to do these things because then you’ll just do the minimum and say that’s enough. You’ll have a checklist, you’ll mark your things off, and then think you’re good to go.” But Jesus wants us to be always more compassionate, more loving, more merciful. What he is saying is, “What I want is for you to follow me. Do what I’m doing. I want you to follow me, and I can’t tell you how to do that. I can show you how to do that, model it for you.”

He says, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

He is the Bread of Life, and now he is talking about flesh. Getting a little creepy, but he’s on a symbolic move about his body. His body. The body that he later allowed others to betray, and then crucify, and then to the shock and surprise of many, the body then which he will raise from the dead and lift up. That’s the act of a loving God, to say, “Here is my body.”

“I am the bread of life. The Bread of Life is incarnate in my body.”

Now, earlier in John’s Gospel, two chapters before this one, Jesus meets a woman at a well in Samaria and tells her that he is the living water.

He says elsewhere in John’s Gospel, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He says, “I am the Light of the World. I am the true vine. I am the Good Shepherd.”

Logically, of course, he cannot be bread, water, a vine, and light, all at the same time. So be not too literal about this. He’s talking symbolically.

“I am the Bread of Life. I am the source of life. I am that which is more necessary for life. I am the one who gives life. I am the Bread of Life.”

Before we went into our Centering Song, I asked you to think of whatever images come to you when you think of bread. I give you a chance to participate. You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, but if you’d like to, just say it out loud, What comes to you when you think of bread?

[Some of the things that came out: Communion. Sandwiches. Special meals. Bread found in most cultures around the world, and some very different forms of bread, like pita and flatbreads, big fluffy breads, dense breads… Sharing at home when company came and one didn’t have much to share, one usually had bread and butter to give them. Comfort food. Is there any better smell than a loaf of bread coming out of the oven?]

I thought of a few: food. nourishment. something to share with others. something essential for life. sandwiches. A way to take things that grow out of the earth and put them in a new form that we can digest and eat to give us energy or life. Family suppers. Toast. Sopping up gravy. Trenchers. Hard work. My Aunt Doris, who is an amazing bread baker, and I think of her with her gnarled and arthritic fingers, kneading that bread dough over and over, even in the pain, to make bread for the family. My mom’s cinnamon rolls, that she made from some bread recipe that was only in her head. No one can make cinnamon rolls like she did out of that bread recipe. So bread is all of that.

See how loaded that image is? That’s the Bread of Life! It contains all those images and more about being fed, about feeding others. The varieties of bread. Maybe we all even picture Jesus differently, just as we have different kinds of breads that are part of our families or our culture.

I think Jesus is not saying he’s a loaf of bread, but saying that just as food is necessary to keep our bodies alive, Jesus is the source of life necessary to keep our spirits and souls going. Jesus provides for that part of our life that connects us with God.

Lynn hinted at this when she responded with her words about having bread on hand for company, I’ve been thinking about hospitality. I think especially in the midwest, and when I lived in Hawaii I saw this (though not so much when I lived in New York), what is one of the first things you ask when people come into your home? You ask, “Did you eat?” Or “djeet?” or “djeetyet?” Did you eat yet? In some Asian countries, the question is, “Have you had rice today?” It’s that hospitality that bread is so important. “Can I get you something to eat?” Whether it is just a piece of bread and butter, or sandwich, pie, cake, or even a meal. I think of my Aunt Tootie, and other relatives, if I’d show up unexpectedly there was also the apology of, “Oh, I don’t have a whole lot in my fridge” and then half an hour later you have a banquet that could feed six or seven people, and I’m like, “It’s just me, Aunt Tootie, you didn’t need to cook all that.” But that’s the bread of life.

The Bread of Life is that which nourishes us, connects us, that brings us together. So Jesus is saying, “I am the Bread of Life. I am what matters. I am the source of all being, the source of all life. I contain all life.”

That’s a pretty big statement to say all that. He is also saying, then, “So don’t seek the food that is not from God. I am the food that is good for you. Don’t seek the food that is not good for you, even if it looks a lot more attractive or sparkles more. It’s not from God.”

He doesn’t say, “I am come to be the arbiter of rules, but I am come to be the source of life. The container of life.”

He is the one who holds our life in his hands.

I think also of something I posted about on Facebook last Saturday (*see below for the post I made). Floyd died Saturday morning, and I’d been with him Friday afternoon and night. Then Saturday morning got the call from Pat and talked to her about it. Then I left to go see a play in the Twin Cities called “Stage Kiss.” Very funny. Go see it. But it is also a beautiful meditation on love. Looking at the real love between two people versus the artificial love that is created just because you work with someone, that infatuation kind of love that is not a solid. A beautiful meditation on love and life. When I got home that night, since it was the first day of the month, I was looking ahead to the rest of August and thinking of what I am doing this month, and I realized that this month I will experience all of the life cycles that we celebrate or commemorate in our life. FLoyd had died, so there was going to be a funeral. That’s the end of life. At the end of August, Michael Green and his wife will be here to have their new baby baptized. I had a wedding yesterday, so I was looking forward to that milestone of life, the joining of two people who are in love. And there was an encounter with someone whose marriage is falling apart. So that’s the other side of that coin: two coming together, and two that are growing apart. And I was thinking of those in our homeless congregation who have their own struggles, their own joys.

With all of this, I was thinking about how Jesus is present and involved in all of this. Jesus is present in all of life. Not just the good times. Jesus is present in all of life. Jesus is the holder of all of life. God coming to us in flesh to say, “I know that your life is hard. I know that it’s messy. Even as it has times of happiness and joy, I know and I understand that life is hard and difficult and painful.”

And God says, “So I am here with you. I come here to be with you because I know that life is hard and messy, and I’m sharing this experience with you.”

That’s a God that loves us. To come to us, to be present with us, to say, “I’m sharing this experience with you, and I am sustaining you with the Bread of Life, which is my body given for you, so that when you are in need it is there, and also so that when your neighbors are in need you can be my presence for them. You can be the Bread of Life for them.”

That is part of our church growth strategy as well. To invite people in to experience this Bread of Life. To experience this fellowship of love. In a harsh and sometimes unforgiving world, it’s the invitation -- the Christian invitation -- into the Body of Christ and into the Bread of Life that can be so healing. It can be the antidote to all the blehhhh that is out there. All that stuff we hear on the news and see on TV. The invitation into the Bread of Life is the antidote to that.

We are talking about Connection as part of the series Connect → Grow → Love that we’re doing over the next year. To connect with folks. To be the Bread of Life for other people. To invite them in. I’ve been out connecting with people, sharing the Bread of Life, being the church to them and building relationships. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s really all about, is to build relationships with people. To connect with God’s people.

So I challenge you this week to connect with someone new. Connect with someone new. Connect with someone you don’t know. Maybe a neighbor has moved in, or a neighbor that you’ve lived by for years but never met. Go out and connect with someone. Meet someone new and build community. You don’t even have to invite them to church, but you can. It’s always nice. Especially to invite them to something safe like singing around the campfire on August 19 at 6:30 pm. Connect with someone new.

I’ve been meeting a bunch of new people over the last couple weeks, and have extended invitations to 5 or 6 of them. Invited them into various things, whether church or a coffee to talk some more. I’ve been building relationships. The couple that I married yesterday and their family, as well, I connected with them. Built that relationship and I’ve invited them to join us. And next Sunday after worship, as I mentioned earlier, we’ll be distributing the door hangers that we made for the Songs and S’mores night. That’s another way to extend an invitation. So I invite you all to meet someone new this week, and if you can help do door hangers after worship, join us to spread the Bread of Life by sharing these invitations to our neighborhood to say “Please come and be with us.” Be the Bread of Life by being invitational.

I hope that isn’t too much of a challenge for one week, but I think connecting with one person ought not to be too difficult. Meet someone new, and let them know who you are, find out who they are. Share stories with them. And the more that we get to know each other, the more our community comes together as well. We can come together around the Bread of Life who is Jesus.

Let us pray: Holy Jesus, you are the Bread of Life for all the world. We pray that you continue to be the Bread for us, to sustain and nourish us, so we may be bread for our neighbors, connecting them to us and through us connecting them to you, the source of all life. Amen.



* here is the post to Facebook I mentioned. Unfortunately, facebook appears to have no way to link to a specific post, which lack of ability I find annoying, but circumvent by copying the thing here:

I posted earlier today when I was at the Guthrie theater about "a chance to enrich the soul with some good theater." I'm feeling very enriched. The play ("Stage Kiss") was really funny. The first act was basically a farce, and the second act was a surprising twist of the farce that turned into a beautiful message about the power of love. And as I sit here late at night, after a long week of the ups and downs of life, I'm looking to the rest of August and feeling the immensity of God's love and presence. I received a spirit-lifting meditation on love in the play today, and I look toward a month with a funeral, a wedding, and a baptism, and then the next month I get to be reunited with the love of my life. This month will see three of the major events of life, in all of which God is present - in death, the love that heals and comforts, from God and from a wife's dedication to her sick and dying spouse, and the reminder that not even death can separate us from God's love; the love of a couple to turn that love into the covenant of marriage; and the baptismal ritual that remembers and affirms God's love for all his/her/its sons and daughters. I also had the privilege tonight of being at the rehearsal of two incredibly talented young adults who are doing a recital tomorrow - God present in artistic expression. I'll spend time with some of our homeless and hurting brothers and sisters, and have opportunity to join the struggle of those who simply want a living wage and a path to the dignity of the exodus out of financial anxiety. Being a minister is a unique privilege of being allowed to be present and to be a witness to the fullness of human experience: the joys and sorrow, the hopes and the dashed hopes, the pains and the celebrations. For whatever it's worth, that is where my heart is tonight, and it feels good.