Bread of Heaven

Sunday, August 6th, 2006
Proper 13 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 6:24-35

24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, 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 on him that God the Father has set his seal.” 28Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he 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.

Once again, we start with food.

Keep in mind, this is picking up just a few short verses from where we left off last week. The last sentence from last week’s reading told of Jesus’ going off on his own – alone – when he realized that the people he’d just fed – all five thousand of them – wanted to make him King by force. Jesus left the people and first went off to be by himself, then met the disciples and traveled with them a few miles away, to Capernaum, and the people followed them.

This morning we pick up the very next morning. At least some of the same crowd is still looking for Jesus with the “Jesus for King” placards bouncing up and down among them. If you look real closely, you may just be able to make out the smaller signs that some of them were carrying: THEY say “What’s for Breakfast?”

You see, the people are still stuck on the fact that their stomachs having been filled so easily the evening before. When they find Jesus, their first question is interestingly phrased. They ask of Jesus, “WHEN did you come here?” Notice, please, that they are focusing on the passage of time – on the time, specifically, between meals. Their question was probably aimed at reminding Jesus that “Hey, it’s about time for breakfast!” It would seem incredible, don’t you think, to have experienced a miraculous feeding along with thousands of others, and not be aware on some level of the spiritual significance of the event, especially if they had witnessed the event from beginning to end.

Can you imagine watching five loaves of barley bread and two fish be multiplied into enough food to feed five thousand men, plus a likely equal number of women, and an unknown number of children, and not come away as interested in the person at the center of the miracle as in the miracle itself? Wouldn’t it seem to be an obvious follow up question from the people to ask Jesus who he was?

It seems that was not the case. They had it in their minds that Jesus was to be an earthly Messiah, a political and military leader OF COURSE. Wasn’t that what they were supposed to be looking for? Someone who could help provide them their earthly needs? Fulfill their earthly desires? Make them victors rather than victims?

How often does that happen to us? That we have so set in our minds what the other person is supposed to say, or do, or think, or FEEL, that we don’t even realize it when they don’t respond the way we expected them to, sometimes to the point of reacting as if their response WAS what we THOUGHT it was going to be when in fact it was nothing of the sort? That is in a way, just what is happening here, between the crowd and Jesus.

They are literally thinking Jesus is a new Moses, coming to liberate them, and to duplicate their feeding just as the people of Israel experienced in the desert with Manna from Heaven. Jesus responds to their underlying NEED in answering their question about when he arrived in Capernaum. He knocks away the superficial ‘when is our next meal’ out of the water and addresses their deeper need. We spoke last week of some of the more basic human needs: food, clothing and shelter, but we also touched on some other, harder to quantify needs – we listed self worth, security, and success. These were the needs that Jesus begins to address, and in addressing, he redefines them, as he so often does.

Self worth, as the world defined – and to a large extent STILL defines it – is measured in direct proportion to the amount of value placed on one’s worldly possessions, not on what it is that makes one an individual, a unique and precious child of God. One whom God loved enough to die for. The people are asking Jesus for a meal, and Jesus is trying to make them see that what they are – what WE are – truly hungering for can only be found in the eternal – in that which does not perish. So he answers, and he tells them they should not work for the food that perishes, “but for the food that endures to eternal life”.

Well, again, it seems that the people couldn’t hear for their belly’s growling. Again they are stuck on Moses, and understand Jesus to be telling them that the food he has for them is like the Manna the people got in the desert through Moses – they woke up each morning and it was just THERE – lying there on the ground, and they were only to gather enough to last them that day – no more. If they did, it would go bad. So they respond to Jesus’ perceived offer and ask him to tell them what they need to be about he business of DOING in order to receive that same ‘manna’ they are hearing Jesus talk about.

So Jesus tries to be even clearer in what he is saying. If you notice, as the chapter progresses, Jesus is being more and more specific in explaining who he is and what he is here to do, and the clearer he gets, the less popular he becomes. It started when he healed the paralytic and forgave him his sins in front of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, and it continues through this passage.

The people ask Jesus what they need to DO – operative word being “DO”, and Jesus turns it around and says it’s not about DOING, it’s about BELIEVING – and believing in him whom God has sent – Jesus himself. The DOING has been on God’s part – it’s nothing they or we can do on OUR part to attain … mercy, salvation, grace, whatever you want to call it.

The language of faith that has developed over the last two thousand years is truly beautiful. To read some of the church fathers, or some of the medieval Christian mystics – and even some of the more recent writings – even many of the hymns we still sing after three or four or five hundred years, if not longer, is to be aware of the amazing creativity of the human mind – the gift of speech, and word, and phrase, and how reading or hearing something can turn our day around completely is one of the purest forms of joy that can be experienced. But there are two sides to that coin.

Somewhere I read – I’m sure with the internet, you may have as well – of a person who dies, and wakes up in the afterlife, and is given a choice to make. He is shown through one door, which opens onto a banquet hall, with a huge table loaded with food. There are people all around the table, and they are starving – none of them can eat anything. They are not able to bring their hands to their mouths to feed because they have no elbows. Their arms remain straight, and they can only sit and complain and bicker and argue.

The next room the person is shown is almost a duplicate of the first, but here, everyone is joyously feasting. They, too, have no elbows, but the difference is that here, rather than trying to feed themselves unsuccessfully, they are feeding each other. You see, they are no less equipped to take care of each other now than when they DID have elbows.

It’s a little smarmy, isn’t it? But it makes the point, doesn’t it?

What is it that, as Christians, we most cherish in our pilgrimage through life? What is it that keeps us going, that gives us the energy to wake up and get up each day and meet it head on, with varying degrees of confidence, granted, but with the assurance that we have something to look forward to – either at the end of the day, or at the end of the week, or at some point in the not too-distant future? What do we mean when we say “Bread of Heaven”?

Let’s draw the correlation with our physical bodies. What does our body need to keep going? What provides us the energy to get up each morning and make it through each day, and week, and month, or year?

Food, of course.

It’s the same with our spirits.

The question for Jerusalem Baptist Church is this: what does our spiritual food look like? We might need to change that wording just a little bit – to what does our spiritual food SOUND like? How is our table set?

Are our ‘meals’ brimming with words of encouragement, and affirmation, and concern, and love, and hope, and peace, and togetherness, or are they silent events, where few if any comments are made until we are away from each other and only then are the true words of our hearts expressed; of bitterness, and envy, mistrust, disdain, and even hatred.

If we are to be a true reflection of the Kingdom of God on earth, which do you think will be heard as a truer representation of that? I can tell you, but I think you already know.

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.

So what is it that we truly hunger for in this life? Forget about the fact that it is nearly lunchtime for a minute, and let’s ask ourselves, what is it that we have been longing to hear, to TASTE in our souls, in our very hearts?

Is it compassion?

Is it acceptance?

Is it forgiveness?

Is it repentance?

What kind of meal is this that Jesus is inviting us to share in – to take an active role in setting the table, and to feed each other?

Let’s pray.