Gospel: John 6:35, 41-51
A reading from the Gospel of John
Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus said to [the crowd,] “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 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. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. 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. 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.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Now let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and Redeemer
INTRO
With the Summer Olympics in Paris this summer, I love the stories of the athletes, their families, their struggles and hardships they have over come…but something else is being talked about in Paris. Bread is playing a central part in the tourist experience. After all, France is known for their bakeries, from crunchy baguettes to sweet pastries and so much more. One bakery went so far as to imprint Olympic rings on the fifteen pound loaves they were baking.
There’s something strange in that first paragraph. A loaf of bread that weighs fifteen pounds?! One the one hand, who doesn’t love bread? Even those with gluten allergies often seek the best gluten-free alternatives to traditional breads and pastas. But fifteen pounds is an almost unthinkable size for a single loaf of bread, even with all the extra people in town for one of the most popular Olympic events in memory. Does the biggest sporting competition in the world require the biggest baked good?
This all raises the question of whether it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. So let’s think about that.
TEXT
I our gospel text Jesus challenged his followers to recognize him as God’s anointed. When he proclaimed himself as the bread from heaven, the first objection was not that he was somehow bread but that he was from heaven. How could Jesus come from God? After all, wasn’t he from Nazareth?
Jesus challenged the people by quoting from Isaiah 54:13: “And they all shall be taught by God.” The hopeful future that the prophets predicted during the dark days of deep alienation between the people and God was at hand—if the people would only recognize who Jesus was. The disciples had the opportunity to be taught God’s words directly from God’s Word!
Jesus went on to argue that the manna, as prior bread from heaven, gave life temporarily but those in the wilderness generation eventually died. Jesus as the Bread of Life who came from heaven brought eternal life. Jesus insists that his flesh is the bread from heaven. Jesus challenges all those who would follow him to recognize both that his origins are from heaven, like no one else, and that digging into his material humanity is the only way to truly understand and partake in him as God’s anointed leader.
This week, and every week, we are challenged to recognize who Jesus is, and who we are as God’s people. Like David and Jesus, we are deeply immersed in contexts that do not support peaceful and merciful human flourishing. We are called to recognize what God is up to in our lives, our world and in our Messiah.
LIFE
In this week’s Gospel—for many Sundays this year, actually—Jesus talks about bread, even claiming explicitly in John 6:35, “I am the Bread of Life.” This reading also includes themes of Jesus’ coming death, communion metaphors, and the promise of eternal life. There’s lots of theological weight riding on this bread!
What makes this Jesus bread so different from the world’s bread—even a fifteen pound loaf—is not just what it does, but how it does it. Of course, regular bread doesn’t ensure rising from death. Jesus even highlights that the manna God gave in the wilderness didn’t have that kind of power! The Bread of Life that is Jesus Christ is different because it raises us up to share eternity with God.
There’s no such thing as too much of the Bread of Life because it’s meant to be shared. The bread comes down from heaven not just to fill one belly or satisfy one’s hunger, but to meet the needs of all who hunger physically and spiritually.
That reality, that the Bread of Life is meant for all, should also tell us something about how we use the bread—and all the resources—at our disposal. It’s really only possible to have too much of a good thing if we refuse to share it with others.
CONC
Many of us are hungry, physically, but we’re not sure what we hunger for. Bread makes a great metaphor, as it sustains us in our daily life, but it stands for so much more. Think of the miracle of bread: water, yeast, and flour, at its most basic level. But given time and attention periodically and an oven, it’s transformed into so much more.
Henri Nouwen spent much of his writing talking about Communion, trying to impress upon his readers how important it is. In Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith, he says, “The Eucharist is the sacrament by which we become one body. . . . It is becoming the living Lord, visibly present in the world” (reading for Oct. 13). In the reading for the next day, he says, “We who receive the Body of Christ become the living Christ.” Nouwen argues for a mystical—yet very real—transformation: the wine and bread transform themselves into blood and body which then transforms us from ordinary sinful human into Christ.
We are hungry for that transformation, but like those people who followed Christ from shore to shore, we often don’t know what we hunger for. We want to do God’s work in the world, but there’s so much work to do, and we’re so tired before we even get started.
Our Scriptures remind us in both the Old and New Testaments that God provides. God gives us both physical food and spiritual food. But we must be receptive. We must open our mouths. God won’t chew for us.
There are days and weeks when what I do seems so insignificant. What are my words of comfort when person after person suffers medical crises, their own or family members? I deal with one person’s problem, only to discover that 10 more have sprouted in its place. Most people don’t know how much longer their jobs will last, how long their retirement funds will last, how much longer we can go at this pace.
It’s good to return to the metaphor of bread. It’s good to think about small granules of yeast and to remember that without their activation, our dough would not be worth baking. It’s good to know that small acts can lead to great transformation further on.