1 Bread for the Soul John 6: 25-34 Binkley Baptist Church ~ August 2, 2015 Stephanie Ford If you have children or pets now or in years past, you know the look I m talking about. It s late in the afternoon, it s been a busy day, and you are walking in the front door. What you most want to do is to put up your feet and drink a tall glass of iced tea but you can feel eyes staring at you. Indeed, from the moment my feet hit the kitchen floor, my cat watches my every move. Perched beside her empty bowl, her eyes implore: What s for dinner? You get the sense that Jesus got that same look when the crowd caught up with him that we-want-something-from-you-now look! We even hear impatience in his reply, You are looking for me because you ate the bread and had all you wanted, not because you understood my miracles. Do not work for food that spoils; instead, work for the food that lasts for eternal life. Now bread was and is no small thing. For the crowd seeking Jesus, it was the daily staple, fundamental at every meal, made through hard labor, not to be taken for granted. Bread was also a symbol of liberation, baked unleavened at Passover to remember the Hebrew people who did not have time to let their dough rise before they fled Egypt. Bread was furthermore a sign of God s sure provision stories retold of ancestors who gathered manna every morning in the wilderness of Sinai. And we can only agree: bread is a good thing to want, to seek. It is still what we most need to survive. Even if you are gluten-free, you have to find something akin to a staple like bread to stay nourished. Yes, the Bread of life is literal, physical real!
2 If we hear impatience in Jesus voice, it is not because he didn t care about his hungry followers, who prayed daily for enough bread to sustain life. No, throughout the gospels, we find Jesus feeding and healing over and over again. He cared about bodies. He shared meals with the poor, with the outcast. When criticized for allowing his disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry, he defended their actions. Yet, he also said mysterious things like seek first the kingdom of God, not food and clothing, for in putting the kingdom first, these physical things will be given to you as well. That s quite a promise. What could Jesus mean? A worthy sermon could be preached right here on the nature of the kingdom of God, how it calls each of us to an astonishing way of justice, peace, and compassion; how the world would be turned upside down if we all really lived out God s vision for humankind and all of creation. The kingdom of God is a lot like Jesus himself, who sacrificed the natural tendency to focus on his own life and his own family s well-being so that others in want of daily bread might be fed and those crippled by illness be healed and so that a community based on God s Way could grow. Could it be that food, healing, and justice multiply if we trusted the love of God enough to give ourselves to the welfare of all? That famous quote by G.K. Chesterton echoes in our minds: Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. I would counter Chesterton just a little: yes, it has been tried, again and again, as we at Binkley can attest, but it must be tried a whole lot more! But we are still left with Jesus seeming elevation of spirit over body in his mysterious challenge to the crowd. As we turn to communion in a few moments, taking in these very earthy elements of bread and juice what is Jesus recommending about them after all? What does he mean by being the bread of life?
3 Perhaps a medieval woman named Julian of Norwich, of 14 th C Britain can help. You may have heard her name associated with a beautiful quote: All shall be well; all manner of thing shall be well. Here are a few facts behind the quote: Julian lived as an anchorite in the city of Norwich, which meant her dwelling consisted of a few small rooms attached to a church from which she never left: a small slit opened to the sanctuary so that she could receive communion and a slit opened to the street so that she could offer consolation and spiritual care to those who passed by. Her life was given to prayer, her daily work was listening to God. Yet if we thought that Julian prayed and wrote in secluded harmony, we would be wrong. She lived during the bubonic plague, which ravaged Europe and wiped out over a third of the people of her city. No doubt she cried bitter tears for its victims, many known to her, as they were wheeled by her window on the way to the graveyard. The Church struggled to explain the reason for the plague; their answer: God must be punishing the people for their sins. Julian saw it radically differently. There was no sin that God s love couldn t overcome with the same compassion of a loving parent. She even asked God for a vision of hell and was shown nothing. But the people on the street struggled to believe in God s goodness, their prayers became dry. A mystic, Julian received forty visions, or showings as she called them. She writes about one of those visions: God showed me in my palm a little thing as round as a ball about the size of a hazelnut. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and asked myself, What is this thing? And I was answered: It is everything that is created. I wondered how it could survive since it seemed so little that it could suddenly disintegrate into nothing. The answer came: It lasts, and lasts forever, because God loves it. Everything that is, has its being through the love of God.
4 Bruce Epperly, notes, Put simply, God is everywhere and that really means everywhere. Nothing is without the presence and activity of God To say that God is everywhere moving in all things is to say God is in my life, moving within my life. God is here in this moment, this encounter, and this situation. Conversely, this means that there are no God-forsaken persons, places, and situations. So what about Jesus encounter with the crowd who are asking for more signs so that they could know for sure that Jesus was the real thing? Jesus does not give them another miraculous sign; rather he points to himself. Eugene Peterson puts it this way in The Message version. Jesus tells them: Throw your lot in with the One that God has sent. God is right now offering you bread from heaven I am that Bread. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more. As Christians, we have not only joined a community of followers, we have been called as daughters and sons of God to be transformed from within, and like all great mysteries, there will never be enough signs to convince us of this reality. We are called to a surrender of the heart, to a trust in the presence of God here and now, to empower us like no earthly food could ever do. We are called into a relationship with God, revealed to us in Jesus himself. Our prayers, Julian writes, join us to God, fastening us tight to the Divine Will at work in Creation by the sweet, internal workings of the Holy Spirit. God works through our prayers, Julian says, to change our lives, for Divine grace makes us like God, not only because we are connected to Christ with the bonds of family love and relationship, but because we are becoming like Him. 1 1 All Shall Be Well: The Showings of Julian of Norwich, written in modern language by Ellyn Sanna (Vestal, NY: Anamchara Books, 2011), 160-1.
5 Writing about the sacrament of communion, theologian Marjorie Suchocki explains, The Word, which is the revelation of God in Christ, is not a treatise in linguistic phrases; it is the person of Jesus Christ The beyond-words power of the Word is conveyed in the wordless Word of bread and wine. God is communicated to us; God is for us. 2 It was actually receiving communion by intinction for the first time in college that I discovered this sacrament of connection to Christ and to one another coming alive in me. Perhaps because in the Baptist church of my youth, I was taught to review my sins as I held the piece of bread and pondered the little cup of juice; communion was always a solemn affair for me. And while it is good to examine the heart, to turn again towards the Divine way communion is more than that. As I went forward in the college chapel, and the chaplain looked into my eyes, saying the bread of heaven for me, and another held out the cup, saying the cup of salvation for me and I felt my kinship to thousands of Jesus followers around the world, and knew instinctively that I was being nourished deeply in a way that I could not explain. Communion shared by the passing of the plate, and picking up the little cup of juice also changed for me. It became a wordless waiting upon God. I am convinced by Julian that we are never forgotten or forsaken by God, but how that gift plays out through eternity, I can only wonder. In partaking in this ritual begun in memory of Jesus last supper with his followers, I join myself to Jesus and seek the empowering grace to live like him. May it be so! 2 Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, God-Christ-Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology ( NY: Crossroad, 1982), 146.
6 Eucharist daily. In the Love is at the heart, and you are connected to Jesus, you are connected to countless generations of his followers, the good, the not-so-good, and he lives in you. Bread of life Temptation to turn stones into bread in the desert.