I Am…You Are To Be: The Bread of Life--John 6:26-35
It
may not be as obvious now as it was a couple of years ago, but I love
bread. I love most all breads, with the
exception of any that have onion or oats (because of allergies), and I am not a
real big fan of banana-nut bread. For
years my favorite bread was the yeast roll at Golden Corral. In fact, there were many times were I would
eat an extra yeast roll or two instead of visiting the dessert bar (and that
was on top of any that I ate during rest of the meal). This summer, though, I found a new favorite
while we were on vacation. It is
Norlander bread. It is good warm or room
temperature with butter spread on it.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for my waist-line, you cannot
readily walk into a store around here and purchase Norlander bread.
When
it comes to folks watching their waist-line, bread tends to be a “no-no.” When I was in seminary I went through a
period of trying to lose weight. I used
a modified version of the Atkins diet, the biggest factor of which was
eliminating the bread and pasta from my diet.
My friends would make fun of me when we would stop at Burger King, or
somewhere like that, and I would order my burgers without the bun. It was pretty successful and in a month’s
time I had lost twenty pounds. I
happened to visit my doctor during this time and she commented on my weight
loss. I told her what I was doing and
asked her if it was okay, as in healthy, in her opinion. She said it was perfectly fine, and that I
would be successful in losing more and keeping it off, if I was willing to make
it a lifetime commitment. I said, “you
mean give up bread and pasta for the rest of my life?” She said, “pretty much.” I knew leaving the doctor’s office that I was
done losing weight…and sure enough, within a couple of months of starting to
eat bread again, all the weight was back, plus some.
Today
we begin a new series at St. Paul’s. In
this series we are going to journey through the Gospel of John examining the “I
am” statements of Jesus. Through the
Gospel, Jesus says, “I am” seven times—“I am the Bread of Life,” “I am the
Light of the World,” “I am the Gate,” “I am the Good Shepherd,” “I am the
Resurrection and the Life,” “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and “I am
the Vine.”
When
we hear these statements, if we have grown up in the church, or even if we are
not a Christian, we don’t think too much about the significance or scandal that
would have been heard and understood when Jesus first spoke them. We may not think the statements much more
than if Bill was to say “I am the Church Council Chair,” or Linda was to say,
“I am the Choir Director,” or Kathy was to say, “I am the Director of Elections,”
or Al was to say, “I am the exterminator.”
However
when Jesus said it, it was heard with a good bit of scandal. To understand the scandal, we must go back to
Exodus 3. God had appeared to Moses in
the burning bush and told Moses that he was to go back to Egypt (remember Moses
had fled Egypt, though being raised in Pharaoh’s household, he killed a fellow
Egyptian who was beating on an Israelite) and lead the Israelites out of
slavery. Moses, from the very beginning,
was trying to find a way out, said, “If I go back to Egypt and tell the
Israelites that the God of their ancestors had sent him, they are going to want
to know who this God is and I don’t even know your name. What am I supposed to tell them?” God replied to Moses, “‘I Am Who I Am.’” God
continued on, “‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, I Am has sent me to
you…The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever and this is
my title for all generations.’”[i]
“I
Am” was understood as means of identifying and addressing who God was. Those surrounding Jesus in the Gospel of John
would have known this immediately. So
now you can imagine the reaction of those who heard Jesus, not once, but seven
times say, “I am….” As they would have
heard it, they would have heard, and on more than one occasion Jesus was
accused of, blasphemy. The Israelites,
the Jews, of Jesus day would have heard Jesus identifying himself with
God…saying that He was God.
For
us, today, that is not controversial. We
know from the beginning of the Gospel of John that Jesus is to be understood as
God made flesh. We know, at least as
Christians, that Jesus, the Son of God, is to be understood as God Himself—a
member of the Holy Trinity. We know that
if we want to see what God looks like, we have no further to look than Jesus,
the Word, God’s Word, in the flesh.[ii]
Today
we heard Jesus say, “I am the Bread of Life.”
Prior
to our reading this morning, earlier in John 6, we find Jesus teaching on a
hillside late into the evening. It comes
to be dinnertime and rather than sending the people on their way to eat in
their own homes as one of the disciples suggested, Jesus takes the dinner of
one young boy, the only one to volunteer up any of his own food, and used those
five loaves and two fish to feed over twelve thousand folks. Jesus and the disciples went on their way
afterwards, trying to find some peace and quiet, they sail across the sea of
Galilee. The folks, so impressed with
being fed off those loaves and fish track Jesus down, and innocently ask,
“Rabbi, when did you come here?” You
ever done that before?? Track someone
down intending to be where they were and bump into them and act all surprised,
“Oh, what are you doing here?” or “Oh, you came too?”
But
you can’t fool Jesus. Jesus confronts
them. You didn’t just happen here…you
tracked me down…and you didn’t track me down because you think God’s kingdom
has come, you tracked me down because I gave you that food yesterday and you
want some more.” Jesus continued on, “If
that’s why you are here, then you have missed the whole point of what yesterday
was about. You have got to stop chasing
after the food that perishes and seek after the food that endures for eternal
life—the food that only I can give you.”
Here
is where the scandal began to erupt. The
people said what kind of miracle are you going to perform? Moses gave our ancestors bread from heaven
out in the wilderness.” Jesus said,
“Nope…you have misunderstood that
too. Moses did not give the manna for
the people to have something to eat to sustain them each day, it came from
God…and it is God who will give you the true bread from heaven that will give
life, not for just day to day, but life to the world forevermore.”
The
people begged for the food. Jesus said,
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes
to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be
thirsty.” (Now before you start asking
what does bread have to do with not being thirsty, we have to note that earlier
in the Gospel of John Jesus has the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the
well, promising her that if she asks it of Him, he will give her living water
and she will never thirst again.) Jesus
provides the living water, and now He says that He is the bread of life, and if
you partake of it, you will never hunger again.
The
people came, maybe looking for all that bread left over in the twelve baskets,
and Jesus told them that they had missed the point. They were not looking for the right
thing—what they were looking for would only satisfy them temporarily…Jesus
said, “y’all make my case, I gave y’all the bread yesterday, and now you are
back looking for more, you are hungry again—that kind of bread does not sustain
you.”
How
many times do we do the same thing? How
many times do we, in our hunger, go seeking after something that gives us a
temporary satisfaction, only to find out that the next day (either literally or
figuratively) we are hungry again, and go searching for it again…and maybe this
time it takes a little bit more than it did the first day to satisfy us.
Maybe
it started as a small joint of marijuana and pretty soon it was a rock of crack
cocaine…
Maybe
it started out as a one-night affair and pretty soon we found that we couldn’t
name all the partners we had been with…
Maybe
it started out as a new dress, a new suit, a new computer, a new phone, a new
car, a new house, and it felt so good, we found ourselves looking to upgrade
every chance that comes along…
Maybe
it started out as working a little overtime to get a little extra “security”
money in the bank, and now we haven’t had a day off in the last six months…
Maybe
it started out as a nice scoop of ice cream and now, fifty pounds later, it is
nearly a half-gallon ever night…
Each
time we think, this will be the time, this will bring me enough, this time I
will be satisfied, and yet we find ourselves still hungering. Jesus says, “you are chasing the bread…you
are seeking bread that will leave you hungry…If you want to truly be satisfied
then you need to come to Me.”
My
brothers and sisters, we all have a hole in our lives, a hunger in our lives, a
part of our lives which causes us to hunger…and it does not matter how much
pleasure or security we try to fill it with…it will never be filled outside of
a relationship with Jesus. It is only
Jesus who can fill us, only Jesus who can truly satisfy our true need…and that
true need is to be in relationship with God and because of our sin, it is only
through Jesus that we can be brought back into that relationship with God.
Since
the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sought to eat of the one food that they
were not to eat…when they sought to fulfill themselves in a way that God had
not intended, humanity has hungered…sin has left us wanting…but Jesus Christ
comes into the world to fully satisfy that hunger. Jesus says come to me, and eat…experience the
forgiveness, the love, the acceptance, the hope, the strength, the redemption
that I offer, and find that you will hunger no more.
That
may seem like a place to end…but here is where our sermon may turn scandalous
to some…note the title of the sermon, “He is…we are to be….” Jesus is the Bread of Life, we are to be the
Bread of Life.
Wait
a minute preacher….now you are talking blasphemy. It is one thing for Christ to make the claim
to be the Bread of Life…to be God’s life sustaining presence in the world…but
how can we make that same claim? We are
not God! We are not Jesus! Well, that is right in one way, but not in
another way…we are not God and we are not Jesus, but we have to remember what
we are…and Paul leads us to understand.
In
Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we read that Jesus is to be understood as “the
image of the invisible God…[that] in him all the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things….”[iii] Paul says that look at Jesus, see God. Yet Paul says more than that.
Paul,
in one of many places, tells the church in Corinth, “Now you are the body of
Christ and individually members of it.”[iv] I hope you are tracking with me and
understand where this is going. If Jesus
was the image of the invisible God, it folks in His day were to look to Him and
see what God looks like, and if we, the church, are to be understood as the
Body of Christ, it be concluded that we are to be the image of the resurrected
Christ in the world today. What Jesus
was when He walked the earth, what Jesus is, as He now reigns in Heaven and in
our hearts, we are to be to the world.
What
does that mean? What does it mean for us
to be the Bread of Life in the world today?
It means that we are to be that which brings the satisfaction that people
need.
I
can hear our mission and service team saying, “Hey, we do that well. We have the food pantry, we help out in the
Good Shepherd Kitchen, we donate to Loaves and Fishes, we raise all that money
for the CROP Walk, and we have the Manna Bags.”
And you know what, those are all good things…we as God’s people are
supposed to look into the world and make sure that people’s physical needs are
taken care of. However, in doing these
things were are doing good things…we are providing the day to day manna…we are
giving them that which will temporarily halt their physical hunger…but yet we
know that same hunger will be back tomorrow.
The hard question we have to ask is, “are we offing them the Bread of
Life?” Are we introducing folks who are
hungering so much that which will truly and forever satisfy them? Are we striving to be that which helps
restore them into a relationship with God?
Can the world look at us and see Jesus in the same way we look to Jesus
and see God? For He is the Bread of
Life…and we are to be the Bread of Life.
In
the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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