What Is It About This Bread? Part 2
This is the second in a sermon series on The Bread of Life Discourse in which Jesus talks about - well, the Bread of Life. It doesn’t go into the how of communion but the why of sharing This Bread. I’ve noticed with my study group that when verses are left out, we often want to know why – the portion we skip over is Jesus confronting those who refuse to believe in him. The discussion continues. Listen for God’s living word in -
John 6:35, 41-51 (NIV)
"35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”"
Communion – seems simple enough, right? Someone prepares the bread, someone brings the juice or wine. Make sure you have a plate and pitcher and a plan for how to serve it, and you are good to go. Wellll, maybe not! In a past church, one day – probably a fifth Sunday, somehow the person who was to provide the bread was not reminded and forgot. No problem – this church had a little freezer area near the preparation area with bread frozen for just such an occasion. They pulled it out, warmed it up in the microwave and scored the bottom – you know, make a cut across the bread to help the pastor when it is time to break it during worship.
All I knew was that bread had shown up – I got to the point of breaking the bread and was suddenly wrestling with a brick. Finally it gave with a loud explosive pop. I still had hope, naively thinking the problems were over. This church served communion up front on two trays – everyone came down the middle aisle, broke off a piece of bread to eat and picked up a cup to drink. As people came forward, I was nudging the softer part of the bread to the front of the tray and noticed my fellow server having problems too. I carefully smothered my giggle and smiled as I offered the bread of life to those in line. Unfortunately, I was soon down to the part of the bread that wouldn’t break and people at best were getting crumbs when all of a sudden, the bread broke at a weird angle and went bouncing across the floor. I scrambled to gather it mumbling about the ten second rule – congregants cooperated and finished doing the best we could to get everyone bread. After that first gasp, we did laugh and joy was evident in the joyful feast in a new way.
While this experience is funny in hindsight, not all Christian faiths would laugh at all – wars have been fought for less as we disagree about what this feast of the Lord and the elements of the meal, really mean.
John helps us with what the bread means. There is a pattern in the gospel of John – 1. Jesus performed miracles – that John calls signs, 2. there is dialogue usually people asking questions, 3. then there is discourse.
A quick review – the miracle or signs in John were the feeding of the 5000 with 2 fish and 5 loaves and then Jesus walking on water to the disciples when their boat was tossed on the waves so they were afraid.
We are in the dialogue part now – and it feels like a lot! Why is there an entire discourse on bread? Pastors and congregations get worn out of bread in four or five weeks – but John has Jesus give a discourse for a reason. Repetition in the bible jumps off the pages begging us to sit up and take notice. So I invite you to sit with me in conversation together about the Bread of Life. One of the questions I was asked last week for our conversation – how many times does bread appear in the bible? While Bread of Life is unique to the gospel of John – bread is central throughout scripture appearing at least 492 times, used literally and figuratively, – from Genesis to Revelation, bread is an integral part of the story of humans and God. 492 TIMES!
Bread is vital to survival – sustenance often sent to us by God, bread at weddings, bread snatched up prior to leavening and carried by the Jews in the Exodus. We may no longer literally eat bread to survive as our ancestors did, but the imagery has carried – even in our Lord’s Prayer – Give us this day – our daily bread. You could do an entire separate study about all of the things that bread symbolizes or represents for us in the bible. But here, in John – and what it points to most centrally for us is Jesus himself.
That is the controversy and mystery in the Bread of Life Discourse. Jesus came down from heaven – he is the bread from heaven, he is also God – the one who sends the bread. Who is this man? Jesus is God and sent by God for us? What the crowd wondered – we know Mary and Joseph – Jesus grew up in our midst they argue. John is having none of that – rather than start the gospel with lineage or narrow descriptions of family, John is the gospel that begins with, ‘In the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God’. A deep reading of the bible gives us a taste for this living word; as early as Micah it is foretold where the messiah will be born – where was Jesus born? Simple question right – looking at the answers from Jesus in scripture, you should know its more loaded. In case you didn’t already know, I love word etymology and languages because the origins of words enriches meaning, adds depth. This one was unexpected for me the first time I heard it - Bethlehem – two Hebrew words pushed together for an innocent town name – right. Bith Lehem – Home of Bread.
We have hindsight and aren’t numbed by familiarity with the man and miracles popping up around us and words/names used commonly day in and day out – but how could they not know – their prophecy told them the messiah was coming, their words screamed it at them. But their expectations blinded them to the Bread of Life that had joined them in Jesus.
David Lose describes it as laughable asking, “… who ever heard of a God who is willing to suffer the pains and problems, the indecencies and embarrassments of human life?” Is Jesus making fun of their expectations he asks or even worse mocking their own deep need for a God who is above our challenges and mess. But I love where Lose takes the idea – he modernizes it. Lose says, “While surprising, it’s encouraging that God would work through technology and instruments, through bottom-line corporations and imperfect labor unions, through ordinary, human, doctors and nurses with short tempers or poor bed-side manners. Just as I find it amazing and miraculous that God works through flawed pastors, jaded teachers, worn-out secretaries, over-worked government officials, exhausted parents, and the like – that God would choose these and so many other unlikely candidates through whom to work, even when they don’t suspect it.”
What are our expectations for how Jesus is feeding us - where do we meet The Bread of Life today? Where do we find ourselves? When our bellies are hungry, or our hearts are aching and God doesn’t show up the way we want? How do we live together and with our God when things aren’t easy?
Grumbling and complaining or growing closer to this bread of life that fills us and calls us to live into the mystery of being the body of Christ in this place No matter our response, God responds to us like the angel sitting with Elijah, bringing him water and food in his time of despair. The Bread of Life is with us, ever present no matter where we wander – running away, or lost and lonely - God with us, sustaining us, binding us together – not just the sustenance we crave but the life we really need. God’s presence with us and in us – there for all who believe.
As Karoline Lewis states, “The bread that comes down from heaven means that the promise of heaven exists for all believers. What heaven means for this gospel, of course, is being in the presence of God.”
This is a redefining of heaven not pointing to or limited to one set location or a set time but a blurring to now and yet to come, eternal life not just past but stretching immediately before us – a mysterious Kingdom of Heaven that encompasses earth and is beyond our defining.
In John eternal life is also less about length although that is part of it and more about quality – it is life with God , beginning right now. Sharing in God’s life with others now – to benefit yourself and others – some say this is THE theme of John – this life that Jesus offers
How do we share this life? We remember this sharing when we come to table together, as last week. Communion comes from the Greek Koinonia – the word that means relationship, fellowship, partnership. A participation together in Christian life – a life initiated by The Bread of Life. John Calvin’s position is that this union is ultimately too great a mystery to explain.
Presbyterians liturgy welcomes all to this table and calls it a joyful feast. Do you approach it in solemn reverence or in grateful joy. Like most things – neither is wholely correct without leaving room for the other. As we pass the elements to one another or serve communion, we say, “Christ’s body broken for you. Christ’s blood shed for you.” Or we say “The bread of life. The cup of salvation.”
Both are correct, and joy is not the same as happy – so whether we sing softly or boldly, sit in silence, close our eyes in prayer or nod at friends with a smile or even giggle when the bread is too hard or we fumble opening the lunchable packages of wafer and juice – this is a table we sit at together because of The Bread of Life bringing us eternal life together through all those people Lose described with all their flaws. This mystery expects us to get up from this table following the example of Jesus, carrying it within us.
Virtual communion where some eat together physically and others share the feast in their homes has allowed us to more fully see what this table really means – the table has no limits, isn’t a table defined by us at all but expects us to carry this koinonia – together – requires reconciliation not only with God but one another. Sharing the Bread of Life demands we actively seek reconciliation in every instance of conflict or division between ourselves and our neighbors. God in and through us in the bread of life taking eternal life in Jesus Christ to the world. After all this is what Jesus showed them that was so astonishing – The Bread of Lfie, God working in the everyday, common, embarrassing life – in us, for all of us. Amen.
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