(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Eating the Bread of Life”, originally shared on July 29, 2021. It was the 135th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Bread is readily available but not central
to our diets in most places in our country today. Many of us in more affluent
parts of the world even avoid bread as “carbs”. So, it’s understandable if some
of us shake our heads when we hear Jesus’ words, “I am the bread of life.”
Today, we’re going to find out what they mean. [Spoiler alert: They mean
everything.]
A guy goes into a restaurant and sits down.
The server comes by and gives him a menu and a breadbasket and says, “Please
take your time. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The guy is looking over the menu when he hears, “Nice tie.” He looks around
and sees no one. He goes back to the menu and hears, “Nice shoes, too.” He
spins around but sees no one. He focuses on the menu and hears, “Nice haircut.”
But no one’s around.
Just then the server comes to take his order and the guy says, “Excuse
me, but I keep hearing nice things being said about me but there’s no one
around me.”
“Oh,” says the server. “That’s the bread. It’s complementary.”
Bread is at the center of today’s reading from John, chapter 6,
starting at verse 30, but the guy is the bread:
30 So 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? 31 Our
ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them
bread from heaven to eat.’”
“What sign”? <sigh> It must have been
hard to be Jesus sometimes. Yes, it was! “What sign?” He had just come from
feeding at least 5,000 people until they were full, out in the middle of
nowhere, with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish, and had 12 baskets of leftovers, and
the people in this text were there eating it! That’s not a sign?
Moses got into trouble by believing what
these people suggested. He started to believe that he himself was providing the
manna in the wilderness for God’s people as he led them out of slavery. That’s
why he was allowed to see the promised land but not to enter it, many scholars
believe.
Moses didn’t give them bread from heaven.
God did.
Jesus clarifies this in the verses that
follow, 32-34
32 Then 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. 33 For the bread of God is that
which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They
said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
The crowd was after another free meal, and
Jesus took their need for food seriously. Here, though, they were missing the
point of what had just happened to them.
They didn’t see that Jesus isn’t a prophet
through whom God gives manna. Food for a day. Jesus fed people out of
compassion, but he was born to die in order that they would have eternal life.
Jesus is God who gives signs that he himself
is the bread that is given for eternal life.
Do these verses remind you of another sign?
Maybe of the sign given to the Samaritan woman Jesus spoke with at the well, in
John 4:13-14?
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks
of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those
who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water
that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal
life.”
Jesus lays out the meaning of the sign of
the feeding of the 5,000 plainly in the next verse, vs. 35:
35 Jesus 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.”
People thirst and hunger for all kinds of
things in life. Sometimes they’re satisfied, but even then they run out.
Most people in Jesus’ day rarely ate until
they were full, except at festivals and celebrations. Rough barley loaves were
the staple of everyday life. Wheat bread was rare.
Today, bread is common.
Go to a grocery store. You can’t go just to
buy a loaf of bread. You will be faced with a bewildering array of choices. I
made a list:
White bread, wheat bread,
whole wheat bread, whole grain bread, multi-grain bread, sprouted grain bread,
rye bread, dark rye bread, Jewish rye bread, double-baked rye bread,
Russian rye bread, extra sour rye bread, sourdough bread, cheese bread, potato bread, brown bread, oat nut bread, buttermilk bread, Wonder bread, bread with
chocolate, bread with milk, sheep herders bread, pumpernickel bread, garlic
bread, blueberry bread, raisin bread, olive bread, cottage bread, unleavened
bread, no-knead bread, and no-oven bread.
And it comes in many
forms: sandwich bread, bread rolls, bread in cans, breadsticks, grissini, buiscuits, crackers, communion wafers (yeah, that’s bread), day old bread, breadcrumbs, bread cubes,
gluten-free bread, organic bread, bagels, artisanal bread, and flat bread, like
lefse.
We have special bread for special days and special
bread for special seasons.
We have bread as part of our ancestral
traditions, plain bread and fancy bread. They are fundamental to who we are:
Mexican pan dulce, Armenian lavash, French baguettes and, boule, and
croissants, Middle eastern Pita bread, Italian bread, Turkish Simit, Japanese
Shokupan, Tanzanian Mkate (thank you Dean George Pindua), Hawaiian bread, Portuguese bread, Naan
bread from India, and hundreds more. You’ll find many of them right here in
American grocery stores.
Where does all that bread come from? From
the store, right? (Pop!) It just shows up. No! It takes a lot of people doing a
lot of many kinds of work for bread to appear for us. And when you’ve eaten any
of that bread, you’ll be hungry again.
The menu at a local restaurant says, “The
problem with our portions is that four or five days after eating here, you’re
hungry again.” No matter how full you are, you’ll be hungry again.
But not with Jesus.
Bread is referred to in both in its physical
form and in its meaning throughout the Bible.
Jesus points to God’s will that all people
have enough to eat, and we can make a difference in that regard. God has
provided. But he also points to an even more serious need.
The bread that Jesus gives to us comes as a
gift from God. That bread is himself. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus not
only satisfies our hunger for life that truly is life, but he satisfies it for
eternal life. He satisfies it by dying for us on the cross.
The bread of life doesn’t come from us doing
good works, or from our being materially successful, or from our having the
right credentials. It doesn’t even come from being a church member alone if
your heart isn’t right with God. No. It comes through a living relationship
with the one true living God that it took the cross to achieve. It comes
through faith by the grace of God. The death of God’s only begotten Son makes
faith possible for all people, and it is given to all who will receive it. It
comes through the work of the Holy Spirit, whose metaphor in both the Old and
New Testament is streams of living water. The Holy Spirit, as church reformer
Martin Luther said, calls us, gathers us, enlightens us, makes us holy, and
keeps us in the one true faith.
We all hunger and thirst for things that perish.
Jesus is “the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives
life to the world.”
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.” Of
all the things we hunger for, Jesus is the one who satisfies us for eternal
life.
Eat that bread today. Turn away from all
that defies God. Open your heart to receive the gift of God of eternal life.
Allow the Holy Spirit to shape and nourish
you as streams of living water from within you.
Allow Jesus to feed you with himself, the
bread of life, and you who seek life that truly is life, will never be hungry
again.
