137 Life Bread

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Life Bread”, originally shared on August 5, 2021. It was the 137^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What does it mean to live forever? If there were something you could eat that would grant you eternal life, would you eat it? Today, we’re going to answer those questions, and more!

   I saw some photos online a couple of weeks ago that showed a dark green glass bottle that had washed up on shore. It had a message in it. The message, written on a yellow sheet of paper, said, “Hi. We’ve been trying to reach you. regarding your vehicle’s extended warrantee.”

   Some people are persistent. Some people know that a message has to be seen over and over again until it sinks in. That’s why they keep calling. It used to be said, in advertising, that a message must be seen six times before it sinks in. “Six ‘till it sticks.” But that was before people’s attention span shrunk to the attention span of a goldfish. It’s probably more now.

   So, John was ahead of his time. This coming Sunday will be the fourth of five weeks in a row where our Gospel reading features bread.

   Why? I’m guessing that it’s because everyone hearing these words understood bread. Making bread and eating bread in some form has been a universal human experience. Even places where rice is the staple instead of wheat people make and eat bread in some form. Everyone gets hungry, and bread is an easy, inexpensive, and satisfying way to fill that hunger.

   When I was on Internship in Des Moines, Iowa, I had an experience that changed my mind about infant communion. A bunch of us interns were brought together from all over the state to debrief, offer support, and do some learning together. We gathered at a Lutheran home for severely impaired and developmentally delayed children. When I say “severe” I mean children of whom it was not certain whether or not they had any awareness of their own existence.

   The chaplain came and talked to us about what he did. He said that he spent time with parents, dealing with issues of guilt over having to institutionalize their now older and larger children. And, he said that he led daily worship services. What kind of worship could he offer in this setting, we wondered? “Well, of course,” he said, “we have Holy Communion.”

That got our attention. How could he offer Holy Communion to people of whom it was questionable whether they were even aware that they were there, we wondered? “Well,” he said, “they may or may not understand anything that I say. But everyone understands eating and drinking, and if that’s their only means of consciousness, I believe that that’s the way God communicates with them.”

   Our text from the Bible in John, Chapter 6, begins with the 46^th verse:

⁴⁶ Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life.

   Jesus had fed at least 5,000 people with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish and had 12 baskets of leftovers, but they missed the point about what that “sign” had pointed to.

   Two monks in Colorado from a nearby monastery were standing in a rural area at the side of a curved road. They held a sign that said, “Repent. The End is Near”. Cars just whizzed by.

   Around the curve, tires could be heard screeching and cars crashing and one of the monks turned to the other and said, “Maybe the sign should say, ‘Turn around. Road washed-out’”.

   Well, “repent” means to turn around. It doesn’t mean to be sorry for stuff we’ve done or left undone. It means to turn around on every path that leads us away from a living relationship with the one true living God.

   It’s easy to drive on by the sign Jesus displays here in this text and not get the point.

   Jesus wasn’t only talking about the elements of Holy Communion. In fact, that wouldn’t come until later. Jesus was speaking about the thing that he nourishes: life.

   Jesus said, a few chapters down the line, in John 10:10:

¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

   Abundant life means a quality of existence that is internal, a joy that starts now and endures for eternity. Eternal life.

   There is a kind of life that is fed by bread, and it feeds us in many ways. I asked Dean George Pindua, Assistant to the Bishop of the Morogoro Diocese (the equivalent of a synod in the United States) what kind of bread would everyone know and eat as a source of nourishment and identity in Tanzania. I’ve worked with Dean Pindua for many years to help develop new churches in Tanzania. His answer was a bread called “Mkate” in Swahili. I found a variety called “Mkate Wa Ufuta”, which Dean Pindua said is a variety eaten in Tanzania. It’s called “Sesame Seed Bread” in English, and I tried to make it to see what it was like.

   Flour, yeast, kosher salt, coconut milk, and egg, are mixed, allowed to rise, and patted into round flat loaves. Oil is brushed and sesame seeds are pressed onto one side and that is heated in a griddle, sesame seeds down, while oil is brushed, and sesame seeds are pressed on the other side. It’s flipped and the other side is heated until finished. It’s delicious, especially when eaten warm. 

   Like bread of all cultures, Mkate Wa Ufuta is meaningful to Tanzanians as a cultural expression as well as being nourishing, like lefse is in my Norwegian culture.

   But these things are provisional. They will not last.

   Jesus continues in John chapter 6, starting at verse 49:

 ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 

   Jesus had performed a “sign”, John’s word for “miracle”, in the feeding of the 5,000 and the crowd came following, almost stalking, him for more free bread. Jesus is concerned for the physical hunger of people and knows of our physical needs.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, in his Small Catechism, a pamphlet on the basics of the Christian faith that he wrote and read from every day, writes on the Lord’s Prayer, the Fourth Petition: Give us this day our daily bread:

“What does this mean?

God gives daily bread, even without our prayer, to all people, though sinful, but we ask in this prayer that he will help us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanks.

What is meant by “daily bread”?

Daily bread includes everything needed for this life, such as food and clothing, home and property, work and income, a devoted family, an orderly community, good government, favorable weather, peace and health, a good name, and true friends and neighbors.”

   We pray for these things, and God knows that we need them even before we ask, but Jesus also points to an even greater need:

   Everyone who ate the manna in the wilderness died. Everyone who Jesus healed died. Everyone who Jesus raised from the dead died.

   Life ends. And then what? “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus says, indicating a divine pronouncement. “Whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.”

   If that doesn’t raise the hairs on the back of your head a little bit, you aren’t paying attention. Eternal life. It begins now and is brought to fullness in the life to come. Forever.

   Jesus concludes this text with verse 51:

⁵¹ 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 bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Jesus gave his life for us on the cross. His death gives us life, eternal life, abundant life.

   We die in our baptisms. We are saved by faith through God’s grace which are gifts. Our eternity has started, it’s already begun.

   What then is life but bread, the bread that came down from heaven, the bread that is given to all who would receive it? Jesus. So that we may never hunger or thirst for life again. Our glass is not half-full or half-full. Our glass is completely full.

   We are filled with the Holy Spirit, God’s ongoing presence for good in the world forever. We are filled forever with the Bread of Life.

   Turn away from everything that is taking you from God and be filled today.