Sermon, Sunday, 2 August 2009

John 6:24-35

I don’t know about you, but I find it all too tempting and much too easy to spiritualize Jesus’ words especially as found in the book of John. We like to think that there’s something transcendent about what Jesus has to say. We’re looking for higher meaning. In fact, if you do a quick survey of the chapters preceding the one we heard this morning we find some rather otherworldly things going on. There’s Jesus speaking with Nicodemus about being born again or born of the Spirit turning the earthy, messy event of giving birth into a spiritual one. Then, shortly after that, Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well and speaks of living water. Again, he uses an image of water--splashing, wet water--and turns it into something else; something ethereal. And then in this morning’s reading, Jesus proclaims himself the bread of life; and once again we have a very basic staple from the earth, the stuff of life itself, bread, and talks about it in spiritual ways.

Jesus doesn’t really help things much by initiating what we call communion by using bread to speak of his body a little later on. We call communion a holy meal, sometimes even a feast, but when you stop to think about it, it’s not much of a meal, none-the-less a feast. It’s a little piece of bread; a tiny bit of flour and yeast and water mixed together; hardly enough to assuage anyone with a stomach-growling hunger who may approach the Table. By instituting this “meal” with bread, he further spiritualizes this very common commodity.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because it’s dangerous to think of Jesus or his teaching just in spiritual terms. In doing so, we run the risk of falling into a trap of saying to those who suffer right here, right now that their reward will be in heaven or that they’ll have an extra star in their heavenly crown or some such unhelpful comment. By separating the spiritual from the physical, and elevating the spiritual over the physical, we just might miss the suffering that is going on all around us.

And there’s not really any reason to do so. If I may, I’d like to back up in John’s gospel again, but only going back a few verses this time rather than to the chapters I mentioned earlier. The start of chapter six, almost immediately preceding our reading this morning about living bread, is about real live bread which Jesus uses to feed five thousand. The narrative just prior to Jesus’ words this morning have Jesus using a young boy’s five loaves and two fishes to fill the stomachs of some very hungry people. Only the story of Jesus walking across the water to reach the boat the disciples were in intersects the two sections of the gospel about bread.

Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa spoke words that have echoes in our gospel reading today. He said: “I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, ‘Now is that political or social?’ He said, ‘I feed you.’ Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.”* Tutu recognizes that there is no split between our physical hunger and our spiritual hunger. He sees in Jesus one who reacts to people’s needs where they are and who they are.

Given the proximity of the feeding of the 5,000 story to our scripture for this morning, it is somewhat surprising that the big request that the crowd had for Jesus was for a sign that he was actually from God. “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you?” (6:30) they asked and then pointed out that manna appeared to their ancestors in the wilderness when they were hungry. Didn’t they just receive their fill of bread and fish? Didn’t they see that miracle happen right in front of them? Here they are chasing after a beleaguered Jesus only to require another sign.

I’m not certain I would have had Jesus’ patience because he just gives them the answer, “I’m the bread you’re looking for, the bread of life.”

It’s not surprising that manna comes up in this passage; manna was bread from heaven. John, our gospel writer, would have known that as would his original audience. The connection would have been immediate and strong for both author and hearer. Especially considering that by the time John’s gospel was written, the last of the four, a ritual of a holy meal had certainly taken hold; the holy meal that I’ve already mentioned that we call communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s supper. A holy meal with an emphasis on bread. More than that, though, the early church had a sense of a feast; a common gathering for a meal that was in itself holy and sacred. This was a meal when the poorest of the community shared with the richest at table, breaking bread, holding in common a meal, the meal.

Manna comes from heaven and John reminds us that Jesus does too. Manna fed hungry people lost in the wilderness and Jesus fed a large gathering of people, out far from towns, from places they could get food. And Jesus offered himself as bread, bread once again from heaven. Bread for those wandering and hungry in their own wildernesses.

Yes, it is dangerous to overspiritualize all of this, but on the other hand there is a danger of ignoring the spiritual elements. It’s a balance between the earthy and the heavenly. The missionary and evangelist D.T. Niles sums it up when he says “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.”*

Indeed we are all beggars, seeking bread, living bread, to appease a growling stomach that won’t let go, that won’t let us stop seeking the slaking of our hunger, our deep, deep hunger for the bread Jesus provides.

* Both quotes were found on the United Church of Christ lectionary website, Samuel (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/august-2-2009-eighteenth-sunday.html)

Photo by John Cordes, used by permission
(c) Gerry Brague, 2 August 2009