Proper 13 Year B

Good bread can build strong bodies even more than 12 ways!

John 6:24-35

I often speak of the scent of bread coming from the bread truck that came through my neighborhood where I grew up, and of how enticing that scent was.

Bread has a way of conjuring up warmth and contentment.

That’s what five-thousand people were feeling upon finding out that there was indeed enough bread to feed them all in the wilderness far from home, and all because they followed this Galilean Preacher to that deserted place. There was now a scent in the air, and the people lusted after its lure.

Jesus had just barely managed to slip away before they proclaimed him a political king, and our Lord went to the other side of the lake. 

But that multitude of men and women were mesmerized by the scent, and they went looking for Jesus, and they found him. 

Jesus manages to look into the hearts of those people, and he says something very piercing to them. He says something that we all would do well to hear though perhaps we would rather not!

Jesus says to them, Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

It’s important to try to get at what Jesus is really saying here. 

I think he’s saying, You missed the point! You liked those wonderful feelings of warmth and contentment that came from your political aspirations, but you missed the point!

That feeding was a sign.  That feeding signified something beyond itself.  All miracles are pointless if you miss that to which they point.

The word miracle comes from same word that means to mirror.

Jesus is saying, the feeding of the 5,000 reflected something much greater, much more enduring, than the fresh aroma of success.

When they inquired further into the meaning of the sign, Jesus explained by saying, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

I am the bread of life. Those words are so beautiful and so poetic. They conjure up similar feelings as those just outside a bake shop. . .  feelings of warm, fuzzy contentment.

I am the bread of life.  Those words sort of melt our hearts like butter, don’t they?

I am the bread of life. Those precious words luringly call us to the security of a perpetually full stomach, almost as though God is proclaiming that God is an eternal vending machine with an endless supply of what we need and what we want.

So, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. . . believe in me . . . follow me.

If all we get are warm feelings from Jesus’ comparison of himself to bread, then possibly we too have missed the point, and Jesus is saying to us as surely as he said it to those curiosity seekers all those years ago:  You’re not looking for me because you saw and understood the signs . . . but because you had your fill, or because you WANT your fill.

Bread has become a metaphor for life itself, but how often do we think about what takes place in order for us to have that bread? It begins with wheat gently blowing in the wind, but not for long. The wheat must be cut down. It no longer blows gently in the breeze but is fiercely flailed and winnowed in the threshing process.

How often does the sweet aroma of freshly baked bread call those images to mind?

The wheat is then placed between the millstones and ground into powder. That powder is then mixed with the other ingredients and is beat, twisted and kneaded over and over and over again, and finally, it must be fired in the oven.

A whole lot happens before you are ever tempted by the fragrance of baked bread.

When Jesus says, I am the bread of life, he isn’t trying to soothe our sensibilities.  He’s laying out the cost of discipleship. Those people didn’t go to the other side of the lake to look for REAL FOOD. . . they came looking for FAST FOOD.

I truly think it is necessary for the 21st century church to stop now and again and take a hard look at what it is we are selling.

We live in a consumer age when the church is so often held hostage by the demand for perfect music, entertaining preaching, comfortable pews, beautiful adornment and above all, low-cost discipleship.

God forbid the pastor should have a slip of memory and miss a visit . . . God forbid someone should forget to send a card or pick up the phone. . . God forbid the church should miss its chance to SERVE me.

I sense that it would be very easy for us to begin to see the church as a bakery: one where you can come early on Sunday just to catch the heavenly aroma. It would be easy to market the church as a kind of spiritual powder room or theological comfort station.

I will be the first preacher in the comfort line most of the time. There is enough suffering in the world that the church doesn’t need to be an additional source.  But our Gospel should remind us of the full scope of the Gospel, and our Lectionary makes sure that I can’t preach only my version of the Gospel.

The fact is, that when you walk through those doors of the church, you have come to the threshing room.  You have come to where the grinding and the mixing and the kneading begin, and why?  

So you can leave this place to tell others where TRUE BREAD can be found.

Methodist Pastor D.T. Niles summed it up best, I think, when he wrote, Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.That is perhaps about as good a definition of evangelism as I’ve heard.

Make no mistake, the Church upholds this view of the Bread of Lifediscourse.  Our Eucharistic Prayers are laden with the true meaning of our Lord’s words:

Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.  Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily SERVE  the world in his name.(From Prayer C, Book of Common Prayer)

We don’t come to church to find escape from the world. We don’t come to smell only the aroma of a stressless, carefree life. Church isn’t just an extra-large support group. We come to the table . . . to the TRUE BREAD so that we may be made WORTHY ENOUGH to become SERVANTS out IN THE WORLD

Jesus Christ is the True Bread . . . he isn’t Wonder Bread: pure and white and full of fluff. He’s a hearty nutritious bread. . . just a bit more difficult to digest, but a bread that lasts forever!

There is no hunger we have that can be satisfied by any other bread.

And they said to him, Sir, give us this bread always.

And Jesus said, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.