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2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
We’re in a string of Sundays where we get to ponder and meditate on one of St Michael’s favorite scripture texts – Jesus’ teaching, I am the bread of life. Last Sunday we sang the hymn that sets these words to music, the hymn that opens our hearts and voices like no other. 100 people sounded like 800 people, and this on a hot, sticky day – standing, arms upraised, tears streaming down faces. No matter when we sing that hymn, this seems to happen. And these words are painted right up there on the wall of the church as you look at the altar, as you approach the table each Sunday to take part in communion. I am the bread of life – he who comes to me shall never hunger. It’s no wonder our longest running outreach ministry is our feeding program, our Saturday Kitchen. These words mean a lot to this place and to us all.
But what do those words really mean to us? Stop for a minute and ponder it. What is it that is so moving about that hymn? What does it mean to hear Jesus say he is the bread of life, that if we come to him, we never have to hunger?
The words seem to mean a lot to Jesus too – he teaches for some time on this idea, and he lives it out even more in his actions. The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 is one of the few stories that turns up in every single one of the gospels. The place where this miracle is said to have happened became a Christian place of pilgrimage within decades of Jesus’ death. The last thing Jesus does with his disciples before he dies is share a meal with them, and tell them, this is my Body, this is my Blood. This is absolutely central to who Jesus is and what he’s here for. Bread of life, that satisfies like no other.
Which I suppose is why there was such an uproar over the part of the Olympics opening ceremonies that seemed so much like the Last Supper. The image of people at a table, gathered around a person in the middle wearing something like a halo, is sacred to people. Seeing that image enacted with dancing drag queens and a blue naked man freaked people out. Outrage! Our outrage muscles are so well trained these days – catlike reflexes on those. It didn’t seem to help anything when the director tried to explain he had a whole different Olympian feast of Dionysius in mind, or that people pointed out that there were 17 people on stage, not 12, or any of that. Days later, the Vatican still had to weigh in and say how dreadful it all was.
Perhaps this is the moment to insert an image I have forever in my brain, from a Catholic retreat center I stayed in years ago. I was doing a silent retreat, I was bored, I was wandering the halls, and there in a display case was a handcrafted model of what was unmistakably the Last Supper, enacted by small fuzzy bears. You know, those little flocked bears from the 1990s, you’d get them as prizes or from vending machines. Someone had a hot glue gun and a lot of piety, and this was the result. So I mean really, let’s just consider the ways this image has been conveyed over the years.
At any rate. The whole kerfuffle felt like another time when people get exercised and offended about something and entirely miss the point. Which is what happens in today’s gospel. Jesus is midway into his teaching: I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. And everyone starts complaining. They’re listening to Jesus because he did this amazing thing and fed all these people with hardly any food, and that is a useful, useful trick. So they want to see him do it again, because they’re hungry too. Give us this bread always, give us what we’re looking for. What is all this about you being the bread of life? they say. That doesn’t even make any sense. Besides, we know your parents, and they’re not bread.
Those crowds think they know what they need. They want to eat something that sounds good to them, with clear and tangible results. They want a certain kind of bread. They want bread on their terms. Jesus tries to explain what he’s talking about, points out that when the Israelites of long ago ate the miraculous manna bread, it only helped them for a little while, they all still died, remember, and what he’s offering is totally different than that. Yeah, so where’s the bread? they all complain. Eventually, Jesus gives up trying to get it all across. Either they’ll get it or they won’t.
This teaching that Jesus is offering, that is so hard for his listeners to accept, is simpler than they think: he is teaching that God is all we need. God is ready to provide everything we need to live on. If we rely fully on God, if we start with God before all else, if we sink our roots deep down into God, God will sustain us through everything. Whatever storms may come, whatever famines there are in the land, whatever joys and pains we have in life, God is enough to carry us through it all. We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to worry. We don’t have to keep grasping for more.
But we so struggle to trust that. We love that hymn, I am the bread of life. We love those words. We want to know that we’re welcome to come and receive and be fed. But we’re not always ready to put our whole trust in it. We’re not ready for the bread to change our lives. We’re not always ready for living bread.
We look at the bread of life offered and try to make it a buffet. I’ll have a little of that kind, but not this stuff here. Or we simply say, Not today, I’m too busy. I already ate. We have all kinds of other bread to snack on, after all. The bread of pleasure, or success, or the ever-popular bread of anxiety (that’s one of my favorites). We nibble away at those all the time. They don’t actually relieve the gnawing hunger at our core, but that doesn’t keep us from chewing on them anyway. They aren’t, we know very well, the bread of life. They don’t satisfy. Sometimes they even make us sick. So we come here to church, we draw near to what we instinctively sense is the source, to feed us what we really need. But we pack ourselves snacks just in case. You might even be holding a piece of that other bread in your mind right this minute.
I am the bread of life, Jesus says. The full meal deal.
Here we can hold out our hands and receive. Here we are invited to accept of what we’re being offered and all that it might draw us into. Here we taste and see how gracious the Lord is, and allow ourselves to be fed. And if we can really receive it, really decide to trust in it, then we will find our lives shaping differently around that – our days incomplete without prayer, our decisions shallow without discernment of God’s call, our relationships missing something without the deeper grounding in God’s love. It’s not a once for all decision – but it is a decision, over time. To trust and believe that ‘I am the bread of life’ is not just lovely poetry – it’s the truth we need to live. As our opening prayer today said, we cannot exist without God.
May that nourishing love and the blessing of God settle deep into us. And may we receive it, and never hunger. Amen.
