“The Bread”

Text: John 6:35-51                                                                                                                       Pentecost 12 2024

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

          Last week, we considered the first two words of Jesus’ first I AM statement recorded in the Gospel of John. These are the words that connect all seven of those statements together. I AM is the personal name of God, revealed to the Israelites as they’re about to be freed from slavery in Egypt. It’s the name that everyone who knows the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob would recognize. And revere. And Jesus connects Himself to that name. Revealing to everyone that this is who He is. He IS our God, in the flesh. Today, we continue to explore that revelation of Jesus as the God of their Fathers who has come to provide for His people, as we consider the next two words of the statement. The Bread.

Bread is perhaps the oldest staple of the human diet. Archaeological evidence from the Fertile Crescent, which encompasses the areas of the Middle East where it’s most likely the Garden of Eden was, shows evidence of large stone fireplaces containing charred remains of breadcrumbs. The earlies humans, Adam and Eve and their ancestors, would have very quickly figured out how to make use of God’s gift of wheat. Even the cursing of the ground recorded in Genesis 3 makes it clear to Adam that “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” Which means that from the earliest days of creation, man knew what bread was and would have been relying on it for their sustenance.

And now, however many thousands of years later, we still love our bread. Those of you who come to Bible Class each week love your bread. Olive Garden knows that we love our bread. It’s why they offer never-ending breadsticks to get you in the door. It’s one of my favorite foods. But I am a Wisconsinite now, so cheese curds are a close second.

And while Jesus saying “I AM the bread of life” draws His hearers’ attention to actual bread, He’s doing much more than just that. He’s reminding us that

WHEN JESUS GIVES US THE BREAD OF LIFE, HE GIVES US HIMSELF.

          So, we ask the question, “what is this bread?” Our whole three weeks in John 6 revolve around this assertion that Jesus IS the bread of life. As the people have found Him in the temple in Capernaum Jesus teaches them about the food that really matters. The Scriptures are filled with these references to bread and one of the most obvious is the one that Jesus refers to as He recalls the Old Testament reading from last week where Jesus reminds them, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.”  Many other places in the Old Testament also refer to food and drink and hospitality at meals. And then our Old Testament reading for today shows us that God’s provision to Elijah had the ability to strengthen and support him for 40 days. God speaks to His people of “a land flowing with milk and honey” and we have the “give us this day our daily bread” of the Lord’s Prayer. These are just a few of the references to the physical provision God promises to His people. Leviticus spends significant time telling us about proper eating and dietary laws. Luke, in his Gospel, speaks about Jesus teaching at and around the context of meals, and specifically the fellowship that happens around those tables.

          In many of these cases, the food that’s spoken of is just that, it’s food. But here in John 6, Jesus is making a point that’s much larger than just what these people are going to have for dinner. In fact, He lets them know that much more important than that which fills their bellies, is the fact that He is The Bread of Life, which will fill them up and sustain them in much more than this life, but into life everlasting.

The exact words of Jesus are a promise to all of us. “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst.”  Just as they’re all wondering to themselves and to one another, “what is this bread that He’s talking about?” Jesus draws their attention to their ancestors in the wilderness and leads them to remember what their people had been through and how God provided for them. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the source of true and genuine life. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Here, Jesus speaks to us about much more than a loaf of bread that fills us up for a short time. This is Jesus’ way of speaking about the cross, and about faith. He gave nothing less than His very life on the cross as the fulfilment of His earthly mission. And our eating of the bread of life is an act of faith. Jesus continues this teaching when He raises Lazarus from the dead and he tells the sisters, Mary and Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

This resurrection and life we’ve been promised is so much better than the life we have, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Just like that homemade bread we have at Bible class is so much better than the store-bought stuff. In so many ways, life with Jesus, who IS the Bread of Life, is so much better than the sin stained temporary life we would be living without Him. And that’s because this bread which sustains us is bread which Jesus has put Himself into. Bread He freely shares with those who have faith in Him. We know that God provides for our physical and material needs. That’s what we pray for when we say “Give us this day our daily bread.” But more than that, the One who came down from heaven, did so that we would experience a fullness of life which goes beyond this earthly life. A closeness and intimacy with God that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

We know that Jesus is The Bread of Life, and that He promised that He is what we need.  And His Father, our heavenly Father, draws us to Him, because He desires that not a single one of us would be lost. Jesus says, “This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day.” That’s His mission. That He should lose nothing. No one. Just as He describes Himself as the Good Shepherd who cares for the sheep and desires that not a single one of us would be lost, so He cares for us. There’s no greater security than that.

And yet, the Jews who heard Jesus speaking about being the “bread that came down from heaven” “grumbled about Jesus.” This grumbling recalls the response of the people in Jesus’ hometown synagogue of Nazareth. It reminds us of the Israelites in the wilderness who deluded themselves into thinking things were better back in Egypt. And it should remind us of ourselves as well. We grumble when we get something that’s not what we really want to have. When we want something other than what God sees fit to give us. And we’ll even grumble when our God isn’t the god our sinful nature wants us to have. We’ll grumble and we’ll seek the god we want instead of the God who IS. All this grumbling is nothing other than a refusal to believe that the Bread of Life which God gives to us is exactly what we need. And what we need is exactly what Jesus does. He offers Himself to us as the food that sustains us eternally.  The bread that never runs out. The meal which has no cost to us and which takes us no time to prepare.

But this bread He gives to us took quite a long time to prepare, and had an extraordinarily high cost, just not to us.  Jesus spent years on earth preparing Himself for us, and us for Him, and in His sacrifice on the cross He paid the ultimate, and only, cost which was necessary for our salvation. The meal is free to us, and it’s ready. The Bread of Life is waiting for us to share in this meal. Come and be fed with the bread that satisfies, that nourishes, even to life everlasting. And may our desire always be to come back again and again for this nourishment. For Christ has given Himself in love for us and pours Himself out that we might be fed with the Bread of Life. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.