Bread, Body, Church Series

Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Luke 9.

We begin a new series this morning called Blessed, Broken, Given. The big idea for the series comes from a book by Glenn Packiam, a pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. I devoured this book this week, and as you can tell, so did my dog!

In Luke’s gospel, there are three different times when Jesus handled bread. The first was when he fed the five thousand, which is what we will look at this morning. The second was the last night He was with the disciples, in Luke 22; during what we now call the last supper, or the Lord’s supper. And the third was in Luke 24, after Jesus was raised from the dead, when he shared a meal with the disciples He met on the road to Emmaus.

And in all three instances, Luke records the same sequence:

Jesus blessed the bread.

Jesus broke the bread.

Jesus gave the bread.

So during the month of November, we are going to look at what it means to be blessed, broken, and given. Because I really believe that there is a connection between what Jesus did with bread and what Jesus does with us.

Everywhere you go in the world, there is some version of bread. The French have baguettes and croissants; Jewish cultures have matza. There are English Muffins. French toast. You go to Subway and you can get a sandwich on Italian bread. Mexico has tortillas. Greece has pita bread. In Malaysia, there’s roti. When I was in India, naan was served with every meal. In Kenya and Rwanda, we had ugali.

And Americans? Well, we have wheat, rye, barley, sprouted grain, multigrain, sourdough, pumpernickel, cornbread, potato bread, gluten-free bread.

And oh yeah: white bread.

And you know what? The variety of bread makes it a great metaphor for the church. Can you imagine how dull the world would be if all we had was white bread? How weird would your next pizza be if all you had was white bread? How bland would Taco Tuesday be if you just folded up a piece of white bread around lettuce and shredded cheese and ground beef and sour cream and salsa. Unfortunately, most of the time you come to church, especially in the South, and all you see is white bread.

But if the variety of bread makes it a good metaphor for the church, then the ordinary-ness (is that a word?) or the commonness of bread makes it the perfect metaphor for our lives. If we’re honest, most of what we do is ordinary. We get up, go to work, we play, we tinker at hobbies, we work in the yard, we shuttle our kids to ball games. We shop for groceries. For the most part, nothing about our daily lives sets us apart from the people around us. It’s just life. Like bread, it’s ordinary.

And maybe you’re saying, hold up. I get that Jesus is the Bread of Life. In John 6:51 he said, “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven.” And I get that God’s Word is compared to bread. When Jesus was being tempted by the devil, the devil tried to get Him to turn stones into bread. And Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on…” What? That’s right—“on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4).

So yeah—Jesus is bread. God’s Word is bread. But where do you get that WE are bread? Where do you get that the CHURCH is bread?

We will circle back to those questions. But let’s look at our text for this morning. At the beginning of Luke 9, Jesus sent out the twelve disciples to preach and teach and cast out demons and heal diseases. They go off and apparently have great success, but they are also pretty exhausted. So let’s pick up the story in verse 10:

Luke 9:10-13 (ESV)

10 On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing. 12 Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, “Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men.