10th Sunday after Pentecost [Pr.14] August 9, 2009 “Series B”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life, come down from heaven to our fallen world. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds to his teaching, that we might be filled with his eternal presence, freed from our sins by his grace, and nourished with the food that forever satisfies. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
This morning we continue our Lord’s teaching, which resulted from his miraculous feeding of the large crowd with just five small loaves and two fish. Following that event, the crowds who followed Jesus grew even larger. But Jesus perceived that they were following him for the wrong reason, that they really didn’t understand that in him, the presence of God was among them. They were in awe of his ability to meet their need.
Thus, Jesus seized the opportunity to expand the peoples’ understanding, to use the symbolism of that miracle to reveal to them his true identity as the Son of God. Last week, our lesson recorded Jesus saying, “Do not labor for the food which parishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give you; for on him God the Father has set his seal.”
But as we move through this series of lessons, we discover that the crowd just can’t seem to grasp the significance of what Jesus is saying. And I don’t blame them. After all, you and I have the advantage of entering this teaching moment of Jesus with the knowledge of the end of the story. But that was not the case for those who engaged in discussion with Jesus that day. They did not know of Jesus giving his life on the cross for our redemption, and rising victoriously from the grave to give us the hope of eternal life.
From our lesson for this morning, Jesus identifies himself as bread, bread that has come down from heaven, like the manna that fed the crowd’s ancestors on the Exodus from Egypt. Today, Jesus asks us to think of him as bread, as a meal, as that daily, life-giving, sustaining presence that keeps us going – not just physically, but spiritually.
As many of you may know, John is the only Gospel that does not record Jesus instituting the sacrament of Holy Communion on the night of his betrayal. However, I have never read a commentary on this 6th chapter of John’s Gospel, without it making reference to the fact that our author uses this teaching of Jesus to serve as the theological basis for the celebration of the sacrament.
But before making some comments to the significance of this text to the sacrament, I would like us to consider the broader meaning of Jesus being the “bread of life.” Would it not be fair to assume that Jesus was, at this very moment, trying to feed those who gathered before him to listen to his teachings?
When I was in seminary, there was an emphasis on urging our church to reclaim the celebration of the sacrament of Holy Communion as a normal part of our worship experience, according to our confessions. And for the most part, I believe that most congregations have moved over the past few decades, to embrace celebrating the sacrament on a weekly basis. But although the sacraments of Baptism and Communion are means of grace, means by which we partake and receive the redemption of God in Christ, they are not the only means of grace.
God’s grace is also available to us through the proclamation of God’s Word, through the reading of Scripture, the praying of prayers, the singing of hymns, the preaching – and sometimes listening – to sermons. The living bread from heaven is present to us through every aspect of our worship to nourish and sustain us, to feed us in our lives, with his living presence.
In the Lutheran tradition, the pulpit, as well as the altar and font, hold special significance. Last Sunday, Josie and I attended Pastor Don Hake’s installation as the new Pastor of Holy Trinity, Hermitage. As a part of that service of installation, the congregation president led Pastor Hake to the pulpit, as well as the font and altar. At each point, she asked, “Will you proclaim God’s word, faithfully? Will you celebrate the sacraments faithfully?” Jesus, in referring to himself as the “Bread of life that came down from heaven,” feeds us with spiritual nourishment in every aspect of our worship.
But then, we can not neglect the fact that in John’s Gospel, this discourse is seen to be his theological rationale for the celebration of the sacrament of Holy Communion, which will become more clear, as we continue in this chapter over the next two weeks. Thus, I would like to explore a couple of points that might bring more meaning to our being nourished at our Lord’s table.
When Jesus says that he is the “Bread from heaven,” he is saying that he is a gift of God, given to sustain and nurture the people of faith. But in reality, is not all bread a gift of God? Dr. William H. Willimon brought this thought home to me in his commentary on this text, which I paraphrase.
When we hold up a loaf of bread at the Eucharist and call it blessed, what to we mean? The farmer plowed the earth and sowed the seed. Rain from heaven watered the ground and the seed began to sprout. The farmer tended to his crop, weeded and nurtured and harvested the grain in due season.
The grain was then hauled to the miller, where it was processed into flour. The flour was then transported by another trucker to the baker, who took the flour and worked it into dough in the early morning hours of the day, before dawn. And then the dough was baked in an oven, which was supplied by gas or electricity, resulting from the efforts of many other persons.
Now I realize that our bread is baked every week by Rita, to which we owe a debt of gratitude, but this process of daily bread doesn’t change all that much. When the bread is baked, it is then packaged, shipped, unloaded, delivered, put on the shelves to be sold by the grocer, bought by someone with money he or she had earned at their job, taken home and served. There, the nourishment that God provides, is consumed.
When we hold up a loaf of bread to bless it to be the bearer of Christ’s presence among us, that we might receive his redeeming grace, we lift up all of the human community, even life itself. There is an intrinsic value to this bread, that enables it to convey to us the very nature of Jesus as being God’s gift of life to the whole world. The term “communion” is truly a celebration of community, for through the elements that we receive, we recognize not only the oneness we share with those at our table, but our oneness with all who participate in putting this bread on our table.
Yet, as we focus on the efforts of our community to provide us with our bread, do we really thing of that bread as a gift of God, who provides the seed, the earth, the rain, as well as the lives of those who enable us to receive this basic daily nourishment? Can we see beyond our common humanity, to grasp, what those people in the crowd couldn’t grasp – the very presence of God in Jesus the Christ, to feed and nourish us with his flesh and blood for our redemption?
For the Christian, we come to the Lord’s table, not just to receive the elements of daily sustenance, which unites us with one another in the bonds of community, but to receive the gift of God’s grace in Jesus the Christ. We come to this table seeking to be nourished in faith, to receive into our total being, the gift of Christ’s sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins, that we might be fed with this bread of life, that we might have life in his eternal kingdom.
Yet at the same time, we can not think of this sacrament as an end in itself. As we are nourished at our Lord’s table, and reminded of how God provides the seed, soil and rain, and those who help to place this bread on our table, we can not forget those who hunger for this very basic need of human life. As Jesus offers to feed us with the bread of life from heaven, we can not ignore those around us who are in need of the bread that met the real hunger of those whom he fed on the mount.
We have a mission as a congregation of Christ’s church. We are to feed on the bread of life that came down from heaven, to be nourished with the truth of his redeeming grace, and with that nourishment, to go and feed those around us. Sometimes that means that we literally feed people with brad that will sustain their life. Sometimes that means that we need to risk sharing with them our faith, that we may feed them with the spiritual bread of heaven. But as we continue to eat of the bread that Jesus came to give to us, we are, through God’s Holy Spirit, nourished to feed those around us. May God’s Spirit continue to feed us, open us to the need of those around us, and equip us with the gifts we need to be the bread of life to others, as Christ’s disciples.
Amen.
