Bread 3: Who is Jesus? I Am The Bread of Life- Rev. Wendy McCormick- Aug 18,2024
Who is Jesus? I am the Bread of Life
Rev Wendy McCormick
August 18, 2024
It was communion Sunday in a small-town Presbyterian Church with a long tradition of covering the communion table with a white cloth. I mean covering OVER the elements. Something that probably started out as protection from summer flies had become so well-entrenched that most of those folks believed it was instituted by Jesus himself. All the communion elements were placed before the service just like we do, and then the whole thing was covered with a large white tablecloth. At the appropriate moment two elders solemnly and ritually removed and folded the cloth. It’s just how they did it.
This was also a church in which the children up through about 3rd grade were dismissed from worship before the sermon every week to go to Sunday School. A friend of mine was the new seminary intern, and part of his job was to offer the children’s sermon before the kids left. Not surprisingly he gathered them around the table for a little lesson about the sacrament. Today is a special day, he began. Do you know what is on this table? The response was awkward. The children looked away from the odd shaped bumps under the cloth, and a couple of them looked at each other knowingly. They didn’t answer. It’s OK, the seminarian encouraged them . . .
At last a child blurted it out: it’s a body! Realizing they had never seen what was under that sheet before, the seminarian right then and there pulled the sheet off the table.
The kids were surprised if a bit deflated. Dishes, one said. Snacks, said another.
Sometimes we don’t realize how we sound to the literalists in our midst. It’s precisely the kind of misunderstanding that seems to consume the writer of John’s gospel, except of course these aren’t kids. We read the story of the feeding of the 5000 and then the story of the disciples in the midst of the storm that follows, and today the story picks up with part of the long conversation about what the feeding means and who this Jesus is.
After the feeding, the people identified Jesus as the long-awaited prophet, and then John tells us Jesus slipped away before the people took him by force to make him king. After the interlude of the storm, the people track Jesus down and the conversation continues.
The theme of this week is misunderstanding. Jesus and the people are having a conversation, but they definitely aren’t communicating. The conversation is more of a spiral than a linear progression. But if we tune into this spiral, we will get closer to knowing who this Jesus is and what difference it makes. But if we try too hard to get it all nailed down, like the crowd in the story, and like so many literalist Christians today, we’ll miss what’s at the heart of the story . . . and at the heart of our faith.
When the crowd catches up to Jesus and say, he says, ‘You’re not looking for me because you saw signs (the sign of the feeding and the sign of Jesus walking on the water) but because you ate your fill.’ In other words, you are only interested in what’s in it for you. Ouch. But this is faith at its most basic, isn’t it? What can you do for me Jesus? What have you done for me lately, Jesus? Feed me, Jesus. Save me, Jesus. Clean up the mess we’ve made of this world, Jesus. Please.
Then Jesus continues, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”
Huh? What does that even mean? I keep saying that sometimes you have to read John like an English major because John plays with the double meaning of darkness and light, hungry and fed. But this exchange might stump even the English majors. Jesus says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Perhaps not surprising that the people respond with basically, “So what are we supposed to do?” The words are: “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus is talking about signs and seals, and eternal life, something that requires reflection and introspection, perhaps deep conversation. But the people respond by asking about works. Tell us what to DO. What are the action steps? I must say I can relate.
And Jesus says the work is to believe. And so it is that much of American Christianity has turned faith itself into a work, an action step. Speak a formula about believing and being saved. And that’s it. No wonder a steadily increasing percentage of Americans choose “none of the above” as their religious preference. “Say you believe and then be a good person” doesn’t really offer much depth or nuance for the challenges of life’s journey let alone a reason to get out of bed on Sunday morning to join in this time of worship.
Jesus tries again: It’s not about YOUR works. It’s about the works of GOD. Hello?? And the conversation continues to spiral . . . we know about manna, and Moses, they say . . .
We heard the manna story again this morning. It’s one of those important references to the Hebrew scriptures, our Old Testament, from this chapter of John, and John’s audience would be very familiar with. Some of us may recall the story of the manna in the wilderness from Exodus. Following escape from slavery in Egypt, God’s people are in the wilderness and heading for the promised land for a long time. Wilderness is its own set of metaphors. They complain to their leaders frequently, and at one point when the problem is that they don’t have enough food, God sends “manna.” Manna was this frostlike food substance that appeared on the ground every morning, enough nourishment for the day but no more. If they tried to save it, it rotted. It was just what they needed, when they needed it, and the amount that they needed. It’s an important tradition about God providing and about trusting that God will provide.
God provides. Just what they need, when they need it in the amount that they need. It’s there. New every morning. Period.
And this is the central reality of our lives in faith: God provides what we need, when we need it, just what we need, new every morning. Not because we are good or deserving – those Israelites whined and complained constantly. But because God is God. And God provides out of a bottomless well of love and mercy. That’s what the signs were about. God provides.
Ok, says Jesus, manna in the wilderness, bread from heaven . . . you’re on the right track. But it wasn’t really about the manna, and it’s still NOT ABOUT THE BREAD. This lectionary series that comes up every 3 years gets called the bread series or bread summer, but wise preachers and teachers remind us it’s not really about the bread. And that’s what Jesus is saying here – it wasn’t about the manna, and it’s not about the bread. It’s about the one who PROVIDES the bread. The one who provides the bread is the one known as I AM, as Jesus telegraphed in last week’s reading. When God first called Moses to lead the people out of slavery, and Moses said, “soooo, if I were to go to Pharaoh and say ‘let my people go,’ whom would I say SENT me?” God replied in that powerful, evocative and totally unspecific way: I AM. The Great I AM. The one Paul Tillich called the Ground of Being. Who is the God of the Exodus? Who provides what we need? Who is with us through every storm. I AM. How did we ever reduce this God to a guy with a check list about who’s going to heaven and who’s not.
Who provided manna in the wilderness? And who fed 5000 people with a kid’s lunch of 5 rolls and two pieces of fish? I AM. That ancient identification of the divine echoes as Jesus says: I AM. I AM the Bread of Life. It’s the first of the seven I AM statements in John: I am the light of the world. I am the gate. I am the good shepherd, I am the way, I am the resurrection, I am the vine, but this is the first. Who is Jesus? Who offered people their fill of the loaves? I AM. Make no mistake. Jesus is I AM, here among us, fully human, fully God.
The manna was enough for each day and no more. You had to keep coming back. Same thing with I AM the bread of life. There is no one-and-done with this Jesus. That’s why there is no work – even the work of stating your belief – that will sew it all up. Just like the people had to collect manna every day, you have to reconnect with I AM the bread of life. Just like you have to eat something every day.
“Those who come to me will never be hungry, and those who believe in me will never be thirsty,” points to a lifelong journey of chewing on the bread of life, what John calls “abiding” in Jesus – which we will talk about next week. That’s why you and I can be fed again and again in new ways by the same stories we’ve read dozens of times, by a worship service we’ve been through every week for a lifetime. We come to worship and to God’s word again and again, not to show that we believe and not to get vaccinated against the world’s troubles but to be fed, to expose all the ways we are full and overfed and to lift up the ways we are truly hungry. It’s an ongoing rhythm that connects us again and again to I AM, I AM the bread of life.
Some will say it’s all spiritual, but the miracle, the sign, like the manna story, like our own celebration of Holy Communion, is real food. This lesson started with 5000 hungry people eating their fill. We gather and give thanks that in word and sacrament, our physical needs are being met and we are reminded that we are called to meet the needs of a hungry world. When we celebrate communion, we say that we are fed on Christ’s body, so that we might BE Christ’s body: being Jesus for others: feeding, healing, showing mercy, and bringing good news. And that’s a tall order that takes more than bread. It takes the bread of life.
And so we come. Like children trying to make sense of a mysterious shape under a sheet. Like those ancient Hebrew complainers. Like those confused and literalist followers of Jesus. We come like people desperate for their next meal and like people desperate for meaning in a world spinning out of control. We come not because we understand but because we are understood.
We come to know this Jesus ever more deeply, to “abide” in the presence and the provision of I AM. Amen.
