I Am The Bread Of Life, July 6, 2014

I Am the Bread of Life

Leviticus 24:1-9, John 6:35-51

Grace Presbyterian Church

July 6, 2014

Rev. Dr. Richard E. Miller

 

The Joy of Bread  In the year 2000, I was in Oberammergau, Germany to see the Passion Play or Passionsspiele.  It is one of the most well-known Passion Plays of the world and is presented every ten years. I was staying in a hotel just on the edge of town. As an early riser, I went for a walk about 5:30 a.m. As I strolled down the streets, I suddenly smelled the aroma of freshly baked bread. I followed my nose and soon found the bakery where I enjoyed a large sweet roll and a cup of coffee. What a treat it was! It brought back memories of my childhood when my mother would bake bread for the family. And such aroma would always make me hungry even after a full meal.

Today, bread baking is not nearly as popular. After all, all we need do is drop by the grocery and pick up a loaf on our way home. When we do this, we have a myriad of varieties from which to choose - white, wheat, rye, French, Italian, Spelt and Brown Rice bread. We can take home honey wheat, light wheat, whole grain, pumpernickel or zucchini bread. Sometimes we find nut bread or cranberry bread. On and on the list could go.

Usage  However, bread is not only something we eat, it is a part of our speech in many ways. For instance, we refer to money as bread, and those who bring home a pay check as being a breadwinner. We say that the Midwest is the breadbasket of America. We talk about knowing which side our bread is buttered on. We speak of casting our bread upon the waters. Thank you notes are called “Bread and Butter” letters. We might invite someone for a meal by saying, “Come over and break bread with us.” Something great is the best thing since sliced bread.  And in the Lord’s prayer,we pray “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Manna  In Exodus, we find the account of the time when the Israelites were starving in the wilderness. Manna, or bread, came down from heaven to keep them alive for forty years. When the people of Israel first saw the manna, they wondered what it was.

And Moses said to them, “It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.” Manna was white with a yellowish tinge. It tasted like wafers made with honey. [Exodus 16:31]. As a result of this wilderness experience, the Israelites always have associated bread with God’s saving presence which sustained them in the wilderness.

Bread of the Presence  This eventually evolved into what the Israelites called “The Bread of the Presence.” In our morning scripture, we read that this consisted of twelve loaves of bread that rested upon a special table in the temple twenty-four hours a day. The loaves were lined up in two rows of six and represented the twelve tribes of Israel. Each week on the Sabbath, the twelve loaves were replaced with freshly baked ones. The loaves acted as an offering of thanksgiving to God They also pointed to the presence of God in the Temple and hence in their individual lives.

Jewish Meal  This idea logically carried over to the Jewish meal. At every meal, the head of the family, normally the father, would take a large piece of bread and pray, “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the world, who bringest forth bread from the earth.” He would then break the bread, eat a piece, and pass the rest for other family members to eat. Then they would enjoy their meal. As Jesus grew up, his father, Joseph, no doubt offered this blessing at every meal.

Asking the Blessing  In various ways, we do the same thing whenever we offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God before we eat. As a boy, my father would always give the blessing before we ate. I remember one time when he was finished that I said, “Dad, I couldn’t hear what you were saying in your prayer.” He looked over at me and said, “I wasn’t talking to you.” Last Sunday at our wonderful potluck, I offered the blessing and hopefully both you and God heard what I said.

But once I said, “Amen” something quite astonishing happened. The dishes of food of all kinds began to mysteriously disappear. And, like the feeding of the 5,000, when we were all full and content, there was great amounts of food left over. But our fullness and contentedness from that potluck did didn’t last very long, did it? I suspect that each of us had an evening meal and perhaps even a snack before going to bed. Why? Because we got hungry again, and again, and again.

Throughout our lives, three or more times a day, we feed our bodies. And if we miss a meal, we might say, “I’m famished!” or “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!”

Feeding of the 5,000   I suspect that exclamations such as this were uttered by many of the 5,000 people who had gathered to listen to Jesus. They wanted to hear what Jesus had to say, but their stomachs were growling. They were hungry. They were getting edgy and crabby. And Jesus knew that people who were hungry wouldn’t be able to hear his words of life. The only person in the crowd that had any food was a little boy who had five barley loaves and two fish. Normally, that wouldn’t go very far with 5,000 people, so Jesus took the bread and the fish, offered a prayer of thanksgiving, and then miraculously multiplied the loaves and fish so that everyone ate as much as they wanted. When finished, twelve baskets were filled with bread fragments. Of course the other miracle was that the little boy hadn’t eaten his bread and fish by mid afternoon.

I am the Bread of Life  The next day the people heard Jesus declare, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’”

At another time, Jesus saw a Samaritan woman at the well he said, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” [John 4]

Bread of Life. Spring of water welling up to eternal life. What a great diet! Food and drink that gives us eternal life. That’s food we can’t get at any restaurant. Jesus is saying the following to our lives today. “I offer you the bread of life and living water. Come - eat and drink.”

It is true that the bread of life and living water of Christ is why we gather at 10:45 a.m. each Sunday morning. In fact, I’ve had many people through the years come up to me and say, “I come to church each Sunday to fill up my tank and recharge my batteries.” As great as this is, I am tempted to say, “Is just one meal a week on Sunday morning all you need to keep your spiritual body healthy?” This morning I suggest that just as we eat physical food every day of the week, so we must dine on spiritual food every day so that our souls are nourished. I know that many of you do this. You consume the Bread of Daily Prayer, the Bread of weekly Bible Study, the Bread of Daily Meditation, and the Living Water of morning and evening Scripture reading. You remember that Jesus said:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” [Matthew 5:6] Are we famished for God’s Word?

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow from within him.” [John 7:37-38] Are we thirsty for God’s Spirit? The scriptures reflect the hunger and thirst of people for God.

Psalm 1  Happy are those whose delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law they meditate day and night. [Psalm 1]

Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. [1 Thessalonians 5:17-18]

You shall teach God’s word to your children. [Deuteronomy 11:18-33]

Yet Jesus is the Bread of Life and source of living waters upon which we must feed daily and by which our parched souls are nourished.

Use it or Lose it  When the Israelites were given manna from heaven to eat while in the wilderness, they had to eat it that day. If they tried to save or hoard it, the manna would spoil and be inedible. Only on the eve of the Sabbath could they gather two days’ supply in order not to work on the Sabbath Day. In like manner, we can’t put Jesus on a shelf for a rainy day which we decide he would be useful.

We must fill our spiritual hunger every day of our lives. When we pray “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are asking God to nourish us spiritually every day.

The Last Supper  During the Last Supper, Jesus startled his disciples by saying, “This is the last time I will be eating with you.”  He then picked up the bread, just as he had done hundreds of times before, and said, “This is my body which is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.” [1 Corinthians 11:24]   By saying these things, Jesus was telling his disciples that whenever they gathered together and broke bread in his name, he would be there in the midst of them.

Bread of the Presence of Christ As we gather about the Lord’s Table this morning, we have one loaf instead of twelve. We know that Christ is here, right now, in our midst. We become aware of his presence when we open our hearts and listen for his guidance and direction. Paul wrote, “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”  This means we do not come to the table as observers, but as participants. As our host, Christ has invited us to join in communion with him and one another.

Paul goes on to say, “We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the same loaf.” [1 Corinthians 10:17] Here Paul is saying that each of us is a part of the one loaf...the community of faith...the Body of Christ. This means that no matter how we might differ in back ground, ages or personalities, we share a common spiritual bond. This was never so apparent to me as the time when I served communion to thirty-four Mennonites on the side of a mountain in Switzerland. There we were, men and women, young and old, sharing a common ancestry, praising God with the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup.

As we partake of Holy Communion this morning, we who are many become one body for we are sharing the one loaf - the body of Christ. And we will be experiencing the presence of our Lord among us. Amen.

Leviticus 24:1-9 NRSV

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Command the people of Israel to bring you pure oil of beaten olives for the lamp, that a light may be kept burning regularly. Aaron shall set it up in the tent of meeting, outside the curtain of the covenant, to burn from evening to morning before the Lord regularly; it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations. He shall set up the lamps on the lampstand of pure gold before the Lord regularly.

 You shall take choice flour, and bake twelve loaves of it; two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf. You shall place them in two rows, six in a row, on the table of pure gold. You shall put pure frankincense with each row, to be a token offering for the bread, as an offering by fire to the Lord. Every sabbath day Aaron shall set them in order before the Lord regularly as a commitment of the people of Israel, as a covenant for ever. They shall be for Aaron and his descendants, who shall eat them in a holy place, for they are most holy portions for him from the offerings by fire to the Lord, a perpetual due.

John 6:35-51 NRSV

 Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And 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. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’

 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’