Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 6th Chapter of the Gospel according to St John: Verses 35 – 51:
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38 for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 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. 40 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.” 41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 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.”
Today, I will give you a short instructional prefix to the sermon proper.
Today for this sermon, I have used the alternative readings as written in the ‘Australian Lectionary – 2021’. It is worth mentioning the Lectionary, as it has been a ‘work in progress’ since the First Century and has been developed in various ways that would take the rest of the day to comprehensively explain. We now use what is called “The Revised Common Lectionary” and that is generally standard across most mainstream denominations. The Lectionary collates the readings for the day in a way that helps us understand the message of the Bible. It is done on a three-year cycle that covers the synoptic Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke with the Gospel according to John supplementing the readings each year. Each set of readings cross reference with each other in a way to demonstrate that the message of the Word comes completely from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospels combined.
By comparison, you will often see TV Evangelists in their preaching, continually ‘grab’ random ‘popular’ passages from the Bible to develop an emotionally based narrative with no real theological message. The Lectionary readings combined for each day, give the true message. Let me give you an example of the Liturgical Setting for the readings I am using from the Lectionary today.
In today’s Psalm, (Psalm 34), the psalmist praises God for deliverance from trouble using an image of eating: (Ps 34:8). “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him” In the Old Testament Reading, (1 Ki 19:4, 6) the prophet Elijah has slain 450 prophets of Baal. But under threat of his own life, he flees, and on his way to Mount Horeb, “a day’s journey into the wilderness,” he is weary and in despair. God feeds, nourishes, and sustains him for his journey with “a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water”. This foreshadows Jesus’ words in Jn 6:35 of today’s Gospel, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
The Epistle connects with two themes in today’s Gospel. First, Eph 4:22–23 encourages putting away our old selves, our former manner of life, and being renewed in the spirit of our minds. There is a similar emphasis on the physical in the spiritual in the Gospel. Second, the reference (Eph 5:2) to Christ “[giving] himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” is another way of saying that Jesus is “the bread of life” and (Jn 6:35, 51) “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”. Both are speaking of Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross.
And now having been provided with the daily ration of God’s truth, let’s see if I can successfully turn it into a meal that will sustain you over the coming week.
I can remember there was a time when I was growing up, my father would make homemade bread. I would come home from school, and its wonderful aroma wafted through the house. My brother and I would beg for just a slice. There was usually a reluctance to spoil our appetites for dinner. But when it came to homemade bread, mum usually gave in and let us have a slice while it was still warm. It was so good and satisfying! Looking back, the reason it was so good was that it was baked and shared in our home. My dad, who was in fact a butcher, not a baker, put everything into making that bread—it was his contribution to his family’s sustenance.
So it is with Jesus. When Jesus Gives Us the Bread of Life,
He Gives Us Himself.
In (v 35), “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst’ ”. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the source of true and genuine life: (v 51) “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”. This is “cross” talk. Jesus gave nothing less than his life, on a cross, for the life of the world. And this is “faith” talk. To “eat the bread of life”is an act of faith. It’s believing in Jesus. (v 40) “This is the will of my Father,” says Jesus, “that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day”.
When Jesus was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, he told his sisters, Martha and Mary: (Jn 11:25–26) “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”.
Homemade bread is so much better than store-bought bread. Life with “the bread of life” is so much better than life without Jesus. It’s not just a matter of quantity. It’s not just that it’s eternal. It’s also a matter of quality. It’s not just more of the “same old stuff” that we may be experiencing or going through now. It’s not just more of what’s corrupted by sin. It’s not just more of what’s broken and heart-breaking. It’s not just more death and what’s threatened by death. It’s new; it’s different. Jesus has put himself into it. He loves us! God loves us! God forgives us! God has got us!
Life with Jesus is far more than life that is here today and gone tomorrow. Life with Jesus is far more than what we can touch and taste. Far more than what we have. Far more than what makes us feel good or bad. Far more than the desires of our hopes and dreams.
The people in our text to whom Jesus was speaking still had the taste of the barley loaves and fish in their mouths, the barley loaves and fish with which Jesus had miraculously fed them. They were remembering the manna with which God fed their ancestors in the wilderness. What they weren’t remembering was that their ancestors ate the manna and died. Life is far more than bread. Life is more than our experiences in this world.
We have a generous, loving God who does provide for our physical and material needs. Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And the acclaimed theologian Dr Martin Luther reminds us in his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer that “daily bread” is everything we need for this life.
But Jesus came for so much more. He came as the source of eternal life, life with God that is forgiven and forever. Jesus fed the crowd with bread as God fed his people Israel in the wilderness with manna. Jesus did this as a sign, to make a point; the same point God made for his Old Testament people in the wilderness: (Deut 8:3) “He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”.
Jesus is that Word. He is (Jn 6:51) “the living bread that came down from heaven”. Today’s Psalm invites us to (Ps 34:8) “taste and see that the Lord is good!”. In Jesus, we are able to know and experience God. Fullness of life. Closeness to and intimacy with God that is otherwise impossible. Our brokenness, sin, guilt, and shame corrupt our relationship with God. Death breaks it forever. Jesus went to a cross for us. He suffered and died for us. He rose from the dead. He lives. He forgives. He restores our relationship with God. Now and forever.
(v 39) “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 I should lose nothing!” In speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd, Jesus said, (Jn 10:27–28) “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand”. We can’t be any more secure than that. And yet, in (Jn 6:41) “the Jews grumbled about” Jesus. Their “grumbling” recalls the constant, stiff-necked, faithless “grumbling” of the people of Israel against God in the wilderness. And it recalls the attitude of Jesus’ hometown people in the synagogue at Nazareth when they rejected him.
Do we grumble? Grumbling is essentially refusing to believe in Jesus—wanting something different than he gives or, worse, someone different than he is—and, thereby losing out on the life he gracefully gives us.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Jesus is the bread of life. He feeds us in the Word. When we are affirmed, that is forgiven in the Words of Absolution, Jesus takes away all that stands against us, all that stands between us and God, all that separates us from God.
When we gather around his Table, Jesus feeds us in the Sacrament. Through this means of grace, we receive nothing less than himself. In the bread of his Supper, we receive nothing less than his body broken for us. In the wine, we receive nothing less than his blood shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins.
Paul reminds us of this life in his Letter to the Ephesians. He says, (Eph 2:4–6,) “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ . . . and raised us up with him”. …. Recalling our Baptism, he says, (Eph 4:22–24; 5:1–2) “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and . . . be renewed in the spirit of your minds, put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. . . . Be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”.
“A fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Not unlike fragrant, homemade bread, prepared and baked in love, served and shared in love, with a lot of the baker put into it. Jesus is the “bread of life.” He feeds us, nourishes and sustains us in life eternal . . . by giving himself for life that is in himself.
My prayer is that through the gift of faith bestowed on you through the waters of Holy baptism, you will willingly seek and receive the grace offering of life-giving sustenance by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that you will find nourishment and peace in Him into eternity. Amen.
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