Bread and Life
Home Moravian Church
August 4, 2024
Craig Atwood
Read John 6:24-34 (NIV readers version)
24 The crowd realized that Jesus and his disciples were not there. So they got into boats and went to Capernaum to look for Jesus. They found him on the other side of the lake. They asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered, “What I’m about to tell you is true. You are not looking for me because you saw the signs I did. You are looking for me because you ate the loaves until you were full. 27 Do not work for food that spoils. Work for food that lasts forever. That is the food the Son of Man will give you. For God the Father has put his seal of approval on him.”
Then they asked him, “What does God want from us? What works does he want us to do?” Jesus answered, “God’s work is to believe in the one he has sent.” So they asked him, “What sign will you give us? What will you do so we can see it and believe you? 31 Long ago our people ate the manna in the desert. It is written in Scripture, ‘The Lord gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”
Jesus said to them, “What I’m about to tell you is true. It is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven. It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 The bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven. He gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” Then Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry. And whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Introduction
For the past several years bread has gotten a bad reputation in America because of concerns over gluten, carbohydrates and other things. Some people voluntarily eat vegan or gluten-free, some for ethical reasons, some for their diets. Way back in 1982 I worked for a wealthy man in Clemmons who was proud of the fact that he had not eaten bread in over 20 years. I also had friend with celiacs disease who could not tolerate even a speck of gluten, and we could eat at only a few restaurants that he knew for certain would keep gluten away from his food. He wasn’t proud of not eating bread. For him, it was a tragedy and trial that made every meal difficult.
Historically, bread has been one of the core components of the development of civilization. Just think of the ingenuity and hard work it took to take grains, winnow them, grind them, combine them with salt, water, fat, and leaven, and then bake them into bread. This wasn’t something you did in your family cave or hut in the woods; it took a village or a town or a city. The mill and the bakery were the core industries of every town.
Each society had its own distinctive types of bread. I once went to a bread museum in the German town of Ulm – yes I am that much of a nerd – where they displayed hundreds of types of German bread. Different grains, shapes, sizes, and all tasty and healthy. Bakeries are probably humanity’s oldest profession, and bread made it possible to feed people who were then free to do other types of labor – such as weaving or making tools or composing perfectly crafted sermons. It’s no wonder that bread shows up so often in the Bible, and it is always a symbol of life, health, and abundance without any of the problematic associations we have today.
First Dialog on the Bread of Heaven:
Last week Ginny preached on the miraculous feeding of the multitude in the wilderness. Our story this week follows that story, and it in some ways gives an interpretation of it. One of the interesting things in John’s Gospel is that most of the times when people ask Jesus a question, he doesn’t really answer them. He’s a bit like a seminary professor who says “interesting point,” while thinking of a way to turn the question around into something useful for class.
In this case, people went looking for Jesus after the miraculous feeding, but he had gone across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum. So, they got in boats and went him. Keep in mind that wasn’t like catching the ferry or taking a motorboat. It was a grueling task to row or sail to Capernaum, so they were really motivated to see Jesus. Perhaps they wanted more bread or perhaps they wanted to learn more about him. Or maybe they just wanted to see him for themselves. It doesn’t matter. Just like it doesn’t matter why you came to church today or are watching online. What matters is that they found Jesus for whom they were searching. And may the same be true of us.
The crowds then asked Jesus a straightforward question: “when did you get here?” The straightforward answer would be “early this morning” or “soon after the storm.” They thought Jesus was like any other man who would recount in detail how long it took to make the trip and how it was faster because he took the I-40 current instead 421 or how they left early to avoid the traffic. But Jesus was not an ordinary man and he didn’t answer their meaningless question.
Jesus ignores the question and tells them that he knew what they were looking for – and that they were looking him for the wrong reasons. He knew they were not asking the question they wanted to ask, which was “can we have more bread?” Or “are you going to do another miracle” as if he were a magician performing in a street festival.
Jesus told them they had missed the point of the miracle they had just seen. They were not seeking God; they were seeking bread or wonders or a story to tell the folks back home. If that’s what they were looking for, Jesus said, they were going to have to row across the lake empty handed.
Mana
What follows sounds like a sermon based on the story of the manna in the wilderness that is told in the book of Exodus that Toni read for us. We know from earlier in John’s gospel that this event took place during the season of Passover, and the lectionary reading for Passover in the synagogue includes the Exodus account we heard. By the time of Jesus, it was common for rabbis to use bread as a metaphor for the Torah or the Scriptures. God gave bread in the desert and he gave the Law. The Law of God was the bread of life like the manna in the wilderness, and people should seek it each day. That was regular preaching.
Jesus told the crowd that they were still going to have to work for their daily physical bread, but he urges them to also work for food that does not spoil. You may recall that the miraculous manna spoiled quickly and needed to be renewed each day. Most bread will last a few days. It will get stale and eventually get so hard you must soak it in milk or wine to eat it, but the manna in the wilderness was different. It had to be gathered fresh daily. It was work.
The Work of God
The crowd understood the metaphor that the bread of heaven is the Law of God, and then they asked Jesus what they should do to please God. How should they observe the laws of Moses? The crowd’s response sounds like a rhetorical question that a rabbi might ask in a sermon. What must we do to perform the works of God? This is one of the basic questions of Judaism from the time of the prophets to now.
Over the centuries, rabbis collected their answers to this question and wrote them down in the Talmud for all generations, but the question of what God requires was something that rabbis often debated in the time of Jesus. Most of the time, the answer included specific deeds that one must do or behaviors one must avoid. The oughts and the should nots. Jesus’ answer here in the Gospel of John seems quite different what we find in the Talmud.
Like a good preacher, Jesus took the traditional Old Testament readings and reinterpreted them for the crowd. Jesus expanded on the original text and applied it to the contemporary setting. It was not Moses who gave the manna; it is God the Father. Jesus even changes the tense of the verb so that the gift of the bread is on-going. God gives the bread of life. God nourishes his people. God is the giver of life and the teacher of justice.
Jesus told the crowd: “The work of God is to believe in the one God has sent.” In the past, God the Father sent manna to the Israelites and gave the law through Moses, but now God has sent the Son into the world to teach, heal, and give his life for the world. Something new has happened and the crowd is among the first to see it. The kingdom is coming into the world. The “work” that God expects, Jesus says, is to believe in him as the revelation of God in the world.
This has caused a lot of debate and disagreement in Christianity through the centuries. Some Protestant churches say that we are saved by our faith alone rather than through our works; other churches focus on receiving the sacraments and performing good works. We don’t have time this morning to go into that debate, but I will say that our Moravian ancestors believed that faith must be completed in love. Faith without works is dead, as James wrote in the New Testament.
What, then we do with this statement in John’s gospel: the work of God is to believe in Jesus? I think it is helpful to remember that the Gospel of John was almost certainly written by a Jew, perhaps even a rabbi, who believed that the death and resurrection of Jesus and his teachings had transformed God’s relationship to the world. Like the Apostle Paul, the author of John’s gospel believed that Samaritans and Gentiles should be gathered together into the household of God. It is not adherence to a set of rules that nourishes; it is faith in the God who nurtures us with the Spirit of Truth.
I Am the Bread of Life
The crowd then asks Jesus to give them this bread of life, but they do not like it when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” Jesus repeats the promise he gave to the woman of Samaria: that those who come to him will never be hungry and never thirst. This is one of those statements that even modern fundamentalists do not take literally. We know from personal experience that those who believe in Jesus can still go hungry and may die of thirst. Jesus warns the crowd not to be too literalistic by focusing on physical things. Seek the deeper meaning. Hunger and thirst do not refer to the needs of this earthly body but to a deeper craving, to the inner needs that drive us.
In John’s gospel, belief in Jesus and his teachings is life-changing; it is transformative; it is life-affirming. People experience a type of resurrection. Despite what some Protestant theologians and preachers have said through the centuries, John does not ignore the importance of doing good works, but ethical behavior itself is transformed by faith in Jesus. Faith is what makes it possible for us to be unselfish and to do good in the world.
In John chapter 3 we learn that belief is not merely an intellectual agreement with a doctrine; it is being born from above. It is placing one’s entire life in Christ and living with Christ. To believe in the one whom God sent means that we view the world from a new perspective; that our hearts are opened in love; that we have hope in the future. Jesus knew that the ancient Israelites first had to believe in Moses as the one whom God sent before they could follow him out of Egypt into freedom. We must believe in Jesus as the Son of God before we can understand what he requires of us. This is how we get that nourishing bread that never spoils or goes stale.
Conclusion
Let’s think back to that museum of bread in Ulm. So many different types of bread made from different grains, different combinations of ingredients, different shapes, different textures, different flavors, and different ways of baking. But all of them nourishing and life-sustaining. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” I have no doubt that he comes to each of us in different ways and maybe we practice our faith in different ways. But the differences are not that important. What is important is that each of can be fed by the Creator. Each of us can have faith in Christ. Each of us can be blessed by the Spirit. Each of us can do the work he has called us to. Each of us can learn to love this world as God loves us. This is the bread that never goes stale; the water that always refreshes. Let us eat and drink with joy.
