Sermon 8/1/2021 “Bread lessons”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection, 2800 Hope Way, Alexandria, VA
Text: John 6:24-35
Day: 10Pentecost, Proper 13, Year B
Today’s lessons—all but the epistle reading—are about trusting in God. And these lessons use bread to teach us that we SHOULD trust in God and that we CAN trust God to give us what we need, even what we crave. The trouble is, these lessons about bread can be very confusing.
For example, in our first lesson, the people were a few weeks out of Egypt with all their cattle and their flocks. And the people, the whole assembly, complained to Moses that they were going to starve to death because they had no bread. In fact, the people longed so much for bread they remembered wistfully when they had been enslaved in Egypt, but—as they recalled life there—they had gotten to eat all the bread they wanted.
Now, you and I know that, as slaves, these people who were “starving” in the wilderness probably hadn’t gotten to eat so well back in Egypt. We humans DO edit our memories! And, apparently, these people edited their reality, as well. I mean, could they have eaten ALL their animals in six weeks? Or were they thinking of them as an asset they weren’t willing to sacrifice? We don’t know. All we know is the people wanted BREAD.
Six years ago, when the Rev. Fanny Belanger preached on these lessons, she told us that (as a French woman, she said) she understood this completely. Apparently, bread is essential nourishment for the French. Apparently, bread was essential nourishment for these wilderness-wandering former slaves, as well. Scripture says “they lusted for” bread.
But let’s not think harshly of those who craved bread. We pandemic-enduring former slaves have our own cravings. When we are in a proverbial wilderness in life, we lack bread or maybe we aren’t in a wilderness but we still crave what we don’t have. We wonder how and when we can be fed; we wonder if we can trust God to provide when there’s no help in sight.
Sometimes, in life’s wildernesses, we ARE fed. Miraculously. Fully. Inexplicably; no rational explanation known. I remember vividly one day in college when there were two or three days until I got paid and I was penniless and hungry. The kind of hungry where your stomach pulses, as if to shake us and demand, “Feed me, NOW!” I was walking toward my dorm room when I saw a beautiful red apple on the sidewalk. There wasn’t a person in sight. To this day, I do not know how that apple came to be there, but that fruit remains the very best meal I’ve ever eaten. I’ve often wondered if the person it came detached from had placed that apple there, shrugging and saying, “OK, God. I don’t know WHY you want me to leave this apple here, but since it’s YOUR apple, I’ll do as you instruct.” Or maybe God just rolled it there unnoticed from whoever was carrying it.
I’ve shared this story before. The apple from God is foundational to my faith, just as my failing to ask anyone for help is foundational to my wrong turns in the wildernesses of this life. I know to this day that God gave me that meal. This was such a clear lesson. The reality, though, is that God gives us every single thing that sustains us.
I am reminded of the apple every time—often—I see people who toss their change on the ground outside 7-Eleven stores as they leave. I do not retrieve these coins; they are for the city’s poor people, a gift from God.
You might say, “God didn’t give me THIS meal. I worked for everything I have.” Or you might say, “I found the coins,” not recognizing that someone had responded to God’s urging to leave them there to be found. You probably wouldn’t say these things, though, because you KNOW that the talents you have, the job you have or had, the ability to earn and spend money, even your charm and intellect and work ethic—all of those things—God gave them to you to allow you to prepare or buy a meal. Everything we have is given by God.
Sometimes, those things get taken from us, either for a while or permanently. THEN we learn anew to trust in God; we learn anew that we CAN trust in God.
Back to the wilderness, where we “left” the future Israelites with no bread and murmuring against Moses and against God. God’s response was to literally pour down a type of bread on them. Not just once, but every day. People could gather and eat the manna but not store it. Think about this: there could be no manna entrepreneurs, no manna economy or even manna capitalism. There was enough for everyone, anew each day.
The last bit of “bread info” we need to “mine” from this wilderness text today is that, over time, the people thought that MOSES was the one who had gotten them the bread.
We know this because Jesus said so in our gospel lesson. “… it was not Moses who GAVE you the bread from heaven,” Jesus corrected the people, “It was my Father who GIVES you the true bread from heaven.” Notice how Jesus amended their understanding of scripture: The giver was God, not God’s servant. And it wasn’t in the past, but in the present and continuing into the future. God gives us true bread from heaven.
Jesus was saying that the miracle of the wilderness is the miracle of God’s everyday provision for us. And Jesus says this provision continues. I haven’t noticed any manna lying around lately, so clearly if God gives us true bread from heaven Jesus was referring to something else. Actually, someone else: himself. Jesus described “true bread from heaven” as “That which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” This sounds like Jesus to me, “That which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Jesus was drawing a distinction between “bread for life” (the kind we bake) and “bread of life” (the kind that spiritually sustains us and reminds us we are not in this wilderness of life alone; God is with us.
We know that later, at the Last Supper, Jesus blessed bread and broke it, telling the disciples, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And we have, ever since, ritually “eaten” Christ Jesus at every Eucharist. In this way, we can become God-food for the bread-starved world.
When we let Christ Jesus animate us to give away things (like toys and hygiene products and food and backpacks and all the rest) we join him in providing signs of God at work in our world. Like Jesus’ signs in feeding and healing people. These are good things, God things, but they are just signs. They aren’t even the work of God; Jesus says the work of God is to believe in the Bread that God sent us.
So what will we do with all this bread talk today? In a few minutes we will ask God to “give us our daily bread” and trust God to provide just that: the bread of life as surely as God provided bread for life.
So, let’s eat! And then share this meal with the world.
