Sunday, May 21st: "I Am the Bread of Life"

Watch the sermon here

First United Presbyterian Church

“I Am the Bread of Life”

Rev. Amy Morgan

May 21, 2023

John 6:30-40 

30 So [the crowd] said to [Jesus], “What sign are you going to give us, then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” 32 Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

35 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. 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.”

To understand what is happening in this text, we need to know what it is to be hungry. 

I don’t mean, “my blood sugar is dropping and I’m feeling kinda hangry,” or “I had to skip a meal to prepare for my colonoscopy.” And I don’t mean, “I lost track of time and missed lunch” or “I forgot to go to the grocery store and we’re out of milk.” 

The kind of hunger I’m talking about is the kind of hunger where you don’t even feel hungry anymore. You don’t feel that emptiness in your belly, but you do feel drained of life and energy. You feel hopeless and depleted. You feel ashamed and worthless. This isn’t spiritual hunger I’m describing. This is what chronic hunger feels like. This is what it feels like to not know where or when your next meal is coming. This is what it feels like to not know how you’re going to feed your children. 

Most of us here are privileged enough to have never known that kind of hunger. I have had to rely on the provisions of a community food bank, and there was a time when the only way we could afford to go out to dinner was to work as secret shoppers for Applebee’s. But I have never known the terror of a ruined crop or had to decide which member of the family would be fed today. 

But this is the kind of hunger Jesus is faced with. Masses of people who have literally nothing to eat. In the countryside of first-century Palestine, chronic hunger was a reality for most people. Infant mortality and childhood malnutrition, skin diseases and even divorce could all be attributed to a lack of bread. 

And I say bread because in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for bread is interchangeable with the word for food generally. Bread was the central food of antiquity, often receiving little or no mention in literature about meals because it was taken for granted that it was the staple of the table. 

What does get mentioned, however, is the quality of the bread. Bread was not only the most important part of the first-century diet; it was also a distinguishing element of social class. Poor people ate dense, coarse barley bread that often contained impurities. Rich people ate white, enriched, sweet, soft breads. 

The conversation we read from the gospel of John today occurs shortly after the miraculous feeding of the 5,000. Jesus has produced bread for a massive crowd of hungry people. Then, he walked on water for several miles during a massive storm. And now people want a sign that will help them believe in Jesus? Now they want to know what work he’s performing? Earlier in this chapter, John takes great care to make it abundantly clear that these people Jesus is talking with are the exact same people who just experienced the miracle of full bellies. 

So what’s going on?

Someone in the crowd suggests Jesus might want to do something like God did in the wilderness with the Israelites. They were grumbling about being hungry, wishing they could go back to Egypt where at least they had food. They were having trouble trusting, believing in, the God who had sent TEN PLAGUES on Egypt and parted the Red Sea so they could cross. God had performed some miracles. But the people were hungry. Miracles of the past had no bearing on their empty stomachs. And so God provided food for them. Quail in the evening, and some strange, flaky, white, sweet substance that the people named manna, which means “What in the world is this?” (That’s my rough Hebrew translation.)

So we can see some parallels here. Jesus has performed some pretty impressive miracles, or “signs,” as John calls them. Turning water into wine. Healing a boy on the verge of death. Feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves and fish. Walking on water. 

But the people are still hungry. And not only are they hungry, they are hungry for more than stale, wormy loaves of barley bread and whatever weeds they can scrounge up to eat. Sweet, flaky, white bread, bread like the rich people eat, bread that shows up day in and day out without back-breaking labor and the fear of drought – that bread sounds real nice. If Jesus could work that miracle, then maybe people would trust him. I mean, if he’s really sent from God, shouldn’t he be able to do at least as good as God did for the Israelites? Sounds like a fair question. 

But, as is typical in John’s gospel, Jesus takes things in a different direction. It is clear that Jesus is concerned about physical hunger. That is why he literally, physically fed them before this conversation takes place. But if what they are looking for is satisfaction that lasts beyond the next meal, he can provide that, too. 

But it won’t look like the sweet, white, fancy bread consumed by the upper classes. Jesus does not declare himself to be the artesian bread of life or the organic, fermented bread of life. He is the artos, in Greek, the plain old everyday food of life. In describing what the “true” bread from heaven is, the “real, genuine, dependable” bread from heaven, Jesus says that it is the bread of God which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. This is not the bread that will elevate us to heaven, lift us above our dreary, tasteless reality. It is the bread that is real and earthy and hearty enough to keep us from going hungry, and it will be life-giving for everyone. Not just the rich; not just the poor. The bread of life gives life to the world. 

The bread of life gives life to the world. The number of times the word “give” comes up in this passage can’t be missed. God gave the Israelites manna in the wilderness. God gives the true bread from heaven. The bread from heaven gives life to the world. God gives everything to Jesus. 

Many of us carry around this Protestant work ethic that basically says your worth is tied up in what kind of bread you can afford to eat. We pray for God to give us our daily bread and then go out and try to earn it. And if God gives us the bread we need to survive, we work overtime to try and afford nicer bread. 

Here’s the real challenge, maybe even call it a crisis, that Jesus presents us with: when will we trust that Jesus is enough? When will we accept what God gives us? When will we trust that God gives, and gives, and gives, and always has more to give? That is what it means to believe. If Jesus is the true bread from heaven who gives life to the world, if Jesus is, as he says, the bread of life, the one thing that will ultimately satisfy our hunger, then he must be as central to our lives, to our survival, as bread was to people in the first century. 

So what does that actually mean?

First, it means we have to know our own hunger. We may not be literally, physically starving, but we are spiritually, emotionally, socially, morally, ethically famished. Friends, we are barely surviving day-to-day on what author Johann Hari calls “junk-food values.” Our souls are malnourished because we are scrounging for meaning, connection, and hope in drought-ridden wastelands of isolation, fear, and the myth of self-sufficiency. Before we can even think about trusting that Jesus is enough, we gotta know exactly what it is we are lacking. And that’s going to look different for each of us, and that will change throughout our lives. So we need to sit with our hunger, feel it, name it. Are you hungry for justice? For authenticity? For love? Know your hunger. 

Then, we have to be willing to bring that hunger to Jesus. Jesus gives the crowd in this story a mild scolding because they have seen him, they have been fed by him, and they still don’t trust and believe in him. But this whole conversation only happens because the people load up in boats and cross a pretty terrifying sea to come and ask Jesus to satisfy their hunger. Maybe they don’t know what they’re asking. Maybe they’re getting it wrong. But at least they’re asking. They’re staying in the conversation. And sometimes, friends, that’s really all we can do. And God can make that enough. 

But we are reluctant to come to Jesus with our hunger. We will go practically anywhere else first. There’s got to be something we can do for ourselves, something we can buy, a pill we can take, a program we can follow, that will fill our emptiness. The self-improvement market in the United States is projected to be worth over 13 billion dollars this year. Humans across the globe consume 117 billion gallons of alcohol annually. The global Luxury Foods market is projected to become a half-trillion-dollar industry by 2027. Trying to satisfy our own hunger is costly. And it isn’t making us healthy or whole. 

Now, I’m not proposing we come to Jesus for faith healing and forego the pleasures of life or the use of medication or meditation for wellness. These are all things God can and does give us for the flourishing of life. But we fail to see that these are gifts from God because we are begging for scraps at the tables of corporations and empires instead of bringing our hunger to Jesus. 

When a famine would strike in the first century, and they occurred with some regularity, the people from the countryside, who lacked the means to store up food, would come to the city seeking refuge. And at first, they would be welcomed in and cared for. But if the famine persisted, and the stores ran low, those people from the countryside would be driven away. This is what the crowd hears when Jesus says to them, “Whoever comes to me, I will never drive away.” If things got really, really desperate, and even the cities ran out of food, the ruler would buy seeds and food from a neighboring kingdom and distribute it to the people so that they would not lose their population and so they could raise up those who were laid low with hunger. Again, this is what comes to mind when Jesus says, “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.” 

In this famine we are experiencing, when we are starving for love, compassion, justice, peace, meaning, and so many other things essential to human thriving – and let’s not forget our neighbors who are actually experiencing physical hunger in our community – in this famine, the Psalmist warns us, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.” Believe, trust, in Jesus, who cares about our physical hunger, our mortal and daily needs. Believe, trust, in Jesus, who is the bread of heaven, who came down to give life to the world. Believe, trust, in Jesus, who will never drive us away when the storehouses empty out, who will not allow us to perish but will raise us up. 

Know your hunger. Bring it to Jesus. And trust that he is enough, and that what he provides is enough. It may not be everything we could want. It may not relieve us from every hardship. But he is enough to satisfy the emptiness in our bellies and in our souls. He is as essential to us as bread, food, love, meaning, hope. Jesus is the bread of life that God has given to us, without asking a thing in return except trust. And until we can trust, God will keep giving and giving and giving. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.