Sermon, August 9, 2009

Pentecost 10B – August 9, 2009
John 6:35, 41-51

Grace, Mercy and Peace be to you from God our father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the true bread from heaven, Amen.
We are now deep into what is known as “the bread of life discourse.” Week two of four where Jesus talks to the crowds about two kinds of bread, bread that perishes and bread that endures for eternal life. If you tack on the feeding of the five thousand from two weeks ago, that puts us in week three of five that are centered around bread. And I have to be honest with you, I’m feeling a little bit of a carbohydrate overload.
Carbs are tricky business. People who have blood sugar disorders like hypoglycemia and diabetes know that if you eat too many carbohydrates and not enough protein, it is likely to leave you feeling exhausted and weak. And here we are, being fed on a strict diet of bread for five weeks. No wonder I am left feeling exhausted by this text…as two elderly ladies on a Wendy’s commercial once said “where’s the beef?”
Now I’m no literary scholar, didn’t do too well in my English lit classes in high school, but I have a feeling that our text for today is getting into the meat of chapter 6 of the gospel of John. I am the bread of life, Jesus said, whoever comes to me will not be hungry and whoever believes in me will not thirst. It’s the punch line from last week’s text and also the binder between last week and this week, a cliffhanger of sorts. But while last week we were witness to the crowds seeming cluelessness, this week we watch on as a new group arises out of the crowd. This new group is the Judeans, or, as our translation calls them, the Jews. It seems that they are a distinct group from with in the crowd because throughout the portions of chapter six that we’ve heard so far, the people following Jesus have always been called the crowds, (ha ochlos).
So now this group of Judeans arises and they begin to complain about Jesus because of what he said. “Isn’t this the son of Joseph? How can he say that he has come down from heaven?” That they were complaining is reminiscent of the complaints of the Israelites as they wandered the desert after the Exodus and our good friend Elijah in today’s Old Testament reading…at the same time, though, I could understand what their questions were about.
You see, back then, a person was strongly linked to their father and inheritance laws ruled the land. So it would have been a disgrace to Joseph’s name if Jesus said that he wasn’t really his son. And also, they had seen Jesus grow up under the watchful eye of Joseph...his earthly father. Their complaining, however, indicates that they are not too fond of what Jesus has to say…maybe this person that they wanted to make their king after the feeding of the five thousand is not the kind of person they really wanted to make their king. And as we saw last week, it doesn’t seem like they get the big picture. They saw the sick being healed and followed Jesus, they were fed by what started out as five loaves and two fish, so they follow Jesus, but then they ask him to show them more signs so that they might believe. The problem is that they are looking at the signs, but not seeing what they point to. And so they complain amongst themselves about this man claiming to be the bread come down from heaven. What kind of King would this Jesus, Son of Joseph, make? What kind of king did they really want, anyway?
Given the time and area in which they lived, it seems that the people wanted a king who would gather them together and lead them against the tyranny of the Roman army that was occupying their land and ruling their government through people like Herod and Pilate, who ultimately answered to the emperor in Rome, who really couldn’t care less about the needs of the people in Judea and Galilee. These people wanted a king who would summon an army, and restore Israel to the glory it had once known. This is the kind of king they wanted Jesus to be, one with military might, one who would feed them until their physical hungers were satisfied, not just once, but time and time again. They were not looking for someone who was claiming to be bread from heaven and instructing them to seek out food that endures for eternal life. They wanted Jesus, son of Joseph to be their king…not Jesus, bread of life.
As I mentioned before, the crowds, and the Judeans in particular, don’t seem to be getting the big picture. They want something that they can see here and now. They want more signs that they can see so that they might believe. But upon seeing their complaining, Jesus brings them back to where this all started…back to God. He brings it back to the one who draws us to Christ, the one who is the great instructor of us all, the one who gives us the bread from heaven. The crowds followed Jesus because they were fed with the loaves, but Jesus reminds them that their ancestors that ate of the loaves ultimately died. Life is fleeting, we are sustained by physical food, but Jesus gives us something better. He gives us bread that will last for eternal life. He gives us bread that feeds our souls. He gives us himself.
Jesus is the bread of life. We have bread prominently present in our gospel text for five weeks for a reason. Not because it’s August and many people are on vacation and probably won’t hear it more than twice, as I heard someone joke the other day. There is a different reason that the creators of the lectionary put such and emphasis on this teaching. We have a problem similar to the crowds and the Judeans. We want to see signs, we want to believe in something that we can see. We have a growing percentage of the population in America that wants to see Jesus come back as a warrior to separate the sheep from the goats.
But what we’re faced with is a gentle, loving Jesus, who wants to feed us with himself…a Jesus who wants to bring all people to himself and give us eternal life. Not exactly the type of king that one would expect. But here we are. Somehow, something has drawn us here today. Somehow, we have listened to God beckoning us to this place, a place where we gather together in community, a place where we receive Christ, a place in which bread and wine, body and blood are consumed.
And this is the protein that we need. God gives it to us, and while our souls do get worn out from time to time, God keeps giving us this protein through Christ. Someone once said that God is like a tow truck for when we run out of gas along the road of life. God picks us up and takes us to the Son, who gives us a quick refill and sends us on our way. “but, I thought Jesus said that those who come to him would never get hungry??” The thing is, when Jesus says, “those who come to me will not be hungry” it was meant in a future sense. But that’s ok, because we need to be hungry now. We need to experience hunger, because if we don’t, we will become complacent and the cries of those who suffer from lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of human rights will be squelched. Our hearts need to hunger now, for peace, for justice, for love in a world that is so full of hate and violence. But the good news is that we are drawn to Christ, and in consuming his body and blood, we become what we eat so that we can be Christ’s hands and feet in this world. A world that is broken and needs Christ to be present in the most ordinary of moments. This is how Christ brings life into the world. Christ has given himself up for us and in taking him into our bodies, we go out into the world to share his love with those we encounter as we work, as we rest and as we play. And this is the protein that gets us through. Therefore, we can rejoice in these five weeks of bread, for they remind us of how God feeds us and then sends us out into the world to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. Amen.