The Bread of Life

A sermon preached this past Sunday at Church of the Incarnation as part of a sermon series, "Food & Faith." Listen here.

Today's the last of our food & faith sermon series, so I thought I'd begin by talking about bread. Humans have been eating bread for milennia—but 20^th-century Americans were the first to eat sliced bread. Factory-made, soft, pre-sliced and pre-wrapped—is there anything better than sliced bread?

The first company to sell sliced bread was Wonder Bakers, the makers of Wonder Bread. Wonder Bread is the iconic sliced bread, with its logo of blue, red, and yellow balloons and its brilliant advertising slogans: “Wonder Bread builds strong bodies in 8 ways.” (Later, when they figured out how to inject even more artificial vitamins, it became, “Wonder Bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways.”) Wonder Bread is pretty remarkable really; apparently, it’s even been used as a sponge to clean the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.[1]

                                                                                                              

But we’ve just heard about some even more wonderful bread. Bread that's a cause for real wonder. Bread that makes people scratch their heads and ask, "What is it?" Bread so full of wonder that its name is a question.

I'm talking of course about manna, the mysterious, previously unknown food God provided the people of Israel in the wilderness. Manna appeared on the ground after the dew—“a fine, flake-like thing, fine as hoarfrost on the ground." The Israelites didn't know what it was so they named it "Watchamacallit." That's roughly what the word "manna" means in Hebrew: "whatchamacallit," "what's-it."[2]

We still don't know what it is. Some speculate that manna was honeydew, a sugary sticky liquid secreted by a particular kind of bug—that's right, bug poop. After all, that stuff is called "manna" in some Semitic languages. Or perhaps manna was something wholly new and miraculous. The psalmist calls it "the bread of angels." Whatever it was, angel's bread or bug poop, manna was white, reminded the people of Israel of coriander seed, and tasted like wafers made with honey (cf. Ex. 16:31). Some say that it tasted like whatever you liked best—like something from Willa Wonka's chocolate factory.

The manna came every day, and everyone could gather what they needed. But only what they needed—any leftover spoiled. The only exception was the sixth day of the week, when they could gather enough manna for two days, so that they didn't have to gather food on the seventh day, the sabbath. Israel ate manna for forty years while they wandered in the wilderness; it ended when they came to the Promised Land.

Manna was God's provision to feed his people in the wilderness. It was their daily bread given to sustain their lives in the desert. God gave his people manna that they might live; he rained down "bread from heaven" for his people to eat.

As "bread from heaven", manna points beyond itself. It points to Jesus.

In today's Gospel lesson, we heard how Christ identifies himself as "the true bread from heaven," the bread that "gives life to the world." Like the manna, "the bread from heaven," the Lord Jesus came down from heaven and become incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man. And just as the manna gave life to the people of Israel in the wilderness, so Christ Jesus gives life to the world.

Yet Jesus is better than manna—better even than sliced bread—because the life he gives does not end with death and because he satisfies our hungers. The people of Israel ate manna in the wilderness and they died, but Christ is the bread "which comes down from heaven" and whoever "eats this  bread will live forever" (Jn 6:58). The life Jesus gives outlasts death, because "by his death he has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us everlasting life.”[3] Christ is more wondrous than manna—those who ate manna were hungry day after day, but those who feed on Christ Jesus will neither hunger nor thirst.

In the wilderness, Israel was hungry. Real hungry. Hungry enough to get a little desparate. Hungry enough that the grumbling of their stomachs consumed all memory of God's power in bringing them out of Egypt. The Plagues, the parting of the Red Sea—what are these when you're hungry to death? Believe you me, Israel was hungry in the wilderness.

The crowds alongside the sea of Galilee, across the way from Capernaum, were hungry, too. They'd just witnessed Jesus feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, and there were lots of leftovers, but they hadn't had enough. Like Mick Jagger, they can't get no satisfaction—so they're looking for Jesus, hoping for more of the same, looking, in short, for "bread and circuses." Hungry for free food and a little excitement, smelling a little like teen spirit, singing that old Nirvana song, "here we are now; entertain us."

The crowd was hungry. Israel was hungry.

Maybe you're hungry, too. I'm not talking about physical hunger—I doubt any of you here are that kind of hungry—although now that I've mentioned it, you're probably only going to be thinking about lunch! I’m not talking about that kind of hunger; I'm talking about a deeper hunger. Call it spiritual hunger, if you want. Whatever you call it, if you're this kind of hungry, you know what I mean.

Maybe you're hungry to feed an addiction. Maybe you're hungry for sex, hungry for money, hungry for power; hungry for knowledge or meaning. Maybe you’re hungry to make sense of your identity. Maybe your debt is gnawing at you.

Or maybe you're hungry for peace, for a little bit of hope, for a return of joy. Maybe you're hungry for love. Maybe you’re hungry for righteousness or justice or truth.

But then again, maybe you don't feel hungry at all. You've eaten and had your fill; you're feeling fat and happy. Maybe you're satisfied with what you have or with what you can get. Maybe you're even a little complacent, feeling a little drowsy, leaning back in your chair, unbuckling your belt. However you slice it, you're not hungry.

Whether you're hungry or not, Jesus says to you today, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst." His words are for all of us. If you're hungry, hear this: Jesus will satisfy your desires. If you've eaten your fill, hear this: You'll always need more of him.

Jesus is the bread of life. Whoever comes to him will never hunger, and whoever believes in him will never thirst. But how does Christ satisfy our hunger and thirst?

Think about what hunger and thirst are for, about why we eat and drink. Most simply, we eat and drink to live. Our most basic hunger is for life. It's a hunger we humans share with all other living creatures. All living creatures—from the tiniest phytoplankton to the greatest blue whale, from house plants to homo sapiens—unconsciously or consciously—seek to live. All creatures hunger for life, because no creature has life in itself. The life of all creatures comes from the outside. The need all creatures have for some source of nutrition makes this absolutely clear; if we do not eat, we die.

All creatures receive their life from God, who is the Giver of Life. As Creator, God is absolutely and qualitatively different from all his creatures. God alone has life in himself. God's creatures do not; we live only insofar as he gives us life. As the psalmist puts it, "with you is the well of life" (Ps. 36:9). All God's creatures depend absolutely on God, looking to God "to give them their food in due season," as another psalm has it (Ps. 105:28). As creatures, our life comes as a gift from God the Giver of Life.

And so our hunger for life is ultimately a hunger for God, who is Life itself.

We’re all of us hungry for God.

Trouble is, we deny that hunger, that need. Our basic sin is to turn away from God, to turn, in our pride and self-deception, from the "well of life" and strike out to live from our own resources and for ourselves. Of course that doesn't work out so well—even if we don’t realize it. Our need for God is absolute; we need him more than bread; we are literally nothing without him. Deep down the hunger for God continually gnaws at us, try as we might to ignore it or to take the edge off by "eating" lesser things. But nothing other than God himself satisfies that hunger or slakes that thirst.

Here’s an illustration of what I mean: Audra and I once lived in Russia for a few months. After we’d been in Moscow a while, we got hungry for fajitas, and so we went shopping for tortillas. But we couldn’t find any! not even in high-end grocery stores. No tortillas, anywhere. Finally we settled on a substitute: lavaash—a thin, flat bread from central Asia that comes folded up because one piece is roughly a square meter in size. Now, I like lavaash a lot—but it’s a lousy substitute for a tortilla. It gets all mushy and falls apart. And that’s not what you want when you’re eating fajitas. Only an actual tortilla will do; there’s just no substitute for the real thing.

So, too, there’s no substitute for God himself. Nowhere else will we find the life we’re hungry for. Still, we're pretty good at distracting ourselves from that hunger for God at the core of our being—and our culture is particularly adept at producing cheap imitations—so many Wonder Breads—that can for a time produce the illusion of fullness. Half asleep, we wander in a wilderness.

That's why we so desperately need to hear Jesus saying, "I am the bread of life." Because in saying this, Christ identifies himself as the source of life. And he reminds us that we are indeed hungry. He reminds us that we do not have life from ourselves, but live only by God's gracious gift. He teaches us that we do not live by bread alone, but by him. As Augustine says, "We live by him, by eating him; that is, by receiving himself as the life we do not have from ourselves."[4] Christ is the bread of life; when we feed on him, he satisfies our hunger.

Christ is the bread of life; he gives himself for our nourishment; he gives himself for us to eat. We eat him when we believe in him, when we find our refuge in him. We eat him when we obey his teaching, when we walk in his Way, when we heed his voice. We eat him when we ruminate on Scripture, because he is the Word of God that all Scripture speaks. We eat him in prayer, eat him when he feeds us with his Body and Blood. Christ is the bread of life; he gives us everything we need. He is our Life.

In a few minutes, when we come to Communion, I’ll hold up a wafer of bread and say to you, "The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven." It's true. Christ Jesus feeds us in this Bread and this Wine.

So, come on! Come eat your fill of the Bread of Life.

Come, if you're hungry. Come seeking Christ for his own sake, not for something else[5]—he alone will satisfy. Remember all that he has done for you, humbling himself, dying and rising for you, giving you new life.

Come, even if you're full, if you're not feeling hungry. You, too, come with empty hands. You, too, need to eat. You, too, need the nourishment Christ gives. Your life also is a gift.

To all of us, Jesus says, "I am the bread of life.” So, let’s eat!

Amen.

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[1] Art Morella, “How the Phrase ‘The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread’ Originated,” The Atlantic (Feb 8, 2012).

[2] Nahum Sarna, Exploring Exodus.

[3] Preface for Easter, The Book of Common Prayer 1979.

[4] Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.19.

[5] Cf. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.2.