“Living Bread” Colchester Federated Church, August 11, 2024, Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (John 6:35, 41-51)

There’s a traditional story told about how at the beginning of time God desired to hide God’s self within creation.  God was contemplating how to effectively do this and angels gathered around God to help come up with a plan.  So, God told the angels that God wanted to hide somewhere within creation, but needed to find a place that was not easy to discover.  God said, “For it is in their search for me that my creatures will grow in spirit and in understanding.”[1] 

The first angel proposed that God should hide deep within the earth.  God thought about this proposal for a while.  However, God said that it wouldn’t take people long before they knew how to explore below the earth.  It just wouldn’t take long enough for people to grow before finding God.  A second angel suggested that God should hide on the earth’s moon.  God thought about that idea some more.  God said that it would be a better hiding spot than within the earth, though it wouldn’t be too long before people discovered how to fly through space.  Again, people would discover God too soon before they’ve had enough time to truly grow.  And this was the whole point about God finding a good hiding spot—so that God’s creatures would grow in spirit and in understanding.   

Well, the angels were at a loss since God didn’t want to hide deep within the earth or high above the earth on the moon.  What other hiding places could there be?  A great silence descended as everyone thought some more about what to do.  Finally, an angel said, “Why don’t you hide yourself within their own hearts?  They will never think of looking for you there!”  God loved the idea and was immediately delighted to have found the perfect hiding place.  Perhaps it remains true that God is secretly hidden deep within the heart of every one of God’s creatures.  God is hidden there “until that creature has grown enough in spirit and understanding to risk the great journey into the secret core of its being.  And there, the creature discovers its creator, and is rejoined to God for eternity.”[2]

Sometimes it seems like we go searching high and low for God.  We think that God is out there hidden far beyond our reach.  God is far beyond our ability to comprehend.  And of course there are aspects of God that will always be beyond our human ability to understand.  Though maybe God can be found as we make the journey within to discover who we are and who God is calling us to be.  For the hardest journey we sometimes make in our lives is the journey from our heads to our hearts.

Today we are continuing our exploration of Jesus teaching his followers about the living bread.  In some ways, Jesus is doing his best to help people make the journey from their heads to their hearts.  Because these stories are about so much more than just the physical bread they have seen before their eyes, the bread that filled their empty stomachs.  Jesus told the crowds.  Remember that this takes place after they had experienced the miracle of multiplication with the feeding of the five thousand on the mountainside— “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”[3]  This “I am” statement gets some reaction from those who oppose Jesus—there’s some grumbling here.  Folks can’t help but ask, “Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son, whose mother and father we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”[4] 

We are only in the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John and Jesus is already facing opposition.  People are asking, “Who does this guy think he is anyway?”  In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus declared, “Prophets are honored everywhere except in their own hometowns, among their relatives, and in their own households.”[5]  This sentiment is unfortunately proving to be true.  Because in these Gospel stories we have gone from the feeding of the five thousand to Jesus walking on water to Jesus speaking about himself as the bread of life and comparing and contrasting himself to Moses and the miracle of manna in the wilderness feeding the Israelites for forty years. 

Now here we are (again thinking about the manna in the wilderness) and Jesus making some significant statements about the living bread.  Jesus explains to everyone gathered, “Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that whoever eats from it will never die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”[6] 

Okay, so we have been talking about the feeding of the five thousand, the Exodus story of the manna from heaven, and Jesus as the bread of life over several Sundays.  That’s how the Lectionary goes sometimes as we are doing a deep dive into this metaphor of Jesus as the bread of life.  Suffice it to say that John is nothing if not thorough!  We can recall that Jesus has seven metaphorical “I Am” sayings that are unique in the Gospel according to John.  These metaphors emphasize Jesus’ power and divinity, helping us to understand Jesus better.  Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.”  “I am the light of the world.”  “I am the gate.”  “I am the good shepherd.”  “I am the resurrection and the life.”  “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”  “I am the vine.”

Even the words “I Am” are symbolic since God tells Moses “I Am Who I Am” in Exodus at the burning bush.  Moses encountering God in the burning bush was an awe-inspiring experience.  The burning bush story would have been near and dear to Jesus’ own heart as a Jewish man who would have grown up hearing the stories of his people.  In that significant, mysterious encounter, Moses heard to come no closer and to remove his sandals—for the very place where he was standing was holy ground.  When God commanded Moses to go to Pharaoh to bring God’s people out of slavery in Egypt, Moses has a beautiful exchange with God.  Exodus Chapter 3 shares the story: “Moses said to God, ‘If I now come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,” they are going to ask me, “What’s this God’s name?”  What am I supposed to say to them?’  God said to Moses, ‘I Am Who I Am.’  So say to the Israelites, ‘I Am’ has sent me to you.”[7]  Moses took off his sandals to honor the sacred space, to acknowledge that he was truly home in God’s presence—the God of his ancestors and his God, the Lord, Yahweh, I Am Who I Am.

The whole point being that Jesus’ “I Am” statements are important within the religious, cultural, and historical context.  The crowds would have heard these words differently than we do.  We may gloss over the “I Am” statements simply because they are so familiar in our Christian tradition.  Many of us find them deeply theologically meaningful.  Though “I am the bread of life” would have been especially striking for the crowds to hear.  Recalling the Exodus story hopefully helps explain why Jesus’ critics had such a strong reaction with—who does this guy think he is?  Isn’t this Joseph and Mary’s son?  Prophets don’t tend to get honored in their hometowns anyway.

In the end, Jesus spends time unpacking and further explaining the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand to help people who experienced it make that journey from their heads to their hearts.  Jesus does so using stories and images that would have resonated with the people, stories and images that also made his critics react negatively.  Though this was all meant to encourage people to not go looking for God just deep within the earth or on the moon or way out there beyond our ability to comprehend.  Not when “I Am Who I Am” was also standing right in front of them—on the mountain and on the lakeshore, offering us all the living bread.  Jesus said, “I am the bread of life . . . I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”[8]  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] “God in Hiding,” Retold by Margaret Silf, One Hundred Wisdom Stories from Around the World, pgs. 32-33.
[2] “God in Hiding,” Retold by Margaret Silf, One Hundred Wisdom Stories from Around the World, pgs. 32-33.
[3] John 6:35, CEB.
[4] John 6:42.
[5] Mark 6:4.
[6] John 6:49-51.
[7] Exodus 3:13-14.
[8] John 6:35 and 50.

Photo by brandon siu on Unsplash