First Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11
1“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name to dwell there. 3And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.’ 4Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. 5And you shall make response before the Lord your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. 6And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. 7Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. 9And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which you, O Lord, have given me.’ And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. 11And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you.”
Psalm 100
1Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands; serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song. 2Know this: The Lord himself is God; he himself has made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. 3Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise; give thanks to him and call upon his Name. 4For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age.
Second Reading: Philippians 4:4-9
4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Gospel: John 6:25-35
25When {the crowd} found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE
For those who didn’t know, I grew up in the Phoenix Arizona area, in a small town called Chandler, not far from my maternal grandmother’s house. The reason I bring this up is that some of my fondest Thanksgiving memories were ones we spend the day at grandma’s house. Now grandma was known for three things, her fantastic pies, her biscuits and her corn bread.
Every thanksgiving, grandma had a tradition where she baked every grandchild their favorite pie. Mine was coconut cream. Not only was the pie delicious, but the crust was amazing. The second thing I remember fondly was grandma’s biscuits. She made her fresh, from scratch, buttermilk biscuits at every meal; they were big as your fist and were the envy of everyone she knew. Put it this way, Bojangles ain’t got nothing on grandma’s biscuits! The final thing she was famous for was her corn bread.
I can fondly remember coming in from playing or working around the farm on many a hot summer evening and sitting down to a meal of cornbread and milk. Now for those not familiar with this delicacy, you take a big slab of fresh corn bread, break it up in a big glass. Then you take ice cold dairy fresh, not store-bought milk, and fill the glass. Then you simply eat that with a spoon. There’s nothing more filling or refreshing, after working in the hot Arizona sun all day, than fresh corn bread and dairy fresh milk. Isn’t it interesting that many of our fondest memories revolve around family and bread?
Speaking of bread, I ran across a bit of Jewish humor that goes like this: An old man goes to a diner every day at precisely noon for lunch: he always orders the soup of the day. One day the manager asks him how he liked his meal. The old man replies, “It was good, but you could give a little more bread: two slices of bread isn’t enough.” So, the next day the manager tells the waitress to give the man four slices of bread. “How was your meal, sir?” the manager asks. “It was good, but you could give a little more bread,” comes the reply. So, the next day the manager tells the waitress to give him eight slices of bread.
Thinking he’d have a satisfied customer now, the manager asks, “How was your meal today, sir?” “Good, but you could give a little more bread,” comes the reply. So . . . the next day the manager tells the waitress to give the man a whole loaf of bread, 16 slices with his soup. As the man comes up to the register, the manager once again asks, “How was your meal, sir?” “It was good, but you could give just a little more bread,” comes the reply once again. The manager is shocked.
At this point, the manager is now obsessed with seeing this customer satisfied with his meal, so he goes to the bakery next door and orders a six-foot-long loaf of bread. At 11:45 AM the next day, the manager goes next door, picks up the loaf of bread, goes back to the restaurant where he and the waitress cut the loaf in half, butter the entire length of each half, and lay it out along the counter, right next to a bowl of soup. At noon, as usual, the old man comes in, sits down, and devours both his bowl of soup, and both halves of the six-foot-long loaf of bread. The manager, now thinking he’ll finally get the answer he’s looking for, asks the old man, as he comes to the register, “So, how was your meal today, sir?” The old man replies: “The soup was good as usual, he pauses a moment and then says with a smile, but I see you went back to serving only two slices of bread!” I guess there are some people who just refuse to let you win.
Now I’ll bet that many of you, at some point this past week, probably went to the grocery store to get a loaf of bread. Hurricanes and snowstorms aside, for those of us living here in the Carolinas, bread is normally abundant on the shelf. Additionally, I’ll sure there was quite a variety to choose from. Now if you’re like me, during the holidays, I don’t pay attention to the price, and until recently, I was unaware that the packaging the bread is wrapped in actually costs more than the wheat that’s in the bread itself. That aside, I’m guessing that all in all, you probably thought your last bread run was an uneventful trip; but you might be wrong.
It’s difficult for us, as Americans, to understand the importance of bread, unless we turn on the TV and watch what’s going on in so many parts of our world today. When there’s no bread, no staff of life, there’s suffering and famine. A simple loaf of bread: it’s something we seldom, if ever, give a second thought about. But, in certain parts of the world, it means life itself. It’s only as we come to understand this, that we really begin to comprehend the importance of bread, not only now, but also in the time of Jesus. Like my grandmothers cornbread and biscuits, bread is a part of every meal.
Think for a moment about the number of significant theological events in the Bible revolve around the subject of bread. The most important event in the Old Testament was, of course, the Exodus event–the trip from Egypt to the Promised Land. And when you stop and think about why the Hebrew people were in Egypt in the first place, it was for want of bread; there was a famine in the land and Joseph was able to bring his father’s entire house to Egypt to feed them. There was a 7-year drought foretold through Joseph, and the Hebrew people came to the land of the Pharaoh because there was a surplus of grain in storage there. One could say that it was bread, or the lack of it, that initiated this chain of events. Later, when the Jews were on their way to the Promised Land, and they were facing starvation in the bleak wilderness, God rained down bread from heaven, as it was called, in the form of manna.
When Jesus began His ministry, He went into the dessert where He was tempted. As the hot sun braced down upon Him, satan came to tempt Jesus to turn the stones into bread to satisfy His hunger. But Jesus spurned that temptation because, He said, “man cannot live by bread alone” (Matt. 4:4). On another occasion as Jesus was praying, the disciples came to Him and asked Him to teach us how to pray. It’s in the midst of the Lord’s Prayer that He reminds us of the importance of the staff of life. He prayed: Give us this day our daily bread.
But probably the most prominent story we remember is when Jesus met with His disciples on the night that He was betrayed. During the meal, He took a loaf of bread and broke it and gave it to the disciples and said: This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of Me, (1 Cor. 11:24). When we stop and think about it, we simply cannot escape the significance of bread, not only in our lives, but also throughout the length and breadth of our Judeo-Christian heritage.
This brings us to our gospel lesson for this evening. It begins with the well-recognized event known as the feeding of the 5000. A small boy is brought to Jesus with five barely loaves and two fish and from that meager meal Jesus was able to feed the vast multitude that had assembled. After this event, Jesus goes into His teaching, but there’s an issue. His miracle generated controversy.
Quite impressed with what they’d seen, the remaining group, from the day before, went searching for Jesus across the lake. When they found Jesus, they approach Him and said, in effect, if you are the Messiah prove it. They pointed out that when the Hebrew people were in the wilderness, Moses was able to bring bread from heaven (6:30). During the time of Jesus, there had been a strong rabbinic belief that when the Messiah came, He too would bring manna from heaven. In their minds, this had been the superman act of Moses and surely, they reasoned, the promised Messiah could surpass that. In other words, the Jews were challenging Jesus to substantiate His claim of Messiahship by raining bread from heaven.
Now some might say, well, wasn’t the feeding of the 5000 miracle enough to satisfy their criteria that Jesus was indeed the Messiah? Well, yes and no. Yes, they were impressed–no doubt about that–but, you see, Jesus’ critics would argue that He merely fed 5000, whereas Moses had fed a nation. Jesus, they reasoned, fed these people for one day, but Moses did it for 40 years. In their minds, what Jesus did was multiply a few earthly loaves of bread and fish, but Moses made it appear from out of nowhere. The messiah, it was believed at the time, would outperform the signs of Moses. He, who was to come, would do the superior work.
Jesus meets these expectations by saying that they had misinterpreted the Moses event. First, He reminded them, that the bread had not come from Moses but from God. They were putting the emphasis in the wrong place. Moses was the facilitator, not the originator. Second, Jesus tells them, they failed to see that the real bread from heaven was not manna at all. That was only meant to be a symbol of the true bread. The real bread from heaven comes down and feeds not only our physical needs, but also our spiritual hunger as well. It was at this point, and please don’t miss the significance of this, Jesus said: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”
Bread is central to the major stories of the Bible and plays a significant role in life, but we must first understand that to satisfy our hunger for heaven, we cannot simply eat the bread of earth. This should be obvious. Jesus is saying to them, that they were putting too much emphasis on physical bread. Now this isn’t to say that earthly bread is insignificant. Jesus taught us to pray for our daily needs. The supplying of our physical needs is important. But what Jesus is saying here is—there’s a deeper aspect to this whole issue.
200 years before Jesus arrived on the scene, the Roman Emperor Aurelian initiated something called the “bread dole.” This meant that grain could be supplied to the poor for half price. The dole quickly became a political tool to be used by tribunes to buy voters. If Jesus hadn’t been careful, the whole thing of giving bread could have quickly degenerate into a tool to win friends and influence people. He would become as just another demagogue—just another politician. The point is this: Bread can be used as a weapon. In the past, there have been those in our own government, that have advocated that very thing. For example, if nations withhold oil from us, then we’ll withhold bread from them. On the surface, feeding the world’s hungry sounds like such an ideal thing, however, when you take all things into consideration, the whole issue can become very complex.
In the novel The Brothers Kara-ma-zov, we read a fictionalized scene that takes place between an old church cardinal who is engaged in the Spanish Inquisition and Jesus, who supposedly has now come back to earth. The crooked old cardinal chastises Jesus for missing a golden opportunity in the desert; the cardinal points out that Jesus could have changed all the stones into bread and fed humankind. The old Cardinal points out, “Mankind would have run after you, grateful and obedient, though forever trembling with fear that you might withdraw your hand and they would no longer have loaves. You did not want to make men slaves, but here too your judgment was too high for all men are slaves.”
I’ve always thought that the temptation to give bread to the world was the greatest temptation that Jesus ever experienced, because I’m certain that His great compassionate heart melted at the sight of those who were hungry, so many of whom were children. With the snap of a finger He could have done it. But Jesus understood the ramifications of this act, and He did what He had to do by refusing to fall into that tempting trap.
Yes, bread plays a significant role in every country and in every life, but we must understand that to satisfy our hunger for heaven we must eat of the bread of heaven. Jesus is saying: While life, in its most elementary form, depends upon bread, bread only sustains life, it doesn’t make life what God intended it to be. Bread may have power, but in the end its power will fail. Bread can buy you land, but not love; it can buy you bonds, but not brotherhood; gold, but not gladness; silver, but not sincerity; hospitals, but not health; karats, but not character; houses, but not homes. You can trade bread for commodities, but not comfort, real estate, but not righteousness, hotels, but not heaven.
To satisfy our hunger for heaven, we cannot simply eat the bread of this earth; we must eat the bread of God. That bread of heaven is the One who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. The crowd said to Jesus: Give us the bread from heaven. Do what Moses did and we will be satisfied. But Jesus is saying: I am the bread from heaven. He who comes after me will never hunger. As bread nourishes us physically, so eating the Bread of Life, Jesus, nourishes us spiritually.
As a parent, my wife and I provided our children with all the physical needs that they could have. We feed them, we clothed them, we gave them warm beds, and as my grandmother was so fond of saying, we even powdered their bottoms. But as time went on, I discovered that their needs went so much deeper than those physical needs. Our children needed to be loved and held. They wanted to play. They had a desire for knowledge and new experiences. In short, they desired quality of life and not mere existence. That is what Jesus ultimately provides for us–quality of life–a way to get beyond ourselves and mere existence and experience life; life in Him.
In this season of Thanksgiving and beyond, take the time to give thanks not only for our daily bread that God provides, but also for Jesus, the Bread of Life. And each time we give thanks, don’t focus solely on the bread of this world, instead, let us partake of that food which does not parish. Let us partake of the bread that isn’t here today and gone tomorrow. Let us partake of the staff of life, which nourishes us for all of eternity. To satisfy our hunger for heaven, we cannot eat the bread of this earth. To satisfy our hunger for heaven, we must eat the bread of heaven. That bread is Christ Jesus our Lord. He is the bread of everlasting life—now and forever more.
Amen.
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