The Bread of Life
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa
12 August 2012
Rev. Barry W. Szymanski, J.D.
Minister of Pastoral Care

READING FROM SCRIPTURE

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Then the people began to complain about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”? Jesus answered them, ‘Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

SERMON

When we examine the passage from John’s Gospel we hear Jesus unequivocally stating that he is the bread of life. Mothers who are nursing can legitimately say that they are feeding their infants. Mothers and Fathers can rightfully say that they are the nourishers of their children: in healthy bodies, in proper emotions, in soul.

Jesus continued by saying that those individuals who come to him would never be thirsty or hungry. The people listening to him then had a problem. They could accept what he said, or they could reject it; or they could question what he said; or they could disparage what he said.

Some in this group decided to complain – that is, to criticize Jesus; at first they did so among themselves. However, reasonably, they then questioned the statement Jesus made that he could satisfy the thirst and the hunger of their bodies. I think that they were justified to doubt. But, they went further than to simply criticize, they began to belittle Jesus and his family. In order to discredit what Jesus was telling them, they went directly to dishonor his parents. Instead of attempting to further ask for an explanation of what Jesus was saying, instead they attacked who he was, who his parents were, and where he came from.

They knew Joseph, who was an ordinary man, a guy who worked with his hands, a maintenance man or mason or carpenter. And they knew Mary, an ordinary woman from Nazareth. They wanted to point out to anyone who would listen to them that this Jesus was the ordinary son of ordinary Joseph and ordinary Mary of an ordinary small village, and that they were familiar with that family. In their critique of Jesus and his message, they focused on his family - his lineage, if you will, rather than on his teaching – what he was telling them.

Jesus, quite sharp, responded to them by feeding their credulity because he said that he, Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, would raise them up on the last day, if they believed, but they would only believe IF God the Father in heaven would push them toward Jesus.That is powerful stuff. Stuff, in this one sermon, is a theological term! Stuff is what Jesus was talking about. The ordinary stuff of life. The commonplace stuff of life. Sonship. Bread. Bread that was both ordinary – but also very extra-ordinary. What Jesus said was that he is the ordinary stuff of life. He is the bread of life.

Now, I do not want to judge those people who listened attentively to Jesus on that first day when Jesus said he was the Bread of Life. First of all, they did not have the opportunity to know, at that date, about the resurrection. They did not share in the concept of the divinity of the Christ. Moreover, and that is a most interesting word, more-over, some of those individuals may have come to believe in Jesus, after his death and resurrection and ascension, and after Pentecost.

But the chief reason I do not want to judge those individuals is that there are many, many, many people today who have their same questions, and many even share their same criticism, and instead of seeking an explanation, just walk away from Jesus. Many people do not believe what Jesus said when he announced that he is the bread of life. Many people do not believe that he came down from heaven, or that he can satisfy our hunger, or satisfy our thirst, or that he is the one to raise us up on the last day or that Jesus’ actual life was given up for the life of the world.

The last verse, #51, of today’s passage, and I am now quoting: “Jesus said: ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’”

We sometimes fight the divine. Isn’t that the story of Adam and Eve? We often look at what we desire, and ourselves rather than to look to God, and what God wants. We like our Will to control our appetites; we don’t like anyone else’s Will to interfere with what we want. It doesn’t take us long in life to determine what our will is.

I see self-will in 1-year old Princess Opal; and 3-year old King Eddie has very strong desires. Might I suggest that the principal problem in a marriage is the test of Wills that often takes place? Is there anyone here who hasn’t served on a committee at work, or at a social club, or even at church, where a battle of Wills has taken place?

One of the attributes that made Jesus so special was that his Will was united to His Father’s Will. Said more theologically, one aspect of the humanity of Jesus is that he did everything in his power to achieve His Father’s divine will. Jesus’ confirmed that all he did and all he wanted to accomplish was the divine Will. Now, our defensive response to this is that we are not divine. We are only human.

But Jesus was born of Mary. Jesus had a human side. So how do we ‘walk with Jesus’ to use that phrase? The answer is: in love. When two people first fall in love, they want to do the same things. If one suggests a movie, the other readily agrees. If one suggests a restaurant, the other promptly agrees. This goes on for some time because they genuinely want to do the Will of the other person – they are willing to adapt.

However, as time passes, they become individuals again – they want their own Will - to choose what they desire. But not in all marriages and not always – for in marriage the give-and-take of the life of love begins to grow because of the love they have for each other. What people in love want is not just to know what their lovers want, but they also want to do what their lovers want to do.

Both in marriage as in close friendships, sharing becomes an important part of the relationship, more important than exercising one’s own will – the singular will. One characteristic of what love is – is sharing and sacrificing together.

Jesus was in love with his Father. And because of his love he wanted not just to know what his Father wanted of him, but Jesus also wanted to do what his Father wanted. Love was the life of Jesus. Love is what causes Jesus to want to share himself with us. And Jesus, because of his relationship with his Father in heaven, knew what the true meaning of life is, and in response told us that he is life himself! Because Jesus is life, he wants to share life with us. As he gave his life, his very flesh, for the life of the world, we will not die. We will not die while we live on this earth, nor will we die after death. For Jesus the concepts of life and death are not our concepts of an earthly life, followed by death and the ‘end of our physical life’ on this earth.

To the contrary, for Jesus, life means life now, here on this earth, life in the fullness of life itself, followed by life after death in another type of union with God. For Jesus, death means death now; walking dead in this life – death in not knowing, or accepting, or even trying to understand God, or of even perceiving that there could be a real vibrant life to be lived on this earth. When Jesus says that he nourishes us and can take away our thirst and hunger he is addressing something very different than mere food. Jesus is addressing the hunger of the emptiness we have, the thirsty desire we have, for union with others, and especially the union with God who made us for union with him.

To live a life of pure isolation is painful to almost everyone. We are social people. Jesus tells us that our need for being with others is a God-made desire and that he can satisfy the underlying desire we have, which is the desire to be united with the divine.Jesus, simply stated, is life himself, and as we ‘consume’ who he is, which is to ‘take him in’ to internalize who he is, then we are nourished by the divine.

We become what we take in. We are, as much as we can be in this world, part of who God is. How we live Christ out was brought out at least in part, by Paul in his letter passage in Ephesians this morning: no falsehood, no slanderous or evil talk, no bitterness or anger, but instead, kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness. In short, Paul said we are to be imitators of God, and live in love, as Christ loved us. Our meditation is to try to realize the love that Jesus, the Christ had for us. Amen.