Living Bread (2)
John 6: 24 – 35
Ex 16: 2 – 4; 9 – 15
I hope you have been enjoying watching the Olympics this week. Even with empty stadia it’s been great to see athletes competing and excelling – it’s been uplifting to share the unexpected successes and moving to see how athletes who have had to withdraw for reasons of injury or ill-health have done so with dignity and good grace. Dina Asher Smith said yesterday of her decision to pull out” As athletes we’re all on our own journey and this Olympics is part of my journey – there will be other competitions for me in the future.” The disappointment of this games is part of a bigger story of her life in athletics.
It’s something of a cliché to observe that our life is a journey, but it’s true - we are often absorbed in the present, but at times it is good to stand back and trace the arc of that journey – to notice the pattern of our life’s journey and to recognise, as Asher Smith was doing, that this day that is our today is part of a bigger pattern of days.
So here’s a question. What is it that keeps us going through the days of our life’s journey? What is it that fuels us, that resources us? What especially keeps us going when the going gets tough?
“I am the bread of life” says Jesus. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.” That’s a big claim, an amazing claim.
I am the bread of life says Jesus. Not I am the bread of your religious life. I am the bread of your church going life. Jesus is saying something bigger than that. He is saying,
I am the bread for the whole of life’s journey.
Today, and in all the days that make us your earthly life, I, Jesus am the bread that can nourish and resource. I will feed you with my bread throughout all of life – both in the good times and the struggling times.
I am the bread that will replenish you when the cupboard of your life seems empty and bare.
I am the bread that brings grace and comfort and strength in all of life and for all of life, from its beginning to its end, and beyond its ending too.
I Jesus, am the bread of life – for your life. For today and all your days.
This week is the second week in our sermons exploring John chapter 6 – the “bread chapter”. Last week we saw how sharing bread was central to Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God, and how sharing bread is always central to the life of the Christian community. In the abundance of the feeding of the five thousand we saw an image of abundant grace. I asked you to read John chapter 6 at home – I hope some of you managed to!
And now this week we continue reading in chapter 6. The crowd are following close on Jesus’s heels and he has a conversation with the crowd about the difference between ordinary perishable food and spiritual food the food that endures. This culminates in Jesus’s “I am” statement – I am the bread of life. As I said last week, Jesus’s “I am” statements are “site up and take notice” moments in the gospel. Because the first hearers and readers of John’s Gospel would know their Hebrew scriptures well, they would remember that when Moses asked God his name, God spoke from the burning bush to say, “I am who I am”. So, Jesus’s “I am” is a way of announcing his identity, that he is God, made human.
I am, says Jesus. I am the bread of life.
He is the bread for the whole of our life’s journey.
At our last PCC meeting I showed some of the videos of a Christian nurture course called the “Start” Course, that I hope we can use in the parish. The course is an introduction to the Christian faith for use with small groups – it enables people to ask questions and share experiences. The first sessions is called “Life” and in part of the session the presents are on a beach. Using a bucket and spade they trace the line of their life in the wet sand as they talk about it. In the sand they sketch out a line that illustrates their life’s journey so far – with a fair few wiggles, highs and lows – and observations about where they have met with God on their life’s journey.
It helpfully introduces the thought that God is knowable and that we can know and experience God in ordinary ways in the everyday stuff that makes up our life on this planet. If God is indeed creator, life giver, God’s spirit the very breath of life then it makes sense that we can experience God in and through the life that is his gift to us.
My lifeline begins in Coventry, where the love of my Grandad, himself an Anglican priest, gave me a deep childhood sense of the love of God. It continues in Birmingham where I grew up, University in Cambridge, social work in Sheffield, marriage and children, ordination in my early forties, and parish ministry in Sheffield, and from last year, parish ministry here in Whaley. And like most people there are ups and down in my lifeline of disappointments and delights, good times and hard times.
When I look at the line of my life, I realise that it’s the times of difficulty that I have had to rely upon Jesus and his bread for the journey, because in all honesty there wasn’t much else to fall back on in those times. God’s grace has been enough to keep me going in the tough times, and with hindsight I can see that sometimes those have been times where growth has happened.
Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Jesus is God come as close to us as the food that we take into our bodies.
Jesus says that he comes to us in the place where we are – to the particular point in our life’s journey, lived here in Whaley Bridge, within all the networks of relationships that make up our lives – and that in this particular place where we are, he can sustain us, he can meet us at the point of our need and our hunger.
We heard in our reading from Exodus about the people of Israel on their journey through the desert with all the discomforts and hardships that brought. God provides a strange kind of bread for them to it, but only enough for each day, and only as much as each person needs. They are fed, but the in a way that helps them, recognise their continued dependence on God. They were pilgrims through a barren land. They knew, in the words of the hymn, that they were weak, and that God was mighty.
In order to receive the nourishment God offers in Christ we need to first recognise our hunger, our own need. And in the wealthy west our affluence gets in the way of this. Our material possessions insulate us from a sense of our spiritual needs. We forget how very fragile and dependent we are – though the pandemic has served to remind us.
At our last PCC meeting I asked people to tell me about a time in the life of Whaley Bridge when their faith seemed especially alive, when God seemed really close. People spoke about the near collapse of the dam – about the intensity of those days. Someone said, “It seemed as though the whole town was on its knees.” People from the wider community came to join in prayer. God’s spirit was visibly at work in the praying life of the town, and also in the wonderful way the community pulled together to care for one another at the time of crisis. When the dam was mended and catastrophe averted, there was a deep sense of thanksgiving for the saving grace that kept Whaley Bridge intact.
Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.
At times of crisis we recognise our need for God. But in the ordinary days it’s not quite so easy. We need to pay attention – and prayer is the name we give to paying attention to where our life intersects with the life of God.
This week, why not take five minutes at the end of the day to notice what has been good about our day and what has been difficult about it, what has gone wrong, with us and with the world. Often these will be small things. Or they might be very big things. We can thank God for what has been good. And we need to let what has been difficult or what has gone wrong tell us about our need for God. It’s good to simply notice the gap, to notice the need, to name the hunger.
Let us pray.
Jesus, you are the bread of life
For our life – for every life.
Help us to be hungry for your love, your justice, and your grace.