THE BREAD OF LIFE

A Sermon for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

By Pastor Laura Gentry

John 6:41-51 & Ephesians 4:1-16

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  

The crowd that surrounded Jesus in our Gospel lesson in John became angry at what they thought was arrogance. How dare he call himself the bread of life?  He’s just a regular guy from Nazareth. How can he satisfy us? They don’t understand.

 

Yet, just a few verses earlier, this crowd was totally excited about Jesus—so much so that they tried to make him king. They had seen a little boy's lunch turn into a spread for thousands, with 12 baskets of leftovers. The miracle was amazing but they were understanding it more as a magic trick than a sign illustrating who Jesus really was. He tried to get through to them, nevertheless. He said he was the bread of life, something that would last far longer than the bread we eat. What he brings will satisfy the very hunger if their souls. But they can’t see it. They do not have the eyes of faith. And so they miss the bread of life he offers them.

Do we see Jesus as the bread of life? I mean, really know him in that way? Do we feast on this bread that gives life? Or are we missing the banquet? The theologian Karl Barth wrote, "Were we to hear only of a god who measures up to our rule and is able to do what we can also do for ourselves without him, what need have we of such a god? Whenever the church has preached such a tiresome little god it has grown empty."  We need bread that is truly satisfactory.  But where can we find it?

 

In the letter to the church at Ephesus, there is a challenge that sets a high standard: "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice for God." The point of this passage is that if we want to feast on the bread of life, we must follow in the way of Jesus—we must imitate him.

 

There is a legend of a man with a scarred face. He was embarrassed of it and so he made a mask to cover it. He made the mask look like a saint. It was a beautiful, flawless face on the mask and the man wore it always. He even fell in love and got married but even his wife was not allowed to see his real face.  Years go by and finally the people of his village find out about his scarred face. They legend goes that they are desperate to see who he really is and how what his face looks like behind the mask. So they surround him and rip it off. They are shocked to find out that his face has taken the form of the saintly mask. By pretending to be a saint all these years, he has inadvertently become one! 

 

The lesson of this legend is that we become what we habitually imitate. We become what we think and do. The thoughts that fill our minds, the passions that drive us, the habits we fall into—all of these things are building blocks that form us into who we are. If we fill our hearts and minds with the shallow, empty things of our popular culture—or if we cling to our hurts and angers, our resentments and bitter feelings, we're only hurting ourselves. Martin Luther explained it this way: "You cannot keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair."  What he meant was that we will always have sinful thoughts, but we can’t welcome these thoughts and let them get a foothold in our hearts.  If we do, we are feasting on the world, not the bread of heaven.

We become the patterns by which we live. Christ, the bread of life, wants us to feast on him, not these empty things. He wants us to fill our hearts and minds with God's Word. He wants us to work on loving as he loves, caring as he cares. In all things, we are to be imitators of God. That’s what the Christian life is all about.

 

John Wesley once wrote, "First let us agree what religion is. I take religion to be, not the mere saying over of so many prayers, morning and evening, in public or private, but a constant ruling habit of the soul, a renewal of our beings in the image of God, a recovery of the Divine likeness, a self-increasing conformity of heart and life to the pattern of our most holy redeemer."

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, which we heard a reading from today, we hear some good advise for how to create a constant ruling habit of the soul. Keep in mind that things aren’t going well for Paul at the time he writes this—he is imprisoned for his evangelism. But instead of feeling sorry for himself, he is writing powerful letters from prision. Let’s listen again to the beginning of this chapter:

“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

Aha! There is the secret. We’ve got to figure out how we can stand one another. That’s what he said! We need to summon all our humility, gentleness, patience and love so that we can live together in peace. Being an imitator of Christ is no easy work but it is vital because when we do, we can live in love as one body with one faith through our one baptism in our one God.

So you see that having the bread of life to eat is not just a personal matter. We partake of Christ together, as a family. And that means we have to be extra cautious in how we deal with one another. We can’t be mean and self-centered because that would cause hurt to our fellow believers—our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are called to bring our gifts to the table so that together we can build up the body of Christ. That’s what the bread of heaven can do for us and for our community—not just this congregation but all believers in Christ everywhere. But we’ve got to live it. We’ve got to take action.

 

The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard told a parable of a community of ducks waddling off to duck church to hear the duck preacher. The duck preacher spoke eloquently of how God had given the ducks wings with which to fly. With these wings there was nowhere the ducks could not go. With those wings they could soar. Shouts of "Amen!" were quacked throughout the duck congregation. At the conclusion of the service, the ducks left commenting on the message and waddled back home. They never flew.

 

There were some who knew Jesus personally and they enjoyed his miracle of the feeding of the 5000 but when they heard him preach, they were like the ducks. They didn’t get it. The waddled home. Let’s learn from them so that we can avoid being waddlers too.  Jesus is offering us himself, the bread of life so that we can live a life worthy of the calling. This is of ultimate importance.   Let us not waddle home today, but let us feast on Jesus and fly home.

Now may the peace of God keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.