Tenth Sunday after Pentecost Yr B Proper 13 August 1 2021
2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a, Psalm 51:1-13, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:24-35
The fragrant smell of fresh bread is one of my fondest memories from my childhood. When I would enter my house after walking home from school, my mom would have fresh bread ready for an after-school snack. We’d smother it in butter and eat a whole loaf. My memory of that is infused with love and abundance. A mother who was home when I got home from school, fresh bread, brothers and sisters, time to play outside. It was grace upon grace, it was absolute and abundant love. There was no question about my place in my family, even with eight kids I always knew I was loved. This remains one of my most grace filled memories. Today families are made up of all shapes and sizes, with constellations of people who care for children, grammas and grampas, other family members, day cares and clubs, all with the same ability to show children they are loved abundantly.
Beginning last week and for the next four weeks we will be reading through the Bread of Life Discourse in John’s gospel, the entire sixth chapter. In these seventy-one verses, John’s themes of grace upon grace, and God’s abundance are mixed in and rise to offer us the fragrant gift of eternal life.
In these next few weeks, I encourage you to read all of John, and most especially this sixth chapter. And, I encourage you to attend Friday morning Bible Study. We’re recording the discussion, so you can listen to it with a click from our website.
But even my experience of love and grace and abundance, pales in comparison to what John is doing in the gospel and in this sixth chapter specifically. John gives us Jesus, who offers the disciples, and you and I, an invitation into a deep, deep, relationship. Jesus reveals more and more of who he is, the bread of life.
Today John offers us the bread of life that fills us, and sustains us, in Jesus whose relationship with us heals us.
We wander around trying to fill up on that which cannot fill us, that which cannot sustain us, that which cannot seep into the cracks of our broken hearts. We look for something that we believe will make us happy and successful. And we come here, looking for something, maybe not quite sure what it is. What we get is Jesus. Jesus is the food that fills us, Jesus is the blood that seeps into the cracks of our hearts and souls and makes us whole. Come and I will feed you. Come, and you will never be hungry or thirsty again. When you eat this bread and drink this wine, you will be healed, you are a new creation, your hunger will be satisfied. That is what the gospel writer John means when he refers to eternal life.
The feeding of the five thousand, last week’s reading and the beginning of this Bread of Life discourse, was a massive picnic in the wilderness. Today we hear Jesus say to those who, I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Often, those who followed Jesus were confused, they misunderstood. They cannot see beyond the sign to Jesus, whom they have already received. Not only is the bread Jesus' body, but it is manna from heaven, the bread of angels. The wine is not just Jesus' blood, but the free-flowing drink at the messianic feast, the substance of joy. It will fill you up, like nothing else can.
A loaf of bread is as practical as it is mysterious. It will fill our hunger in so many ways. And as we partake of the bread we become the body, the body of Christ. We become a new creation, we are made whole. We become a community of faith. We are healed, we are put back together, we are re-membered.
As we take the bread into our bodies, and as we are healed, we are formed as followers of Jesus. We come here, finally again, and we take into our bodies the bread of life, we ingest the Word over and over again. Jesus seeps into our very being and fills the cracks and fissures. In this practice, we become the people of God, we become who God creates us to be, who God dreams we can be. Part of the mystery is that the loaf of bread teaches us who we are as well as transforms us into whom we may be. Our practice and prayer surround the loaf of bread with word and action.
As we take the bread into our bodies we become followers of Jesus, and as followers of Jesus we embody God's promise and reconciliation in the world. That is our mission. What does God call us to do? God calls us to embody healing and reconciliation in the world. We are a holy community, sanctified by the presence and Spirit of God, sharing the Lord's meal, and as a holy community, God works through us ordinary people, to do extraordinary things.
We are a witness to the world of an alternate way of living. We are followers of Jesus, we are the Jesus movement. In the world, the strongest wins, the one who has the most wins, in the Jesus movement, Love wins. In the world the powerful, the well-known, the stars, get the attention, in the Jesus movement, the first will be last, and the last will be first. Our identity as followers of Jesus is found in participating in God's life and love for the world, in creating Jesus' community wherever we find ourselves. We care for our own members, and we love our neighbors the same way God loves us in Jesus. We go into the world bearing a spirit of humility, compassion, and mercy, and we bring Jesus' healing wherever we go.
We also receive Jesus' healing from others, we receive Jesus' hospitality from others, and Jesus' body is completed by others, because we don't have all the answers, we don't know it all, we don't have the right way or the only way. There is so much we have yet to learn, so many ways we can be Jesus' body that we do not know yet.
It is I, do not be afraid. You will eat and be filled, you will eat and be healed, you will eat and be sent into the world to be Jesus' hands and feet. You don't need to be perfect because you are perfectly loved. It is this love relationship that is faith, that is belief, and that is eternal life. It is grace upon grace. Amen.
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