“Bread for Us”
August 11, 2024
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Today it is as if we entered a hall in the middle of a lecture. You certainly would understand that Jesus is talking about bread. And somehow, Jesus is that bread. But it helps if we back up to set the scene. Earlier in this chapter, Jesus fed the multitudes with just five loaves and 2 fish—the physical sign of what he is now teaching about. And last week, after Jesus urges us not to hang around just to be fed physically, we arrive at our own plea, “Jesus, give us this eternal bread, always.” And it is then that Jesus proclaims, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…”
I have to admit that the passage we have as our gospel lesson today is an example of why I count John as my least favorite gospel. Jesus is so wordy, and seems to speak in circles of circles of word upon word. I want to shout, “What does it mean, Jesus?” And why do you seem to be so different from the Jesus of the other gospels who might speak in parables but at least makes more sense!
So, I put my literary critic hat on and started to look at the words more closely. I find it fascinating that the lectionary committee decided to pair this reading with the story of Elijah in the wilderness. If your eyes hadn’t rolled into the back of your head by the time I finished the gospel this morning, you might have heard Jesus say, “Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died.” So why bring in Elijah here? Why didn’t we read more about the manna story from Exodus or Deuteronomy like we did last week?
And then I remembered that the Johannine community (the community formed around John) was being persecuted by those they called “the Jews” (even though they were Jewish themselves.) They didn’t know who to trust. They were being hunted and arrested and killed. And so they came up with this kind of code—so they could speak about things that were important to them, but the uninitiated wouldn’t be able to understand them.
Maybe that is why Jesus seems to talk so “weirdly”—maybe it is “Jesus speak” filtered through the community’s desire to protect themselves. Almost like hearing the voice of Jesus put through one of those machines to distort it so that it is not recognizable to others.
In this passage, Jesus is makes a separation between the physical bread and the eternal bread, from the manna in the wilderness and his bread from heaven. The old, the old bread, the old way, “the Jews,” only led to death. You HAD to have the new, the new bread, the new way, Jesus. Now this particular lens on Jesus’ message has made for quite a lot of harm in our world. Pogroms, the holocaust, the exile and killing of Jewish people in almost every period of history (including our own) has come partly because of hearing the gospel through this lens.
But Jesus knew his Bible. Jesus knew there were stories of bread from heaven other than the one about manna. And even though this Jesus in John insists on being the way, the truth, and the life, and only through him can one talk to God—the stories we read about in the gospel of John are about inclusion, about widening the circle, about inviting people into community. Like the story of Jesus being willing to meet Nicodemus in the middle of the night for banter about being born anew. Or the story of Jesus asking a Samaritan woman for water, talking to a Samaritan which wasn’t done, asking a woman to give him, a man, water which wasn’t done. And then offering her, not one of the inner circle, not even a Jew, offering her and her community living water, gushing up to eternal life.
So, let’s imagine that Jesus wasn’t trying to pit one group of people against another (“the Jews” versus the Johannine community/the old versus the new). Let’s imagine Jesus is talking to us about the bread of heaven. Yes, he might remind us of the story of Moses in the wilderness. Of God providing quail at night and manna in the morning. But he might also talk about other stories in his Scripture. Like the story of Elijah. Elijah in the wilderness. Elijah on the run from Jezebel. Elijah who was fearful and tired and ready to give up on speaking the Lord’s word to those who didn’t want to hear it. He is ready to die. But an angel touches him and offers him food that has suddenly appeared, not once but twice.
And then it says, “then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”
Hmmmm. Forty days and forty nights. Being fed in the wilderness, or ministered to by angels. For those of us who know the other gospels, we can see parallels to Jesus’ own journey. In other words, God has been giving bread from heaven from the beginning. There is no, God didn’t do it right back then, but I came, and now we’ve got the true stuff. Bread from heaven, bread from God, actual, physical, bread, is needed to survive. And God the good shepherd, God the One who loves God’s creation, does not want us to perish, physically or spiritually. There has always been bread for us from God.
So, I am less interested in John’s murky words that are trying to hide the actual message from those who might want to harm the true believers. I desperately want to strip away all the disguise and try to figure out what Jesus was getting at. I am the bread of life. Bread for you.
And here I have parables exploding in my brain. Parables that take normal, ordinary things and situations and twist them so we might think about the kingdom of God. I think that Jesus is almost always saying to us, look at what is right in front of you. Don’t take it for granted. Yes, water is necessary for us to survive. But there is living water that gushes up to eternal life. Yes, there is bread that is necessary for us to survive. But there is eternal bread that can assuage your hunger for justice and mercy and shalom. Don’t just live in this world, being fearful and tired and ready to give up on making things the way God intended. There are angels around. There is food for the journey. Eat, and in the strength of that eating, get up, and continue on to the mountain of God.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the 19th century poet, wrote these words as part of her epic poem, “Aurora Leigh,”
“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.”
Browning is lifting up that God is all around us, if only we will see. Please, Jesus, give us this bread.
Now, today we are going to leave the lecture before it’s done. There are two more weeks of reading John 6. And there is more decoding to be worked on—starting with the last word of our reading for today “flesh.” “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” But that is for another day and another preacher. Today, I want to press us to think about what this bread is for us.
Last Sunday, after all those images of mouthwatering bread, you might have wanted to go home and EAT. But what do we do after we eat? I hate to say it, but the call isn’t to go sit on your sofa and take a nap. Neither does Jesus want to feed us with the bread of life just because he can. No, the bread of life is not just about what Jesus gives to the world, but about what is expected of us. Do you remember what Jesus said last week about “the bread of God”? “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
The question is, what do we do with that life we have been given. And here I’m going to go back to the story of Elijah in the wilderness. Because after the angels fed him, after he walks, in the strength of that food, forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God, Elijah hides in a cave. And God finds him, and says, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” And it is a great read if you ever want to hear the full story—I Kings 19.
This morning, I’m going to skip to the end. For this is the famous scene where God reveals God’s self to Elijah not in wind or fire or earthquake but in a small, still voice. And Elijah strengthened by the food of the angels, strengthened by the vision that God does have to have fireworks, God can be seen in the small, in the still, in a single voice, Elijah leaves the cave and goes back to work—speaking for God and pushing the reality of God’s reign even if no one is listening.
Brothers and Sisters, we are gathered together, we are gathered around the Lord’s table, we are gathered to eat the bread of life and to drink the cup of the covenant.
We are here to be fed. And the bread that is on that table, the food for thought that comes from tearing apart the Word, it is here for the taking. Take, Eat, this is my body broken for you.
But we do not stay at the table, even if we wish to do so. We get up, we go out those doors, we go into a world that sometimes makes us fearful and tired and ready to give up. So eat, until you are full. Eat, so you might be strengthened to do the work God has given you. There is so much to do. But we are in the company of angels. And we have the best provisions. The bread of life. The bread of heaven. Bread for us.
Please Jesus, give us this bread, always.
May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.