Rev. Mary Shipley, August 8, 2006

Feeding Frenzy

John 6:24-35
  

In English, the word "bread," in some contexts, is synonymous with food. In many East Asian dialects, the word for "rice" and the word for "food" are the same. It's the basic thing you need to stay alive.

Bread is the biblical metaphor for this because bread was the staple, basic, bottom-line food of Jesus' time. And bread it was that the crowd was looking for when they sought Jesus on the other side of the lake from where he had so recently performed the miracle of feeding the crowd of thousands with five loaves and two fish -when they came to Capernaum and said to him -- "Rabbi, when did you get here".

And Jesus responds by saying: "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill." They had a feeding frenzy on the bread that had been provided.

But to come to Jesus only for the bread that satisfies our bodies one day and leaves us hungry the next, to turn to him only for the physical and immediate blessings of this world is to miss the significance of who Jesus is, and indeed to miss the significance of what life itself is all about. And Jesus indicates this when he says "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."

In our fears and insecurities it is so easy to miss the deeper meaning of things.

It is so easy to focus our attention on the gratification of our physical needs that we forget that there are greater things - things that satisfy not only the body - but the soul. Bread is a good image for all this, because bread is important to all of us. It is good to have your fill of bread. I was reading an article recently from sojourners magazine that claims that - the world food supply is more than adequate to feed every man, woman, and child upon the planet. Yet thousands perish each day for lack of food.

Think of the sin of it all. The blindness. The lack of understanding. The lack of trust. The lack of love. Farmers are paid by our government to not grow food. Marketing Boards order the destruction of accumulated supplies of food so that the prices will not fall below a certain level. Large wholesalers of food stuffs toss food out that has come to it's expiry date rather than distribute it to places and persons who are in need. And as Mike Glenn pointed out earlier the lack of commerce and transportation abilities really to affects the opportunity to get the excess food to the people who need it most.

We are driven by our sense of need, by our desire to have more for ourselves, and by our inability to imagine any other realm, any other reality, by which life might be measured any other sphere from which life itself might come and to which life itself might return.

The crowd in this week's section of chapter six of The Gospel According To John seems to miss that. They see Jesus as a simple wonder-worker, as one who can performs signs and fills stomachs. And Jesus is that. But Jesus also knew that the bread of this earth does not satisfy that men, woman, and children will grasp after it and seek - as they did with the manna in the wilderness -to acquire more than they need for each day and that in the end they will still die; and their sin - expressed in their insatiable desires and their refusal to heed the voice of God will cause others to die.

John wants us to know that Jesus is more than a wonder worker. That he is more than one who is able to provide the food that our bodies need - that food which already exists in abundance upon this earth. John wants us to know that Jesus came to feed us with what lasts unto eternal life that he came to give us the bread of heaven that he is in fact the bread of heaven: "This is the work God requires", says Jesus, when speaking to the crowd in Capernaum, the work that provides food that endures to eternal life, "to believe in the one he has sent."

And then again - when the crowd asks him to give them this bread from now on he says "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." Look around the world today. It is like it was so long ago. It is populated with people who having their fill of the bread of this earth long for something more, and who seek that something more - not only in the pursuit of more earthly blessings, but in the empty spectacles and false promises provided for them in the pleasure palaces and cultic coliseums of our world.

"I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." An incredible statement - to be sure -We in deed need a steady diet of spiritual nourishment. Could you imagine a world that all people had their fill each day! A feeding frenzy that would include - prayer, study, Christian fellowship, worship, service, and faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?

We are called by God - the giver of life - to eat the bread of life, that bread provided by him and through him and in him, in Christ Jesus, that bread that is shared at this table today.

When we receive it by faith and in faith it builds us up in the one who came to give it to us, the one who was with God at the beginning and through whom all things were made. And as we celebrate the Lord's Supper today, we celebrate how the one whom we call the Bread of Life is broken - and given to all who are at the table- that they may eat and live.

Where peoples are being harshly oppressed, the table of the Lord speaks of exodus or deliverance from bondage.

Where believers are rejected or imprisoned for their faith, the Bread and the Cup reveals the life of the one who was rejected by people but has become "the chief stone of the corner".

Where discrimination by race, sex or class is a danger for the community, the table of Christ enables people of all sorts to partake of one food and to be made one people.

Where people are affluent and at ease with life, the Bread and the Cup say, "As Christ shares His life, share what you have with the hungry."

Where a congregation is isolated by politics or war or geography, the Lord's Supper unites us with all God's people in all places and all ages.

Where a sister or brother is near death, the Last Supper becomes a doorway into the Kingdom of our loving God.

Today, let us go past the surface appearances of this world and the immediacy of our physical needs and celebrate the one who brought this world's life out of the deep unordered waters of creation, and who in Christ Jesus gives us the bread of heaven that we may eat and never die. The waters of baptism are poured that we may become one with the one who gave his life for us.

The table of the Lord is set so that together we may be made strong in this world and prepared to enter the world to come. Blessed be the name of the Lord, day by day. Amen.