August 8th Sermon by The Reverend Loree Reed

John 6:35, 41–51
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.

Once again, this morning, Jesus is speaking about bread to the crowd gathered around him. . . and telling them that he is the Bread of Life who has come down from heaven to satisfy their hungers.  But where last week they seemed right on the verge of accepting his words and receiving what he was offering, this week, suddenly, they’re not so sure.  In fact, they’re grumbling to each other, “Wait a minute.  This is Joe’s boy – Joe from Nazareth.  How can he say he came down from heaven?  We watched this kid grow up.  We know his mom and dad.  ‘Come down from heaven,’ my foot!”
But Jesus knows two things.  First, he knows that the people gathered around him are there because his Father in heaven has drawn them, has drawn them there to listen to his Son. Or they wouldn’t have come at all.  And second, he knows that they are hungry.  They are hungry for an experience of God himself – an experience as real as the physical feeling of food in your stomach.¹  In fact, that’s why we’ve all come here this morning – to satisfy that hunger.  We can’t explain it.  We find it hard to put into words.  But we are drawn to the presence of God in this sanctuary, in our common prayer and praise, in his Word, and certainly in the bread we receive at the altar rail.  We have a hunger we can barely describe.  But this is the place where we can satisfy it.  Jesus’ listeners that day in Capernaum had that same kind of hunger.  So despite their skepticism, they hang in there and they listen to him.
The problem for them – and maybe for us too — is that what we are seeking has to come to us by faith.  It’s a gift, in other words, not something we can produce for ourselves.  And we hate that.  We don’t want to be dependent.  Then too, though it’s a spiritual experience, it’s going to come to us through something quite ordinary – as ordinary as Joe’s boy who grew up in backwater Nazareth, as ordinary as a piece of bread.  But that’s the way God does things.  When we least expect it, he comes to us through the ordinary elements in our lives, revealing his Presence through them.
‘Incarnation’ is the fancy word theologians use to describe Jesus, the Son of God, coming among us, but it’s more than just a theological term.  ‘Incarnation’ is the subject of John’s whole Gospel.  In his Prologue, John tells us that from the beginning of time “the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (1:1)  And then, a few verses later, he tells us that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” (1:14)  In fact, all the way through the rest of his Gospel, John will be helping us see and come to terms with this mystery, this revealing–of–the–sacred–through–the–secular.
For good and for sure, the whole idea was, at first, a mystery to everyone – even as Jesus tried to explain it.  Nicodemus, for example, is a well–educated Jewish scholar who knows a thing or two about human birth.  But he has a hard time comprehending the spiritual birth Jesus is trying to explain to him – and not a clue that he himself might one day incarnate such holiness.  And it isn’t just Jewish people who find Jesus’ words hard to fathom.  The woman by the well in Samaria knows all about drawing clear, cold water from deep wells.  But it takes her a while to grasp that his stranger, this Jesus, is offering to slake her spiritual thirst.  So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to find that the people gathered around Jesus this morning are having a hard time understanding his description of himself as heavenly bread that has come down from heaven — bread they themselves are invited to sample.
But they will, eventually, as our psalm puts it this morning — taste and see that the Lord is good.  They will, despite their misgivings, begin to try this new bread Jesus is offering to them.  For they are hungry.  And bread, in their culture, was essential – not just as a food but also as the means by which they ate their food.
You see, in ancient Middle Eastern culture no one used forks or spoons to eat their meals.  Instead, they gathered around a common table with a communal dish at the center. . . and they dipped their bread into that bowl to carry the food to their mouths.  So bread, for them, was not just something extra – like a dinner roll might be for us.  Instead, bread was an essential part of every meal; it gave people a way to take in the food they were served.  That’s what Jesus is saying to the crowd that morning in Capernaum.  The main course God the Father is offering them is life – life abundant, life eternal.  Jesus simply presents himself to them as the bread they need to take that meal in.
And this morning he is making the same offer to us.  He is offering us himself.  He might not be the bread we ever thought we wanted.  But he is the bread we need.²  For our hungers, too, are deep.  And no matter how we have tried to satisfy them, those hungers have not abated.
So this morning I offer to you the bread that came down from heaven – in his Word, in our worship and in Communion.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Amen.
¹Barbara Cawthorne Crafton “Eat it all today”   The Christian Century: Sunday’s Coming, July 27, 2009.

²William Willimon  Homilectical Perspective, Proper 14 Feasting on the Word; Year B, Vol. 3 (Westminster, John Knox Press, Louisville: 2009) P. 337.
 
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