I AM the Bread of Life

Scripture Lessons: Deuteronomy 8: 1-9 and John 6: 35, 41-51 Sermon title: I AM the Bread of Life Preached on June 6, 2021 Today begins a sermon series that will last the summer based on what Bible scholars call the “I Am” statements. On several different occasions Jesus tells those who are listening who he is using statements like the one we just read: “I AM the bread of life.” On this communion Sunday we recognize that this statement is both a metaphor and a fact. When he says, “I AM the bread of life” we know that he’s not just like bread. He is the bread. Even more than the mother bird who made a nest outside our kitchen window and flies back and forth all day feeding her two chicks, we don’t just thank the one who “gives us this day our daily bread” today. We gather around the table remembering the one who loves us so much he offers us his body and his blood. I AM the bread of life. That’s love in a most profound sense, and we know he loves us by this gift that he provides. Not everyone loves us that much. “I AM the bread of life,” he says, and as he says it we know he loves us even more than the waitress at Red Lobster who brings those delicious biscuits to the table ruining our appetite. Do you know the biscuits I’m talking about? In the ancient world, in the culture of ancient Israel and Palestine, bread wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a treat. It wasn’t something that you had on special occasions. Back then, when people thought of bread they weren’t thinking about carbs, they were thinking about the most basic form of sustenance. The most basic staple at the dinner table. When Jesus says bread, he’s talking about the grain of life. It’s what rice is to so much of Asia, what grits were to our Southern fore parents, not what French Fries or chicken nuggets are to our kids and grandkids. Bread isn’t junk food in the sense that Jesus means it, though sometimes we think that the ones who provide us with junk food must love us the most. That’s why, when I make the girls desert, I give them as big an ice cream scoop as I can. I do that because I want to be their favorite. I also want them to know how much I love them, but there is another parent who loves them so much she wants to make sure their teeth don’t rot out. “I AM the bread of life.” Bread is solid, it’s nourishing. It’s not what you want but what you need. The ones who love us the most supply us with bread. I think about Jesus saying, “I AM the bread of life” and I remember this story that author Ann Lamont tells. She said that she was at a women’s Bible study and the leader invited the women at the table to think of someone who was like Jesus to them. Who embodied the Gospel to you? Who revealed to you God’s love? Well, they went around the table and you can imagine what people said. One woman talked about how when she was growing up her grandmother lived right next door. When she’d had a bad day at school, she’d first stop at her grandmother’s house on her way home and somehow her grandmother seemed to know that she would be coming, and just as she walked in the door grandma would be pulling chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. “She was like Jesus to me,” she said, and you can imagine what she meant. Another told about her old golden retriever who was always there, bringing comfort, all through her divorce. Another talked about her sister. Another her faither. On and on, amazing tales of kindness until the last woman at the table spoke: “Who has been like Jesus to me? That’s a hard question to answer because Jesus loved people so much that he always told them the truth even if they didn’t want to hear it. To answer this question, I have to think of someone who loved me so much that he was so honest with me that I wanted to kill him?” That’s bread. That’s a particular kind of nourishment. Certainly, we all need the warmth of a grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies or the comforting presence of a good dog, but there is a powerful love in honesty. There’s a love in bread that’s more than the love in junk food. Have you ever thought about how much junk food there is in the world? How many people, how many of us, only read the journalists we already agree with? How many of us think we’re watching the news, but it’s not really the news because it’s not really the truth? I tell you, if you can watch it without it making you uncomfortable it’s not bread. It’s junk food, because it doesn’t nourish us though it tastes good. It’s not bread and it’s certainly not love, because the people who have really loved us sit us down to tell us those uncomfortable truths, like: “You’re just wrong, and I don’t love you any less but you’ve been wrong for a long time.” “I hate to say it, but you really have been drinking too much, and I’m worried about you.” “I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but you’re showing up late and leaving early, and I love you and this organization too much not to bring it to your attention.” Of course, it’s easier for me to be told that I’m doing a great job all the time and that I’m perfectly wonderful, but that’s not enough and it’s not the truth, so, I have two kinds of friends. One kind who will take my side no matter what and are glad to tell me that Sara is always wrong, and my boss never appreciated me, and another kind of friend who I call when I’m ready to hear the truth. This is the kind of friend we have in Jesus. He is the bread of life. He is not the fast food, fill you up then leave you empty, tastes good but clogs your arteries kind of savior. I AM the bread of life he told them. That’s different, and people don’t always like it. The religious authorities of the day certainly didn’t like it. Our Scripture Lesson just calls them the Jews. That’s not an exact title, because not all the Jews were giving Jesus a hard time, some of the Jews were following him and one of the Jews was him. What we know about the Gospel of John was that it was written so long after Jesus’ death that the author had distanced himself from the Jewish community and wasn’t familiar enough with all the major players to call them by name. I say that just so you know that some people within every community don’t like the truth tellers. People haven’t changed very much over the last 2,000 years, so even today some people try to silence the truth tellers. They’d rather be fed fast food all the time. I guess we all would, though a diet of fast food doesn’t give us the energy we need to change, and like the Hebrew people, wandering around the desert, not sure how to get to the Promised Land, for months now we’ve been living in a Pandemic. There’s a way out it seems, and I tell you how to find out which of the voices in our world are telling us the truth. It’s the ones who don’t tell us what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. Who loves us enough to tell us take our medicine? Who is like the bread of life? When you walked into the worship service this morning, with your bulletin came a brown ribbon. This is my first time buying a whole bunch of ribbons. It’s hard to find enough brown for this many people. I tried to convince some church staff members that the colors I was able to find easily, tan and burnt orange were close enough to brown. They didn’t buy it. Then I tried to just cut them straight across and if you got one with ugly edges, I cut it, if you got one with a nice diagonal cut Natalie Foster probably did it. What I want you to do with those ribbons is think for just a minute about someone who has been like bread to you. It could be a doctor who told you a hard truth and helped you to make some changes. A teacher who wouldn’t put up with your excuses. A friend who dared to hold up a mirror to you and held your hand as she did it. It might not have been what you wanted but it sure was what you needed, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones. Think about a person who has been a gift from God to you, not because they were just kind, but because they helped you become a better you. Think about someone who has been like Jesus, the bread of life, and use a pen in the pocket of the chair right in front of you to write their name on your ribbon. As for me, I’ll be writing my wife Sara’s name, because she always loves me enough to tell me the truth, but I’m also writing George on my ribbon today. Back at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, the first church I served as a pastor, a mother once asked me to baptize her baby. I told her I would, but then the Senior Pastor told me she wanted to do the baptism. I said that would be fine, but no one ever told the mother which pastor would be doing the baptism. Right up at the front of the church, this mother tried to hand me her baby but the Senior Pastor took the baby instead. She baptized him in front of the whole church, while his mother starred me down like I’d just broken her heart. I told George all this the next day over breakfast. He was a young pastor then too, and I said, “Can you believe that Senior Pastor? Can you believe she wouldn’t just let me do the baptism? And why didn’t she call the mother?” George wasn’t hearing any of that. He just looked me in the eye and he said, “Joe, you messed up. And I mean, you really messed up. But it’s going to be OK, because I know you’ll make it right and you won’t make this same mistake again.” In that moment, George was like Jesus to me, because he told me the truth that I needed to hear. He spoke the words that helped me do better be better, both as a better man and as a better pastor, and so today I’ll be writing George’s name on my ribbon, giving thanks to God for him. At the end of the service, we’ll all go outside and will tie our ribbons on a structure that has chicken wire that Tim Hammond and Howard Swinford built for us. As the wind blows through our ribbons in the coming weeks, the wind will lift our prayers of gratitude to God for those who have been like bread to us. Our prayers of gratitude for nurturing us with the true bread from heaven and food of eternal life. Take just a moment now, as a prayer of thanksgiving, to write down the name of someone who has been like bread to you. Amen.