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Sermon - Christ: The Bread of Life 2- 20th August 2006
St Aidan’s West Epping 8:30am
Over the last few weeks the Sunday lections have featured portions of John chapter 6 as the Gospel reading, beginning a few weeks ago with John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000. Last week’s lesson continued on from that – except we observed Transfiguration here – and so this week and next week continue this study of John 6, the Bread of Life discourse. It is a wonderful block of scripture because it gradually builds up from the account of the miraculous feeding to Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist.
You will recall that the account of the Feeding of the 5,000 finishes with Jesus fleeing from the crowd – fearing that they will want to make him King because of the wonders he has performed. Jesus is aware that the people are more interested in his ability to provide for their material needs and he flees. But the crowd eventually find Jesus again in Capernaum. Jesus confronts the crowd "Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." He confronts the crowd in this way because of their preoccupation with miraculous signs. The feeding of the five thousand, only the day before, is still vivid in everyone's minds. Instead of seeing in the miracle of the bread and fish the sign of who Jesus is and his authority, they had seen in the miraculous sign only the physical result of the bread: the crowds preoccupation with its physical needs has prevented it from seeing that in Jesus deeper spiritual needs are satisfied and that he is the bread of God who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. In describing himself as the bread of life Jesus teaches us that what ordinary bread is for the body, Jesus is for the soul – food for the soul. "I am the bread of life," says Jesus. He feeds us and fills us and satisfies us.
The crowd ask Jesus, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we might see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate manna in the desert; as it is written; He gave them the bread of heaven to eat." They try to bargain with Jesus. If you do this for us, then we'll believe. Jesus has already met their physical needs the day before, yet they want more of the same from him. St John is hinting here that once we start down this path of expecting God to satisfy our physical needs first, there is no end to it. Having our physical needs met by God will not induce us to a spiritual life. Material satisfaction does not endure. Our appetite returns soon enough and there is something else we need from God. Jesus said to the crowd, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves". If we look for physical things from God we lose sight of spiritual things. This, of course, does not mean that our basic physical needs of food and shelter are unimportant to God. Many times in this Gospel the assurance of God's provision is proclaimed. However, Jesus calls us to transcend preoccupation with our physical needs and to consider our deeper spiritual needs. Jesus came into the world not to satisfy our physical hunger, but rather to give people heavenly bread that satisfies for ever. He challenged people to look deeper: to face their deeper hunger, their spiritual hunger. He urged people to seek the food that could satisfy that hunger – the bread of heaven that he could give them. And, when Jesus challenged people in this way, they began to murmur and turned their backs on him.
This passage teaches us that we have no greater need than to satisfy our hunger for the bread of the spirit. Our prayer is not for bread for the body. God has provided amply for the needs of the body by his abundant gifts of the earth. It is our responsibility to see that they are not wasted, but are shared with all people.
And so, we pray for spiritual bread, the food of the soul “ our daily bread”. It is the food that gives us the strength of spirit we need to abide faithfully in this world.
Jesus calls us to lift our gaze from the material and the worldly, to the spiritual and the eternal. We must pray and reflect. We need to be still and wait upon the voice of God. We must be open to receive the bread of life who is come down from heaven, Jesus, and be open to his teaching and call on our lives, and to be fed by him.
There is a lot of talk these days about food and diets. The media reports continually of the obesity and diabetes epidemics which it seems are the consequence of bad eating habits and low levels of exercise. Public authorities are greatly concerned by the statistics that show we are all eating more, exercising less and taking up more space.
A couple of years ago I went to see the film ‘Supersize Me’ – you may have seen or heard about the film. In it, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock “hit the road and interviewed experts in 20 U.S. cities, including Houston, the "Fattest City" in America.
During the journey, Spurlock also put his own body on the line, living on nothing but McDonald's for an entire month with three simple rules: 1. No options: he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!) 2.No supersizing unless offered 3. No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at least once.”
In the film Spurlock says that he is living every seven year old’s dream eating nothing but junk food. Supersize Me reminds us of what happens to us when we don’t think about the nutritional value of what we are eating and the dangers of being irresponsible with our diet. Similarly, in our spiritual life, we need to watch our diet. We need to pay attention to what we do and don’t include in our diet.
Some people have a keep it light diet when it comes to their spirituality. Nothing too heavy, only small portions, and big gaps in between. It’s the kind of spiritual diet that keeps you looking good on the outside. On the outside you might appear to be someone spiritual because you seem to do spiritual things when it counts, like going to church at Christmas and Easter – that kind of thing. But, if we were to look beneath the good image, there is emptiness. If we have a spiritual diet that is full of light food we will never feel full – we will always, deep down, be craving something more substantial.
Some other people have a very high fat diet when it comes to spirituality. They bite off big chunks of whatever they think smells or tastes good. A bit of this, and a bit of that…A sort of yum-cha of spirituality. The problem with these kind of diets is that sometimes what we really need are things that we don’t want. These high fat diets miss out on the real nutrients that we need.
In the Eucharist we are all guests at the Lord’s table and we are invited to his supper to feed on the bread of heaven and to drink from the cup of eternal life. In the sacrament of the Eucharist Christ feeds us with hope, love, comfort and through service. He feeds us through his own body and blood, broken and shed for us, breaking forth new life in the power of resurrection. He feeds us with his flesh - the bread given for the life of the world.
This is no ordinary meal. This is a meal that nourishes us like none other – it feeds us with spiritual food. – it unites us with Jesus and all his followers – and in this meal we encounter Jesus. As we reach out our hands to receive the bread and wine Jesus makes himself known to us. The Eucharist celebrates the bond that God has formed with us, a bond that can never be broken. The Eucharist is a celebration of that bond that comes to us through the saving death of Jesus. It is not just a remembering of events in the past – it is a celebration of those events in the present, a nourishment of our spiritual needs in the present and a foretaste of future celebrations.
The Eucharist invites us to feed on Jesus: to receive his love for us and his service of us and to be filled with his presence and strengthened to go into the world and live out that same love of Christ in our own lives and to serve others.
We all need to make sure that we feed on Jesus – the giver of life – so that our souls are nourished. We feed on him by making Jesus the centre of our life, learning about him, reading the Scriptures, developing our life of prayer, meeting together with other Christians and in sharing the Eucharist together. Only Jesus provides the perfect balance of love and eternal life that we crave. If we feed on Jesus our souls will never be left hungry or thirsty. Amen.
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