The Bread of Life

sermon by Torin Eikler
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15   John 6:22-35

“I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

Those are the words that Jesus said to the crowds that had followed him after he multiplied the five loaves and two fish.  They had tried to set him up as a king, but he had escaped them, going first to the mountain alone and then sailing across the sea with his disciples.  But the people followed him.  They sought him out, and when they found him, Jesus rebuked them.  And the question that comes to my mind when I hear that story is the same question they asked him … what’s wrong with that?

Of course, they put it a different way.  They said, “Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘he gave them bread from heaven to eat.”  What sign can you give us that could be more powerful than that … than the miracle you have already shown us?  Why shouldn’t we want bread in the same way?

And Jesus gives them no sign.  He doesn’t even address their question … not really.  Instead he tells them that he, himself, is the bread from heaven that gives life to the world…  that whoever comes to him will never be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty.  All fine and good, and we know those words.  We have heard them and others like them many times before, and if I asked you, I’m sure that you would probably say that you believe them.  And yet, they are patently untrue… at least in the context that Jesus spoke them.  People do get hungry and thirsty no matter how strong or pure their faith is.  So, why did Jesus refuse to feed the people?

When Carrie and I were first married and living in Washington, DC, we were volunteering with two different organizations.  I was working as a cook and kitchen manager in a soup kitchen on Capitol Hill.  Carrie was working as an organizer with School of the Americas Watch – an organization devoted to raising awareness about the United States role in training Central American military staff in torturous methods of dealing with citizens that threatened their regimes.  It was my job to address the immediate needs of people who didn’t have enough to eat.  It was her job to work at changing the systems that brought about injustice and abuse.

In the course of our year there, we made several friends in our various “fields” and were invited to several evening get-togethers where talk inevitably turned to the “evils” we were all addressing in our society or in the world.  What surprised us was not the passion … or even the single-mindedness with which people did their work, it was the amount of judgment (and sometimes disdain) that seemed to divide the non-profit world in that city.

People who worked at advocacy felt that it was useless to simply treat the symptoms of our cultural ills by feeding or housing people in need.  At the very least, that did nothing to address the deeper issues, and it might even support an unjust system by relieving the pressure on policy-makers to change things.  One evening when he was feeling particularly extreme, one person even suggested that people should be left on the streets, starving so that the government would have to acknowledge the sheer size of the problem, address the issue, or accept responsibility for the injustice and inhumanity of their policies.

On the other side, people who worked to feed and house those in need were often angry and frustrated at the attitude of policy advocates.  They accused them of being callous and calculating.  They wasted time and resources that could actually do some good if they were directed toward succoring the people who fell through the cracks of our social support systems.

It was a strange situation to be in.  Our work made us intimately aware of how both sides of the discussion were unquestionably correct in thinking that their efforts were important – essential even – to the health and wellbeing of the people of the world and to the progress of our society toward a better way of living together.  But, I could never understand why there was animosity between the two camps.  The expression, “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime,” has truth to it.  But, if you don’t give that man a fish to eat, then he may not survive to learn.  It seemed clear – still seems clear to me that the two should be working together.

I think that Jesus would certainly agree on that point.  He showed that he understood it when he fed the crowd so that they would have the strength to continue to seek out the new truth that he was teaching.  And, I suppose that one might be able to make the argument that the rebuke he offers in this story was aimed at limiting the people’s dependence on him and pushing them to learn how to take care of themselves.  After all, wasn’t Jesus was teaching a new way of living together – the kingdom way that provided for everyone exactly what they needed through compassionate sharing?  But while that was a big part of Jesus purpose while he walked the earth, I don’t think that was what he was getting at here.

In the story we heard from Exodus this morning – the story that the crowds quoted when talking to Jesus – the Israelites were stuck in the wilderness without any source of food.  They had brought a lot of supplies with them out of Egypt.  But 600,000 people go through a lot of bread, and they had no means of getting any more.  They were in a bad place and had begun thinking that it might have been better to stay slaves than to die of starvation.

When they turned to Moses with their concerns, he, in turn, went up the chain of command and put the problem squarely in God’s lap.  And God responded by providing Manna – bread from heaven in unbelievable amounts.  God even went a step further and sent quail to the people in the evenings so that they would have at least a little variety in their diet.

What our reading left out, though, was the people’s response to God’s gift.  Warned that they should not collect any more than they needed if they didn’t want an infestation of worms and an outbreak of disease … assured that the providence of God would continue to sustain them, they still took matters into their own hands, and the result was exactly what had been promised.  Worms grew in the meat and the flour they had collected and many of the wanderers got sick. 

But the illness wasn’t really the problem.  It wasn’t even the disobedience.  They learned their lesson, and God did not withdraw the food from them.  What their actions showed was that they had missed the point completely.  God was providing for them so that they didn’t need to worry about the future.  They were free to leave behind their fears and their insecurities, but they failed to answer the call to leave behind their need to have more than enough – to leave behind their greed.

I think that is what Jesus’ confrontation with the crowd was really about.  They, too, had missed the significance of the miracle they had witnessed.  They failed to understand it as a sign that spoke of God’s love and care for the people and a call to set aside their own hunger and desire.  They failed to see that God’s love was among them in Jesus.  They sought him out not so much to learn more about God’s love and grace as to see more and get more for themselves….  More than they needed.

There are times when I am sure that we are in the same situation.  Not always, at least not in this congregation.  I have seen this community share deeply from their own bounty to support those in need, and I would not say that any of us are really greedy.  But there are times when we do gather more than we need, times when we forget that God is caring for us and we don’t need to fear … times when we forget the meaning of God’s powerful signs of love, forget that Jesus lives among us holding out grace offered freely for our needs.

This morning, as we take communion, I invite to consider that grace … to consider it and let go of all the things that you hold onto … that hold onto you.  Let go of the things that you don’t need and accept the new life offered to you through the love of God.