Revd Rowena Francis, Moderator, Northern Synod, The United Reformed Church
Exodus 16: 2-4;9-15
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6: 24-35
Bread from heaven
I always say bring back the good old days, but not those before automatic washing machines, and hot water on tap. Somehow today we have lost the older perspective on bread, which is still strong in other parts of the world. Gone are the days when one had to harvest the grain, take it to the local mill to have it ground and then each and every day bake it before it could be savoured and enjoyed. The current fad for bread machines may be counteracting that but it is the easy convenient way of getting the aroma of newly baked fresh bread. I remember the winter of discontent and the strikes which led to queues for bread, I could never be bothered to stand in line, but people were desperate to get hold of this life giving substance. Now we just go to the shop and are overwhelmed by the choice, what sort shall we have today? We take bread, our sustenance for granted.
The Israelites in the wilderness wanted to return to captivity because in Egypt there was bread for eating. After all starving slaves were not productive so it made economic sense to feed them. In the desert there was nothing; or at least there was the fear of slow starvation. Moses talks to God and it is God who provides meat through quail and bread through manna. The people’s needs are met in the wilderness. Through bread from heaven the Israelites learn not to rely on their own strength and resources, but on God. The great hymn ‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah’ puts it
‘I am weak but thou art mighty,
hold me with thy powerful hand:
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,
feed me now and evermore.’
After years of quail and manna one wonders how the people might have hungered for different and more varied provision! Yet they learned that daily bread, possibly no more, would be given.
The people with Jesus had experienced the feeding of the 5000, so they persisted in following Jesus; gone was the possibility of a quiet life for him. Yet Jesus challenged them to move on from a very physical material perspective on life to a more spiritually based one. Bread from heaven is not only about God as provider, but about the Son of Man, Jesus himself being the bread of life. Not only can we rely on God for our physical needs – there is more than enough for the world to be fed if only we had the moral and political will to do so, but we can also rely on God for our spiritual needs, for meaningful abundant life. Even if our experience in the present leaves a question mark hanging over it with a billion hungry every night on the planet our faith suggests that in the end love and good prevail.
For Jesus came down from heaven, and descended to the depths of the earth, to the places where the worst that can happen does, and was executed as a common criminal, betrayed and rejected. He descended into death, that all might feel the spiritual presence of the bread of life, and learn to rely on God. Then God raised Christ from the dead and Jesus ascended into glory. So not only can we know God’s provision of bread to meet our material needs like the Israelites in the wilderness; we can know God’s provision for our spiritual needs for purpose and significance in Jesus, through whom we are assured of being held in love and brought into the presence of the glory of God.
Tim Hansel in ‘When I Relax I Feel Guilty’ tells of an American Indian visiting New York. Walking with a friend from the city he said suddenly, “I hear a cricket.” “You’re crazy,” his friend replied. “No, I hear a cricket. I’m sure of it.” ” Don’t be daft. It’s noon. Listen, the traffic is deafening. I’m sure you can’t hear it.” “But I can.” The American Indian listened attentively and then walked to the corner, and found a shrub in a large planter. He moved the leaves aside and found a cricket. His friend was astounded. But he said, “My ears are no different than yours. It simply depends on what you are listening to. Here let me show you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of loose change and dropped it on the pavement. Many heads turned to the noise. “You see what I mean?” he said as he began picking up the coins. “It all depends on what you are listening for.”
When the people followed Jesus their perspective, what they were listening for had to change. No longer was it material provision necessarily, bread for lunch, no longer was it the coins dropped that their ears needed to be attuned to. Rather it was the cricket, the rising bread of heaven, the food of life not only physical life but life in all its fullness, offered and given by Christ that needed to be heard. Their focus needed to change, from human survival to trust and reliance on God.
This is easier said than done. When we are given presents or offers we respond. Advertising and free gifts would not work if that was not the case. Jesus is very in your face to the people who chase him around the lake. Jesus says, “You are not here because you have heard a different tune and understand it, but merely because I have fed you with physical bread. You do not yet understand who I am. You can not grasp that I am the bread of life – that which sustains all that is because I am of God.” This was shocking – blasphemy. No wonder the powers of the time sought to rid the world of the one claiming to be the bread of life.
Bread can be used as a special offer you might say bribe. In Jesus’ temptations he refuses to turn stones into bread. Jesus refused to misuse his power of provision in order to buy people to his side. In this teaching of Christ on the bread of life in John’s gospel he reinforces this. It is not physical bread that is significant rather it is Jesus himself as the bread of life. It is not the miracles and wonders that are the sustaining power of faith but Christ’s very-self, given in the incarnation and on the cross.
Remember the story of the pig and chicken who decide to offer the farmer, who cares for them, breakfast. The pig turns to the chicken and says ‘It’s all very well for you I am giving a sacrifice but you are only making an offering.’ God makes the sacrifice of Jesus, the bread of life, on the cross. It is belief in this that will enable the work of God to be done by followers of the way. This is enacted each time we come and share bread and wine at the Lords table where Christ is both host and bread.
Com-panion (with bread) is a word not for just friends but for those with whom we share bread, and therefore the sustaining presence of the love of God. There is one loaf, one bread of life, and for those who share it there is unity. As Paul puts it in Ephesians there is ‘one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.’ (Eph 4: 4-6) This unity is a gift of the Spirit and can not be achieved by human will but only received and welcomed as a given.
Jesus, the bread of life, came from God and lived on earth changing the perspective for ever. Those who believe hear the cricket, the melody of love and come to know Christ as the bread of life and are nourished and grow. God in Christ does not offer bribes and special offers of our perceived needs met now, but the sacrifice of Christ’s life that we may come to belief in God’s sustaining provision for life born in love.
As we feed on the bread by communing with Christ we become mature in the faith and grow into the full stature of Christ. Through so doing we become Christ’s body, bread for the world and can offer sustenance for daily living to those around us. We do this by giving of ourselves and holding others in love, building up the body of Christ into the one loaf of bread that can feed creation.
Our response arising as we grow in belief is to say to Christ with the disciples ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’
Let us pray:
Bodies are hungry, God,
Hungry for bread and for healing;
Break the bread of life we pray.
Minds are hungry, Christ,
Hungry for truth and meaning;
Break the bread of life, we pray.
Souls are hungry, Lord
Hungry for love and for pardon.
Break the bread of life, we pray.
Christ, break the bread for us,
So that we may share the bread with others,
Now and always.
Amen.
