2018-08-13
Brooke Strong
Scripture John 6:35,41-51
Our Daily Bread
In my childhood home, bread was an ever-present staple. I don’t remember a day when bread was not in our cupboard, or a meal when bread was not on the table. Maybe it’s an Italian thing. My father’s family was from Italy, and his mother taught him how to make bread. He, in turn, taught my mother, who is Swiss, and did not know how to make the bread that he so loved. Her first attempts would probably not have been described as anything akin to “bread of life.” My father used to joke that those loaves were so hard, they could have been used to club someone senseless. However, after a few unsuccessful attempts, she got it right, and we grew up nourished by her daily bread.
It may be for this reason that I can so well relate to Jesus calling himself the Bread of Life. As John tells it, though, when Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life – come down from heaven,” his words are not well received by the religious authorities of his time. When Jesus, whom they see as just an ordinary guy, born to ordinary people, uses this “I am” statement – I am the bread of life” - to name himself, it evokes for them images and stories from their foundational scriptures. The “I am” statements of Jesus, of which there are seven altogether in John’s gospel, echo God’s own “I am” statement to Moses from centuries before. When God called Moses to lead the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt, and Moses asks “Who shall I say sent me?” – God answers “Tell them – ‘I am who am’ has sent you.” This is a parallel statement to all those that Jesus makes about himself. And if this were not enough to offend the religious leaders, Jesus goes on to declare himself to be even better than the Manna their ancestors ate! Manna was what God had sent from heaven to feed the Israelites while Moses led them through the wilderness to the land they were promised. When they were afraid that they would die of starvation in that barren desert, God provided for them a version of “daily bread” – a substance that could be gathered each morning to sustain them throughout their journey.
How is it, the people around Jesus asked, that he has the audacity to say that he is better than this substance that God sent to their ancestors, that he is in essence, the new and improved Manna? How dare he say that he is the one who came down from heaven, that he is God made flesh, the Bread of Life?
One reason the religious leaders had a hard time with Jesus claiming to be the Messiah, the Savior, the Bread of Life, was that his background was so ordinary. He was not part of a royal dynasty, or from a wealthy or powerful family. He was born in Bethlehem, which was considered the “wrong side of the tracks” in those days. And yet, the way God chose to love us, to reveal Godself to us, to save us - was by coming into our world in the form of this ordinary person – in the one we know as Jesus. I think that one of the reasons Jesus calls himself the Bread of Life is precisely because bread is such an ordinary thing. It is the most basic of foods used to satisfy our hungers. In our Lord’s prayer – we ask “Give us this day our daily bread.” When Jesus says he is the bread of life, one way to understand this is that Jesus claims to be the one who comes to satisfy our ordinary hungers, wants, and needs.
Paul Strable, teacher at Webster University, writes in a Christian Century article,
In Jesus we have everything we need for life—if we define “life” more broadly than just by our physical needs. Jesus provides God’s grace, God’s help, guidance and assistance. He provides access to God for our prayers. He helps resolve some of our problems and adverse situations. Other situations he does not resolve for us, but even then he remains present for us as we bring our needs to God. He provides us life forever with God.
… God has become clear in the person of Jesus. God approves us, gently draws us to Christ and teaches us. God has taken full initiative to provide sustenance sufficient for this life and the next. He does not even fret about how much we eat. He simply invites us to his well-stocked table of abundant blessing. As it was for those early listeners, so it is for us.”1
It is through Jesus, our bread from heaven, that we receive our daily bread. Jesus shows up in our lives constantly. But it is up to us to open ourselves to noticing this presence of his. He does not come as literal manna on the ground each morning when we awake. We will not see him in a miraculous display of bread on our kitchen tables when we arise each day. And while there may be times when Christ does show up in a big, miraculous way, most of the time, I would venture to say, we experience his presence in ordinary ways throughout our ordinary days.
During my years as a mother of two young daughters, there was a period of time when I babysat for two girls once a week. On the days when they came, our tradition was for us to make bread together, using the simple, ordinary recipe that I learned from my mom. We would make the dough in the morning, and witness its growth throughout the day, punching it down when it rose to the right height. No bread machine for us. After the second rise, we would shape it into rolls, pizzas and calzones for our dinner in the evening. This was for us, in a very real way, bread of life – witnessing the magic of the rising dough, creating a rich tradition and fond memories, feeding our bodies and spirits in a weekly meal created and shared together.
Of course, bread of life does not have to involve bread at all. In fact, most of the time, it probably won’t. I experience this promised bread of life on a daily basis:
When I make and savor my morning cup of tea - that is bread of life
When I look outside and am amazed by the beauty of the earth and the sky – bread of life.
When I go to work and have a meaningful conversation with a fellow staff-person – that is bread of life.
When I receive an encouraging note, or phone call – bread of life.
When I get a new idea, a sudden burst of inspiration – bread of life.
When I come home to a meal that my husband has prepared – bread of life.
When I spend time with my daughter painting our nails and sharing in conversation – bread of life.
This lovely prayer by Rev. Deborah Vaughn expresses beautifully the way she experiences God’s bread of life. She writes:
Holy One,
You got my attention
At lunchtime today when I watched the kids
Romping in the fountain…
I realized…
I forget the simple things
that you put in front of me every day
To declare your boundless love…
The sunlight through the leaves,
The wren’s song on her nest,
The crisp pages of a new book in my hands,
The smiles I trade with my beloved,
A phrase from a hymn that lifts my heart…
Every time I feel the darkness tug at me,
Or my mistakes or failures pile on,
You use simple things to remind me
You are there
You are listening
Your very Presence is beside me
Within me
All around me,
As you invite me to laugh
(And maybe even get my feet wet!)
Simple things
To praise you, love you, serve you
Another day.
I am blessed beyond words…
Amen.2
So what makes something Bread of Life, or Manna from heaven? The Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor says,
If your manna has to drop straight out of heaven looking like a perfect loaf of butter-crust bread, then chances are you are going to go hungry a lot. . . . If, on the other hand, you are willing to look at everything that comes to you as coming to you from God, then there will be no end to the manna in your life. A can of beans will be manna. Grits will be manna. Nothing will be too ordinary or too transitory to remind you of God. 3
It’s so easy for us to over-look the daily bread we receive from our loving God. It’s so easy for us to complain, rather than to be grateful. And it’s so easy for us to forget that we are held and loved and sustained in each and every moment, by a God who adores us, who saves us, who accompanies us and blesses us all our days. How do we move from cluelessness, complaint, and forgetfulness to awareness, gratitude, and remembering?
I find that having a daily practice that reminds me of the bread of life I receive each day really helps. Maybe you have such a practice. It could be as simple as: each morning when you wash your face, or take a shower, reminding yourself of God’s cleansing love, or of your baptism. Or maybe, like someone I know, it is watching the steam rise from your morning cup of coffee, and remembering in gratitude, that all your prayers rise to God’s ever-listening ear. Some people find a devotional that resonates with them that can be read each day. I enjoy the Still-speaking devotionals from the United Church of Christ that show up daily in my email inbox. Another possibility is a printed devotional booklet called, appropriately, “Our Daily Bread.”
Perhaps becoming aware of the daily bread, or manna from heaven you receive happens for you by taking a walk: in nature, in a gym, on a labyrinth, and being truly grateful with each step you take. Or maybe it is through spending time in prayer, meditation, or listening to an inspiring message. Just as manna broke the fast for those ancient Israelites each morning, as manna was their literal “break-fast,” so too can a daily discipline serve as our break-fast and feed our souls to start each day.
Jesus’ words “I am the bread of life. . . . and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh" also remind us of how he shared his life at the last supper with his disciples. In that meal, Jesus took bread, thanked God for it, broke it and gave it to his followers to eat, saying, “This bread is my body, my flesh, given for you.” Jesus reiterating that he is the bread of life.
The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr suggests that one way to live out our call to be followers of Jesus is to imitate what he does with the bread. He suggests that like Jesus:
You also should take your full life in your hands. . . . You then thank God. . . .who is the Origin of that life, of all life . . . You choose to break your life … wide open, letting your life be broken, used up, …and then You chew on this mystery for all the rest of your days! 4
Taking, blessing, breaking, tasting. As we receive our daily bread, may we remember, notice and acknowledge all the ways in which we are fed and nourished by God, and then thank Jesus, who is our bread of life, who is our companion on the journey of life. May we then in turn become daily bread ourselves to feed a hungry world.
It did not feel right to me to preach on bread of life this morning without some actual bread to share. So now I invite my servers to please come forward and help distribute this simple, ordinary bread – to remind us of the extraordinary love and grace of Jesus. As the plate comes to you, take a piece of bread – gluten free bread is in the separate bowls - and then hold onto it until all are served so we can eat of it together. We will sing our hymn while the bread is being distributed.
Hymn (refrain only): Taste and See (Bob Hurd)
(After everyone has bread -)
Let us pray – Holy one, as we take the bread in our hands, may it remind us of all the ways that you feed and nourish us, of all the ways you show up as our daily bread. As we eat this bread, fill us full - of your love, your mercy, your grace. Take our lives, that we might in turn become bread for the world. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our bread of life. Amen.
And now I invite you to rise as pray together the Lord’s prayer – noticing especially the words “Give us this day our daily bread.”
1https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2003-07/jesus-diet
2https://revgalblogpals.org/2018/08/10/friday-prayer-simple-things/
3 Taylor, Barbara Brown. Bread of Angels: Feeding on the Word. Canterbury Press, 2015, p. 11
4 https://cac.org/the-christian-mime-2018-07-25/