Mostly because I just haven't done this in a while...

Bread Enough
a sermon based on John 6: 24-35

To understand this text we are given today, it is important to take a look at what happens in the story right before this conversation. The over-arching theme of John’s sixth chapter is Jesus’ revelation of himself as the Christ, and his attempts to get the crowds who are following him to understand that he is the one sent to show God to the world.

Jesus has been traveling back and forth across the Sea of Galilee, and at every port, there have been crowds, and with every crowd comes a question, or a need. The need that met Jesus after had tried to retreat to the mountain was hunger, so he has just completed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with five leaves and two fish, with twelve baskets-full left over, and he has walked on water before we even meet him here.

The people who are seeking Jesus don’t really understand yet exactly what has drawn them to him—at least not in the way that Jesus wants them to. But they know this: their bellies were empty, and now they are full. And that is good enough for them. Drowsy and satisfied on carbs and lean protein containing Omega 6 heart-healthy fish oils, they might be a little slow to understand this whole Bread of Life business, and we can’t really blame them, can we?

A few years back I was a willing participant in the diet trend that prescribed a very low consumption of “the white stuff”—you know, bread, rice, sugar, flour, potatoes. I joined an online diet community, cut my simple carbohydrate consumption to less than 30 grams a day, added daily exercise to my routine, and I lost weight—about 40 pounds. My clothes started to hang on me, people told me how good I looked, my knees didn’t pop and crack and ache every time I walked up the front steps of our raised Mediterranean house.

The problem with cutting carbs is that it can be very isolating. To be successful, I could really only eat at home, food that I prepared myself. It’s not a very sociable way to eat. I remember having some old friends over for dinner, when they visited California after a couple of years of ministry here in Wisconsin. I made a meal that was very low-carb friendly, except for potatoes. I hadn’t had potatoes in weeks and weeks, but as soon as those potatoes hit my bloodstream, they might as well have been vodka, because my entire nervous system screamed out “Yes! This is what we’ve been missing!” The body knows what it misses, you see. It seemed as if every cell of my body was drunk with happy metabolism.

Another problem is that the body knows what it wants and needs. No matter how long I could temporarily fool my digestive system into believing that lean protein and slow-releasing plant-based carbohydrates were the only things it really wanted, it always knew better than that. And it rebelled. If I wasn’t going to feed it what it wanted, then it eventually started being satisfied with something else, until it started rejecting being fed altogether. And that’s when I knew I had a problem.

The third and most spiritually devastating result was that I started to fear the Lord’s Supper. Not one single book I consulted about lower carb diets addressed the bread and wine (juice) that we will share this morning. I started to wonder what kind of reaction I would get after intinction, and wondered if maybe I should skip communion altogether for my own health. When the Bread of Life became for me a mere carbohydrate count, a blip on my diet, I knew that it was time to re-think what I was doing.

In the Good News of the Gospel for us, Jesus faces a crowd that is needing, wanting , hurting, and hungry. He does not discriminate between the physical needs of the 5,000 and the spiritual needs of the world. He does not ignore the actual, physical hunger and hand them platitudes to satisfy their aching bodies. But neither does he ignore their hungry hearts.

The people however, full to complacency, fail to recognize who is standing in front of them. Having witnessed the wonderful sign of God’s care for them, and having recalled the wonder of the miracle of manna in the wilderness—bread where there was none—they still do not recognize the Bread Enough in their midst.

I had a moment, week before last, when after a whole week of vacation, it was near the end that I got my “This is why I sent you here” message from God. One of my favorite things to do, which is to say one thing that really feeds my soul, is serving communion. Since my ordination to ministry of Word and Sacrament, although I get to preside at the table here, I don’t often get to serve. So, early in the weeks at Synod School, when I found out that there would be opportunity to serve communion, I made sure to sign up early before all the spots were gone.

And my favorite way to celebrate the Lord’s Supper is by intinction. The act of standing up, and walking to the table, of becoming one in a long (or short) line of believers is very meaningful to me, very reminiscent of a spiritual journey. For me, it can signify taking a stand, literally and figuratively in a way that sitting and being passed the elements does not. Plus, to have someone present the bread and wine to me with the words, “The body of Christ given for you, the cup of the new covenant shed for you.” Puts a face and voice to the sacrament that I just don’t experience when I am passed the “shot glass on the hubcap”. (That’s a new phrase I learned last week) There really is no right or wrong way to serve communion, but intinction is far more meaningful for me personally.

At Synod School, I was given the privilege of serving the bread. I was instructed to break off a piece for the communicant. There are several practical reasons for doing this—for one thing, there is only one set of clean hands touching the bread, and there is the assurance that everyone gets a big enough piece to make the sacrament meaningful. “Be generous!” I was told. “God’s love is abundant, not a tiny crumb.” “Give the people enough to dip in the cup so that the fingers are kept out of the cup.” was the most practical reason for generosity.

So, as the sacrament began, and 600 or so worshipper stood in line to be served at two stations, “The body of Christ given for you.” I told each communicant. “Thanks be to God.” “Amen.” “Thank you.” were the replies. Or sometimes the person would just look away, or give a smile of gratitude. It can be a very intimate thing to be handed the body of Christ personally by someone standing two feet away, and I was conscious of that.

By the time I had served, oh, about 100 people, the loaf that had seemed so large when I started out was getting very small. There came a point when I could hold the entire piece of bread in my palm, yet my line did not seem as if it was getting any shorter. I started to panic a little, to make the pieces tiny, to give an apologetic look to the ones who got very small bites instead of generous portions.

Just as I was about to turn the body of Christ into Eucharistic dust, a hand reached around from behind me, and handed me a fresh loaf, and there was Bread Enough.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

Thanks be to God!