Tenth
Sunday after Pentecost
August
13, 2006
Sermon
by Pastor John Marboe
The
Holy Gospel according to
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.”
Then the Jews began to complain about him because he
said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the
son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?
How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain
among yourselves. No one can come to me
unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the
last day. It is written in the prophets,
‘And they shall all be taught by God.’
Everyone who was heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except
the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has
eternal life. I am the bread of
life. Your ancestors ate manna in the
wilderness and they died. This is the
bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from
heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will
live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my
flesh.”
The
Gospel of the Lord.
Grace
to you and peace from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the
Christ.
The
context of our Gospel lesson for today is that Jesus has recently fed more than
five thousand people, with five loaves of bread and just two fish. Now, the people are tickled by this;
they think it’s just wonderful, and maybe it could be this way all
the time. So they wish to make Jesus
their king. Jesus doesn’t like their
plan. He leaves. He goes away, hides for a while. His disciples cross over the lake to the
other side; and Jesus, it says, joins them at night, walking on water. The next day, Jesus and his disciples are on
the other side of the lake, and the people want to know where they went. So they get into their own boats and follow
across to other side of the lake. And
that is where this conversation between Jesus and the people occurs.
Jesus
says to them, “You came back because you had your fill of bread.” The people say, “Well, Moses gave the
people bread in the wilderness.” In
other words, “Well, why not?”
Jesus then says to them, “I am the true bread from heaven, and my
flesh is that bread for the life of the world.
Whoever eats of me, this bread, will not die but have eternal life.”
Bread
is a metaphor,
a central metaphor, that Jesus used to describe what he was all about,
what he viewed to be his central contribution in the world. Who and what he was, his total purpose and
ministry, had something to do with being bread. Of all the images that Jesus might have
chosen, he chose bread. Christ is the
bread of life, for us and for the world.
I do not propose to exhaust the depth and the breadth of the meaning of
that metaphor today. But whatever else
it means, it means at least three things.
It has to do, in the first place, with Jesus’ compassion;
secondly, with his companionship; and, thirdly, with communion.
In the first place, it has to do with his compassion. Whatever else it means that Jesus is bread,
it is certainly to do with compassion.
Compassion is that ability to see the suffering of
others and to desire to alleviate that suffering in some way.
Jesus
fed over five thousand people with five loaves of bread. It was a powerful miracle. But the power of it was not just that he
could do it, but, even more that he wanted to do it. Jesus gave bread, but, more importantly, he
gave of himself, in compassion.
I was
reading Newsweek recently and came across this story out of
What
caught my attention was a young Marine Corps captain, by the name of Max
Barela, who back in April decided to change the protocol of his unit. Instead
of going randomly to houses and kicking in the door, terrifying the people
within, maybe finding something, maybe not, he decided instead to go to each
and every household and, instead of kicking in the door, knocking on the
door, and then inquiring politely if he and his men might step inside. And then, being invited in, they would sit
down, put their weapons down, and have a conversation, sometimes, he would say,
lasting late into the night, chit-chatting about this and that, getting to know
one another. And, in the course of the
last several months, he says that he and his men have gotten to know every
household in his area. His colonel
comments that the violence in that area has been reduced by more than 70
percent, the children are once again seen playing on the street, and that
ambushes against our soldiers have virtually stopped.
This,
to me, is not necessarily a profound insight into human nature, but it is a
simple example of the power of humanity and compassion, inside even a war
zone. This example grabbed me not
because I believe that showing compassion can solve every conflict and make
everything wonderful, because I don’t believe that. But it does show the extraordinary power
of lived compassion, shared humanity, the ability to see through
situations to the suffering of others, even when that suffering is being
expressed in hostility and violence, and then to be able to identify with
that suffering. Christ was the bread
of life for the world by his compassion, and so can we be.
Christ
was the bread of life for the world, and is, by companionship. Companionship is an ancient word that comes
to us in our vocabulary, literally meaning to share bread together. “Co‑pan‑ionship,” to share bread together. In the ancient world, to break bread together
was a very big deal. It was a ritual
reserved to friends and loyal allies only.
It was a sign of trust and good faith.
One never shared bread with one’s enemies.
But
it has always struck me, always struck me, that Jesus, on the night before his
own death, broke bread with his companions, even though he knew that one
would betray him, one would deny him, and the rest would abandon him. He didn’t, on that basis, withhold
his bread, which he then again expressed was his body, his life, given for
them, all of them.
Christ
was, alarmingly at times, indiscriminate when it came to who he would break
bread with. It didn’t matter to him
whether somebody was rich or poor, religious or irreligious, clean or filthy,
good, or bad, or ugly. Even his own
enemies he broke bread with.
There’s
a bumper sticker that I have come to love, and it has become a household prayer
at night in our family: “GOD BLESS
THE WHOLE WORLD — NO EXCEPTIONS.” “God
bless the whole world — no exceptions.”
That saves us from going through a litany of blessing the bed, the
light, Pooh Bear, Aunt Jane, Maggie, their dog, et cetera. “God bless the whole world — no
exceptions.”
It
is, really, the way of Christ. The only people in the Gospels that Christ
specifically refused companionship
with were those who refused companionship with others of Christ’s
companions. Did you follow
that? The only people that Christ
specifically refused companionship with were those who refused companionship
with others of Christ’s companions.
Think about that. Those who
refused companionship with others of Christ’s companions always did so
on some religiously inspired legal or moral ground. They would say things like, “Oh, well, he
eats with sinners and tax collectors.
Can you believe it?”
At
the heart of Christ’s life and message was a sense of companionship with all
of humanity. Christ had a humble and
open heart. When we (the Church) divide
humanity into categories of clean and unclean, when we divide humanity into
categories of those who we associate with Christ and those we don’t, then we
have lost the spirit of Christ. Christ
associates with everybody. No
exceptions.
Christ
is the bread of the world. And surely,
if it means anything, it means something about communion. Jesus is the bread that gives us life,
and Holy Communion is the way that we connect ritually with that. To “co‑mune” means to eat together, or to “co‑munch.”
In
Christ, the bread and the wine, Christ’s life, is “co‑mun‑ni‑cated” to us. So then communing does not mean that we
all think the same way, because we don’t.
Communing together does not mean that we are worthy to receive,
because surely we are not. It means,
rather, that we are forgiven. And it means that we all share in Christ;
that Christ has given himself to us; that he is in us, and we are in him. And that, eating the bread, we become one;
we become his body; we become his bread, for the life of the
world.
However
else we may think about being Christian, being the church, here is one image
that should be at the top of the mind: That
to be Christ, that to be Christ, is to share bread.
We
pray, all the time, “Lord, give us this day our daily bread.” And in so doing, we acknowledge that everything
we need, both physically and spiritually, for life comes from God as a pure
gift. But God does not give us this
life simply to have, but also to share.
And when we do share, then we become part of the way that God blesses the whole world — no
exceptions. Then we become the bread
of life for the life of the world, too.
Amen.