Wonder Bread

(Scriptures:  2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:13a, Ephesians 4:1-16,  John 6:24-35)

What a joy it is to be back with you at Emanuel Church.  I had an amazing time in Cuba – and I’m still mulling over my experiences there in my mind - but, as the saying goes, there’s no place like home.  Rev. Doug, who filled in for me over the past two Sundays, spoke highly of his time with you.  And his words made me even more eager to return.

Last week, Doug preached about the feeding of the five thousand – one of the miracles of Jesus that is recorded in all four Gospels, meaning that the feeding of the five thousand was, for the early church, key to understanding who Jesus is.

And that very question – who is Jesus – is at the center of today’s Gospel reading.  After the crowds were fed and twelve baskets of leftover scraps gathered up, Jesus’ disciples journeyed across the sea back to Capernaum, and in the midst of a gathering storm, Jesus came walking to them on the water.  They landed in Capernaum, and found the same crowds they had just gotten done feeding on the other side of the sea.

And then begins a conversation between Jesus and the crowds, in which the crowds try to get their minds around who Jesus is.  This conversation, which we will hear over the next several Sundays, becomes stranger and stranger as it continues, until at last the crowds become frustrated and stomp off in disgust.  But it begins at a very basic level – the crowds ask Jesus when he had arrived at Capernaum, and Jesus observes that the crowds are looking for him, not because of his signs, but because they had eaten their fill of the loaves – these folk were not well off and were likely used to going hungry, so having a big meal and a full stomach would be a memorable experience – an experience they were eager to repeat.

But Jesus calls on them to go deeper, to trust Jesus, not only to meet their need for bread, but to meet them at their point of deepest need.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”  And they ask how they are supposed to work for this eternal bread, “What must we do to perform the works of God.”  Jesus tells them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”  The people then ask for proof, harking back to their early wilderness tradition: “What sign are you going to give us so that we may see it and believe you?  What work are you performing?  Our ancesters ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”   The people expect that the Messiah will be able to give manna, as it was when Moses led the children of Israel in the wilderness.  Jesus tells them that God, not Moses, gave them the bread from heaven, and God will give them the true bread from heaven.  And the crowds are eager: “Sir, give us this bread always.”  Our reading ends with Jesus’ response:  “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

So Jesus is more or less explicitly comparing himself to the manna with which God fed the children of Israel in the wilderness.  In a place with little food or water, the manna is what stood between the children of Israel and death by starvation.  The manna may not have always been what they wanted – and, indeed, after a while they complained about the blandness and monotony of the manna – but it was what they needed.  The presence of the manna did not take them out of the wilderness – but it made the wilderness bearable, and gave God’s people strength for the journey. 

Psychologist Abraham Maslow spoke of humans as having a hierarchy of needs, which is often represented as a pyramid.  At the base of the pyramid are basic survival needs for food and water.  Just above these basic survival needs are the need for physical and emotional safety.  Higher on the pyramid is the emotional need for love and belonging.  At the top of the pyramid are needs for self-esteem and the desire to reach one’s potential, which Maslow called self-actualization.  Maslow theorized that people whose basic survival and safety needs went lacking, would not feel motivated to seek love, self-esteem, and so forth.  So in a sense, Jesus and the crowds were working from different locations on the pyramid.  The crowds were stuck at the base of the pyramid, in survival mode, focused on their own nutrition and safety – Jesus had fed them, and the crowds wanted Jesus to continue to feed them.  Jesus invited the crowds to rely on Jesus, not just for bread, but for safety, belonging, and all the rest.  The crowds wanted to fill their stomachs; Jesus offered to feed them emotionally, spiritually, in all facets of life.  Jesus spoke of himself as bread – and the crowds were left to wonder what on earth he meant.  He offered himself as a sort of wonder bread, to fill and fulfill them at their many points of need.

Perhaps the image of manna gives us a deeper sense of what Jesus means in asking people to believe in him.  Remember that the manna was provided day by day – they couldn’t store it up for the future, except that they could gather enough on Friday to carry them through the Sabbath.  If they tried to hoard it, it went bad.  So the children of Israel had to trust day by day that God would provide for them.  And perhaps this is the kind of faith we are to have in Jesus – not just reciting the words of a creed, but relying on Jesus day by day to sustain us through whatever life throws at us.

For some in America, it’s been a long time since we’ve experienced physical hunger, or perhaps we’ve never really experienced it.  We know what it is for our stomachs to growl while we’re waiting for dinner, but many have little experience of what it is to go without dinner, and breakfast the next day too, to get by on one meal a day, if that.  But many in America do know – as evidenced by the lines at the food cupboard.  For many children, the school lunch is the only meal they can rely on all day.  For many, especially in urban areas such as our own, while food may be available at low prices, it’s often processed, deep-fried, loaded with corn syrup, carbs, grease, and preservatives – sufficient for filling stomachs, but not good for maintaining health.  In many urban neighborhoods, healthy fruits and vegetables aren’t for sale, or are unaffordable even if they are for sale.  For this reason, many inner city areas have been described as “food deserts.”  And in many countries, many children come into this world with a sentence of “death by starvation” hanging over their heads.  It has been said that, “the question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.”  And many, in Bridesburg and around the world, are waiting to see how our churches will answer.

The crowds who followed Jesus were hungry, in many different ways.  Jesus satisfied their hunger for food, and when he had their attention, offered them the gift of himself.  And that’s a good model for the church to follow.  Starving people can’t eat tracts.  People come to the church with all sorts of needs – for food, for safety, for community, for hope.  Jesus preached the whole Gospel to the whole person – good news for body and soul.  And we in the church are called to do the same.

In Cuba, I saw churches preaching the whole Gospel to the whole person.  Cuba is a country lacking many things – and our country’s embargo on trade with Cuba has only made their situation more precarious – but the people are very resilient and creative.  We were visiting churches affiliated with the Fraternity of Baptists in Cuba, among the most progressive protestant groups in Cuba.   And these churches are growing – this group that had started with three churches in the late 1980’s has now, in a little more than 20 years, grown to over 40 congregations, with many of them having been founded in the last 5 or so years.  Often a church will start a small Bible study, and when the Bible study has enough members, it will leave the main congregation to set out and start a new congregation.  And so many of the newer churches are small, with attendance of 20 or 30 or so on a Sunday – indeed, we visited a house church with attendance about the same as Emanuel.  While a few of the older congregations have large buildings, many of the newer churches are meeting in houses; we visited one church that met in a converted garage.  But they’re all feeding their neighbors, physically and spiritually – many have gardens and offer the produce to their neighbors as well as their own members.  One particularly exciting recent development is that some churches have put in water filtration systems – healthy water isn’t always easy to come by in Cuba.  They have outdoor taps so that their neighbors can get clean water, free of charge.  Neighbors line up at these churches with their bottles – many of which have been reused over and over, as plastic bottles are also not always easy to come by - follow the instructions posted on the wall on how to disinfect their bottles with chlorine – also offered at the churches – and then fill their bottles.  The sign on the tap makes an explicit connection between Jesus as living water and the church’s offering of healthy water to their neighbors.

In his teaching and in his actions, most of all in his death and resurrection, Jesus offered the gift of himself.  In a few minutes, we will gather at the table to share bread and wine and to remember Jesus’ self-offering, to show forth Jesus’ death until he comes again.  May we experience Jesus as the bread of life, and when we leave, may we carry Jesus, the bread of life, to our neighbors who are hungry.  Amen.