Sermon - Pentecost 11 - John 6:22-35

 

Today we begin a three week stretch in which our Lectionary appoints readings from John chapter 6.  John 6 is known as the “Bread of Life” discourse, in which Jesus makes extensive comments about the topic.  My plan is to address John 6 for us today, and with the next two Sundays turn to the other readings for our sermon texts.  So here we come to it – the Bread of Life!

Bread.  It seems to me that in our world bread has gotten a bad rap as of late.  It used to be the biggest category of the food pyramid, but that’s come into question.  With the popularity of low-carb, keto and carnivore diets, it seems like many people are avoiding bread these days.  Well I’m no nutritionist, and the sermon is no dietary diatribe.  But bread, at least as far as Scripture is concerned, is quite an important thing.

After all, Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread.  Here, he means, of course, everything we need to support this body and life.  The Lord provided bread in the desert, Manna, every day, for the wandering children of Israel.  And, of course, bread and wine are the visible elements of the blessed sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

For a people living on a subsistence diet, like so many of the poor in Jesus’ day, you were happy to have simple bread to eat, even if that’s all you had.  Bread stands as a metaphor for all food, then, and even more, for everything we need to live.

As I mentioned, we have these 3 weeks of readings from John 6 where Jesus speaks of himself as the “Bread of Life”.  But before this, we’ve been slowly marching through the Gospel of Mark.  And after this we’ll pick up in Mark where we left off.  So why the interlude here?

A couple of weeks ago we heard from Mark about Jesus feeding the 5000.  And then last week he walked on water, which happened right after that.  Both of those evens are also described by John chapter 6, with The Bread of Life discourse as a reaction to all of that.

Alright, so that’s a lot of setup.  What is Jesus getting at here?  He is the Bread of Life.  He is the bread that comes down from heaven.  He is the bread that one must eat to have life, true life.

The crowds were seeking Jesus, but not for the right reasons.  They wanted more bread.  They had their fill at the feeding of the 5000, and now they wanted more.  Some even tried to make Jesus a king by force, a bread-king, but he would have nothing to do with that, of course.

He’s all about giving bread – but the true bread, the bread from heaven, the bread of life.  Himself.

Jesus is what we need.  We need him more than air, water, shelter and food.  He’s the only thing we ultimately need.

But we aren’t unlike those crowds.  We have different ideas of what we need.  We have strange and selfish ideas of what would make a good meal.

We’re also not unlike the crowds that followed Jesus looking for a handout.  We, like they, are all too apt to work for bread that perishes.  We, like they, are all too focused on our felt needs, the hunger of our stomach, the things of this world.  And we think far too little of the spiritual needs, the things of heaven, the eternal realities. We, like they, are often tempted to make Jesus a bread-king and nothing more, begging only for earthly morsels, and not the heavenly feast of blessings he bestows.

It all started with sinful eating.  When Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit, and ate.  They had a whole garden full of trees to eat from, each one more beautiful and luscious than the next.  Creation was very good, and God had provided for them abundantly.  They knew no need.

But the serpent came and tempted them toward that one food that was off limits, the one that would make them like God, knowing good and evil.  Only the devil’s twisted words mixed truth and lie, and cast doubt on what God did really say.  In the day you eat of it, you will die.  And so they ate.  And so they died.

Now, for Adam and all his descendants, food doesn’t come so easy.  We eat by the sweat of our brow.  We find thorns everywhere – our work is troubled in this now corrupted world.  Life is never easy again.

Even worse, now death hangs around our neck like an albatross.  And if we don’t work, we don’t eat, and if we don’t eat, we will die.  Even if we do eat, we still die.  Sin’s wages come due. 

But God is merciful.  He sends us Jesus.  The Bread from Heaven. 

The bread from heaven – the manna that God sent the wandering Israelites was only a picture, a shadow, of the fulfillment to come in Christ. 

And when it comes to working for your bread… this bread from heaven is different.  For Jesus says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”  Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

“Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

He provides.  He feeds.  He gives.   He does the work for you, so all that is left for you to do is look to him, believe, and have eternal life.  This faith that saves us is so simple, and it rests on Christ and his work alone.

Now, as you may have heard, Lutherans have argued over how best to interpret this John 6 passage – especially on how it relates to the Lord’s Supper.

Martin Luther took a very strong stand, saying this passage has nothing to do with the Lord’s Supper.  And that eating the bread of life is simply receiving Jesus by faith.  Some pastors today would follow that example.  And it’s hard to disagree with Dr. Luther.

But others have noted that it’s difficult to hear these words, especially as Lutherans, and not make the sacramental connection.  For the same Jesus who is the bread of life, who calls us to believe in him as such – to eat his flesh – is the same Jesus who gives us bread to eat and wine to drink that he says are his very body and blood. 

And so even if John 6 isn’t Jesus speaking directly about the Lord’s Supper, what Lutheran can hear these words and not think of it?  We, who have the benefit of all of Holy Scripture, know this blessed, wonderful, sacramental way in which he feeds us with himself – the Bread of Life.  Yes, he does it in a general sense, as faith comes by hearing – and our soul is nourished.  But he also now does it for us in a sacramental gift, bread that is his body, wine that is his blood, according to his simple words of promise, and for a particular purpose:  for the forgiveness of sins.

So come to the feast this day, and come often.  Be fed by Jesus.  Take and eat, take and drink, for the forgiveness of your sins.  Work for bread that does not perish.  Pray for your daily bread, and trust him to care for you, and rejoice in the living bread that comes down from heaven, the bread of life, for you, here, today.