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The Bread of Life
St.
Mark’s Episcopal Church
Sunday, August 13, 2006
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Deuteronomy 8: 1-10
Ephesians 4: 25 – 5:2
John 6:24-35
Taste and see. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. You are
what you eat. One does not live by bread alone. Such are just
a few of the clichés that we have all heard. They all
offer sound wisdom but don’t have enough substance, dimension
or context to build a life on or to motivate us to take them
too seriously. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says,
“I am the bread of life.” This self-revelation from
Jesus faces banishment to the dusty collection of clichés
when it is removed from its context and robbed of its radical
and powerful context. And that is just what some of the people
who hear it want to do. Behind this superficially innocuous,
comfortable saying is nothing short of a world turned upside
down, people freed from bondage, and the gift of a life that
is so filled with God’s presence that it can only be called
“eternal life.”
When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life” it is
the day after he has fed a large crowd, five thousand in all,
with pieces originating from five barley loaves. John’s
Gospel doesn’t call this a miracle – but a sign
because a sign points to Jesus and tells us something about
him. Talk is cheap, but when Jesus says, “I am the bread
of life,” he has the resume and credentials to back it
up. The same thing will happen later on when Jesus restores
the sight of a blind man. Following this sign, Jesus says, “I
am the light.” In fact, bread and light are only two of
many identities which Jesus claims. Others include the vine,
the way, the good shepherd and the gate. But the first is bread,
and its priority isn’t an accident. Bread is basic. It
is eaten by most people everyday. It is something that we can
understand and identify with. When Jesus says that he is the
bread of life, he has captured our attention. But Jesus does
not say that he is simply bread. He is the bread of life that
has come down from heaven. Changing the wording somewhat, he
goes on to say that he is the “living bread.” So
although bread gets us started, bread of life takes us to another
level altogether, and it is the concept of life that is the
key to this Gospel reading and the very identity of Jesus and
God revealed in Jesus. And it is the concept of Jesus as life
that is the stumbling block for his audience. They can’t
understand let alone hear the word “life.” They
are fixated on physical bread and the physical lineage of Jesus,
saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father
and mother we know?”
The problem with the audience is one that continues to plague
all religions and faiths. It is the desire to keep control of
scriptures and traditions, to defend certainties and close off
questions and tensions in interpretation. It is no less than
the desire to limit God to what we can safely comprehend. This
is acted out as those who encounter Jesus fixate on physical
bread and physical eating in face of the radical concept of
bread of life.
We have seen this before in John’s Gospel. Nicodemus is
a Pharisee who comes to Jesus at night. The ensuring conversation
revolves around Jesus’ statement that “no one can
see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus is dumbfounded. He only hears the word “born”
and misses the “from above.” He asks the ludicrous
question, “How can one enter a second time into the mother’s
womb?” Poor Nicodemus is made to look like an idiot –
to show the tendency of everyone, including the most learned
religious leaders to look only at what they know and their world
view, the basis of their position and power.
Both scenes - the encounter with Nicodemus and the crowd who
argues with Jesus about bread from heaven – show that
Jesus is revealing a God who moves beyond our expectations of
a god who is static, distant and lifeless. The bread of life
is the very life of our scriptures - the Word of God that is
alive, life-giving and life sustaining. Jesus is revealing to
us nothing less than how we must approach, listen to, digest
and respond to God’s Word. Recall the first sentence from
John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is
Word with a capital “W” yet we often treat it as
if it were a lower case “w.” This is a difference
between bread and bread of life. The former is simply food to
live. The bread of life is food to be alive. It comes down to
that – to live versus to be alive. And to be truly alive
is to have eternal life – not in the future after our
deaths, but now.
To live or to be alive – that is the choice that Jesus
gives us. To be alive is to see the complexity, mystery and
freedom of God to be who God chooses. To be alive is to read
scripture with a tolerance for ambiguity and surprise. One thing
you might do this week is read the first three chapters of Genesis.
It should only take you about ten minutes or so. Look at the
text with fresh eyes. Be prepared to be surprised by what is
in there and what isn’t. A survey of Christians who attend
church at least twice a month showed that over 80% believe that
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is an apple tree.
I can’t find an apple, pear or peach anywhere in the text
– but don’t take my word for it – read it
for yourself. A more important thing to notice is that there
are two creation stories. It is subtle thing, but you may notice
that it is God who acts in the first story and the Lord God
in the second. These correspond to different names for God in
Hebrew –Elohim and Yahweh. Notice that Elohim is larger
than life, powerful and speaks with clarity and organization.
Yahweh on the other hand, gets down into the mud and breathes
into the nostrils of his creation. This is a God who walks in
the garden, asks questions, sews garments and goes with Adam
and Eve beyond Eden into the harsh outer limits of Creation.
How can we account for such inconsistency in the first three
chapters of Genesis? And no pun intended, it is just the beginning.
I think that this is exciting – that there are tensions,
discrepancies, gaps, questions and layer upon layer of meaning
in our sacred texts. It is porous, flexible and alive and offers
an invitation to all of us to dive in. The genius and mystery
of our scripture is that its content has not been harmonized
and homogenized. The book of Job for example stands as a biting
critique to one major strand of theology found in such books
as Deuteronomy and Joshua. The New Testament contains four Gospel
stories, each with a unique perspective on Jesus. Paul’s
letters to the churches offer advice and counsel that is often
inconsistent from one correspondence to the next, but which
meets the needs and situations of the new faith communities.
Unfortunately for us, our English translations of the Bible
make it look like one seamlessly authored document. Beneath
the English are the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts.
There are dozens of authors and communities represented. The
Bible is no less than a living conversation of God’s people,
assembled over two thousand years. Those who would use scripture
as a dry stick to beat people over the head are the same who
can’t understand the meaning of Jesus as the living bread.
Others seem to want to proclaim a single aspect of Biblical
teaching and theology while ignoring its other voices. If you
like Joel Osteen, then you’ll love the book of Deuteronomy
and the scripture passage we heard today from chapter eight.
It is an “if then” paradigm. If you follow these
rules, then you will be blessed. It’s not a bad message,
but it doesn’t account for the times when “if then”
fails and no matter how good you are, life is a hellish mess.
I am the bread of life says Jesus. Let us eat this strange and
wonderful bread and live – in fact be alive and experience
the eternal life which Jesus offers us this day and everyday.
Amen.
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