Jesus, Our Bread

Jann Martin August 20, 2006

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John 6:51-58

Gospel Lesson

⁵¹ "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; this bread is my flesh, offered so the world may live." ⁵² Then the people began arguing with each other about what he meant. "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" they asked. ⁵³ So Jesus said again, "I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. ⁵⁴ But those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink. ⁵⁶ All who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ I live by the power of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, those who partake of me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ I am the true bread from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever and not die as your ancestors did, even though they ate the manna."(1)

This is the Gospel of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

When we hear this scripture passage we think of communion. Jesus starts this passage saying He is the living bread that came down from heaven, also that if we eat this bread we will live forever. He then goes on to say that the bread is His flesh that was offered so that the world may live. This is referring to His death on the cross to pay the price for our sins.

In the second verse the people are arguing because they are looking at this as physically eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ. We also find this hard to deal with. It is very difficult to consider really eating the flesh and blood of Christ. We try to interpret this to be a metaphor, but Jesus words say, "I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. All who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me, and I in them." Many who were following Jesus and His disciples at that time left because they could not accept what He was saying to them.

To say "eat my flesh and drink my blood," sounds cannibalistic to us, but by faith we can see it as a participation in the death of Jesus, and that from this we will have eternal life. This is not only our life after our earthly body dies, but also a better quality for our life now.

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to sit at Jesus feet and listen to Him preach? To see the miracles and wonders we hear about in the scriptures He performed in person. By reading the Bible we can get a feeling for what it must have been like. We can read a passage and the close our eyes and meditate on it and try to picture ourselves being there and experiencing His words and actions. We could picture His baptism, imagine standing at the side of the river and watching John lean Jesus back and immerse Him in the river. Or maybe you can picture Jesus angrily throwing the tables over at the Temple where the moneychangers were doing their business. Or a fun passage to envision would be Jesus having the children come to Him. I can see Him laughing and playing around with the children and telling them how to treat others.

Jesus usually taught in parables, stories that talked about the kingdom of God, stressing justice and the best way to treat the people you come in contact with. He also criticized the people who were in power and used great compassion for those who were going through difficult times. He stressed in His preaching that we are to forgive others and to love our enemies, and to avoid violence. Because He spoke and did so much against the established rulers, He was eventually killed.

Jesus asks a lot of us in His preaching; we are to give up our worldly possessions, pluck out an eye if it causes us to sin, and to be perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect. But today He asks us just to take a step in faith and believe in Him. He tells us He is the bread that has come down from heaven, that this will sustain us and that we will be satisfied forever if we believe in Him. From our readings we believe that Jesus is our Savior, but we can find it difficult and demanding to understand all of His teachings. We don't choose to believe Jesus on our own. He comes to us, speaks to us, and reveals Himself to us so that we can come to know Him as our Savior.

We came here this morning because we have been invited by Him to get to know Him better. He has invited each of us to learn more about Him and more about how we can share His Good News with others. We don't and won't always understand what His lessons are, but we can be assured that He is reaching out to us and will help us to come to know Him better.

This is from an email I received recently:

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the coffee. All the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee in most cases, just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups. Now consider this: Life is the coffee, and the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the Coffee God has provided us." God brews the coffee, not the cups, so enjoy your coffee!

William A. Barry once said: "Conversion is a lifelong process of letting God remove the scales from our eyes so that we can more and more embrace the reality of God's overwhelming love for us."(2) This is an awesome way to look at our lives. To realize that each day God is bringing us closer to Him.

Amen.

©Jann Martin 2006