John 6:35, 41–51
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.
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Once again, this morning, Jesus is speaking about bread to the crowd
gathered around him. . . and telling them
that he is the Bread of Life who has come down from heaven to satisfy
their hungers. But where last week they seemed right on the
verge of accepting his words and receiving what he was offering, this
week, suddenly, they’re not so sure. In fact, they’re
grumbling to each other, “Wait a minute. This is
Joe’s boy – Joe from Nazareth. How can he say he
came down from heaven? We watched this kid grow up. We
know his mom and dad. ‘Come down from heaven,’ my
foot!”
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But Jesus knows two things. First, he knows that the people
gathered around him are there because his Father in heaven has drawn
them, has drawn them there to listen to his Son. Or they wouldn’t
have come at all. And second, he knows that they are hungry.
They are hungry for an experience of God himself – an experience
as real as the physical feeling of food in your stomach.¹ In
fact, that’s why we’ve all come here this
morning – to satisfy that hunger. We can’t explain
it. We find it hard to put into words. But we are drawn to
the presence of God in this sanctuary, in our common prayer and praise,
in his Word, and certainly in the bread we receive at the altar
rail. We have a hunger we can barely describe. But this is
the place where we can satisfy it. Jesus’ listeners that
day in Capernaum had that same kind of hunger. So despite their
skepticism, they hang in there and they listen to him.
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The problem for them – and maybe for us too — is that what
we are seeking has to come to us by faith. It’s a gift, in
other words, not something we can produce for ourselves. And we
hate that. We don’t want to be dependent. Then too,
though it’s a spiritual experience, it’s going to come to
us through something quite ordinary – as ordinary as
Joe’s boy who grew up in backwater Nazareth, as ordinary as a
piece of bread. But that’s the way God does things.
When we least expect it, he comes to us through the ordinary elements
in our lives, revealing his Presence through them.
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‘Incarnation’ is the fancy word theologians use to describe
Jesus, the Son of God, coming among us, but it’s more than just
a theological term. ‘Incarnation’ is the subject of
John’s whole Gospel. In his Prologue, John tells us that
from the beginning of time “the Word was with God and the Word was
God.” (1:1) And then, a few verses later, he
tells us that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
(1:14) In fact, all the way through the rest of his
Gospel, John will be helping us see and come to terms with this mystery,
this revealing–of–the–sacred–through–the–secular.
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For good and for sure, the whole idea was, at first, a mystery to
everyone – even as Jesus tried to explain it. Nicodemus,
for example, is a well–educated Jewish scholar who knows a thing
or two about human birth. But he has a hard time comprehending
the spiritual birth Jesus is trying to explain to him – and not a
clue that he himself might one day incarnate such holiness. And
it isn’t just Jewish people who find Jesus’ words hard to
fathom. The woman by the well in Samaria knows all about drawing
clear, cold water from deep wells. But it takes her a while to
grasp that his stranger, this Jesus, is offering to slake her
spiritual thirst. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised
to find that the people gathered around Jesus this morning are having
a hard time understanding his description of himself as heavenly bread
that has come down from heaven — bread they themselves are invited
to sample.
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But they will, eventually, as our psalm puts it this
morning — taste and see that the Lord is good. They will,
despite their misgivings, begin to try this new bread Jesus is offering
to them. For they are hungry. And bread, in their culture,
was essential – not just as a food but also as the means by
which they ate their food.
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You see, in ancient Middle Eastern culture no one used forks or spoons
to eat their meals. Instead, they gathered around a common table
with a communal dish at the center. . . and
they dipped their bread into that bowl to carry the food to their
mouths. So bread, for them, was not just something
extra – like a dinner roll might be for us. Instead, bread
was an essential part of every meal; it gave people a way to take
in the food they were served. That’s what Jesus is saying
to the crowd that morning in Capernaum. The main course God the
Father is offering them is life – life abundant, life
eternal. Jesus simply presents himself to them as the bread
they need to take that meal in.
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And this morning he is making the same offer to us. He is offering
us himself. He might not be the bread we ever thought we
wanted. But he is the bread we need.² For our hungers,
too, are deep. And no matter how we have tried to satisfy them,
those hungers have not abated.
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So this morning I offer to you the bread that came down from
heaven – in his Word, in our worship and in Communion. Taste
and see that the Lord is good.
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Amen.
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¹Barbara Cawthorne Crafton “Eat it all today”
The Christian Century: Sunday’s Coming, July 27, 2009.
²William Willimon Homilectical Perspective, Proper 14
Feasting on the Word; Year B, Vol. 3 (Westminster, John Knox Press,
Louisville: 2009) P. 337.
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