The bread of life, John 6: 51-58.
Christ Church and St Mary’s,
20th August 2000
Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe were seated
together at a table. "Hey
Albert," said Marilyn.
"Imagine if we had a baby and it had my looks and your brains-it could
do anything it wanted." "Yes,
my dear," replied Einstein.
"But what if it has my looks and your brains?"
As an icon for the times we are living in Marilyn
Monroe is as good as any. On the one
hand, she had a desperate hunger- a hunger for recognition, for significance, a
hunger to be loved. And aren't these
the things we all hunger for? But on the other hand her hunger was never
satisfied. She lived her life like a
candle in the wind, not only did she not know who to turn to, but all the things
she placed her faith in, beauty, fame, wealth, knowing the right people,
couldn't begin to fulfil her.
It is all too easy for us to look at her life and to
see the obvious pitfalls in pursuing the ultimately empty promises on which she
relied. But the reality is that even
while we see the fallacy of the things she pursued, these remain the very same
things that our society hankers after, and that, if we are honest, so often
catch our eyes with their promise of instant fulfilment.
So we are all hungry, just as she was. And we come here because we know that in our
heart of hearts only God can feed our hunger, our need. "I am the living bread," says
Jesus. And I can feed you. Not only is this bread for today but it is
bread that promises eternal life.” But
this is very strange language. It’s
kind of abstract, as a lot of the imagery that John uses is. What does it mean on a Monday morning?
John writes that just before he said these things
about himself, Jesus had performed two miracles-he had fed 5000 people with
bread, and he had walked on the water.
But what was the reaction of people to these events? The reaction of the crowd after the feeding
of the 5000 was this: "They were about to come and take him by force to
make him King." They wanted Jesus
to provide them with victory over the Romans, political stability, a just world
once again. They didn't say,
"Let's follow this man." They
just said, "Fantastic-here is an opportunity for us to be on top
again."
And what did the disciples say after they had seen
Jesus walking across the water? Jesus
asked them to believe in him, but their reply was, "Well, what sign will
you give us, what work will you perform?"
They wanted a Jesus who provided answers, who would prove his love in a
way which suited them. They were
hungry, but for the wrong things. So
when Jesus said “I am the bread of life,” to both these groups of
people he was telling them that they were not to hunger for power, for signs,
for easy answers to their questions, but simply for him. When they heard this, John says many went
away disappointed saying, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
Yes, we are hungry too. But like the disciples back then it is so easy to think that our
hunger can be fed, even by so-called religious things that in the end will not
satisfy. We look for satisfaction in
the church-but the church will never feed our hunger. In my short life I have been to Roman Catholic churches, United
Reformed, Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, charismatic fellowships, Brethren
Churches, and of course Anglican, but none of them has had a missing key that
the others are lacking. “I am
the bread of life,” says Jesus. We look
for satisfaction in a good sermon-but there will never be a preacher who will
be able to fill us. The other day I went to the local corner shop and picked
something off the shelf that costs 50p.
When I put my hand in my pocket I found I didn’t have the money. "I could invite you to hear me preach
in return," I said for a joke to the woman on the till, “But I don’t have
any 50 pence sermons.” "Perhaps," she suggested "I could come twice." There is no sermon that will truly give us
life. “I am the bread of
life,” says Jesus. Or we can look to
have our appetite fulfilled in the sort of worship we like-but even the best
led service won't satisfy us. Alpha
courses can't do it, revival meetings can't do it, there is no piece of music
or book or fad that holds the key.
What we need says Eugene Peterson, is very
simple. He writes this: "I want to
simplify your lives. When others are
telling you to read more, I want to tell you to read less; when others are
telling you to do more, I want to tell you to do less. The world does not need more of you; it
needs more of God. Your friends do not
need more of you; they need more of God.
And you don't need more of you; you need more of God. At the end of the day he says, feeding on
the bread of life is about returning to square one and adoring God and
listening to God. Pure and simple.
God alone matters.
God alone can feed us. Friends
can get close to us. Husband and wife
can become one flesh. Christians can be
moved to love each other. But there is
no other relationship which has the quality of being as if it is like eating
something, making it part of us, being nourished by it. I and thou. There is no miracle of closeness more than
this - that the maker of the universe wants to be living bread for us.
That's fine, but where to we start? Our reading from Proverbs asks us to make
the decision to lay aside immaturity, to live and walk in the way of
insight. Paul assumes that his readers
will be wise, that they will make the most of their time. He writes, “Be careful then how you live,
not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of time…” If we really are to lay aside immaturity, to
use the precious hours that we have been given, then it is a case of deciding
that only one thing really does matter.
Yes, we can be concerned about whether the church, (we so often talk
about the church as if we are not really part of it) is going our way or
not. But this is really a
distraction. The question we need to
be asking ourselves is this: “What are
we really hungry for?” and “What do we
need to lay aside in order to get it?”
All the encouragements the Bible gives about our
hunger for God are nothing but extravagant.
When Jesus talks about eating the bread of life the word that for he
uses for eat implies noisy chewing, such as animals might make, almost indecent
greed. Orson Welles caught the spirit
of it when he once said, "My doctor has advised me to give up those
intimate little dinners for 4, unless, of course, there are 3 other people
eating with me." When Paul talks
about being filled with the spirit, the verb he uses describes constantly being
filled, being made to overflow, being filled up to the brim.
And yet all the choices we face encourage us to be
cautious, to hold back, to take morsels from here and there not to lay our
cards on the table. Listen to this
statistic: Knowledge is exploding at such a rate—more than 2000 pages a
minute--that even Einstein couldn't keep up. In fact, if you read 24 hours a
day, from age 21 to 70, and retained all you
read, you would be one and a half million years behind when you finished. An amazing statistic. Now tell me when do
you suppose this information was compiled? It will alarm you that these
statistics do not take into account the internet. They do not even take into
account the personal computer. And, why not? It is because the statistics are
from 1979. We are simply
overwhelmed. Choices of belief,
lifestyle, church styles, types of leader, the people we worship with are so
varied that we can so often be distracted from true wisdom.
But we need to make the choice that we have tasted or began to taste the only
thing that can give us eternal life, and simply follow. For when you know that you are hungry you
can think of little else apart from the food you need. It becomes your obsession. The centre, the focus. “I am the bread of life”, says
Jesus. I am hungry for you. But there are so many tasty morsels out
there and even in my church, that clamour for your attention. So use your loaf. Embrace wisdom and recognise that your hunger will only be truly
fed by the bread that lasts forever.