“Guaranteed a Meal”

(John 6:24-35) 

So, when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”  Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For it is on him the God the Father has set his seal.”  Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?”  Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”  So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us, then, so that we may see it and believe you?  What work are you performing?  Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”  Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from Heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

            Some of you know just how odd Rick and I can be.  Mostly Rick!!  We only watch the Guardians and Cavaliers games if they win.  So, we record the games, and, then, we watch them later or the next day.  One advantage of that is that we can buzz through the commercials.  As you probably know, watching sports live means you will see a lot of food and beer commercials. 

There are a lot of them during the Olympic games too.  It’s funny because they are trying to convince us that fast food is healthy and that athletes eat this way.  We don’t eat in the evenings, so there arrayed before us is pop, pizza, burgers, fries, snacks, cookies and candy.  The thing is, these ads must work.  They clearly are causing people to go straight to the refrigerator for a Coke, to the store for cookies and chips or to their phone for pizza delivery.  I must admit I do get thinking about food when I see it pictured so graphically on the flat screen. 

            It seems like we Americans have a strong, though not always healthy, relationship with food.  We’ve gone way beyond using food as a way to survive and to satiate our hunger.  Food has become a way to experience pleasure and sometimes even as a treatment for our emotional pain. 

            …When our cat was still alive, she would start my morning by begging to be fed.  So I would go to her food bowl and notice that there was already food in that bowl.  Then she would begin crunching away even after she had made such a big deal about being desperately hungry and needing to be fed RIGHT now.  It’s almost as if she got scared that she would never get food again.  …Or perhaps I’m making human meaning out of cat behavior so I can illustrate this sermon.

            …Well, the crowd that was following Jesus around 2000 years ago also seemed to have some issues with food.  They had eaten their fill of the loaves at the feeding of the 5000.  As if that weren’t a good enough sign, they were looking for more signs from Jesus.  They were still not trusting God and Jesus for their food, let alone as the source for meaning in their lives.

Humans, along with all living creatures, I suppose, get nervous when we don’t know where our next meal is coming from.  Though Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer to think about food for this day alone, (as in, give us this day our daily bread), still we do like to keep a stock of food ahead.  We like to know we can go to the pantry or the refrigerator and pull out the food that will satisfy our hunger.   

            In today’s lesson Jesus is working to teach the crowd to believe in God and in him, the One whom God had sent, and to bring them to belief.  Yet, they are focused on their own immediate gratification.  Even after a discussion of manna, that which was given by God to the Israelites in the wilderness to meet their needs each day, even after the discussion of real spiritual food and the assurance that God is in the business of providing sustenance for us, both physical and spiritual…even after all this, the people said to him, “Sir, give us this food always.”  They had forgotten all about the “just for today” stuff.  They wanted to be guaranteed a meal. 

            In other words, they wanted security, a guarantee that we will always have something to eat.  We want always to know our bellies will be full.  We want to know our food source will not go dry on us.  We want to know that we will always have food at our beck and call. 

That empty place within us is crying out, not so much for our next meal because we really are all quite well-fed, but, rather, for God’s love.  And that is beyond what human beings can provide.  We are so afraid that the empty place within us will not be filled, so when we begin to feel a little bit lost emotionally, we get busy filling that empty place with food or electronics or alcohol and drugs or gambling or drama in our relationships rather than realizing that it is only God who can fill us always. 

It is only the Bread of Life that will truly satisfy our longings, that will fill the emptiness.

Last week we sang the song, “You satisfy the hungry heart with gifts of finest wheat.  Come, give to us, O saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.” 

Let’s face it, our hearts are so hungry for this Bread of Life that Jesus offers, we search desperately in the wrong places for the meal that will truly satisfy. 

I’ve been talking about food and feeding the last couple of weeks, but it’s different in this reading.  In the others, the feeding of the crowd was REALLY about physical hunger.  They needed something to eat. 

Today’s reading, on the other hand, takes us to our need for spiritual food, and, so, Jesus offers another sign, telling us that HE is the Bread of Life.  Once we admit our true need, once we realize that the true bread of heaven comes from God, we may know, then, that when we hear Jesus tell the people, “I am the Bread of Life,” we can know that he was sent by God to address our hunger for God, for spiritual food. 

I am not saying that those who aren’t Christian can not have the bread of heaven.  No, I’m saying that Jesus is our way of satiating our hunger, of quenching our thirst, our way of experiencing God, our way to know that we can have the Bread of Life always—a guaranteed meal that will be there for us…always!

  God has provided us with the Jesus story so that the truths about God that sound so abstract can come down to us in the lives we lead, in our normal everyday living, so we get to experience the divine here and now today.  The Bread of Life?  Oh, we get why that’s so powerful because on the one hand we cannot live without food.  On the other hand we have no quality of life without God, without meaning.  We need the Bread of Life.

Soon, then, we will share communion during which we receive the bread of life and the cup of salvation.  It is a simple meal that shows us God through Jesus.  Eating is something we do everyday, a necessity, yet communion raises our meal to another level, to the sacred level of feeding our souls, a guaranteed meal for always.  Amen.