The Bread of Life
John 6:24-35
The word bread seems to have many meanings. My Greek Professor in college used to say that the use of the word bread in the Lord’s Prayer would be a word that you would put on top of a grocery list before itemizing all the necessities that you needed to pick up for the day. Ralph Milton also pointed out in his electronic publication Rumors awhile back that Bread meant the basic things needed to stay alive.(1) A few years ago when someone asked, “Do you have any ‘bread’, man?”, they meant “Do you have any money, man”.
So Bread in it’s broadest terms can mean anything that we need to sustains us in this life. However, the way that human nature seems to be is that we demand more and more to satisfy us until we reach the point that nothing we hunger after satisfies our yearning.
Not long ago I read the report of a young woman in California who had everything that she thought she wanted in life. At 25 she was successful and earning a big salary in an investment firm. She owned a staggering string of properties – including her own home with a silver Mercedes parked in front. She had both youth and wealth. I suppose you could say that she had everything going for her. But she eventually drove her silver Mercedes sport coupe to a Laguna Beach hotel, checked in, and then checked out of life with an overdose of pills. She left behind a note that said she was ending her life because, “I am so tired of clapping with one hand.” (2)
Something was missing. She had the bread that sustains for awhile but she did not have the bread that endures.
Jesus promises us in the Gospel today the bread that endures. He is that bread. When we believe in Him and give ourselves over to Him we can taste the difference in our lives.
The Bread of Life is Daily Bread
It is interesting to me that after the feeding of the five thousand, that people came to Jesus still looking for a sign. It satisfied only for a day. Like the Israelites of old experienced the miracle of crossing the Red Sea only to complain later about being out in the wilderness. “We should have stayed in Egypt” was their cry. Then God satisfied them daily with Manna. They had enough for the journey on a daily basis.
Often this is the way it is with us. We have enough spiritual resources for the day, and that is really all we need, because today is all that we really have. We have a tendency to think that each day is not important because of the many days we have ahead of us. But today is not a dress rehearsal for something else. It is the real thing. It is all we ever have. Corita Kent, the former nun turned graphic artist, says in one of her posters, “Life is a series of moments – to live each one is to succeed.” The past is gone and the future is something we can only imagine. To taste the Bread of life today is to make a decision that you will live this moment as Christ would have you live it and then each moment after in the same way. Then each day becomes a pearl – part of a beautiful pearl necklace.
Each day we are given the gifts of life. We need to accept the gifts that today are given us.
Emerson once observed :
“The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant, friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them silently away.”
Harold Kushner in his book, When All You’ve Ever Wanted was Not Enough tells of a Rabbi asking a prominent member of his congregation,
“Whenever I see you, you’re always in a hurry. Tell me. Where are you running all the time?” The man answered, “I’m running after success. I’m running after fulfillment, I’m running after the rewards for my hard work” . The Rabbi replied ,”That’s a good answer if you assume that all those blessings are somewhere ahead of you, trying to allude you and if you run fast enough, you may catch up with them. But isn’t it possible that those blessing are behind you, and they are looking for you, the more you run, the harder you make it harder for them to find us.?” Isn’t it possible indeed that God has all sorts of wonderful presents for you – good food and beautiful sunsets and flowers budding in the spring and leaves turning in the fall and quiet moments of sharing – but we in our pursuit of happiness are so constantly on the go that (God) can’t find us at home to deliver them. (3)
The Bread of life is the Bread that endures
I try to nurture my life each day with some word from scripture or some other inspired writing. It is said that the way you spend the first thirty minutes of each day is how you will spend the rest of the day. There are some favorite passages that I say over and over again in my mind at the beginning of the day. It is certainly food for the day. It might be a passage like, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. Or “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary and walk and not faint”. When you sit quietly and start your day like that, it is amazing how it affects your whole day. And how you live your day is how you live your life.
There is an eternal quality in our lives each day. Paul indicates in the 13th Chapter of Corinthians that when all else has gone, there are three things that remain: Faith , Hope and Love. Have you ever examined your day and all that you have said and done under those categories? Where today did you act in faith? When were you aware of that hope was part of your inward drive? How are all the things that you have done today related to love?
Sometimes I have found that I have no strength in myself to help myself, and in faith I rely on Christ to give me the ability to deal with a situation. Other times when I seem to have a peace and a calm in the midst of a storm I realize that it is the hope that is within me – a hope that nothing is able to separate us from the Love of God. Sometimes I have been able to act in Love beyond my own understanding or ability, that can only be explained by the fact that I have been caught up in the love of Christ. As Albert Schweitzer once said, “There is no higher religion than human service” We could all be inspired by the selfless act of Mahatma Ghandi who lost his shoe while exited a train in India. The shoe was well beyond his reach so he removed his other shoe and threw it where the first one had fallen, saying, “Now the poor soul who finds the first one will have a pair that he can wear.” You cannot help but be affected personally by any act that you do for others. An ancient Chinese proverb says that “a little fragrance always clings to the one who gives you roses.”
This is the bread that endures.
When we share the bread of Life we are strengthened together for the journey
There is a movie called Soul Food which came out in 1997. Matriarch Mama Joe has held her family together for 40 years around a Sunday dinner of soul food. When diabetes hospitalizes her, the dinners stop and tensions among her three daughters start to break the family apart. Two of the sisters feud continuously: Teri is jealous of Maxine’s marriage and irritated that everyone assumes her corporate salary is open to the rest of the family’s uses. Maxine resents Teri’s bossiness and insensitivity to family tradition. Bird, the youngest, newly married to an ex-con, accepts a favor from an old lover that leads to her husband’s arrest. Mama Joe’s grandson Ahmad cooks up a scheme to bring the family together, back to the table, because it is around the table that the family not only enjoys the food for the body but food for the soul. Around the table they come together as a community who care for and love one another and accept one an other’s differences. When they no longer gather, they are all individuals fighting for their individual rights and seeking individual power and forgetting the needs of others which breaks the community apart. (4)
When we gather at the table for communion we share the bread of life. We are a community of Christ’s reconciling love. It is that which holds us together. It is that which we share together with the world.
What is the bread that you seek?
Is it the bread that satisfies for the moment and then is gone and leaves you hungry? Or do you seek the bread that is Christ? This is the bread that endures for ever, that never leaves you hungry. It is that which fulfills and gives meaning to your life.
It never leaves you “clapping with one hand.”
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- Ralph Milton’s Rumors Weekly Newsletter at rumors@joinhands.com>.
- Pulpit Resource, published by Glendon Harris vol 10,No 4 Fourth Quarter 1982 p. 5
- Harold Kushner When All You’ve Ever Wanted is not enough, Pocket Books, NY, NY 1986, p. 146
- The movie Soul Food, 1997 Directed by George Tillman Jr.
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