Bread of Life

9th Sunday after Pentecost

Today's readings: 2 Kings 4:42-44; Eph. 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the first of FIVE weeks that we will hear from John chapter 6 about Jesus being bread of life for the world, indicating this is proooobably really important. But I want to start by pointing out that Jesus doesn’t come to earth and from THEN on all of creation is fed. No, bread, in some way/shape/form, has been the incarnation of God since the beginning of

time. God has always been and will always be the food that sustains us and gives us life.

In our first reading we heard a short excerpt from 2 nd Kings about Elisha. Throughout the gospel stories we hear again and again people wondering if Jesus or John the Baptist are actually the prophets Elisha or Elijah. Have you ever wondered why Jesus and John are constantly mistaken for these prophets of old? It’s because of stories like this! Elisha and Elijah, by the power of the Lord God, performed miracles very similar to the ones done by Jesus.

Our reading from 2nd Kings is almost identical to Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, but wait.. we’ve also seen this before in 1 st Kings when God sends Elijah to a widow in Sidon. After the long journey he asks her for a bit of water and a morsel of bread, but she and her son have just enough left for one more night and then they presume they will starve to death. But Elijah, says to her “bring me a little cake and then make a little something for you and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” And guess what? She brought him a cake and ate for days with her son off that jar of meal and jug of oil.

God is a God who provides, nourishes, and sustains; always has been, always will be. God is a God of manna, miracles, mercy and ABUNDANCE. (Amen) - this is most certainly true. These are not even the only examples of God multiplying bread and resources to sustain those in need.. remember God literally making the sky rain bread (manna) while the Israelites wondered the desert for 40 years!? But, we will talk more about that next week, so lets just look at what we have before us today.

Out of next to nothing, God makes enough for all. 20 loaves of bread? Sure, we can feed these 100 hungry people! 5 loaves and 2 fish? Sure, that’s plenty for 5,000 people! Nothing is impossible with God, the almighty; creator of heaven and earth!! These miracles are moments we can recall in our spiritual imaginations and stand in awe before a God who literally works wonders, but most importantly these are moments that witness to WHO God is. God reveals God’s character throughout all of scripture, not just in Jesus. God reveals that God is trustworthy, loving and eucharistic! When Moses asks God in the burning bush just who he shall tell the Israelites sent him, God replies: “I am.” My brain for whatever reason has always heard that story and glitched over to the scene in the Wizard of Oz when the floating green head says, “I am Oz, the great and powerful!!” But with our Lord there is no curtain to look behind and reveal a scrawny human who is indeed not great or powerful. With Christ the curtain that veiled the great ‘I am’ from the world has been torn in two forever. In Christ we get to see God face to face and live; in Christ we get to feast on the very body and blood of God – the great and powerful ‘I AM.’

The bread and wine/the body and blood are vehicles of God’s love with the power to transform us from the inside out. When God says ‘I AM,’ within those words are infinite possibilities far beyond any human intellect can comprehend. What we do know, from stories like we heard today, is that those words, at the very least, reveal to us a God saying: “I am all things. I am alpha and omega/beginning and end. I am creator. I am parent, protector, provider, and sustainer. I am healer. I am strength, compassion, love, truth, liberation and salvation. I am Lord, I am God, I am Christ, I am Spirit. I am infinitely more than you could ever ask for or imagine.”

Beyond our imagination is God’s ability to make something out of nothing, to turn a little into a lot and to bring life from death. These are things we cannot know or comprehend with our minds.. but there are other ways of knowing than by just using our intellect. There are things we can know only in our hearts. These are things we often cannot explain or put words to and that’s okay, because we don’t HAVE to. We can rest in the ‘unknowing’ of God, because we trust that God fully knows us. Being

known by God is something only our hearts can comprehend, not our minds, perhaps because it is there that Christ dwells.

The Apostle Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians is one I pray for us today, “that, according to the riches of God’s glory, it may be granted that you be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Spirit, and Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” To be rooted and grounded in the perfect love of Christ is the exact opposite of our tendency to root ourselves in fear and self preservation. To be rooted and grounded in the perfect love of Christ is to trust in God’s abundance, because God is a God who shows up and offers God’self, providing for that which we hunger most deeply.

Looking out at thousands who had gathered before them, the disciples asked Jesus, “In the face of SO much need, what can WE possibly do?” Jesus’ answer seems so simple yet so impossible.. “Feed them.” Not even six months wages could have paid to feed these hungry people and yet with just a few loaves of bread and fish, all ate their fill AND had leftovers. Jesus not only calms fears, not only feeds us to the brim, but provides something else that we also never seem to have enough of: HOPE.

We still face a world with so much need. It is all to easy to find ourselves staring into the void asking what can I possibly do in the face such problems. Jesus’ answer always comes to us in the same way: simple, easy, filling and dripping with hope - feed the world with the bread of life. Sometimes this may look like literally giving food and drink to the hungry. Sometimes this may look like telling someone the ways in which God has been revealed to us. Sometimes this looks like breaking bread with strangers, friends, even enemies. Sometimes this looks like speaking truth to power, calling out injustice, and fighting for a world where ALL are fed physically,mentally and spiritually. But always, ALWAYS, this looks like LOVE.

A fellow pastor, Cheryl Bridges Johns, said it best, “At the end of knowledge stands Jesus… the end of human knowledge is the beginning of love’s knowledge, and THAT is enough to feed a multitude with MUCH left over.” Amen – THIS is most certainly true.