Readings: Proper 13B: 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a; Psalm 51:1-13; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

I want to start by bringing to mind  last Sunday’s Gospel reading —the story of the feeding of the multitude. Just imagine it: this amazing abundance of food turns up without warning in a deserted place—enough to feed a crowd with lots left over. Wow! It was like something out of the Bible! It was like God feeding Israel with manna in the desert. And Jesus knew what the people. eating all around him, were thinking: “Let’s grab him and make him king!” So he contrived to make himself scarce, since this was exactly what he did not want. 

And now, in today’s Gospel, we have the very next verses of John’s Gospel, where the crowd manages to catch up with Jesus. And they’re astounded when they do find him because can’t figure out how he got there ahead of them. “When did you get here?” they say. “Hmm! Makes you think, doesn’t it? Was that another miraculous sign? Nudge, nudge; wink, wink.” They’re getting really caught up in this whole adventure—and drawing their own conclusions. 

But Jesus brings them up short. He tells them they wouldn’t recognize a sign if they saw one because they’re only interested in the surface of things: they’re interested in kings and their power, and wondering if they can get in on the ground floor with this one; they’re interested in having full stomachs without working for it, and wondering if there’s more free lunch where that last one came from. Jesus wants to redirect their attention to something of ultimate value, the bread from heaven, the bread that not only supports life, but is life.

Not that Jesus thinks ordinary bread is unimportant. He did feed people, just as he healed the sick and raised the dead. But he wants people to see beyond the necessities of day-to-day life to the deepest values of human existence. And these values, he declares, are embodied in himself. It’s a very big claim. What can it possibly mean? 

We began reading from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel last week and will continue for several weeks to come. And it comes as a bit of a shock, in the midst of reading good old, down-to-earth Mark this year, because Jon’s Jesus sounds so different from the Jesus we meet in the other gospels. He’s mysterious. He often speaks in riddles, and he focuses far more on himself than in the other gospels. When he’s asked a question, his response often seems, at first, to have nothing to do with what was asked. Only after mulling it over, does one sometimes come to realize that, oh yes, he is responding to the question, but he’s putting it into a new and deeper context, so that it begins to mean something rather different. 

And so it is with this discourse on bread. Bread was the staff of life in the ancient Mediterranean world. “Bread” was what you mostly thought of when you thought of “food.” It’s essential. Without it we die. But even the physically well-fed can die in other senses. Without love, without useful purpose, without joy, without humility, without some inner integrity and peace, people can become a kind of walking dead. Jesus wants to rescue us from that. And he offers, for the purpose, not a lecture nor a formula nor a drug, but a life. And, as John’s Gospel proclaims, a divine life at that.

John’s Gospel started off with these familiar words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And it is this Word, the Word by which God spoke the whole world into being, that came to us in the human being Jesus. So when Jesus offers himself as the bread of life to this band of clueless wannabe followers, it is God, in utter humility, offering Godself to us all—offering Godself to be taken in and chewed on and incorporated into our own lives. 

If all this sounds like it’s verging on mysticism, well, it is mystical. The true bread is not to be found in any immediate, concrete form. True, all bread is holy. And we have the sacramental bread at this altar, so freighted with the remembrance of God’s gracious self-giving that we’re not afraid to call it Christ’s Body. But the sacrament is not the bread of which Jesus speaks here. It is a sacrament of it, a pointer toward it. And even the feeding of the multitude was a sign—for those who could see. There are many signs around us. And, at best, the sacramental sign of bread and wine can help us recognize the others. But the ultimate goal is not simply to be a faithful church-goer and communicant, valuable as that can be for a whole array of reasons. The ultimate goal is to begin to know ourselves as the people for whom God humbly took on a human life, sparing Godself none of the indignities or dangers or uncertainties of such a life but enduring everything in order to recall us to the circle of God’s own love, a love poured out freely on us and on all around us. 

Jesus is ready to endure the worst of it and so shows us that, even in horrible situations, the love of God is still the bread of life—the gift of wholeness and relatedness, of hope and joy and love, that makes us true human beings. 

This bread of life shows up in our own lives in many ways. Even when we are at our worst, it can show up to call us back to our true selves. In our first reading, the prophet Nathan had to confront David brutally with David’s own brutality—the only way of getting through to him, it seems. The story of the poor man’s ewe lamb is deeply affecting, not only because the man was poor and had so little to begin with, but because the lamb was a beloved pet, a member of the family. Clearly, there were no plans to eat this lamb. It would grow up to share its wool and milk with the family of which it was a part. The rich man’s terrible crime was an offense not only against justice, but against love. Confronted with that recognition, David had to condemn himself, too. 

And we read, alongside that story, the greatest of the penitential Psalms. Penitence, sorrow, regret are a necessary part of our human existence. And the thing that allows us to confront even the worst in ourselves is knowing that the God who spoke the whole world into existence still loves us—fallible, stubborn, imperfect creatures that we are. This is the love that forms the Bread of Life in Jesus. It can make even sin a stepping stone into greater life. It’s worth observing that the all-time, archetypal wise person was the son of David’s marriage with Bathsheba. Not the first son; that one died. But the second one—the wise King Solomon. 

And as we feed on this bread, this love, it will transform our lives and our dealings with the people around us. Our reading from Ephesians, this morning, talks about the kind of life I mean, sketching out what should guide the life of the Christian people:

. . . lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 

We all know that we don’t always live up to this standard, but it stands as a guide and a pointer for our practice. We have, after all, every excuse to practice humility—by recognizing our own limits. And gentleness—by treating the people around us with respect. And patience—by admitting that not every problem has an immediate, obvious solution. This, of course, is not the whole list of the gifts that adorn a true human life in Jesus. We also receive gifts of boldness, imagination, trust, hope, love, energy, generosity . . . the list goes on. But humility, gentleness and patience spring from our knowledge of God’s humble, gentle, patient love, incarnate in Jesus. And they are deeply precious. Indeed, they, too, may fairly be called “the Bread of Life.”

Preached at Good Shepherd, Berkeley,10th Sunday after Pentecost, August 1, 20