Bread of Teaching

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, August 25, 2024
John 6:56-69

    We are wrapping up our series on John 6 today, and if you were here last week, you know Jesus says some difficult-to-understand things about eating his body and drinking his blood when it comes to believing that he is in fact the Holy One of God.  In our reading for today, we hear that some of his followers go away; Jesus’ words are too difficult.  Earlier this summer I equated our spiritual lives and practicing our faith to exercising and eating healthily.  Faith practices are also healthy habits, and similarly, we can get “out of the habit” of worshipping regularly, connecting to God through prayer or scripture study, giving generously of our time, talents, and treasure and so on.  Even the holiest among us, even Pope Francis, I assure you, has times where it is difficult to believe in Jesus and follow faithfully.  There are so many reasons we struggle to have a strong faith all of the time – from our own doubts and fears to negative influences and forces outside of ourselves.
    So it’s very relatable when Peter asks this powerful question that we often sing right before the gospel, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”  Where else have you turned for spiritual nourishment or for answers to life’s unanswerable questions other than God?  We all have:  maybe this new diet or exercise routine will make me feel happier!  Maybe this new job will give me a fulfilling life!  Or we turn to less healthy things like alcohol, drugs, too much phone scrolling or bingewatching Netflix to avoid asking deeper questions.  Many of us are here today because we’ve tried turning to things other than God and don’t know where else to go but to follow Christ.  
    Developmental Psychologist Erik Erikson famously described the first fundamental development stage of a human life as “trust vs. mistrust.”  In the first year of a person’s life, a baby who is cared for lovingly and has his basic needs met consistently will thrive for the rest of his life.  In addition to food, water, clothing, and shelter what do we need to live well?  Love and trust.  We need more than just physical stuff to live.  This is basically what Jesus is saying today – it's not just about the miracle of feeding the 5000 with bread – it’s about trusting in him that HE is the living bread from heaven, the bread of life.  We had this powerful example in baby Jordan today, whose parents brought him forward to be baptized, entrusting Jordan to God’s eternal care, and entrusting us, as the church, the body of Christ, to be a support system in faith for Jordan as he grows.  Jordan is too young to take on faith in Christ for himself, at least to verbalize that faith, but he trusts that this baptism is a good thing; he trusts his parents and godparents and us!  Babies both need trust and have an amazing ability to trust; they show us what a trusting relationship with God can look like without so much worry and doubt!
We lose that childlike trust as we age, don’t we?  Even if we were blessed to have a good childhood and had many loving, trustworthy adults to raise us, all of us encounter experiences where we learn you can’t trust everybody.  We lock our doors and our cars and even our church because we don’t trust that an open door is safe, sadly.  Perhaps we share something confidential with someone and they break that confidentiality.  Some of us encounter even worse in experiencing abuse from people we thought we could trust.  So when Jesus says eat this bread and drink this wine and trust these words that I am telling you that I am the bread of life…well, it’s hard sometimes.  Does God really work through ordinary things like this stuff?  Water from the tap!  Wafers and wine from the church supply store!  As Christians, we believe that God does amazing, miraculous things through ordinary, everyday stuff like water, bread, and wine.  And beyond the physical stuff, God is at work in our lives to turn us back to him, to help us have greater trust in what God alone can provide – eternal love, forgiveness with no strings attached, life that really is life.
    Sara Miles, raised an atheist, for some reason unknown to her, walked into a church one morning in the San Francisco Bay area and received Holy Communion.  The experience changed her life.  Not only did she become a Christian from receiving this radical means of grace in a simple, ordinary meal that we offer week after week (bread and wine), she ended up dedicating her life to fighting food insecurity and setting up over a dozen food pantries to feed hungry people, body and soul.  You can read her amazing story in a compelling book she wrote called, Take This Bread.  It’s a powerful reminder of what this sacred ritual we call the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, Holy Communion, does for us.  Sara happened to write a book about her experience.  Think of the hundreds of thousands of people who are similarly, inexplicably touched by the power of the gospel, sometimes through tangible signs of bread, wine, and water.  There’s no rational explanation; it’s just what the Holy Spirit does to inspire people to faith and trust in God.
Today we also have this blessing of a reminder of what baptism can do for us – through water and God’s powerful words of promise – you are my child, my beloved.  Jesus says, “This is my body, given for you.  This is my blood, shed for you” – these are words of eternal life.  Lord, to whom else shall we go?  Where else can we, at the end of the day, turn?
The good news for those of us that still have questions and doubts and “trust issues” is that this chapter of John is in the middle of the gospel.  It’s not the end of the story.  I like to believe that at least some of the people who leave Jesus because his words are difficult come back and try following again, because that’s so many of our stories – we receive the faith, we fall away, we put our trust in other things, we discover that didn’t work, and then we return to the Lord.  Consistently, we receive God’s grace in the returning.  Here at our church, we believe that Holy Communion is the Lord’s meal. This is Jesus’ table.  The invitation is open to all who want to receive and believe.  The bread and the wine are for any of us who need to hear “I forgive you,” and “I love you” from Jesus.  This meal with these words gives us strength to trust.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.