John 6:35-59
Many of us have restricted diets. Jesus’ words about salt or
bread bounce off us as we think about low sodium, paleo, gluten-free,
heart-healthy, or the many different ways our diets are different from the diet
of a first century Palestinian. However, for Jesus, his followers, and for most
people around the world, bread is the stuff of life.
Separate bread in your mind from what it takes to make
bread. Flour, salt, water, maybe yeast. What do you need to have those things?
What’s required for flour? Wheat or some other grain. So you need stability to
grow, tend, and harvest that. You need strength and maybe tools for the
threshing and grinding.
Water needs to be clean. You need a well or a clean water
source. You need a vessel to carry it in and a place for safe storage. Salt
requires drying or discovery. You need time and space for this. It requires
patience and expectation.
All of these are gifts that God gives us in Jesus- stability,
growth, strength, community, safety, a body (for storage), patience, time,
space. Let’s dwell on and in that understanding. The reality of bread is much,
much more than the loaf in front of us. The gift of Jesus- God with us- is more
than have either or physical or spiritual needs met. He is the embodiment of
God’s desires and plans for you, for me, and for creation.
This is the point where my sermon derailed on Saturday
night. I was thinking about God’s desires for us- the realities of being able to
receive and eat the Bread of Life. Then I read the news about the conclusion to
Michael Dunn’s trial for the murder of Jordan Davis. In November of 2012, Dunn
asked an SUV full of teenagers at a gas station to turn down their music. When
they refused and prepared to leave the station, Dunn fired at the SUV, killing
17-year-old Jordan Davis.
At the conclusion of the trial yesterday, Dunn was convicted
of several counts of attempted murder with regard to the other teens in the
car. The jury ended up hung on the murder conviction for Jordan Davis. Do you
think it matters in this case that Dunn is white and that Davis and the other
teens were black? What would have been the outcome if a black man had fired
into a car full of white teens for exactly the same reasons?
We live in a society, in 2014, where not all lives have
equal value. Where people’s worth is judged based on their color, their race,
their religious expression, their gender expression, their sexuality, their
physical or mental abilities, their age and a variety of other factors. There
are people in this congregation who regularly worry about their children or
grandchildren, not in the way that we all do, but because of their color or
other factors. We cannot pretend this doesn’t happen. We cannot pretend it
doesn’t affect us. We cannot pretend that we can’t help.
We have said things- security, growth, strength, peace,
community, bodies, safety, time, space- are God’s desires for creation as
evidenced in Jesus as the bread of life. I assume we mean that they are God’s
desires for all people, all people.
Give us this day our daily bread is prayed by millions and millions of people.
The inability to have bread- spiritual or physical- is not impaired by God’s
willingness to distribute it. God has already shown that willingness by sending
Jesus. The ability for all people to enjoy that bread- spiritually and
physically- is impaired by how other people facilitate or get in the way of
God’s distribution.
It matters greatly that the Bread of life is both a physical
and a spiritual experience. It’s not just
spiritual because there are real,
concrete things our bodies must do as followers of Christ. It’s not just
physical because there we have real,
concrete spiritual needs that must be addressed and fed. If we have them,
all people have them.
We
cannot listen to today’s reading, Jesus explaining about all who come to him
being fed, and not feel some responsibility to respond and to help others
respond. We cannot, we must not, listen to the news about the Dunn verdict and
not feel any responsibility to respond and to help others respond. We cannot
allow the forces that oppose God and God’s desires to make us believe that this
problem is isolated to Florida or doesn’t have anything to do with our faith lives.
If
anyone, anyone, anywhere, anywhere, is afraid, is persecuted, is
unable to imagine a better future, is isolated, is killed, then there are realities that are getting in the way of the
Bread of Life. This happens in Anchorage. Schools have unequal resources. City
communities receive unequal attention. Certain populations are profiled. Young
adults do not believe they have valued potential.
This
goes beyond how we pray today. Either we are action takers, on a day to day
basis, through the help of the Spirit, allowing our hands, our feet, our
voices, our votes, our dollars, to be a way of distributing the Bread of Life.
Or we aren’t. If we aren’t, then what are we doing? And who are we doing it
for?
In
Jesus’ time, this teaching was scandalous, mainly because of what he says about
blood. Jews did not eat blood. It was the life force of an animal. Therefore,
it was forbidden. For Jesus to give instruction to drink his blood and eat his
flesh, therefore to consume his life, this was disgusting and very off-putting
to many, many people who heard him.
It’s
critical for us to hear those words today, though. If we understand that Jesus
is present in our neighbors, the senseless killing of people around us- both
actual killing and things that keep life from flourishing- we are witnessing
the blood of Jesus being spilled, without life coming from it. We are
witnessing the exact opposite of God’s desire and intention.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are the fruits of the Spirit. They
grow from the nurturing of the Bread of Life. God’s plan for Jesus as the Bread
of Life is to help creation enjoy peace, stability, growth, strength, time,
space. As people who receive that Bread, physically and spiritually, we are
called to be a part of how all people receive the Bread of Life. If you come to
communion today, if you are praying today, if you are giving thanks for the
forgiveness of sins today, you have entered into a covenant, a contract with God,
in which you have agreed to respond and to be used for God’s purposes in the
world.
Knowing that, believing that, will that change what you do?
Today? This week?
Stability, growth, strength,
community, safety, a body (for storage), patience, time, space- required for
bread, results of the Bread of Life. Bread that is intended for all people. We are
definitely partakers for ourselves. When it comes to others, others like Jordan
Davis, are we distributors or are we roadblocks?
Amen.
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