Brothers and sisters, I know that I’ve shared this news with
you already, but I have to share it again because I do not think that it has
completely sunk in yet for me. Jess and I are having a baby! Wow! I mean, I
knew going into our marriage that the next logical step after getting married
was to start growing the family, but it is still crazy to think that by the end
of the year, I will be holding a tiny baby in my arms, one that I helped bring
into the world.
Honestly, it’s kind of scary. I keep praying that God will
allow me wake up one morning feeling completely ready and prepared for this new
adventure, but so far this hasn’t happened. Instead, I wake up every morning
with the knowledge that I’m one day closer to being a dad, and I feel this
electric jolt of both unbridled excitement and uncontrollable fear.
This week marks Jess’ twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.
During the past six months, we have both learned a lot about the 40-week
process of pregnancy. We’ve read books, listened to professional advice, and
done the best we could to equip ourselves with as much knowledge as possible as
we prepare for our bundle of joy.
And I have to tell you, one of the most interesting aspects
of this journey so far has been learning about the cravings that pregnant women
endure and why they crave certain… substances. According to a number of
sources, many women deal with cravings for all sorts of foods that range the
spectrums from healthy to artery-clogging, from breakfast foods to deserts,
from staple foods to out-of-the-box delicacies. Some women’s diets completely
change while they are pregnant; Jess told me about a case of a life-long
vegetarian who had such strong cravings for meat that she ended up eating steak
or bacon almost every day until the baby came!
Sometimes, though, it is not an actual food that the
mother-to-be will crave. Sometimes, they crave non-food substances as well!
Jess read one day that she might develop cravings for things like clay or iron.
Apparently, these cravings come about because her body knows that she needs to
eat a certain kind of nutrient or protein, and sometimes the only way to best
relay this message from her body to her brain is as a desire for something
completely inedible. She read that if this happens, she should consult her
doctor to find out what exactly she needs to eat to satisfy this yearning for a
non-food.
I told her that if she started craving iron I’d just get her
a piece of rebar to chew on. I don’t think she appreciated that…
I think this is extremely interesting, though. Your body
sends you a message that you need a certain type of nutrient, but your brain
only hears “CLAY! GIVE ME SOME CLAY!”
It is as if it completely misses the point. It’s not about
iron. It’s not about clay.
In our Scripture reading today from John’s Gospel account,
we hear the story of a group of people who also completely missed the point.
John 6 is the account of Jesus trying unsuccessfully to teach the gathered
masses an important lesson about who he is and who God is. Now, the lectionary
breaks this chapter up and covers sections of it over a number of weeks. It has
good reason to do this! I mean, the chapter is seventy-one verses long! But I
think that breaking this chapter up into so many sections has caused readers to
sometimes miss one of the most important of its overarching themes. Let’s jump
into this chapter together and see if we can piece it back together.
The first story we encounter in John 6 is one of the more
popular stories of Christ: the feeding of the five thousand. It begins with a
large crowd gathering around Jesus and him teaching them and loving on them. At
one point, he looks over at one of his disciples, Philip, and asks him, “Where
will we buy food for all of these people?”
Already, in the very beginning of this chapter, food is an
important theme. With a great multitude like the one gathered around Jesus, it
is no surprise that the issue of sustenance would come up. McDonalds built a
temporary restaurant in Olympic Square for the 2012 Olympics with the intent on
feeding 12,000+ a day. I doubt Jesus had a dollar menu he could use to feed
this gathered mass of people.
And yet, from five small loaves of bread and two dried fish,
Jesus gives to all and everyone eats their fill. Can you imagine the crowd’s
response? This man fed them all! And not just a meager spread that would
sustain them until they returned home; no, they all ate until they were full!
What a miracle! The crowd literally goes wild and begins to
talk about making this prophet their king. He has the power to feed them!
Someone with such authority could surely overthrow the Roman overseers. But
Jesus knows their thoughts and slips away before they can act upon these
murmurings.
Next comes the story of Jesus walking on water. When the
wind and the waves were forceful enough that it drove the disciples’ boat far
away from land, Jesus appears in the middle of the sea and is able to calm the
waters with a word. The next day, when the crowd begins to look for Jesus, their
would-be king, they find him across the waters, sitting with his disciples.
Jesus immediately starts teaching them again. He says, “I assure you that you are looking for me not because you
saw miraculous signs but because you ate all the food you wanted. Don’t work
for the food that doesn’t last but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.”
Here we have food again. But this
talk of food is different from before. Jesus had first given them bread and
fish to sate the hunger in their bellies, but now, he is speaking of a food
that lasts forever, a food that gives eternal life.
But the crowds don’t seem to get
it. It’s not about bread.
But they want bread. They need
bread. They have probably spent the majority of their lives hungry, never having
enough food to sate their hunger. But now, they have met a man who can give
them so much food that they had leftovers! And he wants them to set aside this
craving for another kind of bread?
They miss the point. It’s not
about bread.
Someone in the crowd starts
talking about the manna from heaven that Moses gave to the Israelites. Others
pick this up and beg Jesus to give them that manna as well.
But Jesus instead says that he is the bread of which they should
eat.
Now, wait a second. The Israelites
are hungry. But are they that hungry?
Jesus tries multiple times to tell
them that they must eat the bread he has to offer, but they cannot seem to
understand his meaning. They keep asking questions, making statements that pull
away from the true purpose of Jesus’ message. And Jesus seems to be
unsuccessful at reigning them in.
They keep missing the point. Over
and over. It’s not about bread.
Jesus says he is the Bread of
Life, and that whoever eats of his flesh and drinks of his blood will be saved.
He says that he is the bread that the Father sends down from heaven. But all
anyone hears is the collective stomach growling of the crowd, the collective
groan of a people searching desperately for salvation from their oppressed
lives.
No matter how many times Jesus
laid out the truth for them through parable and metaphor, the crowd—and even
his disciples—were not able to grasp his meaning. They kept thinking his was
talking about his body being bread, talking about him as if he were food they
could eat.
You see, what they could not
understand was that Jesus’ words here are much like the non-food cravings that
mothers-to-be sometimes endure. It was never about his flesh or his blood.
It’s not about bread. It was never
about bread.
It was about Christ. It was about
salvation in the one sent by God who was himself God. It was about accepting
the gift of life from the One who freely offered it.
When Christ says he is the Bread
of Life, he is sharing with us the truth that he is the Almighty, for Jesus
Christ is the One who saves and sustains all. When Christ calls us to eat of
his flesh and drink of his blood, he is calling us into a life lived intimately
with him, to allow his very being to become a part of our own. When Christ
offers us the bread that sustains eternal life, he is giving us the opportunity
to enjoy this life and the next spent in joyful relationship and partnership
with him.
I confess that sometimes I find
myself amongst this crowd. I find myself spending so much time and energy worrying
about the bread, worrying about those things that I think are important, that I
miss chance to enjoy the truth and the grace in Christ’s words. I often hold
tight to my wants and desires—what I think I need—and I confuse them with the
life-giving gift that Christ freely bestows. My life becomes bent on making
enough money, or impressing the right people, or earning the highest grades, or
having the newest stuff, or any number of other seemingly worthy and important
pursuits. And I miss out on the miracle in front of me—that Christ is that
which truly saves and sustains me, that any other pursuit is secondary to him.
We all do this, don’t we? We all
at times miss the point of Christ’s message. We focus on the bread, on the
pursuit of worldly fulfillment, and we miss out on that which truly sustains,
on that which truly brings life.
We miss the point, and we crave
the wrong thing. Because it’s not about bread.
But Christ constantly calls us to
him, and constantly offers us the true life-giving sustenance. This is what we
remember and celebrate every week when we share in Holy Communion. When we eat
of the bread and drink from the cup, we focus again upon the great gift of life
that we have received in Christ. For a brief time at least, we are no longer
focused on the bread; we are focused on the Bread of Life.
So when you come to the rail to
receive the elements in a few minutes, remember what it is you are receiving.
What you eat is not simply bread; it is something so much more. What you drink
is not simply grape juice; it is so much more. What you partake in is salvation
made available in and through Christ, the Bread of Life.
It’s not about bread. It’s about
Christ. It is Christ. It is salvation
in the one sent by God who was himself God. It is the gift of life from the One
who freely offered it.
So may we remember that when
Christ says he is the bread of life, he is sharing with us the truth that he is
the One who saves and sustains all. May we remember that when Christ calls us
to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, he is calling us into a life lived
intimately with him, to allow his very being to become a part of our own. May
we rejoice that Christ offers us the bread that sustains eternal life and that
he gives us the opportunity to enjoy this life and the next spent in joyful
relationship and partnership with him. And may we always find ourselves craving
more and more.
It’s not about bread. It’s about
Christ. Thanks be to God for this! Amen.
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