Sunday, August 4, 2024, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
“Living On Heavenly Bread”
Psalm 145:10-21; Exodus 16:2-15; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:22-35
Divine Service III with Holy Communion
Hymns: #684 “Come Unto Me, Ye Weary”; #618 “I Come, O Savior, to Thy Table”; #821 “Alleluia! Sing to Jesus”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
The bread that we all know and love is the world’s oldest recipe. Bread, in one form or another, is the most common food on earth. For most people, bread is “what’s for dinner.” There are hundreds of variations on the recipe for bread, depending on the grain you choose to make it out of, and the shape you choose to roll it into. There’s white bread, whole wheat, light rye and dark rye, pumpernickel, sourdough, and many more. And there are hundreds more ways to vary the taste, with sesame, onion, garlic, poppyseed, or whatever a baker might choose. But they all come from one basic recipe, known in some places as 3-2-1 bread. Three parts flour, 2 parts oil, one part water. I think, probably, that “how to make bread” was the first recipe God gave to Adam and Eve. The first bread was likely some kind of flatbread baked on coals; think matzoh bread, naan, or lefse; picture Adam and Eve making tortillas! (Yeast may have been added later as happy and really tasty accident).
Plus, there’s the “Little Red Hen” part of making bread, that we modern people don’t have to think about much anymore, since we can buy our flour already milled in a bag, or buy a loaf of bread at the store. Remember the story? The Little Red Hen found a grain of wheat, and she asked her friends, “Who will help me plant the seed?” “Not I, said the pig, not I, said the cat, not I, said the rat.” “I’ll do it myself then,” she said. And she did. Same thing with who will help me cut the wheat, thresh the grain, mill the flour, knead the dough, and bake the bread. “Not I, not I, not I,” all her friends said.
A wonderful and poignant story that is, about where our daily bread comes from.
The Little Red Hen was given that seed of grain as gift from God, but it was up to her what to do with it. God also blessed her with a good heart, a hopeful spirit, and a willingness to work; and also hands and feet to do the work that needed to be done. (I know, chickens don’t have hands! But we’ll overlook that for the sake of the story). Our Small Catechism asks the question, “How does God provide our daily bread?” And the answer comes back, “He makes the earth fruitful and blesses us with the ability to work for the things we need.” God gives us hands and feet to work for our daily bread; and also to help us provide for those who are unable to provide for themselves, because they’re too young, or too old, or sick, or disabled.
So thank God for earthly bread, good and wonderful thing that it is. (Couldn’t make a sandwich without it!) But God’s Word also calls us to come and eat “heavenly bread,” the bread we need to feed our spirits and our souls and keep us in the one true faith. Earthly bread – flour and oil and water, baked to wonderful, brown perfection – is the commonest food on earth, whatever flavor you choose to put into it, however you roll it or shape it or twist it. Every culture in every time and place has made it and baked it and eaten it in one form or another. And God in His wisdom, instead of choosing something rare and expensive and hard to find, has chosen bread to be an everlasting symbol of the life He wants to give us. God’s most precious gifts have been wrapped up in something ordinary and accessible and available to everyone. The same God who provides “seed for the sower and bread for the eater,” also provides us with the Bread we all need to eat to be forgiven for our sins and be saved. God even chose bread to be the symbol of Jesus Christ Himself, a Savior who’d be available and accessible to all who would come to Him. “Come and eat, without money and without cost,” Jesus says. Jesus is God’s Word in the flesh, the Word of God is our spirit’s food, for us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”
When God rained down manna – heavenly bread - on the children of Israel in the wilderness - even though they’d sinned against Him time and time again and didn’t deserve it - He was pointing them forward to the coming of Christ, forward to the day when the “Bread of God” would come down from heaven to give life to the world and save them from their sins. Jesus was born in a little town called Bethlehem. In Hebrew, the name of that place is Beit-Lechem, the House of Bread. Jesus answered the devi’s taunting in Matthew 4: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread;” meaning not just the things we need to preserve our bodies, although God is so very generous with those - food and drink, clothing and shoes, house and home, land and animals and all the rest of the things on Luther’s wonderful list in our Catechism - but also the things we so desperately need to sustain and preserve our precious souls.
Jesus asks in Matthew 9: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” “Your heavenly Father knows what you need!” Jesus says. And at the Last Supper, “Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them.” “Take and eat, this bread is My body,” He said. Jesus says in John’s Gospel: “I Am the Bread of life,” and “Here is the Bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die,” and “I Am the living Bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this Bread will live forever. This Bread is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
The crowd in our Gospel, on the evening before, had been given free bread, bread they didn’t have to work for or pay for. They’d been given grace bread, miracle bread, bread from heaven. Maybe, probably, they expected, presumed, and assumed that there would be more free bread for breakfast. They’d seen the disciples, who’d served them their bread the evening before, leaving in the only boat that was there. Jesus, whose hands had provided and multiplied that holy bread for them, wasn’t there either; but where had He gone? (He’d walked across the sea during the night, but that they didn’t know). Then some other boats arrived in that place, likely full of other people who were also looking for Jesus; so they all got in the boats and went to find Him.
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" The unspoken question was, “Rabbi, when’s breakfast? When is our next meal coming? When are You going to make more bread for us?” Jesus, You fed us yesterday, but today we need more! Jesus says in another place that if the only bread you care about it earthly bread, if that’s all you’re scratching for, tomorrow you’re going to be hungry again, and you’re going to need more. But if you feed on the Bread God gives you, you’ll never be truly hungry again. (That’s the secret of “contentment in all circumstances” St. Paul talks about; “I can do all things through God who gives me strength.”)
Jesus tells them, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for Me, not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.” Like Little Red Hens we are, scratching out an existence, worrying only about keeping ourselves alive from day to day, when our lives ought to be so much more. That’s the curse God put on Adam, after he’d fallen into sin; from now on you’ll have to earn your living from the ground, and by the sweat of your brow. These people had had their everyday, scratching-for-a-living lives interrupted by a miracle, and they’d even taken part in one, when they’d eaten that “something out of nothing” bread. And they’d been blessed with not just that miracle, but many others that Jesus had done for them. “Jesus had compassion on them” and “Jesus healed them all.”
Jesus goes on to tell them, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On Him God the Father has placed His seal of approval." There is only one heaven-approved, God-authorized way to have eternal life – and that is to come and eat the Bread – the literal flesh - of Jesus Christ. Everything else the world or the devil may offer is fake bread, ersatz, sawdust, Wonder Bread, cotton batting. To be saved, there’s only Jesus and feeding on Him. (That narrows things down a bit, doesn’t it?)
Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" They’re still stuck on the “What must we do?” What do we have to do to please God, to satisfy Him, to make ourselves acceptable to Him? Lord, give me a list, give me some bullet points, give me some boxes to check, and I’ll check them off one by one… But Jesus’ list of “works that God requires” has only one thing on it – and it’s such a simple thing that it trips us up. Jesus calls it a stumbling block, a stumbling stone, “a Rock that makes men fall.”
Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent." The way to be saved isn’t to do more, but to do less. The only “work” God requires of us is to have faith in His Son. (And faith itself is a gift of God to be gratefully received, and not something we can come to on our own). “This is My Beloved Son,” the Father says; “listen to Him.” To “listen to Him” does mean to love Him, obey Him, and be obedient to His commands; but all the good we try to do has to follow after faith, and come from faith, and flow out of our love for Him, or it won’t be worth a thing. We do what we do because we love Him, not to somehow get Him to love us. His love for us is already full and whole and complete and as great as it can be; look at the cross and you’ll see that it’s so.
So they asked him, incredibly, "What miraculous sign then will You give that we may see it and believe You? What will You do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" What miraculous sign? Really? After being there to eat the multiplied loaves and the fishes, after seeing so many healed of every ailment or disease you could name, after every act of love and mercy they’d seen Him do right before their eyes, they’re still asking Jesus to prove Himself, to give them more proof for their faith? What they were really hoping for, I think, was to be fed again.
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true Bread from heaven. For the Bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." The children of Israel, who ate heaven’s holy bread for forty years in the desert, never seemed to understand or appreciate what the precious bread meant, or who it was pointing them to. They even told Moses at one point that they were sick of the stuff and wanted something else. The crowd in our Gospel, despite all they’d seen, didn’t seem to understand who it was who was talking to them, or what He was so heartbroken and desperate to give them. And I guess sometimes we don’t get it either.
When we come to the altar, what is it we’re receiving? Some say it’s just a symbolic thing, just a piece of earthly bread, and a rather poor one at that, to be eaten thankfully and then digested. But Jesus Himself says it’s so much more. “This Bread is My body,” He says, “given for you.” Today we’re receiving the real and genuine body of Jesus, the same body that was crucified, and certainly nothing less. Talk about standing on holy ground! We should be coming to God’s altar, as Luther once said, with shaking hands and trembling knees, to receive the gift of all gifts. And we should be floating on air when we go back to our seats, grinning from ear to ear, filled with impossible joy, that the Lord of the Universe should love us so much that He’d give us such an incredible gift. Then afterwards, perhaps, we can think about what we can do to somehow thank Him.
The crowd in our Gospel answers, “Lord, from now on give us this bread.” They may not have meant that exactly in the right way, or for the right reasons; but for us, what a wonderful prayer! Lord Jesus, from now on and forever, give us this Bread. We know You always give us the daily bread we need for our bodies; but Lord, draw us always to keep coming back for the food we need for our souls.
Then Jesus declared, "I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty.” Lord, we believe; help us to overcome our unbelief. The world around us constantly offers us “bread that is not bread,” fakes and frauds and sawdust that will never meet our needs or satisfy our souls. Feed us always, O Lord, with the Bread of Heaven that gives us life that is truly life, that we might, as St. Paul says, “live lives worthy of the calling we have received.” As we come to Your Table, forgive us, renew us, and fill us with faith and grace and light, that we may have power to share Your Bread of grace with the world around us. We pray for this in Jesus’ name; Amen.