Glenview Community Church
August 2, 2009
Rev. Dr. Pam Keckler

Scripture: Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16 and John 6:24-35
Question of the Day:  What do you hunger for in life?

How many of you like to eat bread? I love to eat fresh, hot, bread with butter by my plate. I enjoy smelling the bread factories in the city and in the suburbs – one not far from here. When I was involved in 4-H as a young girl, I loved to make breads. Fancy yeast bread and cloverleaf rolls. I would prepare the yeast, the warm water, and the milk. I would watch my bread rise during the day as it gathered heat from our registers on the floor. The bread dough would continue to rise and then sometimes I was instructed to put my fist in the dough and it would decrease in size, starting all over again. But by evening, when my dad came home, the bread was baking in the oven and gave off the best smell anywhere.

Baking bread makes me calm. Bread making is the opposite of fast food. You cannot make bread in ten minutes and the slow work of kneading and shaping quiets our noisy and over-scheduled lives. Bread demands peace and patience. Making bread gives us meaning. It is a spiritual task. For it helps us trust that the world will survive, that we are loved, that the kitchen where we work is holy ground.

One author has said “Bread baking is one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world’s sweetest smells…there is no chiropractic treatment, no yoga exercise, no hour of meditation…that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.”  (M.F.K. Fisher The Art of Eating) Jesus called himself the bread of life and we remember him that way, as necessary as food.

Our scripture lesson in the gospel of John continues from last Sunday after the feeding of the 5,000. Those who had been with Jesus witness the huge meal with leftovers from the start of the little boy who shared his loaves and fishes. These same people cross the sea of Galilee to track down Jesus. Maybe they’re hungry again. Finding him, they ask, “Rabbi when did you come here?” They really want to ask if he will feed them again, for Jesus knows they are looking for food. They ate the bread and fish and now they want more.

Perhaps the question they ask is a deeper one than “When did you come here?”  Perhaps they really meant to ask, “Where did you come from?” “And where are you going next?”
I think they want more than food. “Give us today our daily bread” isn’t just about the next meal. It’s asking for everything we need for daily life. God, give us enough strength to get us through this day…while we continue looking for a job…while we take care of our father…while we suffer…Jesus offers food for life. He offers food for eternal life.
The crowd says “what do I have to do to earn this bread of life?” This really means, “What works do I have to do?” “What good things must I do?” Jesus says, “The work is this: believe in me.” Jesus calls us to put our absolute faith in him as the only true bread from heaven. All else is imitation.

When I lived in Ft. Wayne and worked there as a teacher, I passed a billboard downtown every day that advertised some kind of bread. It was sliced bread, probably Sunbeam bread, but I don’t recall for sure. What I do remember is an elderly gentleman always talking about “the best thing since sliced bread…” and I would want to know what exactly he meant. Was he talking about that sign where the bread kept falling down, and then went around again on its cycle? Was he talking about Wonder bread? Sliced Wonder bread? The kind that was fortified, enriched, soft and smooth. I did learn that white bread was very popular, even though it was not very nutritious. When the company tried to make it healthier, people wouldn’t buy it. They even had to take most of the nutrients out of it, because that’s what people wanted. White, sliced bread, melts in your mouth. Now we have whole grains to choose down that grocery aisle. But I wonder…”Is Jesus offering hearty whole grains to a Wonder Bread world? Does the crowd really know what it is they seek? And when they find it, do they want to hear the answer?”
(William Willimon  Sunday Dinner)

Jesus challenges the crowd here, saying that they seek him because their bellies are full. They respond by seeking another sign, which would lead them to believe. That sign they identify is that of manna. Manna in the exodus story was the sign of God’s presence that created and sustained the people of Israel when they were in the wilderness. As God gave the manna then, so God now provides the Bread of life. And that’s what speaks to those who hunger for relationship with God and one another. (Seasons of the Spirit)

Are we really any different? I think there are a couple of ways to look at this Bread of Life. Jesus is bread – that which is simple, basic, and necessary. But we have to determine how we will fit Jesus into our lives. There are many choices, even as to who and how we believe. How will we decide? One way is to ask yourself: Is it real and authentic or is it an imitation?

Another question is: Does this bread of life fill you up for a short period or does is sustain you over time? In other words, are you pumped up and filled with joy, but then it’s over? Or are you filled with joy because Christ is present in all circumstances, no matter what? Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. I am enough.”

Once we know the sustaining love of God, we can share our bread. Frederick Buechner said this: “Man does not live by bread alone, but he also does not live long without it. To eat is to acknowledge our dependence – both on food and on each other. It also reminds us of other kinds of emptiness that not even the Blue Plate special can touch.”
  (Wishful Thinking “bread”)

We are essential to one another. We need each other. God’s love teaches us how to love, how to respect, how to be at peace. Our Ephesians passage today tells us that God provides what is needed for life and community. God has given us gifts and one another to make up the church. It is up to us to receive that love and to share it freely. (Seasons of the Spirit)

I close with a story by writer Jana Norman, who tells of her visit to a village in Chile in which the community oven goes cold when the village runs out of firewood.
An actual mine, probably of coal, had been operating under the surface for a few generations. It was the single source of income for the people of the ramshackle village nearby. The author, a seminary student at the time, said, “A person whose entire livelihood was based on that mine who was now facing, along with everyone else in his community, a future that held no prospects at all.” She said, “It was hard for me to understand this. We were coming from a world where if something big changes, you simply go to Plan B. But in this village, there was no Plan B. No way to leave the village, no government plan for relocation, no natural resource nearby that they could easily tap into for a new source of income, no way of connecting with other communities to generate enterprise. No capacity for a new start at all.”

In the center of this community was a communal oven “where the women would gather once a week to bake all the bread for the village. It stood cold and unused. There was no longer anything to burn in order to bake the bread – the inhabitants had picked the landscape bare of natural wood and had burned everything else they could put their hands on. No one could afford to buy firewood from somewhere else. So there was no longer any bread.”

Don’t you wonder what else was lost when the community oven went cold?
What about the everyday connections between the women who came to bake and talk?
What about the loss of bread that would have fed them and all the families?
The author says, “I tried to imagine the depth and variety of the hungers that were already gnawing away at this fragile community.”   (Story from Seasons of the Spirit)

All of this from an empty oven.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  

May you hunger no more.
May you never be thirsty.

Amen.