Sermon for October 1, 2006

I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey c. Martz

World Communion Sunday

Scripture:  John 6:25-35 – Good New Bible

Judy and I just returned this week from ten days in Italy in our inspection trip for the congregational trip next April. We found inspiration and nurture in the art we saw and in the churches we were in including some of the earliest church buildings ever built under the guidance of the emperor Constantine. And we loved the food.

One of the books we read before we traveled is a field guide to the Italian mind. Here is what the author, an Italian, says about what food means in Italy:

“No one else in Europe eats the way Italians do. We experience a multitude of emotions when we prepare to sit at a restaurant table. For centuries Italians have sought and usually found consolation at the table.”

I found lots of things at the table. I particularly enjoyed the pizza and the pasta and in fact, experienced one of the best pasta dishes I have ever had in my whole life.

But we also were nourished in spirit by the incredible art and being able in such places as the Roman catacombs and the Colosseum, to touch and feel Christian history. Just being in the presence of some of the greatest art on planet earth was food for our souls. We were awe struck by the two sculptures of the Biblical figure David – one by Bernini, the father of Baroque art, the other of course by Michelangelo. And the Pieta and the Sistine Chapel figures by Michelangelo caused us to just stand there and be quiet for a long while and just be fed by what we saw.

My appreciation for the Michelangelo art was doubled because in one of the museum bookshops I had picked up the 700 page biography of that artist and was reading some about him every day as we also were in the presence of his magnificent art. Michelangelo found that same nourishment in his act of sculpting his figures and would very often start early in the morning and work for twelve or fourteen hours without even stopping for a meal. Did you know, incidentally, that Michelangelo was five feet four and weighed a little over 100 pounds?

He knew the truth of what we have read in our call to worship today from prophet Isaiah and from the gospel of John – that there are other things besides food that can feed us and nourish our heart and our soul. The story from John’s gospel immediately follows John’s account of the feeding of the multitudes. In John’s story it is the disciple Andrew who brings a little boy to Jesus with some fish and some bread – “the boy who shared his lunch”. And because of the boy’s generosity, which probably inspired some similar sharing from others in the crowd, thousands of people ate and were satisfied.

That story with some variations, shows up in all four of the gospels – one of the few stories that all four include. It must have been extremely important for the original Christians to have told it so many times – six times in four gospels!!

John’s version gives us the spiritual meanings and overtones:

Christ says that he is the real bread, the bread from heaven, the bread of life and that when we feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving, He will sustain us when physical food, even comfort food fails to satisfy our need. 

Food is such an emotional thing to talk about. We do, each of us have our own versions of comfort food. In a country where 65% of us are overweight and 35% of us are not just overweight but dangerously obese, food is a very emotional topic. Food means so many different things. We use food to communicate love. We use it as a substitute for love. In the Greek culture I grew up in you would never invite a guest into your home without offering some small treat and some drink. For my mother, not to love or approve of what she put before you on the table was to reject her and fail to love her. 

And food, fellowship meals were important for the original Christians. Remember the four things that the book of Acts tells us that people did when they joined the Jesus movement, the same four things we still do today: they studied with the leaders, they had fellowship, they prayed and worshiped together, and they ate together – they had potlucks. 

Isaiah and Jesus take us beyond the literal plate of food to show that we try to find food for our souls in bad places. Why do you work for food that will not satisfy, Isaiah asks us? And Jesus does the same thing: why do you work for sustenance that will spoil when what I have to offer you is the sustenance and nourishment that will feed you forever? I am the bread of life, he tells us. 

People still try to fill their heart hungers, their soul appetites, with things that disappoint us. We try to find soul food in what we buy, what we wear, even what we drive. The new ad for Hummer even tells us that if a guy eats the wrong kind of food, he is not really a man, and what will solve that spirit problem is to buy a Hummer and prove your manhood. I love that ad but not for the reasons they want me to!!

Where do you find food for your spirit? Where is soul food for you? In having, in buying, in accumulating, in shopping? Are you doing what Isaiah and Jesus warn us against – using shallow experiences to nurture your heart, things that do not finally matter?

In some of the interviews that we are doing for our visioning weekend, I am encouraged to hear folks in our church saying that they are being fed and changed by the study and learning experiences here, by worship, by music, by the chance to serve.

St Andrew folks are doing what has worked for centuries—reading, learning, praying together and are finding food for the heart and soul.

We have to do that regularly for it to work—not just once in a while. When the Israelites were in the desert after leaving Egypt, God fed them. What did they eat? Manna. The Hebrew word manna means, “what is it”??  How much could they collect each day? Only enough for that day. They had to look to God and trust God for food each day. They could not hoard it or save it and coast for a while.

Jesus tells us the same thing in the prayer he gave us: Give us this day our daily bread. Help us to look to you each day, dear God, for sustenance and food for our soul. That is why it is important to pray regularly, to worship regularly and faithfully with other pilgrims or we will forget and be seduced by the Hummer ads and other seductions and try to fill our lives with stuff that will fail us. Junk food that is really junk. We cannot fill heart hungers with junk food.

We remember that Jesus is the bread of life not only on communion Sunday but on every Sunday. Every Sunday we come to worship around a cross and a table. The table has always been important for people of faith. It tells us that God wants to feed us and that we are a family here.

Diane Butler Bass in her new book which we are studying before she comes to be with us in November tells about this invitation in a church she visited:

This is the table, not of the church, but of the Lord.

It is made ready for those who love him and for those who want to love him more.

So come you who have much faith and you who have little.

You who have been here often and you who have not been here long.

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed.

Come, because it is the Lord who invites you.

It is his will that those who want him should meet him here.

In her new book “Leaving Church” Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor tells of the little boy from her congregation who was in the family car as his mother was taking an out of town relative around the town. As he passed by the church he pointed it out to the relative and said excitedly, “That is the place where God gives us the bread.”

Yes. How true. Here is the place, the only place where God gives us the real bread; the Bread of Life. Thanks be to God!

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