Tell Out My Soul

John 6:35,41-51

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” Bread is such an important symbol in our reading from John today. Bread is a staple food. But in the modern industrialised world it’s easy to take our food for granted. Food is so available, modern society has worked out how to produce and supply it in abundance. If we need bread, all we have to do is just pop down to the corner store and buy a loaf. But in Biblical times, especially in the Middle East, people were very dependent on agriculture to survive and if there was drought, no one ate, not the poor, not the rich. The bread just wasn’t there. Without their staple food, they perished.

Famine was a very real threat to people in ancient times and so much of their effort went into making sure that they had enough to eat. Life revolved around food and we see that in so many parables and teachings of Jesus in which he talks about food and agriculture. One of his greatest miracles involved food. Sunday before last we heard about Jesus feeding the multitude with five barley loaves and three fish.

Bread was often a luxury food in many cultures, and even in the middle east during the time of Jesus, ordinary Israelites would not have consumed bread every day. My father came from a rural town in Italy, much like our town is now, and their staple food was polenta, a kind of thick yellow porridge made of corn meal. Bread was too expensive so they didn’t eat it daily. Polenta was regarded at the time as peasant food. They ate polenta every day, so when my dad, who was still a boy, found employment as an apprentice in a bakery, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He had all the bread he could eat. As I was growing up, mum would occasionally serve polenta, and dad would often complain that he’d eaten enough polenta during his childhood to last a lifetime. Over the last ten to fifteen years, regional foods have become trendy. If he was alive today he would find it quite funny to see polenta being served in fancy restaurants. Dad would have laughed at the notion of people paying so much for the kind of food that poor people used to eat back home.

When we listen to Jesus’ bread of life speech, it’s important to keep in mind the context of this talk, and what had happened immediately before. Now what had happened was that Jesus fed the five thousand with the loaves and fish. And what we need to keep in mind is that he was forced to escape the scene because people in the crowd were hassling him to be king. It says that they were trying to take him “by force.”

In Biblical times food and particularly grain was more than just what people ate. Because it was so fundamentally important to life in a precarious world, it became a status symbol. To impress people, and to demonstrate their own importance, people would host huge and elaborate banquets. It was a sign of social prestige, but it was also a symbol of power, especially political power. Grain was stored up and was an important commodity that was traded.

Temples and palaces had granaries in which large quantities of grain were stored. We can think of the story of Joseph. He predicted the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of drought and so the Egyptians were able to stockpile huge amounts of grain. When the drought came, the Egyptians were in a massive position of power, people came to Egypt from all over the place seeking food. And the Egyptians would not have been giving their grain away for free.

So here we see that this teaching that Jesus gives has two levels of meaning. Bread is looked at as simply food for the body, but it’s also a political symbol that refers to earthly power and wealth. The people that came after Jesus to make him their leader did so because they thought that Jesus had social and political power. He was able to feed thousands of people in one sitting and this is what impressed them, not the fact that this miracle was a sign. They were not seeing the signs and miracles as indications of Jesus’ divinity. So immediately after the miracle of the feeding of the multitude, Jesus stresses that while bread is important for sustaining the body, spiritual food is even more essential. He tells them straight out, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’

He takes their minds away from the earthly food that they’ve just consumed and freely given, to heavenly food that is also freely given. There will always be hunger and thirst because one has to keep constantly eating and drinking to stave them off. Physical food is limited. But the food that Jesus offers never runs out, once you have it, it’s yours forever, and you’re never going to feel those feelings of hunger or thirst anymore.

A few weeks ago we had a visitor who came along to join us in worship and we started talking about the weather, as people do. It was very cold that morning and we considered that it might keep some people from coming out of their homes to go to church. But this notion was quickly discounted, because God himself draws us to Church, Jesus calls us out of our homes, to be with him in his holy place and to be with each other, in love and worship, no matter the weather. We also talked about Christians being a social minority and we wondered, “how do people live without God in their lives?” It was difficult to imagine and it was painful to think about. Life without God is a spiritual wasteland, one in which a person cannot be truly fulfilled, forever on the search for what will satisfy. Without God people are like lost sheep, anxious, worried, hungry and thirsty.

Our Lord said, whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. There are two distinct elements to this teaching. Whoever comes to me and whoever believes in me. Firstly, we have to come to Jesus. He tells us that the Father draws us to him, but we have to come along, we have to recognise and respond to this calling. God’s love is like a magnet but many people resist this force of attraction, they hang on to the things of the world as though worldly things and worldly accomplishments are all that there is to life. But these things are not enough. They keep wanting more and more, because their souls remain unsatisfied. These people will always have the feeling that something is missing but they don’t know what it is. They’re living with a constant hole inside them that they don’t know how to fill. Let us all pray for those people who are being drawn to God but who resist, or who are so trapped in worldly pursuits that they cannot see God’s hands reaching out to them. Let’s hope that all people will be able to end their searching and find the peace and love that can only be found in God.

Secondly, Jesus asks us to believe in him:
This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.
The word believe is pressed home, John is big on belief. He wrote his gospel not as a set of instructions on how to live a good life, not a manual of conduct or a biography of Jesus, it was a record of signs to show us that Jesus was who he said he was, so that we would believe. And to believe so strongly, and without any doubt, so that we would be saved.

Finally, Jesus tells us that the bread of life is his flesh. This is the great promise, through our saviour’s death and resurrection we are redeemed and able to have life eternal in Christ. The barriers to belief are strong. Jesus was a holy man, a great prophet, an extraordinary preacher. This is what a lot of historical texts tell us, that he was a great spiritual leader, and that a world religion was created around him. And that’s what we’re told and that’s what is taught. If you look up any of these historical texts, none of them will say that Jesus came down from heaven, that he was the son of God, and that through him we have eternal life. You won’t find that written in a history book. But John, through the power of the Holy Spirit, wrote it all down for us, praise God.

John testifies that Jesus explained that he was the bread of life, that Jesus fed the five thousand and that he walked across the lake to his disciples in the boat. And all this was according to God’s will. God wants this for us. Jesus said, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” A mere mortal could not say this. It’s a claim that would have been incomprehensible to people, and for many it still is. How can anyone presume to know what the will of God is, unless this person is one with God. The people he knew were struggling with it. They were wondering, how can he have come down from heaven, he’s Mary and Joseph’s son, just an ordinary man, who we know and grew up with? Suddenly he’s saying that he’s come down from heaven.
On the topic of faith, the author and theologian, C S Lewis, said, I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Jesus doesn’t want us to climb mountains or leap tall buildings, he just wants us to believe in him, that he is the bread of life, himself, his body and blood. Who but the son of God himself could truly tell us such things? Jesus said, it is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” God himself draws us to him and he has put his word in our hearts and because of this we believe and because of this we’re nourished with the food of the spirit that is the body and blood of our Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ.
Amen