Sunday 11 August, 1024

Reflection:  "The Bread of Life"

Psalm 130

2 Samuel 18:5-9,15,31-33

John 6:51-58

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

As we read a few weeks ago, it must have been an amazing sight, thousands of people gathered, listening to Jesus, learning from him, and then, hungry.
When the disciples were asked to "care for those gathered", all they could come up with was 5 loaves and 2 fish.
But Jesus took this food, gave thanks to God, blessed it, and fed those who were gathered there.
Even more amazing was that when they ate their fill, there were leftovers, and they wanted to make Jesus their king.

​But as it often happens in the Gospel of John, not everything is what it seems.
What were these people “really” hungry for and what were they really looking for?
It turns out that Jesus, “the word made flesh", is more than just a great teacher, or just the son of Mary & Joseph.
He is the one who shows us God the Father, the one who connects us and makes us participants in the divine life.

It’s easy for us to confuse the thing with the person, the symptom with the problem, or the want with the need.
Those who were fed on the hillside that day, came looking for more than just food, and Jesus presented them with the reality of his identity, as well as the opportunity for a different life, if they choose to participate in it.

Those of us who claim Jesus Christ as our Lord, find ourselves being fed by Christ's own presence, and it’s in the feeding that we are participants in the divine life – of God reaching out to us, providing a way for grace, opening the doors for the holy to live among us - again and again and again.

Imagine the rich earth that produced fruit, as described in those early chapters of Genesis.
The taste, smell, and sight remind us - tell us - about who God is, teaching us something about Abba, our Father and it’s been like this from the beginning.
Hear the stories of people gathering around that food and the promise of a land full of milk and honey.
You can't get much closer to something than when you eat it.

In our eating and our drinking, we also participate in this long story of a God who feeds, and a people who serve.
Of a God who gives of himself, and a people who follow in the way.
Those of us who eat this holy bread, do so at our own peril: for we can’t just eat this bread and then forget.
In fact, when we eat and when we drink during the sacrament of communion, the central reason for our gathering together, we’re saying that God's will for all of us, and all the world, is to be restored, saved, healed, made whole!

No simple "devotional" practices, or pious "memorials" of some far, distant, reality.      

NO WAY!!

Instead, we come to the "bread of life",  over and over again, with the promise that God WILL come, that the spirit we’re calling, WILL actually show up, that the claim we make WILL be made present, that you and I WILL find ourselves part of a new reality, transformed into God's own people.

Maybe if churches spent more time and attention in becoming a "feeding people", if they put their attention into becoming a community of the "bread of life", if they took more seriously the reality of God's own presence in the meal, then they might spend less time and attention on the things that divide and separate them, that exclude others, that close their doors, and that questions God's image for others.

Eating assumes that people are hungry, that they’re in need of sustenance.
Part of the challenge of the Christian life is the recognition of our dependence and our interdependence.
Because in eating the bread of life, we’re recognizing our own dependence on God, no longer relying on signs and wonders. 
Instead, we’re recognizing our own need.
We recognize that, in this eating, in this drinking and in this gathering, we’re able to experience God's self.
We have a need of sustenance, a need of something more - and we need to truly see God.

Because that same God has called us to care for one another, having left his glory, in order to reach us.
We, too, can leave the comforts of our lives and leave our pews - those comfortable places of worship.
We, too, can walk out of the doors of our church services, ready to align ourselves with the life that is life eternal.

So, do we gather in churches like those who on that day came looking for another sign, but missed it entirely?
Do we gather around the Lord's Table looking for the "magic", for that spiritual "fix", ignoring the life transforming power of Jesus' own presence in the bread and the cup?
Or do we think of it as something personal and forget to share it with those around us?

Part of the challenge is for us to recognise that there are many around us that go each day, every day, without the sustenance they need, while we gather for feasting day after day, week after week, month after month.
There are many who don’t have such sustenance.As we go about our internal Christian posturing and ideologies, there are many who go without.

As we discuss who has worked enough, who has had enough initiative, as we argue with one another about what it takes to be "successful," as we battle with church congregations across Australia, wanting to draw the line as to who's in and who is out - we miss the point, we miss the invitation.
We, like those who came back on that day thousands of years ago, are still unsure of whom it is that we have encountered in this Jesus of Nazareth.

"I am the living bread!" says Jesus.
Open your eyes!       
See the light!

Maybe now we can recognize that we, too - you and I - have been the beneficiaries of an amazing life.
We’ve found our sustenance, and instead of using it to propel us into the neediness and hunger of the world;
instead of finding that sustenance and having it energize us into speaking on behalf of those that have no voice; instead of having that sustenance call us to task again and again into the ways that our own life is part of the problem, we’ve continued eating our fill, as if we've earned it, ignoring the plight of those who need this sustenance the most.

Our community, called the church, is at its core a community of people who hunger.
A community of people called together around the table, whose own identity is rooted in what it means to be sustained by the presence of Christ's self, each and every time we gather together.

From the very beginning of the story of faith, God has been giving himself to us and inviting us to take this sustenance and use it as a source of being the light of the world on behalf of God's kingdom.
So, part of our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving is our recognition, that when we leave our gatherings of prayer and praise, we’re to walk out of the doors and work tirelessly for the sustenance and feeding of a hungry, hungry world.

May our congregations, may our gatherings, may our conversations, become the centre - the active centre - of creating this future, of creating a reality – which is the time when Jesus comes again.
May we, together, begin to make a way to the Father, in our eating.
May we become a people that begin to extend life eternal, a people who live out the meaning of sharing in the life of Jesus to a hungry world.

There are many who are looking, many who are hungry; there are many who are searching.
May we become the body that feeds them.
May we become the body that proclaims the identity of the bread of life to this broken and hungry world.

Then, as we participate together in the sacrament of communion, we’ll be sharing in the life of Jesus in the world.
As we mediate whilst being served, we can pray for those in need, who haven’t yet come to know the love of God.

Let us pray that as we’re refreshed in the spirit, we’ll find someone who is in need of refreshing and encourage them to join us in God’s kingdom.

Blessings
​Pastor Rick