John 6:35-40
“I AM the Bread of Life”
February 21, 2021
Most of them scattered the minute I drove my car up the driveway.
Nearby on the side of the driveway, within easy viewing of the big picture window, were the abundant feeders with birds of all types and plenty of squirrels feasting on bird seed but it was the crows determinedly going after the bread that Chet & Dottie regularly scattered near the garage that seemed to be the huge draw for those big birds.
The day-old bread is broken up into chunks bigger than a child’s hand and the crows can’t get enough of this treat.
Every so often you can catch one flying off with multiple pieces in their beak, anxious to make sure they get seconds and thirds from this all you can eat buffet, especially appreciated when the trees are bare and the ground and its treasures are covered over with snow and ice.
We have entered the season of Lent at a time when it feels in some ways like we are still in the Lent of 2020 with its serious consideration of our place in the world. We’re waiting for the joy that will arrive with the Resurrection and with a life filled with hugs and gatherings and the opportunity to share a church supper, or a coffee hour after Worship, or a Communion Sunday with bread dipped in a shared cup.
Every creature alive relies on food to survive – it may look and feel different depending on culture and tradition and access but bread in some shape or form cuts across language and religion and nationality.
I recently read about Betty Peck, a beloved Kindergarten teacher in Saratoga, California who used the magic of bread to teach her young students for decades. Every week they would make what she called Kindergarten Bread together. They would plant wheat each year, harvest it, grind up a little bit to add to the weekly bread. They would learn why you must knead the bread and wait for it to rise and then bake it. They sang songs together for each step of the process. Each week they focused on a different letter of the alphabet and that would be the shape they each made with their ball of dough before it went in the oven. Betty’s goal with her young learners was to show how everything in life was interconnected.
Jesus obviously was just as passionate about bread because it shows up in so many of the stories of his ministry.
When he compares himself to bread, he seems always to be speaking about it both in the spiritual and very, real and bodily sense.
Five loaves along with a couple of fish became a symbol of all that God provides as well as a way to fill the stomachs of the five thousand shortly before his proclamation here, carrying on with a similar miracle found with Elisha in 2 Kings.
This is manna in the wilderness – a way to feed both body and soul.
Five times in this same chapter Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life which brings together all the themes of bread.
A different bread story is the one when Jesus was tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread and he resisted.
What Jesus does not ever do is just turn stones into bread.
He doesn’t make food appear where there is none.
When he’s brought the 2 fish and 5 loaves by his disciples, he multiplies them using what they have brought him.
Jesus does not do the superhero routine and just make a never-ending supply of bread so that he can solve the world’s need.
No, Jesus is counting on his followers to remember that the way God answers the prayers for daily bread is to work through other people.
We are not just to be fed by Jesus, but we are to be feeders also.
Jesus treats those first disciples as his partners in his ministry of feeding.
Feeding each other, in Jesus’ name, is how we carry on the work he began.
We do it with our support of the Arlington Food Shelf.
It happens each year with the Summer Lunch Program.
We see it when we offer community suppers – hopefully again in the not-too-distant future.
The use of our space for Senior Meals is another way we offer to help in the process of feeding others.
Every week for the next 4 months we offer to tie the needs of those who grow and produce food in Vermont with local restaurant owners and their employees, all of whom must eat during this pandemic, through the Everyone Eats program, providing 75 of the 1000 meals being offered here in Bennington County, from the church office.
We feed each other through the Sacrament of Communion shared every month – a taste of the bread and a sip of the fruit of the vine that reminds us that Jesus is our Bread of Life and we in turn are to then go out and provide such sustenance for everyone we can.
We are missing sharing table fellowship which last happened here on March 8, 2020 but I invite you to hold onto this image that Barbara Brown Taylor offers that speaks deeply of the powerful image for any of us who have been hungry in body or in spirit – and that would be all of us:
“When you break bread, the bread opens up.
When the bread opens us, so does the table.
When the table opens up, so do your hands – reaching out for some of what you have to hand it to someone else-
Only to discover that you have more instead of less.”
(Always a Guest, p. 161)
Let us take Jesus’ assurance that he is indeed the Bread of Life and share it abundantly.
The world is hungry.
As his disciples, may we continue to be in the business of feeding both bodies and souls, including our own.
Amen.