For me, one of the most important things to come out of this week’s eclipse experience was the sense of wonder it invoked for many.  Some of the people I saw interviewed in the path of totality were at a loss for words, and quite rightly.  CBC reporter Heather Hiscox was in Niagara Falls and she was moved to tears – which perhaps spoke more eloquently about her own experience than any words could have.  The wonder of the cosmos.  All I could think was “The heavens declare the glory of God” as people looked in wonder.

We continue to pointedly celebrate the risen Christ through these weeks of Eastertide. May we look in wonder as we live in the light of the risen Christ.  Every day.  We are talking about matters of life and death.  In matters of life and death, we have a story to tell and to show.  In matters of life and death, we have a song to sing.   May we be moved to wonder and awe as we consider these words of Jesus, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (6:35)  We’ve already heard “when wine is not just wine” and “when water is not just water.”  Today it is “when bread is not just bread.”  These words come after the 4^th of Jesus’ 7 signs in the Gospel of John.  A large crowd is fed with 5 barley loaves and two fish.  What does this show us about God?  What does this show us about Jesus as bread, Jesus as life?

Sometimes our failures stick with us and this isn’t a bad thing necessarily.  We can learn from them and continue to learn from them.  A group of us from Blythwood were in a small town in the Chapare region of Bolivia 15 years ago.  We were at a church in their courtyard and there were kids everywhere.  We had brought some soccer balls and toys and markers and things like that along and the scene was chaotic.  Children from the village were lined up outside hoping to get in.  After a little while the kids settled down somewhat and our host and guide Ivan asked me if I would teach them a Bible lesson.  I was a little more unprepared than I should have been.  I should have expected such a request and such an opportunity to share with the kids.  I read the story of the boy with the loaves of fish and said some things about it.  My main point that I can remember anyway is that God will provide for you.

I should have done something better with this passage or any other passage.  I would have been better singing “The Fruit of the Spirit” with the kids and talking about the kinds of things God will do in our hearts.  Those kids knew what it was like to not have enough (more than I have ever known) and they weren’t best served by me moralizing this story.  But you learn and we’re not going to moralize this story here this morning.  We see throughout John’s Gospel that things point to other things.  Jesus is not talking about becoming a baby again when he speaks to Nicodemus.  Jesus is not just talking about water or thirst when he speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well.  When we talk about Jesus feeding 5,000 plus people we’re not just talking about food.  We’re not just talking about bread and fish.  We’re not just saying that Jesus will supply our material needs.  Sometimes material needs aren’t supplied after all.  What role do we have to play in trying to ensure that the needs of all are met?

We read the word of God in light of the dying and risen Jesus.  “But these are written so that you may come to believe (or continue to believe) that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (20:31) That you may come to believe for the first time or that your belief will be deepened.  We looked at the first of Jesus’ signs some weeks ago. Water into wine at a wedding in Cana.  The sign pointed to something else – to a new age of deliverance in Christ.  Something new happening which came out of something old.  When John tells us in v4 that it was near the time of Passover, we can start to think that we’re not just going to be talking about food.  We’re going to be talking about deliverance.  When we read that there was a great deal of grass in the place and the crowd sat down, we are going to think about the one about whom the Psalmist sang makes us to lie down in green pastures.  It’s not simply about the food.  It’s not even simply about the miracle.  It’s about to the One to whom the signs point.

The bread and the fish point to something else.  The talk of bread speaks to hunger.  This group of people in our story knew what it meant to not know where their next meal was coming from.  People who knew what it meant to live a hand-to-mouth existence.  It can be hard for us to know this unless we’ve known food insecurity.  Often we eat for fun or out of boredom (if you’re like me).  Material truths can point us toward spiritual truths.  We are all created to hunger. Bodily hunger can point us to spiritual hunger.  This is at least partly why fasting has been a practice of God’s people for thousands of years.  Hunger is part of the human condition.  “We all have a hunger” is how one song puts it.  “Everybody’s got a hungry heart” is how another song puts it. 

Bread is a good way to point to a deeper meaning because we’re all wired for hunger.  There’s something newborns experience which has been called “The Breast Crawl.”  It’s been described like this: “We are born hungry.  A newborn infant, seemingly helpless in every respect – eyesight undeveloped, gross and fine motor skills at a bare minimum, not even strong enough to hold her head up on her neck – will if left alone, follow a clear and discernible pattern of behaviour which results in that newborn finding her food source – mother’s breast – and initiating feeding.  The baby is literally hardwired in those first few moments of life to do nothing other than use all five senses, every spare ounce of strength, in order to seek food.  Before memory, before words or understanding, before acquiring any skills, before our neural pathways have begun to form rational thought, each of us is born hungry.”

Into this situation steps Jesus with the words, “I am the bread of life.”  We’re talking about more than bread here.  Now you may be saying this is easy for me to say as I’ve never known real hunger or food insecurity or a hand-to-mouth existence.  You may be saying “Aren’t you the one who’s always up there talking about how matter matters and to God the material is not immaterial.”  It’s true, we are not to forget Jesus’s words “I was hungry and you fed me” or his words “You yourselves give them something to eat.”  It’s still not just about food.  If we are feeding people on Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons and evenings, that is wonderful and something for which to be thankful.  If we are not introducing people to the Bread of Life and saying “Come and see him!” then we are missing something. 

Let us not miss this.  Let us not be like the crowd who followed Jesus because they ate their fill of the loaves.  People were filled by the way, because life in Christ is life abundant (and again I’m not talking about food but this abundance was pointing to something else).  Some were following Jesus because they were interested in what they could get out of it.  “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus tells them, “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” (6:26)  The classic case of “What’s in it for me?” May God save us from presenting the good news of Christ to people primarily in terms of what’s in it for them.  At the same time, people were following and wanting to put Christ in a pigeonhole of familiarity.  “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How can he now say ‘I have come down from heaven.’” (John 6:42)  Let us not be people who try to tame Christ by saying things like he was a well-meaning first-century rabbi who had some good things to say.  If we call him Lord, let us not try to make him in our own image.  Christ the loving socialist. Christ the clear-eyed capitalist.  Christ the nationalist.  Christ the chill dude on our dashboard.  Christ the fearsome avenger who’s going to make sure our enemies get theirs.  Let us remember that scene before his arrest when Jesus says “I am he” to that group of followers and soldiers later on in this story, that they all fall to the ground.  The untameable Christ.

What are we to do then?  Listen to Him.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For it is on him that the Father has set his seal.” (6:27)  The answer comes back from the crowd, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” (6:28)  Jesus answers, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (6:29)  Belief not simply as intellectual assent.  Belief as seeing, hearing, remembering, praising. Belief as devotion to, entrusting one’s life to.  Belief as our desire to abide in, live in, rest in, hunger for.  Hunger for the bread of God which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

We’re talking about real life.  In this is life.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  In this is love and light and life.  That thing for which we hunger.  That thing which we seek in all kinds of different places.  That thing which we are called here to make the foundational underpinning truth in our life.  I’m saying that thing but I should be saying that person.  That bread.  That bread of life. The one in whom we have a life now.  The one who promises to raise those who believe in him up on the last day.  “Give us this bread always,” says the crowd.  It’s good to know what you want.  They’re still talking about actual bread at this point but in the light of Easter, this request takes on a whole new meaning for us.  Let it be our prayer.  “Lord, give us this bread always.”  It’s good to know what we want.  This was Jesus’ question to people so often, wasn’t it?  What are you looking for?  Whom are you looking for?  What do you want me to do for you?  Give us this bread always, Lord.

Jesus continues to up the ante during this talk.  This bread that I’m talking about is my flesh.  He ups it some more.  “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53).

I don’t believe Jesus said this or that John recorded it so that we could have endless disagreements about transubstantiation.  We’re not just talking about food anymore.  We’re not just talking about the act of eating and drinking.  We’re still talking about a hunger though I think.  May God put that hunger for Christ in our hearts and may we respond to it fittingly and well.  There are many things going on here.  The deliverance which is ours through faith in Christ’s death and resurrection.  This deep abiding with Christ, this deep sharing of his life – compared elsewhere like to a branch that abides in a vine.  This resting, this staying, this being with Christ in indescribable intimacy.  This seeking of Christ and hungering for Christ in his body the Church.  We can’t ignore the references to gathering around the Lord’s Table here.  Matter does indeed matter and gathering around the table of the Lord often and meaningfully together matters.  How wonderful that we’ve had a chance to do this at church twice in the matter of just over a week!  Rowan Williams described the church gathering at a table this way in a sermon – “Here we are then… the people who have not found the nerve to walk away.  And that is perhaps the best definition we could have of the Church.  We are the people who have not had the nerve to walk away; who have not had the nerve to say in the face of Jesus, “All right, I’m healthy.  I’m not hungry.  I’ve finished.  I’ve done.”  We’re here as hungry people, we are here because we cannot heal and complete ourselves; we’re here to eat together at the table of the Lord, as he sits at dinner in this house, and is surrounded by these disreputable, unfinished, unhealthy, hungry, sinful, but at the end of the day almost honest people, gathered with him to find renewal, to be converted, and to change.”

May we count ourselves among that hungry honest number.