Wonder Bread

Kerry Greenhill
Highlands UMC
August 2, 2009

John 6:24-35

I’ve always liked the name Wonder Bread.
I think it’s kind of genius.
I’m not endorsing the product, mind you –
just the name.
Bread is normally so ordinary,
such a humdrum part of our daily lives—
something to keep your hands clean while eating sandwiches—
that to suggest there’s something amazing about it,
something wonderful or wonder-working,
gives my spirit a little jolt.

In Jesus’ day, especially
bread was utterly ordinary –
mostly flat cakes baked on flat stones or in pans –
and essential for survival.
It was made from scratch by family members,
very possibly by people who had picked the wheat
and ground the grain themselves.
No plastic packaging,
nothing pre-sliced or nutritionally fortified.
Nothing fancy.
But very real. Solid. Familiar.
Not much to wonder about.

Today, of course,
with the convenience of supermarkets
and fast-food sandwich shops,
it’s easy to take food for granted
(like so many other things)
without thinking about where it comes from
or how it was made.
I know I am guilty of it;
I can count on the fingers of one hand
the number of times in my life
I’ve baked a loaf of real yeast bread.

Bread is the stuff of life
whether it takes the form of sliced bread or whole loaf,
tortillas or pita,
naan or injera.
Bread is still familiar. Solid. Predictable.

Except…
there was this one time
when I was in college
and our campus ministry, the Wesley Foundation,
held a worship service in a chemistry lecture hall.
Our altar was a covered lab table.
We celebrated Communion,
as was our custom,
and David – the campus minister –
had bought a loaf of bread from the grocery store,
one that looked pretty ordinary
on the outside.

It was covered during the sermon,
and it wasn’t until David took the bread,
blessed it,
and broke it open for all to see
that the jaw of every person in the lecture hall
dropped in astonishment
and wonder.
You see,
David had chosen this particular loaf
because it was labeled,
“Rainbow Bread.”
And as David continued through
the words of blessing and remembrance
we couldn’t stop gaping
at the rings of deep purple, bright orange
dark blue and vivid green
still showing in the broken loaf.

Now, as far as I can remember
it tasted pretty much like ordinary bread.
But after the service, as we stood around talking
one by one we started to exclaim –
“Hey, did you know
that your tongue is blue?”
“Look! Your lips are green!”
“David, what is in this bread?!”
And in that service,
we all wondered
at how the ordinary
had become extraordinary
and the Holy
had broken through our expectations
of a meaningful but routine ritual
to reveal something amazing and beautiful
right before our eyes.

Jesus was kind of like that, I think.
He seemed to delight
in subverting people’s expectations
neatly sidestepping their questions,
leading them by a roundabout path
to a place of new understanding.
He was constantly stretching people’s boundaries
pushing them out of their comfort zone
asking them to believe the incomprehensible
to trust the intangible
and to follow him on an impossible path.

Today’s passage in the Gospel of John
comes just after Jesus feeds the five thousand.
Afterwards, Jesus had gone up the mountain
for some quiet time,
and the disciples had set off across the Sea of Galilee
in a boat at evening.
The crowds didn’t see Jesus
walking to the disciples across the water,
but in the morning they realize
that only one boat set out from the shore,
and that Jesus wasn’t on it at the time,
but he doesn’t seem to be coming back down the hill
to teach or feed them again.
So the crowds head across the Sea after the disciples
and discover Jesus there with them.
You can imagine their double-takes.

As if his mere presence wasn’t enough
to make them wonder,
what he then says to them
definitely falls under the category of
“things that make you go Hmm.”

Instead of answering the question they ask,
Jesus questions their motives:
“Look,”
he says,
“I know you’re more driven
by your physical hunger
than by spiritual concerns.
But there’s something more,”
says Jesus,
“something beyond this life,
and through the Human One,
the one known as the Son of Man,
God is sending you food
for the spirit.”

Kind of a strange response to give to the question,
“So when did you get here?”

In trying to make sense of it,
the people draw on their religious tradition.
The last time someone important
said that God was sending food,
was when the children of Israel, led by Moses,
were wandering in the wilderness
after escaping from Egypt
and God sent them manna
to sustain them.

The manna was both
an answer to their physical need
and a sign
that Moses was God’s messenger.

In a time of rumbling stomachs
and uncertainty about the future,
God had come through for them,
and God’s people were reassured
that they were still in God’s hands.

The people following Jesus
are hungry too.
I don’t know about you,
but I spent enough years as a starving student
never to pass up a free meal when it’s offered.
I can hardly blame the crowds
for hoping there might just be one more
miraculous feeding.

Instead
Jesus tells them
of a bread that does not perish
as did the manna in the desert,
but bread that endures,
the bread of God
that comes from heaven
and gives life to the world.
He speaks to them of the difference
between physical hunger
and spiritual hunger,
between the bread that fills the body
and that which fulfills the soul.

I think we know a little something today
about confusing the two.
The prevalence of eating disorders,
substance abuse and other addictions,
even the increase in obesity, diabetes,
and high cholesterol
speak to our search,
individually and as a culture,
to fill the spiritual emptiness
we all face
at some point in our lives.
Hey, no judgment here;
I’ve been known to drown my sorrows
in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, too.
The temptations we face today
in a modern and affluent culture
are quite different from those
faced by the crowds following Jesus in his lifetime
or even by folks in less developed nations today.
Bread is necessary for survival—
especially among those who are poor and hungry,
never quite secure in knowing
whether they have bread enough to last the week—
and so Jesus taught his disciples
that it was okay to pray for it daily.

And I think it’s important to note
that Jesus did actually make sure
that the people’s bellies were full
before he tried to talk to them
about spiritual matters.
It’s not that our bodies don’t matter,
or even that they’re separate from our souls.
The incarnation is all about
the spiritual becoming known through the material,
the Holy taking on flesh
and moving into the neighborhood.

But as Jesus is recorded as saying in another gospel,
the body is more than food,
the whole person is physical *and* spiritual
(and emotional and intellectual)
and so people cannot live by bread alone.

As Simone Weil,
20th-century Christian mystic, activist, and philosopher,
“The danger is not lest the soul should doubt
whether there is any bread,
but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself
that it is not hungry.”

Seeing spiritual hunger for what it is,
naming it and realizing it cannot be satisfied
by filling the belly
or dulling the senses
is the first step toward finding a path
of genuine spiritual engagement.
But you have to know you’re hungry first.

And the crowd doesn’t really seem to get that.
They’re still focused on the prospect
of not being physically hungry ever again.
Which is why they’re probably even more confused
when Jesus tells them,
“I am the bread of life.”

What a weird and wonderful thing to say.
Have you thought about that?
What it means to think of Jesus
as the bread of life?
To feed on him in our hearts.
To take him physically or spiritually into ourselves.
To draw nourishment from him,
knowing that it is life-giving
in a way that endures.
A little bit later in the chapter,
when Jesus talks about how his followers
will have eternal life if they eat his flesh
and drink his blood,
the disciples say, “This teaching is difficult.”
Which may be the understatement of the year.
On the other hand,
a lot of Jesus’ teachings were difficult.
He didn’t dumb things down,
or “keep it simple, stupid.”
He spoke in metaphor and parable,
image and story,
sometimes seemingly incomprehensible,
leaving room for his audience
to come to their own conclusions.
He taught in rich layers of meaning
in a way that reminds me of a hearty, whole-grain bread.
Sometimes you have to chew on it a while,
break down the tough or fibrous husks
to get to the nourishing kernel inside.

If Jesus is the bread of life,
how does he fit into your food pyramid?
Is he a quick sugar-fix snack when your energy is low?
Dessert that you only indulge in occasionally?
The vegetables your mother always made you eat
even though you thought they were disgusting?
Is Jesus your secret addiction
or your comfort food?
Your guilt-laden diet regime
or your healthy, daily lifestyle?

Because this image reminds me of the phrase
learned years ago in school,
“You are what you eat.”
What we take into our bodies
becomes part of us,
determining whether we are healthy or not,
whether we have strength to go about our daily lives
or are weak and cranky from hunger.
The same is true for our spiritual diet.
Without the sustenance God offers,
we are at risk of starving to death.

“I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me
will never be hungry,
and whoever believes in me
will never be thirsty.”

The bread of God
is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.
Life abundant, surprising,
colorful and unexpected.
A real kind of Wonder Bread.
No wonder that the people said to Jesus,
“Give us this bread always.”

Amen.