Readings:
Sermon:
In this morning’s reading from John’s Gospel Jesus makes one of seven rather cryptic statements about who he is. Each uses a different word picture: Jesus is the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Good Shepherd, the True Vine. In each of these, Jesus uses something physical and everyday to communicate a deep spiritual truth about the difference he can make to our lives. The test that John sets for us as readers is whether we can see past the physical image and see the spiritual reality behind it.
In today’s reading the crowd fail this test. They follow Jesus to Capernaum because he has just performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, physically feeding them, so to be fair bread is rather on the agenda. Jesus challenges their motives: “you aren’t interested in the miraculous sign and what it says about who I am”, he says, “you just want more bread. Don’t be so fixated on the concrete and everyday that you lose sight of what really matters. What matters is trusting in the one God sent (which is me, by the way).”
“OK,” say the crowd, “what miracle are you going to do to prove it then? More bread?” This seems to ignore the miracle that Jesus has just done with bread, but John’s crowds are never notable for their intelligence.
“The sign is standing in front of you,” says Jesus. “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” He then goes on to explain that unlike physical bread which gives physical life, the life he gives is eternal and leads us through death and into resurrection.
How often in life do we fixate on the physical and immediate, and lose sight of what is of real value? In Sam Mendes’ film American Beauty Kevin Spacey plays a man undergoing a midlife crisis. His marriage (to Annette Benning) has lost its spark and she is having an affair. In one scene he attempts to rekindle the sparks of their relationship and it seems to be working until a coffee cup spills on the sofa. Immediately Annette Benning is distracted and starts trying to clean it up, and the romantic mood dissipates. Frustrated, Kevin Spacey erupts, “It’s just stuff!”
Stuff, Jesus says, is important, sometimes essential, but it isn’t everything. There is more to life than survival.
Many biblical scholars see Jesus’ reference to himself as the Bread of Life as foreshadowing his founding of Holy Communion or Eucharist. In this core act of Christian faith we receive Jesus through physical bread which represents his body broken on the cross and resurrected from the tomb, but the benefit we receive is spiritual.
We know that the food we eat becomes part of us, but also that it changes us. My favourite bread is soft and white, in spite of what my arteries and my cardiologist might have to say about it. Wholemeal would be much better for me. In the same way, when we receive Jesus into ourselves in the bread of the Eucharist, we receive his life into our bodies. What does that life look like? We see a glimpse of it in today’s reading from Ephesians: when as a community of faith we receive Jesus’ life, we begin to live that life in a vibrant faith which reveals Jesus’ life to the world. As a community of faith we together become Jesus’ body, bringing his spiritual blessings to those around us through the physicality of our own bodies. As Teresa of Avila said in the sixteenth century:
Christ has no body on earth but yours
No hands but yours
No feet but yours
Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out for the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.
Questions:
- Where might we be fixated on the physical and necessary but missing something more important?
- Where do we see Jesus’ life working itself out in our own relationships with others, individually or as a community?