I AM: The Bread of Life

I was serving Communion, and the bread was fresh, homemade, and delicious. He broke off a piece and dipped it into the cup and ate. And then, the little boy exclaimed, “I want more! That’s good!” His mother, of course, was embarrassed, and the congregation amused.

The little boy liked the taste of the bread. He wanted more. I could overlay that we should all want more grace in our lives, more Jesus, more of what is truly good…but, that’s not what he wanted. He tasted the bread, it was delicious, and he wanted more.

The crowd that found Jesus on the other side of the sea wanted more bread. The day before, Jesus had fed 5,000 men plus the women and children with them on five loaves and two fish with twelve basketfuls left over. Now they are back in Capernaum. Jesus knows they aren’t looking for him because they understand the miracles he is doing. They had been ready to make him king. And now, they are just there because they want him to do it again. But, Jesus isn’t just feeding people bread. Like the little boy who tasted the Communion bread and wanted more, they didn’t understand that Jesus’ bread had a deeper significance.

“I’m telling you the truth,” Jesus says, “you aren’t here because you saw signs when I fed you yesterday. You are here because you ate and ate…all the bread you could eat. Don’t spend your life searching for food that doesn’t last. You should be working toward the food that endures for eternal life – the food that the Son of Man, who bears the seal of God the Father, will give you.”

Last December the movie “The Greatest Showman” opened. The critics hated it. Historians were appalled. The movie is inspired by the life of P.T. Barnum, who rises from humble beginnings to riches and recognition. It isn’t historically accurate, but it does capture the hunger, the longing, that drove Barnum. He marries a beautiful, loving young woman he met when his father was a tailor for her rich father. Together, they have two beautiful daughters. He opens a museum of oddities, then he collects people to create a freak show, then a circus. He buys a mansion for his family. But that’s not enough. He partners with opera singer Jenny Lind to tour so that he isn’t known only for being the ringmaster of a circus. She sings a song titled “Never Enough,” and in his quest for more and more, he almost loses it all. The critics don’t know why people loved the movie. It is about hopes and dreams and love and losing focus on the relationships that really matter and then regaining it, and realizing that money and fame are not the food that satisfy.

Jesus looks at the crowd that he fed the day before and asks, “Why are you following me around? Don’t spend your life searching for food that doesn’t last.” And they have this back and forth and round and round exchange. “What must we do to work the works of God?” they ask. “How do we get this imperishable food?”

“Believe in him whom God has sent.”

“Then what sign will you do so we can believe? What miracle will you perform? Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness – everyday it rained bread – as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

I love the dig here. God sent Moses and our ancestors believed in him…and they got bread EVERY day. If you are sent by God, how about some more bread? Some commentators suggest that perhaps they were looking for Jesus to do something political or to reveal a plot for a military coup…I think they just wanted more bread. If we look back to see why the crowd had gathered, John tells us at the beginning of chapter 6, “A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was doing in healing the sick.” Then he fed them with basketfuls left over, and I don’t think they followed him hoping to transform the world, I think they just wanted to be taken care of, to be comfortable.

And Jesus reveals to them and to us that we are always going to be hungry until we realize who he really is. It wasn’t Moses who fed the Israelites in the wilderness, it was God. “The bread of God, what satisfies your hunger, is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. I am the bread of life. If you come to me, you will never hunger, and if you believe in me, you will never thirst.”

I am what you are hungry for in life. Everything else will never be enough. “The Greatest Showman” satisfied moviegoers with a happy ending, but I would argue that P.T. Barnum died with a deep, unsatisfied hunger. When he was 81, he became very ill, and his obituary ran two weeks before he died – at his request, so that he could enjoy it.

We come to this table hungry. Hungry for meaning. Hungry for purpose. Hungry for our world to be set right. Hungry for God. And we are fed. Christ’s body and blood are offered to us, we take and eat and internalize Christ, the Bread of Life. To act and live as Christ in the world, that is enough. Thanks be to God! Amen.