Thankful Memorial, Chattanooga
August 1, 2021
Year B, 10 Pentecost, Proper 13

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
Psalm 51:1-13
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“I am the bread of life,” says Jesus.  “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  It’s such a well-known image, such a well-loved phrase to many Christians that we’ve gotten quite used to it.  But how shocking it must have been to the folks who heard it from Jesus himself. 

I mean, who talks like this?  When you meet someone at a party, and they ask you about yourself you might say “I’m retired,” or “I’m in HR,” or “I’m a dad of two.”  But you are unlikely to identify yourself by a metaphor.  And you’d be pretty surprised if someone introduced themselves by saying “I am the oil that lubes my company’s machine,” or “I am the vaccine that protects my family from the virus of dysfunction.”[i]  You’d think that person was completely mad. 

But indentifying himself by wacky metaphors is exactly what Jesus does often and especially in the Gospel of John.  And today, we get one of the most famous of those metaphors.  “I am the bread of life,” says Jesus. 

In fact, it’s such a wacky way of helping people get to know him better that it takes Jesus quite a long time to unpack that metaphor for his listeners.  It takes him so long that in order for you to hear what he has to say about it, you’re going to have to come back to church every Sunday straight for the next four Sundays, because that’s how long it’s going to take us to read through the rest of Jesus’ “bread of life” speech. 

And that means you and I and a few other preachers will listen to Jesus’ words about himself and, together, we’ll try to piece out what he means and why he says it.  But right now, I’d like us to consider how Jesus even gets here.  What leads up to his claim that he is the bread of life? 

It’s a series of questions – all of which get unexpected answers – that bring us to those final two sentences of today’s reading.  Jesus has been teaching on the mountain top and has miraculously fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish.  Then, he escapes from the crowd by walking over the sea of Galilee and the next morning, all those folks wake up to discover Jesus gone and they come looking for him.  When they find him, they ask the first question: “Rabbi, when did you come here?”  Now, the logical answer to that question might be, “Last night, I walked across the sea while my disciples sailed.”  But that’s not what Jesus says.  He answers the crowd, but he answers a question they didn’t quite ask: “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”  And then follow even more questions and answers.  The people ask Jesus “What must we do to perform the works of God?”  and “What sign are you going to give us then…?”  And finally, they demand, “Sir, give us this bread always,” spurring Jesus to arrive at that funny metaphor: “I am the bread of life.”

The questions the crowd asks are of the kind we might all ask if we want to understand someone or something a little bit better.  These folks have just had this amazing experience, this miracle of feeding.  And they’re all trying to sort through it.  What the heck happened? they ask each other that morning. Did you experience that the same way I did?  Was that the miracle we thought it was?  Who is this Jesus?  And will he feed us like that again?  And again?  And again?  Let’s find him.  Let’s find out. 

And so they come to Jesus, asking questions.  Mind you, they’re not really the right questions, as Jesus is quick to point out.  And many of them are not asking for the right reasons, as we’ll hear over the coming weeks, but it doesn’t really matter.  Here they are; here they’ve come, asking. 

And here we are; here we’ve come, asking, too.  And Jesus answers us in the most unexpected ways.  Jesus invites all of his would-be followers to ask more questions, and to constantly and consistently listen for his response.  By this process, in and through and with Christ, we are invited to come to the Father, to learn, to believe, and to grow in faith.

The writer of the letter to the Ephesians says it this way: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” 

And the Christ we encounter in the gospel always invites our questions, even if they’re the wrong ones, because it means we are coming ever closer to knowing him.  As Christians, we are not “blown about by every wind of doctrine,” but stand firm in what we know to be true: “There is one body and one Spirit… one hope of [our] calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”  We believe in that one Lord, who, “for us and for our salvation… came down from heaven… was crucified under Pontius Pilate… suffered death and was buried,” and who, “on the third day rose again.”  This is who we are; this is the good news we have to give. 

And we commit to believing in that creed each week, even as we recognize that it will take our whole lifetimes to work out how to live into those beliefs; it will take our whole lifetimes to understand what it means for Jesus to be our bread of life.

That’s why our questions are so important to our faith.  While we stand on the firm foundations of Scripture and tradition, our daily, miraculous encounters with the living Christ, lead us to right back to him, again and again, asking questions, hungry to find out who he is to us, right now, today.  When we ask questions, when we discern together how to live that which we believe, then we begin to speak the truth in love to one another.   Then we begin to grow up in faith.  Then we begin to seek Jesus out for the right reasons and find that in him we are truly fed.  Amen.

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^{[i] For these metaphors, I am indebted to “Never Go Hungry,” a sermon on this text preached some years ago by Scott Hoezee and posted as commentary on the website for the Center for Excellence in Preaching: https://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/proper-13b-2/?type=the_lectionary_gospel}