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9th Sunday after Pentecost
August 2, 2009 Sermon
by The Rev. Bill Van Oss, Rector
Readings
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus said: “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.” During these Sundays of summer in this particular lectionary cycle, we are given some of the “Bread of Life” discourse from the Gospel of John.
Bread was a big deal for people at the time of Jesus. Bread was a staple, like rice in Asia or corn and beans in Latin America or plantains in sub-Saharan Africa. Bread was the staple food for the people in 1st century Palestine. Bread kept people alive. To have bread was to live, not to have bread was to die. That’s why the story of God giving manna to the people as they journeyed through the wilderness is so central for the people Israel, and it’s why the stories of Jesus feeding the multitudes are so central to our Christian story.
Bread meant life. Bread saved lives. The absence of bread meant death. Jesus gave life when he gave the 5,000 bread. Jesus gave life when he gave his disciples the bread at the Last Supper—but that time Jesus gave Himself as bread, He gave Himself as life for the world, and we partake of this bread of life every time we eat the bread and drink the cup we call “communion” or “eucharist.” We are given Jesus Himself, the Bread of Life.
And in today’s section of the “Bread of Life” discourse Jesus warns the people not to work for food that perishes, but for food that endures. You see the people are whining, just like the people whined in the wilderness because they were hungry, the crowd of 5,000 that Jesus fed last week with five loaves and two fish is hungry again and now they’re whining. Because that’s how it goes with perishable food. We eat our fill and everything’s fine, for a time, but then we get hungry again.
But Jesus wants people to look beyond their physical hungers to make them see that what they really have are spiritual hungers. These spiritual hungers are what Jesus came to fill, because it’s only when we satisfy our spiritual hungers that we are truly filled. It’s only when we work “for food that endures for eternal life” that we are ultimately satisfied.
“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” A great saint once said that each of us has a God-shaped hole within us that we spend our lives trying to fill. Jesus offers Himself as life to fill that hole.
A couple of months ago I saw a wonderful little film called “Up.” It’s the story of a quiet, shy kid named Carl who meets a real spitfire named Ellie. As children, they both dream big dreams of being explorers and adventurers. Carl and Ellie grow up, fall in love and get married. They transform their ramshackled house into their dream home, and try to save their loose change in a glass jug for the “big adventure” they have always dreamed of.
But real life gets in the way: work, home and car repairs, medical bills. But they are happy. An instant later, they are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, having never saved enough for their big trip. Soon after, Ellie succumbs to cancer, and a grieving Carl is lost and alone. Until one day Carl finds a scrapbook Ellie kept entitled, “My Adventure Book.” The first pages are funny little treasures and happy childhood memories.
Then one page is labeled, “Stuff I’m going to do,” and it details her dream trip with Carl. Carl is stung with remorse that he was never able to keep his promise to take Ellie on that trip, but as he turns the pages, he sees that Ellie has placed pictures of their life together—their wedding, working on the house, going out for ice cream, sitting in rocking chairs on the porch. And under the last picture of their simple life together, Ellie has written: “Carl, thanks for the great adventure-go and have a new one! Love, Ellie.”
And Carl realizes that he and Ellie have had a great adventure: they have dreamed together, loved each other, faced disappointments, laughed, and grown old together—the great adventure was not some fancy trip after all, it was loving each other. That’s the “imperishable” food that Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel. “The food that endures for eternal life” is togetherness, forgiveness, patience, generosity, kindness, joy and love.
Striving for the perishable—for material things—the things that don’t last—only leaves us hungry and unsatisfied. But the “food that endures,” that ultimately satisfies, is found by living a life of love. Enjoying life’s simple pleasures, facing life’s challenges together and ultimately loving each other as Christ has loved us.
The God-shaped hole within us can only be filled by love. That’s the food that endures for eternal life.