Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35
I recently re-connected with one of my college roommates on Facebook. For the last few weeks, he and I have been reminiscing about college and the apartment we shared with three other guys. Of course we also talked about the things that we used to bicker about, like dirty dishes, house cleaning and food supplies. I was reminded of the many times the four of us would wait each other out to see who go shopping for food. During the lean times we would carefully ration what few food supplies we had – Graham Crackers, Saltines, dill pickles, Cheez-Whiz, Cool Whip, ketchup packets, etc. (We also kept Dominos Pizza very busy!) Sometimes we would go for two weeks before someone would break. On one such occasion, my roommate Billy was scrounging around for something to eat, when suddenly we heard a cry of delight coming from inside the refrigerator: “Aha! A jar of peanut butter!” A moment later, Billy grabbed his coat and keys and made for the door. “Where are you going?” we asked. “You guys win, I’m going shopping,” he replied. “Why’s that?” “Because we’re out of peanut butter, and when you’re out of peanut butter, you’re out of food.” Everyone has a bottom line.
It’s virtually a cultural universal that the metaphors we use for food are whatever happens to be the bottom line; the basic thing you need to stay alive. In many Asian cultures, the word “rice” and the word for “food” are the same. In Melanesia, the same applies to yams. For Billy, it was peanut butter – the one food item, stuffed somewhere in the back of a refrigerator or a pantry, that he could always count on if there was nothing else to eat (unless of course someone had forgotten to throw away the empty jar!).
In English, the word “bread” is often synonymous with food. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Bread also happens to be the biblical metaphor for food, because bread in biblical times happened to be the staple, essential, bottom-line food. If Jesus had been Melanesian, he would have spoken about yams. (Imagine that! "I am the Yam of life!") But bread it is. And bread it was that the crowd was looking for when they sought Jesus on the other side of the Sea of Galilee from where he had so recently fed a crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fish. When they finally catch up to him in Capernaum, they ask, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus responds bluntly by pointing to their bottom line: “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” [cf. John 6:25-26].
Now this response may seem harsh on Jesus' part. After all, they had just been fed by Jesus, and obviously this Jesus was someone who seemed concerned for the hungry, someone who showed compassion on the multitudes. Obviously he also had the power and authority to do something about it! And besides, it’s a good thing to well-fed! Would that everyone in the world had enough to eat every day! None of us would allow a child to go to bed hungry if we had the resources to feed him. This is all very true, and yet Jesus still goes on to challenge this crowd’s bottom line: “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. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal” [John 6:27].
It is evident that the bottom line for Jesus was different than the bottom line for the crowd that sought him out. “What must we do to perform the works of God?” the crowd asks Jesus [John 6:28]; a question that betrays not only their basic misunderstanding, but that of people down through the ages. How often do we look to our needs as the bottom line in our relationship with God? What must we do, what deed must we perform, to get God to fulfill our basic needs? – To fill our bellies and pay our debts? Perhaps the need is little less tangible, e.g., our emotional or relationship needs. And when bread or finances do not miraculously materialize, when emotions and relationships fall apart, we conclude that either we have failed to do something for God or, more often than not, that God has failed us. Was this not Israel’s attitude as they complained to Moses and Aaron? – “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread” [Exodus 16:3].
“This is the work of God,” Jesus answers, “That you believe in him whom he has sent” [John 6:29]. In other words, Jesus reminds us that there is something more basic than food or clothing or any of our material needs; so basic in fact, that Jesus co-opts the very metaphor we use to describe our basic physical needs: BREAD. “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,” the crowd retorts. “It was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven,” Jesus says, “But it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” [cf. John 6:31-33].
Now I realize that in an age of uncertainty it is all too easy to focus on our material needs. This is true not only for the poor, but for the rich as well – perhaps more so! J.K. Rowling describes her life before the success of the Harry Potter series as being “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless,” and yet “… I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
Now, mind you, we are not presented here with an either/or choice. Jesus is not telling us to make a choice between our bellies and our relationship with God. It is not that we should be unconcerned about the physical, or not trust God to see to our needs. Rather, Jesus reminds us that OUR solid foundation, our bottom line, is a right relationship with God – a relationship that is grounded in our faith in what Christ has accomplished for us on the Cross and in the resurrection – the forgiveness of our sins and a new life in him; a relationship that we re-affirm at this altar each time we gather to partake of his body and blood – the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. Herein, Jesus reminds us what the true bottom line is for us: “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” [John 6:35].
Bread – the bottom line physically; as it turns out, the bottom line spiritually as well, but not bread that spoils, not bread that fills the belly merely for a day, but the bread that fills us for eternity: Jesus Christ.
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