Sermon August 5, 2012

First Presbyterian Church – Willmar

August 5, 2012

Sermon

John 6: 24-35

An old man goes to a diner every day for lunch. He always orders the soup du jour. One day the manager asks him how he liked his meal. The old man replies, "It was good, but you could give me a little more bread. Two slices of bread is not enough." So the next day the manager tells the waitress to give him four slices of bread. "How was your meal, sir?" the manager asks. "It was good, but you could give a little more bread," comes the reply. So the next day the manager tells the waitress to give him eight slices of bread. "How was your meal today, sir?" the manager asks. "Good, but you could give a little more bread," comes the reply.

The manager is now obsessed with seeing this customer satisfied with his meal, so he goes to the bakery, and orders a three-foot-long loaf of bread. When the man comes in as usual the next day, the waitress and the manager cut the loaf in half lengthwise, butter the entire length of each half, and lay it out along the counter, right next to his bowl of soup. The old man sits down, and devours both his bowl of soup, and both halves of the loaf of bread. The manager now thinks he will get the answer he is looking for, and when the old man comes up to pay for his meal, the manager asks in the usual way: "How was your meal TODAY, sir?" The old man replies: "It was good as usual, but I see you are back to serving only two slices of bread!"

We take bread for granted.  Bread figures into many major stories in the scriptures: the grain famine that drove the Israelites into Egypt; the manna that God gave them in the wilderness; the Lord’s Prayer prays for daily bread. 

Perhaps when we look at this story of the feeding of the 5000 we forget that at the outset of his ministry, when Jesus was in the wilderness facing Satan’s temptations, the very first of the temptations was when Satan taunted him about being hungry:  “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  At that time Jesus quoted Deuteronomy (8:3): “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

In the time of Jesus, the Romans had used bread like money:  giving it or withholding it as they saw fit.  In a society filled with poor people, whether or not you had bread to eat was more important than the balance in your bank account.  Part of the expectation that defined the Messiah was that he would do a feeding miracle even greater than what Moses had done.

In the first part of this story which we read last week the people were so impressed with his feeding of the crowd that they wanted to make him their king.  If you could feed people, they would follow you anywhere.  And so Jesus and his apostles slipped away from the crowd. 

But the crowd finds him again.  Like party crashers the world over they were following the feast!  Jesus recognized that they were following him only because they had gotten all they wanted to eat.  He tries to explain to them about a food that endures for eternal life, and they just didn’t get the point.  They challenge him to show them a sign that will prove that he is greater than Moses!

We always want another sign.  We have an abundance of food and things.  When Jesus told people who were hungry that there was something more important than the bread that filled their bellies, they might have thought:  easy for you to say!  They might have called him a party pooper.  What’s our excuse today when he says:  “I am all that you need”? 

There’s a fine line to be drawn between vital spirituality and a focus on other-worldliness.  Jesus made it clear that we have a mission here, on this earth.  We are to give witness to the world that God has sent us all that we need.  We are to give witness to the world that we have been forgiven.  We are to give witness to the world that we have been redeemed and transformed.  We are to preach the Gospel and we are to live our lives – especially within God’s called community – as a witness to the life that God wants for us.  And we are to pray and listen for God’s affirmation to us that we are already seated at his banquet table.

“What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe it?”

On this table are the signs of God’s grace for you and me.  On this table are the signs that the bread of God has come down from heaven and given life to the world.  

How do we respond?

The Gospel of John reports that the crowd said: “Sir, give us this bread always.”  Do we say the same?

Amen.