RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - August 2, 2009

“Communion Meditation”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 6:24-35

Bread – made from wheat sown in the hills and valleys of Galilee, or, if you are poor, made from that wild barley sprouting just beyond your back door.

Bread – found in aisle 10 of the grocery store – row upon row of bread. First there are the donuts and pastries, then the loaves themselves beginning with the healthiest – 17 grain, 12 grain, 7 grain, all the way down to a single grain – wheat bread, rye bread. And it all ends with Wonder Bread, which if one had to hazard a guess by its placement in the bread aisle, has no grains at all.

Bread: We have always referred to it as the staff of life. However, that concept is understandably a difficult one for us to wrap our minds around, living as we do in the nation that is known as the world’s breadbasket.

I mean, face it. You and I have never lacked for bread and besides, our food scientists, the experts who tell us what we should and should not eat, have outlawed bread, and so some of us never eat it for fear that, with all its carbohydrates, it will make us fat.

Yet, in Jesus’ day, bread was indeed central to survival. Hunger was everywhere, and bread lay at the core of life itself. To break bread was to eat because bread was synonymous with food. Without bread, mothers watched their children die. Without bread, there was famine. It had always been so – as far back as anyone in Galilee could remember, even as far back as when the stories of ancient Jewish history were created.

You remember the Exodus - the pilgrimage from Egypt to the Promised Land. However, do you remember what caused the Hebrews to be in Egypt in the first place? It was for want of bread. The wheat crop had failed due to drought, and the Hebrews had migrated to Egypt because there was a grain surplus stored there. It was bread (or rather the lack of it) that initiated the whole chain of events that define the Jewish heritage.

Later, when the Jews were on their way to the Promised Land, and faced starvation in the bleak wilderness, God rained down “bread from heaven”, as it was called, in the form of manna.

More recently, when Jesus began his ministry, he went into the dessert where he was tempted. As the hot sun mercilessly shone down upon him, he looked out with sweaty eyes at the round white rocks, and we are told that they took on the appearance of loaves of bread – which prompted Jesus to cry out that no man or woman can live on bread alone.

And later, of course, when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he reminded them of the importance of the staff of life: Give us this day our daily bread, he whispered to them.

Oh, yes, the crowds that followed Jesus knew about hunger, and they knew about bread. And if we follow the sequence of events as the John’s gospel writer tells them, they knew that Jesus had just fed the whole hungry lot of them. Somehow Jesus had shared with all of them a little boy’s lunch of 5 small loaves of bread and a couple of fish and ended up with 12 baskets of leftovers. Maybe Andrew the disciple was right after all, and the men, women, and children continued to follow Jesus simple in the hope of another freebie meal.

And Jesus, not about to let such a golden opportunity, such a teachable moment, pass him by speaks out as only the Gospel writer of John would have him speak out. He addresses the crowd – still 5000 strong - in metaphors and similes and double entrendres and multiple meanings.

Jesus takes the ever present hunger of an impoverished people who did not know where their next meal was coming from but hoped against hope that they could at least eat the 12 baskets of leftovers, and he plays with them, plays with their words until all-of-a-sudden they are no longer asking for bread for their stomachs but instead they are seeking bread for their souls and when they are crying out for that, Jesus tells them the great secret: Yahweh. God. I am who I am. I am the Bread of Life. Feast on me and your soul will never be hungry again.

I am the Bread of Life. I am the Bread. I am the Life.

WORDS OF INSTITUTION – Bread

Someone once said, “If Jesus is the Bread of Life, then the soul is the yeast.” Such a curious, yet intimate intertwining this statement implies. When you think of it that way, it can not help but make you realize that we are all in this Kingdom of God thing together – Jesus and us.

The bread needs the yeast to really be bread, and the yeast is nothing by itself. We are in a blessed and symbiotic relationship with Jesus – each of us relying on the other to usher in God’s Kingdom and realize the promise of a new way to really live.

We – you and I - are what will make the message of the bread a reality. We are the yeast, and it will be through us that the promise of love and reconciliation will bubble and rise and expand and double and treble.

Imagine – we have been invited to know Jesus - this Bread of Life - so intimately that his way of being has the potential to one day become our way of being and his values one day to become our values too. We are meant to be one – bread and yeast together.

O come, let us celebrate the yeast. Let us celebrate the bubbling warmth, the magical things that happen to the bread because of us:The rising, the expanding, the love overflowing, the new relationship we have with God. The Bread of Life will rise and rise until a sacred kingdom overflows all over the earth – all because the yeast has finally done its job.

Maybe that was part of the meaning of the wine at the last supper – a final chance to celebrate the yeast – to raise a toast and acknowledge the new and blessed symbiotic relationship we have with God – bread and yeast together.

WORDS OF INSTITUTION - wine

Sermon - August 2, 2009

“Communion Meditation”

By Rev. Nancy Foran John 6:24-35

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 6:24-35