John 6:35-51
“The Only Bread”
August 12, 2012 - Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

         After an incredible, almost movie stunt landing, the Mars rover Curiosity is sending back pictures of the Martian landscape. There’s rocky desert, the rim of the crater in which it landed, and a view of the three and half mile high mountain toward which it’s driving. We’re seeing scenes from 160 million miles away. Those images take 14 minutes to travel here at the speed of light.

         I imagine there are people who think it’s all a hoax. Not too long after Apollo 11 touched down on the moon in 1969 skeptics began to argue that it was an elaborate trick played on the public by our government. Those movies of Neil Armstrong taking his “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” were supposed to have been faked in some secret studio somewhere. People saw those things, but refused to believe.

         That’s the kind of spirit Jesus met among those who heard Him in Capernaum.  Already, in our text last week, He said they weren’t looking for Him because of His miracles, but because the miracles produced food. Now in verse 36 He chastises them that despite the fact that they’ve seen Him and what He can do, they don’t believe.

         That’s what Jesus is looking for: belief, faith. Go nearly to the end of John, chapter 20 verse 30, and John says he could written down many more miracles that Jesus did, but those he did write are here so his readers could believe in Jesus. Here in chapter 6, Jesus talked to people like those skeptics who see the video, the moon rocks, the space suits worn by the astronauts, but still want to argue it’s all some sort of con game.

         People still challenge Jesus. They hear the story of the Gospel. They see how belief in Jesus changes lives and brings hope into the world. Yet they keep arguing that faith in Christ is a con game, a trick to dupe us into some sort of unscientific, primitive, prejudiced world view. Go to any atheist web site and you are told that Christianity is the world’s primary source of hatred, that we are opposed to science and common sense, and that what we believe stands in the way of any real progress toward solving human problems.

         Now as then, not everyone is willing to accept the truth when it’s put before them. On the other hand, as Jesus says in verse 37, everyone who the Father gives to Him will come to Him, “and anyone who comes to me I will never drive out.” He’s not talking about a God of hatred and ignorance. He’s talking about a Father of love and inclusion.

         Verses 38 to 40 show us Jesus understood Himself to be doing the will of His loving Father. And the Father’s will was that Jesus should not lose anyone who comes, who believes, but “raise them up on the last day.” Believing in Jesus is about life, about resurrection, about renewing and saving everyone and anyone who puts trust and hope in Him. That’s why Jesus came down from heaven.

         The skeptics in Capernaum in verse 42 thought it was just too much for Jesus to claim to have come from heaven. Today they talk about biology and empirical science and come to the conclusion that Jesus couldn’t have been anymore than just another human being. Back then they didn’t need to look any farther than another town twenty miles away. “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” He couldn’t have come from heaven, they thought, because He came from Nazareth.

         That same dilemma faces anyone who really thinks about Jesus. In the words of James Allan, we have here a man who “was born in obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place He was born. He did none of the things usually associated with greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.” Why believe He was more significant than other religious leaders or teachers?

         Jesus’ own answer was to ask why they’re complaining. He says in verse 44, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.” He goes on to quote Isaiah in verse 45, that “ they shall all be taught by God.” In other words, believing in Jesus is a matter of being instructed by and listening to the Father. “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” Basically, if you really find God, you find Jesus.

         What Jesus said is as hard today as it was for the Jews of Capernaum. Jesus Christ is the only meal God is serving. To think you can come to God without coming to Jesus is like trying to go to Papa’s Soul Food and order something besides barbecue. It’s like going to Ocean Sky Chinese Restaurant and asking the waitress for lasagna. It’s as if you went to Newman’s Fish Market to buy blueberries. The food on God’s Table is the life, death and resurrection of His Son. There’s only one choice.

         But we like our choices. Take us to Shari’s or Applebee’s where you can order a burger or barbecue or an Asian salad or a plate of spaghetti. So we get the idea that Jesus can be one of many options, suitable for some tastes, but not for others. We can believe in Jesus, someone else can believe in another god, or nothing at all, and it’s all just fine. The spiritual menu is large and you can choose whatever you like.

         You might think that’s a new idea, but it was much the same in ancient times. The Romans had pluralistic religion. It didn’t matter much which god you cared to worship, as long as you didn’t bother those who worshipped other gods, and as long as you were willing to say that Caesar, the ruler of Rome, was one of them, to say, “Caesar is lord.”

         The problem for Christians in Rome was the same problem we have now. We insist on what Jesus said here. You can’t come to God, you can’t listen to God, without coming to Christ, without listening to Jesus. Christians wouldn’t say Caesar was Lord because they they had only one Lord and His name was Jesus. So Romans called Christians atheists and made their religion illegal, took away their jobs, and sometimes tortured and killed them.

         In our time and in our country, Christianity is far from illegal. But if we say what Jesus said, if we insist that Jesus is the only Bread of Life, that He is the only Savior, it’s not popular. Isn’t it arrogant and intolerant to insist that only our religion is the full truth about God? Doesn’t it lead to prejudice and violence and injustice to ask everyone to believe in Jesus? Those are the questions people around us ask about our faith.

         Sometimes folks like to think Jesus Himself didn’t really mean this, didn’t really mean to say that He was the only Bread, that only He was the way to God. That’s awfully hard to square with words like we find in verse 46. “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.” Jesus says He is the one who came down from heaven. He’s the only one who has seen God, knows God, ultimately is God. Jesus saw Himself as the only way to God, the only food for eternal life.

         C. S. Lewis was right, then, that there are only three choices about what to believe about Jesus. If you think that He really meant it when He said He was the Bread which came down from heaven, but you think He was wrong, that means He was crazy. But if you think He didn’t mean it, that He meant to deceive the people He taught, then He was lying. The only other alternative is to believe He was just what He said He was, the Bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Lunatic, liar or Lord. Mad, bad, or God. Those are your choices of what to think about Jesus.

         Of course, lots of people who don’t believe in Jesus are perfectly willing to allow us our faith so long as we don’t try to convert them. Most folks I meet don’t mind that I wear a cross, but they would mind if I tried to stop them and tell them what it means. Yet part of what Jesus is saying here is that we have good reason to do just that, to want others to believe, to tell them about the Lord we serve.

         Contrary to the way skeptics wish to paint Christian believers, we aren’t out to convert others for our own glory and power. That happens, but that’s not the Spirit of Jesus, that’s not real Christianity. D. T. Niles from Sri Lanka had it right when he took an image from the impoverished streets of India and said that sharing our faith is “one beggar telling another beggar where he just found bread.”

         Telling people about Jesus and asking them to believe in Him is not arrogance and intolerance, it’s happy sharing of the Bread of Life. It’s one shopper showing another where a bargain is to be found. It’s one mother passing along the number of a great babysitter to another mother. It’s one fisherman telling another fisherman what fly the trout are taking. It’s personal, practical, real good news.

         The good news of Jesus is the gift of life, an everlasting life. Jesus explained in Capernaum with verse 47, “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.” Believing in Jesus gives life that extends beyond death. That’s why He repeats that wonderful claim in verse 48, “I am the bread of life,” and continues in verse 49, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness and they died.”

         Just this past week a couple more studies on the benefits of drinking coffee were published. One study suggests a cup or two of coffee a day helps prevent heart failure. Another study demonstrates that three or more cups a day lowers the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, skin cancer. We all welcome news like that, especially if it directs us to simple diet choices which will help us live longer.

         Jesus pointed us to the diet which gives eternal life. It’s a diet solely and completely based on Him. Verse 50 says, “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” When we share Jesus Christ with someone else, we are sharing the best diet ever discovered, a diet to live on forever.

         Early this morning Stephen Kiprotich the winner  of the men’s Olympic marathon ran 26 miles in two hours and eight minutes. You can’t do that without bread. Marathoners load up on carbohydrate rich foods that sustain them for the long haul. We share Jesus Christ as food for life’s marathon, for the longest distance of all.

         In The Lord of the Rings, the books, not the movie, there is a special bread made by the elves. Lembas are the food they take on long, hard journeys. The elves gave some to the Fellowship of the Ring, and they find it wonderfully delicious. When Gimli the dwarf gobbles down a single piece they tell him he’s just eaten enough for a day’s journey

         We saw something like lembas in our Old Testament lesson this morning in I Kings 19. Elijah was brought a cake of bread and a jar of water by an angel. In verse 8 of that chapter we learn how, “He got up, ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”

         Jesus Christ is food for the long journey, a food to last us all the way through life and into the life to come. Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings discovered how lembas strengthened and gave them life beyond all expectation. Tolkien wrote, “The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die.” Near the very end as Frodo and Sam are climbing the bleak and barren slope of Mt. Doom, and feeling the loss of their strength and hope, they eat a little more lembas and Tolkien says,

“And yet this waybread of the elves had a potency that increased as travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.”[1]

Tolkien’s Christian faith shines out of those words. He acknowledged later in a private letter that lembas had spiritual significance. He was thinking of being nourished at the Table of the Lord, of living on, relying on, Christ alone for our help and strength. In another letter to his son, he wrote that he believed Holy Communion was the only cure for a sagging faith.[2]

         The more we rely on Jesus Christ and don’t try to mix our belief in Him with other, contrary beliefs, the stronger we grow, the better able we are to carry on in hope and in joy. The uniqueness and exclusiveness of faith in Jesus is not a need for power, not a desire to be wiser or better or holier than other people. When we share our faith, when we ask others to believe in Him and in Him alone as the Bread of Life, it’s that hope and joy that we want for them as we enjoy it for ourselves.

         In our last verse today, verse 51, we hear Jesus say just briefly what we will listen to Him expand and teach next week. Jesus is uniquely and only the living bread that came down from heaven, so that “whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

         With that word “whoever,” literally “if anyone,” we hear how Jesus intends to offer the Bread of Life to anyone and everyone who wants it. Believing in Jesus is not about excluding others, it’s about welcoming everyone to His feast, offering anyone a place at His Table.

         And with that word “flesh” we hear how real and serious Jesus is about bread and eternal life. It’s not just a nice metaphor for a game you play in your head, trying to relax or meditate or achieve some sort of inner peace. No, it’s God coming into our world and our lives in the flesh and letting Himself be hurt and broken and ultimately murdered so that we could receive His gift of life-giving food.

         We have more to say about it next week. Jesus has lots more to say about it. But for now please remember that Jesus is the Bread of Life because He let His flesh be broken, like bread is broken, so that you and I could receive eternal life. And we receive that life not just in our minds, not just in our hearts, but in our own flesh in all the ways that we live out and do like Jesus did and give ourselves to serve others.

         Our reading from Ephesians 5:2 said, “Christ loved us and gave himself for us.” Jesus said He would give Himself for the life of the world. He gave Himself for you and for anyone who will receive Him. Keep chewing on His Bread, enjoying Christ’s love for you, being nourished by Jesus. The Bread of Life will last the distance. Just keep on eating.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj