Text – John 6:24 – 35 (Cotton Patch version)
Prayer –
Tom: May the meditations of our hearts and the words which come from
our lips be found worthy. May we be inspired, informed, and lifted up in our
time together. Amen.
(Kay) Let us begin in the beginning. The witness of our bible is that God created the heavens and the earth and provided plants and animals for our use. In our liberal and modern church traditions we don’t think that the hand of God came down and arranged molecules and water and other things to literally produce those plants. We do strongly affirm that God is responsible for bringing order to the chaos which covered the face of the earth and that God was behind the orderliness of nature and the wonder that it provides food for us.
(Tom) The beginning which I remember is that in my household of origin, my Mother was very resourceful and figured out how to efficiently use the food which we could afford so it supported three children and three adults. My mother’s mother lived with us much of the time. The joy which we shared included the wonderful creations from a simple yeast dough which became the basis of coffee cakes. We called them by their German names – kuchens. The kitchen would be filled with these cakes topped with apples, plums, streusel, and perhaps cherries or peaches. Mom would freeze them so they were almost always available. At Christmas she baked shtolen ( a German bread with slices of pickled fruit in it) which we would have with other breakfast foods during the Christmas season. And she would make fruit cakes. Beyond our basic sustenance these were foods which we enjoyed and gave us joy as we shared them at special times.
(Kay) We have heard the story of the Israelites receiving manna in the wilderness. They received the generosity of a provident God who gave them quail in the evening so they had some substantial nourishment to sustain their lives. In the morning the mysterious stuff appeared that we call manna. In Hebrew this word means what is it? I am sure that some of you may have set down to a meal and wondered what the food was which you were about to eat and felt like saying – “what is it”? But that is different from the stuff described as white and flakey. One place in Exodus it is described as tasting like wafers and honey. The children’s bible version suggests that they tasted like biscuits and honey. The message is that God provided those chosen people with food even in some dire circumstances. God provided them also with inspiration and with spiritual sustenance through the Ten Commandments and through the messages delivered by Moses and his brother Aaron.
(Tom) My great grandfather was a farmer in Central Illinois. He was a charter member and helped build a church which is still used. He had two daughters who both married ministers. Church was very important to him and his family. His family was supported by their farm including animals and the crops which they could grow. Corn was the most plentiful. They ate corn bread until it came out of their ears. They would combine it with apples and spread all kinds of homemade jams on it. They grumbled about it. Yet they received manna and they were fed.
(Kay) An interesting bible story is that of the prophet Elijah who sought to call the people to faithfulness under King Ahab. Ahab was a descendant of King David and his son Solomon. Ahab was one of the wickedest kings that ever ruled the people of Israel. Ahab married Jezebel who was a worshiper of Baal. Elijah took the message of God to Ahab that since he was so wicked there would be no rain or dew for the foreseeable future. Elijah went out and lived simply in the county by a brook. Eventually the brook dried up and the ravens which brought Elijah food at night were no longer in that place.
(Tom) God provided for Elijah by sending him away to a heathen land where he told Elijah that there would be a widow to feed him. He went to the gate of a small village where he found a woman who was drawing water and gathering sticks to make a fire to bake bread for herself and her son. Elijah asked her for water to drink. She went to get it and when she came back Elijah asked her for some bread. The widow explained that she only had a small amount of oil in a bottle and a little flour in a jar. Elijah promised her that until it rained she would have enough oil and flour. She baked a loaf for Elijah. And behold the widow always had flour and oil until God sent the rains.
(Kay) My mother-in-law was a bread baker. She birthed 12 children in the U.S.A. and following the death of her husband put the last 6 of those children through their final years of elementary, junior high, and high school living only on her husband’s railroad pension. Even though this woman had never learned to read, God did provide. God provided her with the intelligence to manage that small amount of income, and the skill to bake all the bread and make all the pasta that her family needed. She was faithful to God, and God was faithful to her.
(Tom) The gospels describe at least two occasions when a large crowd gathered to hear Jesus and he and his disciples fed them. One of those times is described in chapter 14 of Matthew’s gospel. The same incident is described in the 6th chapter of Mark and in the 9th chapter of Luke’s gospel. In the first part of John 6 there is a similar instance described. They have in common that as the afternoon of preaching and fellowship drug on Jesus was aware that his followers had been there a long time and that it was time for them to eat. A discussion ensued about how to provide for the crowd.
(Kay) The disciples were simple men. They lived with the benefit of few resources. They realized that it would take at least 6 months of wages to purchase food for the crowds. Jesus instructed the disciples to take a survey of the crowd and to find out what provisions they had. They came up with five barley loaves – you see the local land and agriculture supported the growth of barley and not wheat. And they also found two fishes to go with the barley loaves. By a miracle the disciples went around and shared the loaves and fishes and after everyone had been fed they had 12 baskets full left over. Sometimes people try to come up with explanations of how this was possible. For sure the story conveys the wonder that God prefers that the hungry be fed and also that Christ offers preaching and his presence to raise up the people of God and to make their lives more complete.
(Tom) I am inspired by these stories. We might think of them as a directive that if we share what we have we can make a difference. We have those possibilities in things like the bread run and the food pantry and in the thrift shop. We also take part in things like the CROP walk and give to various funds which are aimed at providing agricultural assistance and clean water and other resources to those who go hungry. Yet on this very day about 25,000 children under the age of 5 will starve to death. We have a lot of work to do. In small towns the CROP walks are able to raise the equivalent of more than a dollar for each resident. In some medium sized places they raise similar amounts. In Las Vegas we raise an amount equal to two or three cents per resident. If we were to increase that to a dollar per resident we would be able to contribute nearly $2,000,000. That would be a bigger drop in the bucket towards filling the needs of the starving. I challenge you to work on filling that bucket.
(Kay) In our cotton patch translation Clarence Jordan has Jesus asking the disciples and other followers whether they are following him so that they can fill their stomachs – perhaps with the leftovers from his miracles. Jesus suggests that there are things besides groceries which they need. Indeed they need to receive the spiritual food as it comes from the Creator God. In answer to their observation that the manna in the wilderness came as free food from Moses, Jesus observes that it did not come from Moses but rather from God in Heaven. We would do well to look more often to heaven. When we pray the LORD’s PRAYER we petition God in the words – give us this day our daily bread.
(Tom) In the Lord’s Prayer we also pray that we are not led into temptation and that we are protected from evil. We live in a place that is the poster child for temptation and that might at times be thought of as the embodiment of evil when people get way too involved in their material pursuits and also are mistrustful that they will have enough . In one of the sermons that I did here I read a meditation by Walter Brueggemann about generosity in which he recited our fears that we won’t have enough – we won’t have enough food, money, sex, friends, health, or love. Well those things are important. Part of today’s lesson is that we need to pay attention to spiritual things and to look to heaven as the source of blessings and spiritual well being. It is the loaf that we receive from God that will truly satisfy us.
(Kay) The good news is that there is no such split between feeding the body and feeding the soul. Jesus is the One who, in Luke's Gospel, announced his "agenda" with words from Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor and setting the oppressed free. Jesus is the same One who, at the end of this passage in John, says, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty" (6:35). "Jesus," Fred Craddock writes, "did provide food for hungry stomachs before moving on to the sermon on the bread that lasts forever. John cannot be charged with spiritualizing the gospel to the point of abandoning basic creature needs, and neither should the preacher who presents John 6, nor the church that hears it". (Preaching through the Christian Year B).
(Tom) I offer you this Fred Craddock story as we reach the end of this sermonic adventure. “There was once a successful man who left a restaurant where he had enjoyed a very nice meal. As he left he encountered a needy person who asked him if he could spare some change. The business man was in a generous mood and he reached into his pocket and gathered all of his change and placed those coins in his open hands and reached toward the beggar and said, “Here, take whatever you need”. The beggar scooped up all of the coins. A short time later the businessman realized that he needed to make a telephone call and remembered that he had no coins. He turned around and saw the beggar who was happy with his good fortune. The businessman spoke to the beggar and asked him if he could have back enough change to make a phone call. The beggar without hesitation placed all of the coins into his open hands and extended them to the businessman and said, “Here, take whatever you need.”
(Kay) We have been privileged to receive all of your memories of interactions with bread. We have heard stories from Sean about memories of his mother baking special breads and he and his sister being distracted by the odors and the idea of the flavorful treats which can be gotten from a bake shop. We have heard about people passing bread through the air which was both upsetting and informative. We have heard how bread with sugar and love spread on it can taste like the finest pastry in the world. We heard about cross cultural exchanges when we mix together a word for bread which sounds like a pound. I am sure that many of you have memories of yeast causing dough to rise up so that our bread might be light and not clunkers.
(Tom) We also have a description of some of the special customs practiced in this place when people baked bread for communion and shared it with all who came to this place to receive communion. In a few minutes we will serve and receive communion and the bread and juice which symbolize for us that which we may receive which will sustain us even to eternal life.
(Kay) Let us pray – We give you thanks, Lord, for bread and for those things which will sustain us forever. Amen.
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