Bread of Life. Once upon a time, an old story goes, a traveler was journeying alone. and got lost in the deep dark woods. He wandered for days,

Transcription

1 Sermon for October 5, 2014 World Communion Sunday Rocky Hill Congregational Church, UCC, Rocky Hill, CT The Rev. Dr. Brenda M. Pelc-Faszcza, Interim Senior Minister Text: John 6:25-35 It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, God gives you true bread from heaven, and gives life for the world. And they said to him, Lord, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life Bread of Life Once upon a time, an old story goes, a traveler was journeying alone and got lost in the deep dark woods. He wandered for days, looking for something to eat, anything, or some sign of help, anywhere. He grew more and more hungry and weary, until at long last, he spotted something. way off in the distance, a clearing, and a little house or shop of some kind. Aaaah!! His heart leapt up perhaps he wasn t alone after all! He made his way toward it,

2 and as he got closer, he could hardly believe his good fortune. There was a sign out front that said Fresh bread. Fresh bread!! It was a bakery! What could be better than that, for a starving man?! A bakery! Bread! Thank you, God! He made his way up to the door, and when he got inside, asked the person he met there if he could please have some of that bread. Oh, no, he was told, we don t actually have any bread here, we make signs. We make signs for places that have bread. The traveler s heart sank, his stomach growled, and one felt as empty as the other as he turned away. The sign that he d seen was just a sign. There was no nourishment there, just the advertisement of it.

3 Metaphorically speaking, churches are supposed to be bakeries, not sign shops: places that have bread -- or to put it another way, places that are bread -- not just nice signs about bread, or nice words about bread, or nice traditions about bread. Churches are supposed to be communities where the real thing can be found and is offered up and shared, and in the sharing is multiplied communities of passion and compassion, of learning and love, of justice and mercy and hope, that have something real to pass around, not only for the hungers of those who are already inside them but something for the hungers of the world outside too. As Mother Teresa once put it, Everybody in the world is hungry, and not just for bread. The real hunger of the human heart is for the things of the spirit. Inside the Christian community,

4 we call it the bread of life and our lifelong learning is the learning to follow Jesus, in whom we recognize this bread, whom we come to know as the bread, whole and embodied, then broken, then given, for the life of the world. We, of course, are not the first people, only the latest, to be looking for that kind of authenticity and strength and depth in life, or to be thinking of it as a form of food. The church was first born by asking about bread. When Jesus said something about bread to his first disciples, they wanted to understand and they said, What do you mean? What is this bread you are talking about? And Jesus says back to them,

5 I m the bread. My life is the bread. The God-spirit in me is the bread, and it s the same spirit that feeds you, it s the same thing you live on, and it all comes from the same source, it all comes from God. There is nothing else that matters more, there s no other bread that will ultimately satisfy the hungers of your heart, except this bread of love, grace, forgiveness, peace, that my life is all about. It s the life you are offered too, it s what I m passing on to you, it s what you have to pass to others, and if you have found that you have everything. The church started there, with that. It started in one little place, with one little group, and eventually spread out to the whole world.

6 And now here we are, all these centuries later, participating in the ancient and sacred practice of sharing the bread among us as a way of naming and sharing the spirit among us, the spirit of Christ that wants only to love, redeem and heal the world, including us, here and now. You know, the basic question for Jesus followers hasn t changed, no matter how long the movement has gone on or how widely it has spread, no matter where on the planet it takes form, no matter the setting, the language, the music, the customs, that express it. It s still the question, What is this bread? Or, to put it another way, What is it that we have to give the world? Does the gospel have anything to offer? Is there any real bread in it?

7 That s the question we live inside of, both as the worldwide church, and as every particular church, every particular local congregation. Sometimes, particular churches are wonderful bakeries, full with the real thing, serving up what human beings are hungry for: love, learning, connection, challenge, acceptance, healing, growing, seeking, asking, discovering, serving, trusting, naming, acknowledging, forgiving all in service of God s dream for the world. And sometimes, churches can be like that shop in the woods that just had the signs but not the goods. They have the right words, the right advertisements, but not the real thing inside. Sometimes the grasp on the real thing that they may once have had

8 has slipped a bit, for any number of reasons too much focus on the shop itself, too much anxiety about how it will be kept up, more concern about the sign than what it points to. Sometimes a weary, hungry traveler could be disappointed to find there less than she hopes for. Jesus says to those who would follow him into the Kingdom of God that if we ever find ourselves becoming like that, it doesn t have to be that way. You don t ever have to be without bread, real bread, he says, because the bread you want is there for the taking, God already supplies it. You can have as much of it as you want, but you have you want it, instead of something else. If you do want the Bread of Life, if you do keep yourself in its presence, it will always be there for you.

9 Mother Teresa was right, everybody in the world is hungry, and not just for what the body needs, but, more than ever, for what our spirits need. Literally around the world on this day, a world so full of the things that break human hearts, bread is also being broken and shared at Christ s table, as we will do here, because Jesus followers still believe that the gospel does have something to say to the world, does have something to offer to the world, and that we, the current generation of disciples are the way it gets said, the way it gets offered and passed around. When we pass the bread to each other today and say as we do so, The bread of life, that will be a way of remembering that our vocation as church, as with the church in every place, is to be a bakery:

10 that here, among us, and with us, any traveler should find the real thing, the bread of life, that everybody everywhere is hungry for. And we should find it too. May it be so with us. Amen.