(To the children:)
How many know the story of Moses and the Israelites, the Children of Israel?
They were freed from slavery in Egypt
crossed over the Red Sea escaping Pharaoh’s army
Now they were on their way to a land where they could live free
where our rector Hunt is on his way to
traveling through a rough wilderness desert area to get there
Hunt gets to go there by airplane
but 3,500 years ago when this story takes place, no planes.
They had to walk.
It was going to take a long time
and they would be walking through the desert,
a hilly and stony desert.
Now there were not any grocery stores or restaurants out in the desert.
There was very little grass even for their flocks of sheep and goats to eat.
And there were a lot of people out there in the desert in that band of Israelites.
They had had to run away from Pharaoh’s army
so they had not been able to bring whole lot with them.
What food they did have with them didn’t last very long
before it was all gone.
So they started complaining,
and do you know what they said?
They said they would rather have stayed back in Egypt as slaves
than to be free out there in the desert
because at least there in Egypt they had something to eat.
So what did God do?
God sent them some special food.
First that evening at dinner time
some quails, a small bird, sort of like a chicken,
thousands and thousands of them flew into the camp.
It was like everyone getting a big bucket of fried chicken from KFC!
And then in the morning, what happened?
Here they were in the dry, dry desert
and in the morning there was dew on the ground.
Do you know what dew is?
Have you ever noticed the grass in the morning sometimes
covered with tiny drops of water all over
shining in the sunlight
and you know that it didn’t rain. That’s dew.
And when the dew dried up in the sun
there on the ground was something small and white and flakey.
And the people looked at it and said, “What’s that?”
In Hebrew the word for “What’s that?” is manna.
They picked it up, and someone tasted it and said, “Mmmm, this is good.”
They said it had a sweet taste like honey, and it was like bread.
Let’s look around from some manna.
Does anyone see some manna here? No.
Wait, I know something that is sort of like manna.
-- get basket with communion wafers from credence shelf –
The grown ups that prepare all the things for the altar on Sunday morning set out some of the communion bread for us.
This bread has not been consecrated yet,
not had the special Eucharistic Prayer said over it yet.
So it is simply bread, little round pieces of a particular kind of bread.
These look sort of like manna: flat, white, flakey.
Let’s see what they taste like.
Put your piece in your mouth and suck on it so that you can taste it.
What does it taste like?
Every day as long as they were out in the desert, which was a long time,
the Israelites found this bread waiting for them in the morning.
They always had enough for everybody, but just for that day;
and the whole time they were in the desert they got fed one day at a time.
God was taking care of them until they came out of the desert
to the place where they could plant their own gardens
to grow their own food.
Now let’s look at our Gospel story, the reading where we all stand up
and face toward the Gospel book
as we bring it right down into the middle of the congregation.
Last week we heard about how Jesus feed 5,000 people with a boy’s lunch.
Today we heard about how people went looking for Jesus the next day.
Why were they looking for him?
They wanted to see him do that miracle again.
Because they wanted him to feed them again this day like yesterday.
Jesus had fed them all with the boy’s lunch
because he had compassion on them and loved them.
And now when they wanted him to keep on feeding them
Jesus began to feed them with words
that would be even more nourishing for them than bread,
words of life.
The people came looking for bread like the manna that the Israelites knew
bread that would last only one day
But Jesus told them, “I am the Bread of Life,”
a different kind of bread than they assumed,
bread that would last far longer than only one day,
bread that would last forever.
(To the children:)
Thank you for helping the grown ups listen to the story,
and when you come up for communion,
when you come up to receive the Bread and the Wine,
think about how Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life.”
(To the adults:)
Jesus fed the 5,000 because he loved them.
He saw their need,
and his compassion and love were put into practical action.
So he touched the food and enlivened it,
causing an expansion that resulted in an abundance,
more than what was needed,
because they had so much left over after they were all stuffed to the gills.
And his touch began to enliven the people
as they sought him the next day,
and as he engaged them in life giving dialog.
“You were looking for me,” Jesus said to them,
“because you ate your fill of the bread
that you didn’t have to work for yourselves, free bread.”
You know what it is like to work hard day after day
to put groceries on the table at home.
But I’m going to say something different to you, Jesus said,
Do not work for the food that perishes,
food that gets eaten up and then it’s back to work again.
Work for the food that endures for eternal life
- well, obviously, a different kind of food -
food from the One upon which God has set his seal,
upon whom God has indicated approval and authenticity.
So they ask how they are to work for this kind of food,
what works are they to work to be doing the works of God.
And here is the crux of all that is too follow in this chapter,
indeed, the central point of this whole Gospel.
This, as we would say back in Minnesota where I spent so many years,
is “the whole kielbasa.”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God,
that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Does this strike you as odd?
that the work of God that we are to do is to believe?
not to keep all the Commandments
not to do good to others
nothing that requires muscles and sweat
or that make a product, accomplishes a task
but to believe the One God sent.
Let’s look at this word believe.
You have heard me say more than once about the challenge of translation,
how a word in one language usually has
a constellation of meanings about it,
and when we translate it to another language, say English,
we have to pick a word that inevitably cannot include
the whole scope of meaning of the original word.
That’s how it is with the verb that is translated here as believe.
I would rather translate it as have faith in.
To believe has the connotation of giving mental assent,
to accept as a doctrine, like when we say in the Nicene Creed,
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty…”
But the Greek word is much richer.
We could begin the creed just as well with
“We have faith in one God… We have faith in one Lord, Jesus Christ…”
To have faith in someone
means that we have a history with that person.
We have experienced that person as trustworthy in particular areas,
such as keeping their word, or arriving on time,
or doing a good job at fixing your car.
What we have faith in is the truth of that person as we have experienced it.
So this is the work we are invited to do:
to trust Jesus, to have faith in him,
to trust him, especially as we have experienced him in our lives,
how we have experienced him in our prayers and meditation,
how we have experienced his Resurrection Spirit guiding us,
how we have experienced his voice, his presence
through others who reflect his life in their own,
how we experience him in bread and wine week by week,
how all of creation points us to him,
in all the hundreds of ways we can come to experience and know him.
And to trust that, to rely utterly on Jesus
who would feed us with himself.
Jesus gives himself fully,
so that when you receive him,
you are nourished to fullness of Life.
He will feed us with what he is.
He will feed us with what he is.
And then we become him,
for, as they say, “You are what you eat.”
Jesus is the bread of God who comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.
We may want to make a link between this Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel
and the sacrament of the Eucharist
The essential Bread of Life is there for us
to sink our teeth into spiritually,
living bread that conveys life to the eater.
What are you hungry for? What does your soul crave?
Work for what will satisfy that hunger like nothing else can.
So come to the Table today with all your hunger,
and you may want to say a little prayer prior to eating,
such as the grace we say at home before a meal,
something like this:
For what we are about to receive,
may the Lord make us truly grateful.
