Pentecost 12, 2024
1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sometimes the lessons assigned on a Sunday all seem to go together. Today we heard from 1st Kings where Elijah wants to die, but the angel says, “You just need to eat something.” You’ve probably been in the angel’s shoes, if you have children or an aging parent. And then we read together part of Psalm 34, where the writer rejoices in God’s power to save us. And then we heard a portion of the letter to the Ephesians, where Paul tells us the importance of treating one another with love. All of which was followed up by the Gospel reading we just heard from John, another discourse on bread and heaven and eternal life. Don’t forget to eat; God saves; love one another; don’t forget to eat.
These readings go together nicely. But let’s go back to the old saying, “You are what you eat.” We all kind of have a vague idea that this is true, right? Like we want our kids to eat healthful food because we want our kids to be healthy kids. Or, at least, more vegetables and less cake is something we consider a rule of thumb. It’s kind of related to that other old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” And if you don’t think about it too much, it’s easy to get the idea that food is just like gasoline for our bodies. We naturally talk that way, about eating an energizing breakfast: food for energy, and so on. I think we’re more apt to think about food as being fuel for our bodies, rather than raw material for our bodies, even though in truth, you really are what you eat.
Since our bodies are constantly losing cells, the stuff we eat replaces those lost cells. That’s why if you stop eating, you will start to shrink until . . . well, until you die. In simple terms, you need a constant supply of nutrition to build more cells to replace the cells that are dying every day. And that nutrition actually replaces the cells that have died, as well as feeding the living ones. Here ends what I know about biology, and so we turn to today’s gospel . . .
In this five-week stretch we’re in, we get Jesus talking about bread, and distributing bread, and comparing himself to bread. Bread bread bread. Five Sundays about bread and Jesus, which is why I’m using the same Communion hymn for several weeks. And in the little section of John’s Gospel we just heard, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
And then—as is often the case when Jesus says something amazing—people begin to grumble about what he said. In this case, they’re scoffing over Jesus coming down from heaven, because they know his parents. You can’t have come down from heaven, because we know what you are!
I talked about this last Sunday, which perhaps you remember. The Israelites escaped from Egypt but they are hungry. Moses talks to God, and God sends down something from heaven for them to eat. The Israelites call this stuff “Manna,” which literally means, “What is it?” They don’t know what it is, so they call it “What is it.”
Now flash forward to this scene with that in mind: The crowd is saying, Jesus, you cannot have come down from heaven because we know you. You are not manna. You are Joseph and Mary’s son. We know what you are!
And check out Jesus’ response: “Do not complain among yourselves. 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.” They’re complaining that he can’t be from heaven because they know him. And Jesus says, don’t complain; no one can come to me unless the Father draws them.
And then he continues, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” This is harsh! This is a very strong smackdown, to say the least. The implication is, the reason they don’t understand is because the Father has not drawn them.
Jesus is speaking to the descendants of those Israelites. They are the ones whose ancestors were delivered from slavery in Egypt, who ate the manna, and welcomed the food, but did not know what it was. And Jesus says, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.”
They were fed day by day, but it was just food to get them through the day. Day by day, they ate and lived, but eventually, they all died. God provided, but they still died. Even the unknown food from God’s hand was not enough to give them everlasting life. As the disciples will say in a couple weeks, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" Food from the very hand of God is not enough to provide everlasting life?
Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” Whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate bread in the wilderness, and they died. What is different here? Two things. First, whoever believes has eternal life. And second, Jesus is the bread of life, and whoever eats of this bread will live forever. Daily manna from heaven? That day-to-day food that does not bring eternal life? Child’s play! Well, child’s play for God, I mean.
But, eternal life? That’s different. Eternal life takes a whole new way of thinking. Eternal life takes Jesus. The living bread. The bread that has come down from heaven. That is an entirely different thing to be eating. Which takes us back to that first point: You are what you eat.
Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” You are what you eat. The food you eat becomes the cells in your body. If you eat the living bread, your body becomes the living bread. Jesus finishes by saying, “and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
Does this mean that you and I will live forever in these mortal bodies for eternity? No, of course not. And the older I get, I would add I hope not! We have two thousand years of Christians before us to prove that eating the Bread of Heaven does not keep you alive forever. The point is not that we will live on forever in these aging bodies. (And that is good news!)
We only get it once in today’s little snippet of reading, but all around this reading—before and after—Jesus says, “And I will raise them up.” If you read the 6th chapter of John’s Gospel, FOUR times Jesus says, “And I will raise them up on the last day.” Over and over in this chapter he says, “I am the bread of life.” And over and over he says, “I will raise them up on the last day.”
We get it from every different angle, with every different nuance: Jesus is like the manna in the wilderness, but with these two crucial additions . . . He is the living bread, and therefore he will raise us up on the last day.
People of St. Timothy’s, it is true: we are what we eat. And today Jesus comes to us in the sacrament as the living bread that has come down from heaven. He infuses every cell of our bodies with his presence, and sends us out into the world in peace. And since you are what you eat, come and feast on the living bread that has come down from heaven. Even though we die, we shall live forever.
Amen.
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