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Pentecost 11 2024
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Hamilton, Ohio
Pastor Kevin Jud
August 4, 2024
Exodus 16:2-15, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:22-35
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Bread is easy. Bread is abundant. I can go to Aldi and buy a loaf of white bread for $1.35. And they won’t limit me to just one loaf, I can buy a dozen. For a little more money I can buy Italian bread, French bread, Indian bread, Pita bread, wheat bread, sprouted bread, sour dough bread. Bread is easy. Bread is abundant and for this we can thank our hard working farmers and their amazing machines and chemicals and techniques that produce incredible quantities of wheat.
So, getting bread occupies very little of my time and effort. I don’t think about it really. Bread is easy.
But rewind history 2,000 years and we see that in Jesus’ time bread was a big deal. There were no pesticides, limited fertilizers, no tractors, no $500,000 combines to harvest and thresh the grain all at once. In Jesus’ time getting bread was back-breaking work. Sowing seed, hoeing weeds, praying for rain and then waiting for harvest time. Then the hard part starts. Cut the grain with a sickle, bundle it, carry it to the threshing floor where oxen would walk on the harvest to break it down. And then to separate the wheat from the husks and stalks they tossed it in the air with a winnowing fork to get the wind to blow away the chaff. Then they gathered the grains to be sifted. The sifted wheat is then ground into flour between two heavy millstones. Then you could start making bread.
In Jesus’ time bread was difficult. People had to work hard and long to get bread.
Rewind another 1500 years back to the time of Moses and the Exodus. The children of Israel have been freed from slavery to the Egyptians and are in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. They have eaten the Passover lambs whose blood was painted over their doors to protect them from God’s plague of the death of the first born.
Now, the children of Israel are in the wilderness and they are free, but they are hungry. And as difficult as the struggle is for bread when you are living in one area and able to farm, the struggle for bread when you are a moving band of migrants is pretty much impossible.
The people are free, but they are hungry, and the hunger overcomes the freedom. We can understand this. Hunger is a real motivator. When you are hungry it is hard to think of anything else. The children of Israel are hungry and they cry out to Moses that they would rather have died in Egypt as slaves, where they had enough to eat, rather than die of hunger in the wilderness.
So then God provides for the children of Israel in the wilderness. He rains down bread from heaven for the people. God provides enough manna for each day.
Bread is a big deal. In Jesus’ time, just prior to our Gospel reading, Jesus feeds 5,000 men, plus women and children in the wilderness. For these people who live in a constant struggle to get food, Jesus miraculously supplies food. This is amazing. Jesus multiplies five loaves into an abundance of bread; like manna from heaven.
The Lord supplies the Israelites with the bread that they need in wilderness of Sinai, and the Lord supplies the crowds with the bread that they need in the wilderness by the Sea of Galilee. The Lord, out of His mercy, does this to meet the people’s needs, and to show that He is the Lord Almighty. It is a sign from God. Jesus feeds the 5,000 as a sign that He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God and yet so many of the people who eat the bread see it only as a sign that Jesus is a bread machine.
In our Gospel reading from John the crowds are following Jesus, but Jesus knows why they seek after Him. The crowds are not looking for God in Flesh or the Savior of the World. The crowds are not looking for the King of the Jews; they are looking for a bread king. They are looking for someone to satisfy their physical hunger. And Jesus does satisfy their hunger, but it is a sign of what more He can do.
Jesus tells them, John 6:27 (ESV) 27 Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”
The children of Israel are distracted by their physical hunger and unable to see the mighty things God is doing for them in delivering them from slavery in Egypt. Their greatest hunger; their greatest need, is for the Lord’s salvation. They eat the flesh of the sacrificial Passover lamb and are saved by the mark of the blood, they cross the Red Sea on dry ground, but then they forget what God is doing. God feeds them in the wilderness with bread from heaven but then they grow weary of what God is doing for them. They grow weary of God’s salvation. They don’t like the way God is saving them. It is slow and boring. They eat the manna from heaven but then lose sight of their total dependence on God and that the manna is a sign of God’s continuing love pointing them forward to the true Bread of Life, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Jesus is declared to be the Lamb of God at His baptism in the Jordan. Jesus’ blood marks the cross to save you from your sins. Jesus provides bread for the multitude, and Jesus also is Himself the Bread of Life. Jesus feeds you with the Bread of His Word and the Bread of His own flesh. You are fed with the flesh of the Lamb of God who shed His blood for you and was sacrificed for you.
The people seeking Jesus, the bread machine, want to know what they need to do to be doing the works of God. Jesus gives them an unsatisfying answer. John 6:29 (ESV) 29 … “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” It’s not about you; it’s about Jesus for you.
Jesus is the Lamb of God. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Jesus is the true Bread from Heaven. To do the work of God is to believe in Jesus. Your salvation is totally dependent on Jesus. You are totally dependent on Jesus. You hunger and thirst for righteousness and Jesus say, John 6:35 (ESV) 35 … “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
Jesus was sealed by God the Father in Baptism. In baptism you are sealed by God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You have been set apart from this world as one who knows the truth and is fed with the Bread of Life.
This world is full of people who desperately hunger for the food of eternal life, but far too often they do not know it. People hunger for the Bread of Life, but they are distracted by their other hungers and can be unaware of their most important need. For many folks in this world, physical hunger still distracts, but not so much for most of us. In this land of abundance most of us don’t have to worry about being hungry for food, but there are a lot of other hungers that distract.
There is a great temptation to want Jesus to be easy; like going to the store to pick up a loaf of bread. Jesus is simple enough for a child, but He is not easy.
Hungers are not necessarily bad in themselves, but you can start to believe that Jesus’ main purpose is to satisfy your appetites; your physical hunger, your emotional hunger, your sexual hunger. You start to believe that Jesus wants you to be healthy, wealthy, wise, happy, and fulfilled. You have a desire for physical health and that is a good thing, but it is not the most important thing. The most important thing is eternal life with God.
This teaching does not please the children of Israel in the wilderness of the Exodus -- and they rebel. This teaching does not please the crowds that come to Jesus seeking bread -- and most of them abandon Him. This teaching does not please people today and so, so many abandon the Bread of Life trying to satisfy their temporary hungers.
There is a great temptation to want Jesus to be easy; like going to the store to pick up a loaf of bread. Jesus is simple enough for a child, but He is not easy. It is so tempting to want Jesus to be a Jesus you can control; a Jesus who does what you want, when you want. It is easy to grow weary of God’s means of salvation through baptism, the Word of God and Holy Communion; it is so slow and boring. It is tempting to want to satisfy your own hungers, decide for yourself what is sin and what is not sin, until the only thing you think is sinful is belief that sin exists. It is tempting to want a Jesus that stays out of your way except when you determine that you need Him. You want to be a part of your own salvation by doing the works that you determine you should do. But the work of God is to believe in the one sent from heaven. It is simple enough for a child, but it is not easy. It is total dependence.
Believe in Jesus; He is the Bread of Life. Amen.