Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, rcl yr b, Sunday, August 11, 2024
2 SAMUEL 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; PSALM 130; EPHESIANS 4:25 – 5:2; JOHN 6:35, 41-51
Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever;
and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6:51)
It is hard for Christians to hear today’s Gospel and not consider it as a reference to the Holy Eucharist. In this Gospel, Jesus identifies the bread that he gives as a metaphor for his flesh, and we immediately think of the words he spoke to his disciples at the last meal they shared, words we ourselves recall at every Eucharistic celebration. “On the night he was handed over to suffering and death…our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks…he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take, eat: this is my body which is given for you.” And then he immediately commanded these same disciples, “Do this for the remembrance of me.”
And so, when the disciples came together after the Day of Pentecost to begin again the mission they had begun with Jesus, we read this account in Luke-Acts: “Day by day…they spent much time together in the temple, broke bread at home, and ate their food with glad and generous hearts.”
When Luke writes that they “broke bread at home,” he is referring to something that became a practice in the apostolic church, specifically that whenever the disciples came together, often on a Sunday, the day of Jesus’ resurrection, they would share a meal and reserve part of their mealtime to give thanks and break bread in obedience to Jesus’ command “Do this for the remembrance of me.”
But it is passages like today’s Gospel that deepened the Church’s understanding of the significance of this memorial meal. When Jesus teaches that the bread that he gives for the life of the world is his flesh, he is proclaiming that in this bread that he gives, he is present; that one of the gifts we receive in Holy Communion is the real presence of Christ within and among us. And it is through his real and gracious presence that our sins are forgiven and that we receive eternal life.
We often hear and even read these days of the death of the Church or the collapse of the Church, but such death and collapse are only possible if we cease to recognize Christ in our midst, calling us together, feeding us with the bread of life, calling us into mission for the sake of the gospel. Any parish, any congregation that holds to the vision of Christ’s real presence within and among its people will not lose its way, will not fail. Any parish, any congregation whose hearts burn with call of the gospel to love the world as God so loved the world will always be sustainable.
And so, the Church is not a museum, nor is it an institution that has outlived its relevancy. The Church is the locus of the real presence of Jesus Christ. And if we are fortunate enough, as this congregation is, to have a building in which to meet, in which to break bread, and from which to offer hospitality to others, that building for all of its leaks and upkeep and retrofitting and expense is nothing less than the Church’s base for mission, a foothold in our troubled and broken world for the proclamation God’s grace, for sharing the Bread of Life.
Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t talk directly in the passage we read today about sharing the bread that he gives and is. But when he refers to his bread as bread for “the life of the world,” he introduces a change in perspective that causes us to open our eyes and take account of others.
The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, at the beginning of the chapter in John from which we read today, is the backdrop and frame of reference for all of Jesus’ teaching in Chapter 6 about eating and drinking. The five thousand who ate their fill by the Sea of Galilee signify that the grace that is Jesus Christ is grace that is given for the many, not the few; grace that is given “for the life of the world,” not only for your life or for mine.
What does it mean for us to share our bread? The answer is remarkably simple, really, and hearkens back to Jesus’ teaching that the bread he gives for the world is his flesh. The answer is also prophetic because it calls us to action.
Sharing our Bread means sharing who we have become, because of Jesus.
Receiving and then sharing the bread that is Jesus and his gospel is, therefore, a costly gift. There is a hymn that I love which, sadly, is neither in Common Praise nor Songs for a New Creation. It names the Holy Eucharist, the celebration of the real presence of Christ within and among us as a “hungry feast”. And so it is. Sharing our Bread means sharing who we have become, because of Jesus.