Sermon for Pentecost 12: "The Bread of Life"

+ 12th Sunday after Pentecost - August 12th, 2018 +

Series B: 1 Kings 19:1-8; Ephesians 4:17-5:2; John 6:35-51

Beautiful Savior Lutheran, Milton

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lately, my children have been playing a little word game. It goes something like this. Do you like chocolate? Yes. Do you like peanut butter? Yes. Then you must like them together!

Now, the book of Exodus doesn’t tell us, but maybe Israelite children played similar games with their parents in the wilderness. Do you like Manna? Yes. Do you like Quail? Yes. Then you must like them together!

This little game fits in well with today’s Scripture readings too. Do you like food? Do you like God’s Word? Then you must like them together!

Indeed, God joins his gift of food and Scripture together all the time. Remember how Ezekiel and John ate the scroll of God’s Word. Or how Jesus was known for eating and drinking with sinners. Or how we pray that we would read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest God’s holy Word.

Everywhere you turn in Scripture, there’s a feast of God’s gifts. To Adam and Eve, the Lord declared: Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

To Israel in bondage and slavery in Egypt, the Lord gave his Passover, saying, “They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it.”

To Elijah, running away from wicked Jezebel, the Angel of the Lord declared: “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.”

Whether it’s in the garden or the wilderness, under a broom tree for a fearful prophet or in an upper room of fearful disciples, Old or New Testaments - everywhere you go in Scripture, God is with his people. Giving daily bread. Slaughtering the fattened calf for prodigals. Gathering us to his banqueting table.

Last week we heard that Jesus gives us Living Bread from heaven. Today we hear that Jesus is the Living Bread.

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

We’ve all been hungry before. We walk to the fridge or cupboard and say to ourselves, “I’m hungry, but I don’t know what for.” Hunger is the absence of bread, food. Thirst is the absence of drink. We need food and drink to live. Like the Snickers bar commercial says, “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry.” We get cranky, tired, weak, 21 days without food. 3 days without water. Eventually we die.

And what’s true in our daily life, is also true of our life before God. Sin leaves us with a feeling of hunger that can’t be satisfied, a thirst that can’t be slaked, and an emptiness that no matter how hard, and how full we try to fill it, the hole just keeps getting deeper and darker.

We’re like Adam and Eve, desiring what is pleasing to our sin-warped eyes; we delight in our own wisdom or strength, or we pride ourselves on not being proud like those other sinners. We think we know best what we need, not what God gives.

We’re like Israel in Egypt, enslaved to sin, death, and the devil. And in our hunger, we grumble against God. We reject his kindness, grace, and favor. Why did you bring us out in the wilderness to die and eat this loathsome food? Sin does that to us, twists us inside out so that we prefer the food of slavery and bitterness over the bread of heaven.

We’re like Elijah, weary and weak of life in a fallen world. Jezebel was after him; he had death threats; he couldn’t trust his best friends or family. So he sat under a broom tree in the wilderness and cried out: It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.

That sums up our wilderness wandering too. Like Elijah, we grow weary of life in this fallen world. Surrounded by Jezebels. Idolatry, immorality the new normal for our society. It’s easy to get an “Elijah complex” here in the wilderness, thinking we’re the only one who gets it. The last faithful Israelite. Such delusions come with malnutrition.

Elijah had one thing right though. He was no better than his fathers. Same for us. We’re no better than Adam and Eve, Israel, or Elijah, or the crowds listening to Jesus’ bread of life teaching. Our spiritual hunger pains are a sign of a deeper disease. The hunger of sin and unbelief.

That was the crowd’s reaction to Jesus’ teaching in John 6. They didn’t believe. They grumbled. “Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness.”Yes, they did, Jesus replied. And they died. Ultimately, our hunger reveals our Sin. Our lack. Our Emptiness. Our death.

And it’s here, in our emptiness, hunger, and weakness – in our sin and death – where our Lord sets out like a Michelin star chef to fill, satisfy, strengthen, and save us. Clothing, shoes, food, drink, house, home, family. All of it from God’s gracious fatherly hand without any merit or worthiness in us, just as he did in the wilderness.

Jesus fills our empty hands, bellies, and lives with an abundance of daily bread, but he does more. After all, manna couldn’t save Israel or us, it can only sustain us. For salvation, we must look to Jesus, the Bread of Life. For the bread that Jesus gives is not like the bread that fell from the sky for Moses or the bread that the angel brought Elijah. The bread that Jesus gives is Himself.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

Jesus is our living, life-giving bread from heaven. In Holy Baptism, he washes us and prepares us to come to his table as guests. In his holy Word of forgiveness in absolution, and in his holy body and blood broken and poured on the cross and on the altar, Jesus prepares a food from heaven that satisfies the deepest of our hungers, the hunger for righteousness. Jesus serves up a satisfying meal that no earthly food can offer, his very own flesh and blood.

“The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

When Jesus says this it’s hard not to think of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, we should.

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for here at our Lord’s table you are, and ever shall be satisfied. Christ our second Adam feeds us with the fruit from the tree of life, his body and blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sin.

Christ our Passover Lamb is sacrificed for us and he offers up his blood to save us from the angel of death, gives his flesh to eat as the Bread of Life, and leads us out of slavery in the exodus of his death and resurrection.

Christ, the angel of the Lord who once visited Elijah under the broom tree, visits, feeds, rescues us from death, and says to us, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” I will make the journey for you. I will feed you. Take eat. Take drink.

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.