Year B

John 6:24-35

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Body That Feeds

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to hear the Bishop of Botswana, Africa speak when he visited the diocese of West Missouri which is their companion diocese. He told a group of us that it was custom in his country for priests or clergy to feed guests who show up at their door. He said, even people traveling through the area would look for the local priest’s home knowing that they would be invited in and fed.  Sometimes with little food themselves the priest would go out to the backyard, kill another chicken so there would be enough food to feed everyone.  I’m thinking as he is telling this story, thank goodness I can plan when I will help feed the hungry, or have guests, and I don’t have to go out in the back yard to kill a chicken. Although, during the depression and WWII, you hear stories of those down and out showing up on door steps looking for food, and you hear of the generosity of those who didn’t always have much themselves feeding and helping their neighbor. If someone showed up on my doorstep hungry, of course I would find something for them to eat.

The Bishop went on to say, it is our responsibility as Christians to show Jesus’ radical hospitality to our neighbor of which the scriptures command us to do. In Roman’s chapter 12:13, we hear, “Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” And of course this familiar verse from Hebrews, “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.” He went on to say; it is always my hope that my witness of Christ’s hospitality to those in need will bring faith to those who are fed. In an age, when many of us experience abundance with plenty of bread, fresh meat, canned goods and fast foods, we don’t experience people showing up on our doorsteps everyday looking for food. We take manna-from-heaven for granted.  Yet, there are people all around us experiencing serious poverty, hunger, and starvation. Every week, I have people come or call the church office looking for help.

The ancient Hebrew’s were hungry and complaining as they were wandering in the wilderness after their release from the land of Egypt, and God gave them food. Manna from heaven means the unexpected. And they said when they saw it, “What’s this?” In the Hebrew language the phrase for “what’s this,” is manna.  Manna is for real. In the Sinai desert today, Arabs eat “manna,” and they call it mann, and they say it is a gift from heaven. Manna appears to be a honeydew secretion from two kinds of insects that feed on the sap of the tamarack tree or bush, which is all over the Sinai. The honeydew is rich in three basic sugars and pectin. Most of the moisture evaporates in the dry desert air, and what is left, are sticky droplets on the plants on the ground. The Hebrew’s would pick up this honeydew and boil it in pots or ground into meal and bake it into cakes. The wandering Hebrews because they came from civilized Egypt, would have been surprised by the phenomenon of the tamarack bush and its honeydew producing insects. And they thanked God for manna.

This story of God feeding his people with manna in the wilderness has had a profound effect on religious beliefs for thousands of years. It led directly to one of the most famous saying of Jesus: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” As we know from today’s great passage from the gospel of John, which continues the theme of bread in the wilderness where the Exodus story ends, Jesus made this statement in reply to questions about manna from heaven.  The people had just experienced the feeding of the five thousand and they knew the wilderness story so immediately they began to look for more signs that Jesus was a man of God. And Jesus said I am the sign, I am the Bread of Life. God gives the true bread from heaven, the manna from heaven and I am that bread. I am the food that endures and gives life to the world. In me, you will find the life-giving presence of God. The bread that Moses and the people were given in the wilderness rotted by God’s intention after a day. Unlike that bread from heaven, the one who gives bread now, gives Jesus, the bread that endures for eternal life.

Jesus on the cross is bread and drink for all who believe.  In the resurrection and in the Eucharist, which proclaims this death and resurrection, this bread and drink come here now, as the end of hunger and thirst. If we come merely to eat the bread with “human” reason not as remembrance of Christ’s teaching and as a source of spiritual nourishment that gives us life, then we have misunderstood the meaning of the Living Bread.  This Living Bread provides enough and more than our share, so that we can share with others that show up on our doorsteps. We can give what we have to those in our community, the city, and wherever next door might be. We can live out our baptism remembering the promises of God and the promises we make to proclaim by word and example the Good news of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves, striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being.

Part of the challenge for us is recognition that there are many that go each day, every day without the substance, the faith they need. We have found our sustenance in the Living Bread of Christ and it should energize us and call us to seek out those who need this bread the most. Today, we come together like the people of the Exodus, around the true bread of God, enabling the journey we are on with Christ, a journey of freedom, witness, and praise. The point is not simply to “eat your fill” of bread, or desire more signs, but to receive in faith the great gift of God, the love and mercy of God which delivers us from our sinful nature and gives us the presence of Christ amid our hungers, giving life to the world, through the Spirit that makes us one. There are many who are looking, many who are hungry; there are many who are searching  May we become the body that feeds them; may we become the body, the sign that proclaims the identity of the bread of life to this broken and hungry world.