Text:  John 6:51-58                                                                                   W 13^th Sunday after Pentecost

Two Kinds of Bread

            In the name of him who has come down from heaven to give us eternal life, dear friends in Christ:  I’m going to begin by warning you that what I’m about to say may offend some of you:  but when I was growing up way back in the nineteen(ahem)sies, we lived on a ranch a few miles out of a “one grocery store town” – not much different than Clarinda [Bedford].  And in this town’s one grocery store, you could buy basically two kinds of bread: there was the standard pre-sliced white loaf made of bleached, vitamin enriched wheat flour (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about); and for those who wanted to walk on the wild side, or who wanted to think of themselves as being rugged, “organic”, or nutritionally conscious, there was standard pre-sliced “whole wheat” loaf made of exactly the same bleached, vitamin enriched wheat flour dyed light brown. That was pretty much it; though you could also buy buns for hot dogs and hamburgers made of the same material. The bread itself was tasteless, spongy, and so soft that it was limp.  When you put it in your mouth, you really didn’t have to chew; it just sort of dissolved.  And we loved it (except that when we were very young we insisted that the crust be removed.  Otherwise,) we thought it was great stuff – and that’s because we never knew anything different, and also because we never gave it a second thought.  No one really ate bread for bread’s sake, it was always only a platform for eating something else – your peanut butter and jelly, or your boloney, for example—that’s what was important.  The bread itself was little more than an edible wrapping or container.  And that’s the way I think most Americans think about that same kind of bread even today.

            Ah, but then I lived in Germany for several years. And over there in Europe, where there are vast differences in language and culture between the various countries, and where there are so many centuries of history of rivalry, wars, and bloodshed, one thing all European people happily unite in doing is making fun of American bread.  They take their bread very seriously over there – it’s something to be enjoyed and celebrated for its own sake.  There are hundreds of varieties available in the little mom and pop bakeries that are on practically every street corner.  But take even the most basic bread, say your German “landbrot” or farmer’s bread:  it’s heavy and firm and flavorful and it’s got some real body and substance – you have to chew it.  More than that, it’s hearty and delicious, and you can eat it by itself; it stands alone just fine.  And if you make a simple sandwich with it, or if you use it to soak up your soup, you’re not going to be hungry again for good long while.  Well, long story short, they made me a convert.  I learned that there are indeed two kinds of bread: there’s real bread, and then there’s the pathetic imitation on the shelves of the local grocery that most Americans mistakenly imagine is worthy of being called “bread”.  Trust me, it’s not.

And by now I expect some of you are a bit offended.  True, things have changed a bit, and these days you can find a wider variety of breads in the stores – some of which come almost close to being like real bread; but maybe you’re thinking, “Hey, who are you to knock it? I’ve been eating that good old spongy, tasteless, floppy American white bread all my life, and I like it just fine. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Well, if you are offended, and something like that is what you’re thinking … then too bad – as far as I’m concerned, the loss is yours.  And now, even if you’re not offended, you surely understand that some folks might be … and as a result, you’re better able to understand exactly what’s going on in this morning’s Gospel lesson in which we find Jesus offending people over the issue of two kinds of bread and which is best.

These are the same folks we’ve been hearing about in the Gospel readings for the past several weeks.  They were present and ate their fill at the miraculous feeding of the 5000, and they have pursued Jesus in the hopes of having yet another meal on him – actually, they’d like to have many meals more on him.  And the truth is that Jesus wants to give it to them—but not the way they’re thinking.  They want the bread they are most familiar with:  good old fashioned “mom makes the dough and puts it in the oven” bread like everyone in Palestine eats everyday; it’s the stuff they live on.  But Jesus wants to redirect their focus to spiritual matters.  He wants to give them a bread to satisfy their spiritual hungers – something to feed their souls for eternity.  He wants to give them himself as their Savior:  that’s the Bread of Life.

But they stubbornly resist his efforts to change the direction of the conversation.  They want to remain with what they are comfortable with – the earthly and familiar – with what they know best; and what they think is best to satisfy their wants and needs.  They keep pressing Jesus to provide it for them.  In response, Jesus grows increasingly direct with his words.  He has been referring to himself as the Bread of Life as a metaphor they could easily relate to.  They all understood that bread was what they depended upon for their lives.  And so his use of it was intended as an illustration to help them understand the spiritual realities he wanted to get across.  Now he begins to “unpack” the metaphor of bread, explaining exactly what he means in explicit terms that are offensive to the ears of his hearers.  He tells them point blank that the Bread of Life he has been speaking about “is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”  Now, finally, this gets their attention.  They begin to argue about it among themselves, “Did we hear him right? Did he just say he was going to give us his flesh to eat?  Sounds like cannibalism.  Is he serious?  If so, how’s he going to do that?  What does he mean?”

Capitalizing on their confusion and their eagerness to hear an explanation, Jesus drives the point home with even stronger words: “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  These words are designed to offend them.  Jesus is talking about consuming his human flesh.  When he speaks of it again a bit later, he chooses a way to describe it that’s even more graphic.  He uses a word that means not just “to eat” something, but actually to gnaw and chew on it with noisy slurping and smacking lips – like a group of hyenas devouring a carcass.  It’s not a pretty picture.  And doubly offensive to an audience of Jews is the reference to “drinking my blood”. First, because of the cannibalistic aspect of drinking human blood, which is bad enough; but more so because Jews were specifically prohibited from ingesting the blood of any creature. The Lord declared, “the life [of a creature] is in its blood” – and that life belonged only to the Lord who gave it. So when Jews slaughtered or sacrificed animals, before they used the meat, they took great pains ensure that every drop of blood was drained out.  They were obsessed with not letting any blood pass their lips.

And so I can’t go far enough to impress upon you just how scandalous these words of Jesus are to his listeners.  It’s difficult for us to understand.  We live without any religious dietary restrictions, and in a pragmatic age that says, “well, cannibalism is bad – but you know, if it were a matter of life and death, like it was with the Donner party, say, or that plane load of Chilean soccer players that crashed in the Andes a few decades back … well, it’s gross, but you do what you got to do to survive.”  And so we might be taken back by what he said – but nothing like these Jews were.  They were horrified.  And this effectively ended their conversation.  They heard this and left Jesus.  They didn’t want any part of him.  As a matter of fact, you probably know that besides the twelve closest disciples, Jesus had a larger following of disciples numbering perhaps in the hundreds. But when they heard him say these things, though they had been with him nearly a year, and had seen many miracles and believed him to be a powerful prophet of God, the vast majority left him in disgust.

Which makes us want to ask the question, why was Jesus being so offensive? Why did he choose to phrase things in a way that he knew they would find horrendous?  Especially considering that what he said was not absolutely literal. I mean, the way he described it, it really did sound as if they were to hack his living body to pieces, tear the flesh off his bones with their teeth, and drink down his still hot blood.  Yet, no one has ever done that, nor ever will they – and that’s not what he meant.  Now, it’s true that we do eat the true body of Christ and drink his true blood in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, but even then we do so in a way that does not violate our sense of decency.  The Lord’s body and blood are hidden in, with, and under the sacramental elements of bread and wine – so there’s nothing particularly unpleasant about it.

So again, I ask, why did Jesus use such scandalous language?  Why did he deliberately mean to offend his hearers with his words?  The answer is important, and it may surprise you.  The fact is that he wanted them to be offended – even more offended than they were; because if they had truly understood what he was saying, they would have been even more shocked and angry with him. 

Jesus is here speaking of spiritual feeding.  And the point he is trying to get across to these Jews (and to us) is that, “You live on my sacrificial death.  Your eternal life – and your continuing good relationship with God – depends entirely on your sustaining yourself on my death for your sin. Without that, you have no life at all in you.”  And let me make it clear that the “eating” Jesus is speaking of is faith in his sacrifice. Just as the body stays alive by eating bread, the soul stays alive by trusting in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. We live on his death, and on his death alone.  That’s why he calls himself the “Bread of Life”.

And to fallen mankind that’s the biggest offense there could possibly be. You see, in a spiritual sense there are two kinds of bread.  The first and by far the most popular is the kind we secure for ourselves.  And we spend a lot of time doing it.  From the moment we wake in the morning to the time we go to sleep at night, we are usually working on getting it for ourselves. And when we do, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as sitting down and serving ourselves a great big portion of it. We really love it.  What is it?  Well remember that spiritual feeding has to do with faith and trust – specifically, what we trust in for eternal life.  And so our “earthly” spiritual bread is everything we do that we believe is worthy of being recognized favorably in the sight of God.  It’s all the accomplishments, behaviors, attitudes, sacrifices, thoughts, or whatever that we take pride in, and that we imagine move us closer to, or secure us more firmly in the God’s kingdom.  And that’s the bread with which we are most familiar. It’s what everyone likes and is satisfied with.  And we like it especially when it comes free of charge.  It’s hard work to earn it – so there’s nothing we enjoy more than imagining God reaching down from heaven and patting our little heads and saying, “Oh, what a fine person!  I like you just the way you are.”  “Why”, we think, “that’s like bread from heaven.”  And when all is said and done, it’s that sort of bread that most people are counting on for eternal life.

But whoever eats that bread will die.  That’s because it’s not really spiritual bread at all.  It’s a deception, an illusion; something that momentarily creates the sensation of being filled, but turns out to be completely indigestible and innutritious.  And that’s the big offense.  That’s what we find so scandalous:  the truth that nothing we do, nothing we so nobly work for, nothing we are, or could ever hope to be or attain, will ever move us even a minute fraction of an inch closer to the glory of heaven and eternal life with God.

“You mean that the Lord is not pleased with anything I do?“ That’s right.  Everything you do is tainted by your sin.  Your best efforts and your proudest accomplishments literally stink to high heaven.  They are an offense to God.  “But surely you don’t mean to say that God doesn’t love me just the way I am?” That’s exactly what I mean to say. The truth is that God hates what you are.  And if it’s “But God loves everybody” that you’re counting on for eternal life, you are damned to hell.

“That’s awful sharp language coming from a preacher.  Now you are offending me.”  Good.  I mean to. Because that which is offended in you is the part that’s being fed by the sort of worthless spiritual bread that I’ve been speaking of.  That’s the part of you that’s strong in pride and dead in sin.  It’s the part that needs to be more than just offended: it needs to be put to death. Because when it is, you will utterly despair of trying to find any merit or worthiness in yourself – as indeed you must. You will spit out of your mouth – you’ll vomit up – the empty bread that cannot give you life.  And you will look to be filled with the true Bread that has real substance and body:  the body of Christ crucified for you.

This is the Bread of Life from heaven:  not that God approves of what you do, but rather of what Christ did. It’s his sinless perfection and his works of love that God looks upon with favor.  It’s not that God loves you “just the way you are”, but rather that he loves Jesus his Son just the way he is – nevertheless, in his infinite mercy, he placed you in his Son, and damned and cursed him for your sake.  The Son endured all the wrath and hatred that God had for you and your sin.  His body was destroyed and his blood was shed on your behalf – and trusting in that sacrifice, thus spiritually consuming it, is what saves you and gives you life.

In the Christian church we call it the “Scandal of the Cross”.  What it means is all credit for anything good goes to Christ and to him alone.  In his death we place our trust.  And his resurrection, his victory over death, is the guarantee that his death earned eternal life for us.  The Scandal of the Cross also means that we must constantly war against the worldly appetite we have that seeks to feed on some imagined good or worthiness in ourselves. Be it faithful church membership, a fine record of worship attendance, consistent and generous offering giving, works of love for family, friends, neighbors, charity work, or just a general sense of being a basically good person, all of it is poison for the soul to the extent that we place any trust in it.

The Bread of Life is Christ and him crucified.  Eating this bread, that is, trusting in it, is what gives eternal life. And, of course, the highest expression of this faith and feeding is found in the Lord’s Supper in which we actually do eat the body and drink the blood of the Savior sacrificed for us. Here the spiritual and physical eating is combined – assuring us of the forgiveness and life we have in him, and reminding us too that his sacrifice for us is not exclusively food for our souls. No, there’s a physical dimension as well.  Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  Just as he died for our sins and rose again in his body, even so, on the last day will our blood bought souls be reunited with our own resurrected bodies. And then, just as lives, we will too live, in him, body and soul forever.

Dear saints of God, spiritually speaking, there are just two kinds of bread. May God give each of us the grace to despise the bread of this world, and to seek daily to be fed only with the true Bread of Life from heaven.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!