Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann
John 6:48-58
March 22, 2017
It’s said that in some cultures a meal is not a meal unless one eats rice. And, so three meals a day or more, rice is served with whatever else is being eaten. In our culture, there was a time, not long ago, when the same thing could be said only substituting the rice with bread. For breakfast there was toast, at lunch bread would be on either side of any sandwich, and for dinner, a plate of bread in the center of the table was as standard as water glasses and salt and peppershakers. Diet crazes and eating habits shift with time, of course, and bread may not be as ubiquitous at American meal times as it once was, but bread is still important. Indeed, it is still often said that bread is the staple of life, and bread continues to hold an important metaphorical position as the basic life-sustaining element that is absolutely necessary for life to continue. That’s why the person who brings home the biggest paycheck is the breadwinner, and the money earned is still sometimes called bread. And that’s why when we pray for daily bread we know that what we’re really asking for is everything that we need for life to continue.
While the Holy Land is officially part of what we call the East—either the Near East or the Middle East— when it comes to the bread or rice question, the eating habits of the Middle East are definitely western. They eat bread. And like most staples of life, the bread they eat is much the same as it has been for centuries or even millennia. The bread is large, round, and dense. You’d probably call it pita bread—though in Christ’s time the pocket was not standard and they weren’t always pancake-flat. Since it was the staple of life, bread appears frequently in the pages of the Bible. So, tonight, we think about bread, but more specifically, we think about broken bread. In the world of the first century, “breaking bread” was a decidedly happy phrase. It meant that it was time to eat. The large heavy loaves of barley or occasionally maybe even wheat flour had to be made manageable before they could be eaten, and that was done by tearing or breaking them into sizes that one could easily handle. So, a meal began with the breaking of bread and then the distribution of bread would follow. The standard image of Jesus holding the loaves and breaking them in the upper room for the disciples would have been a scene that had been repeated hundreds of times before that night. It’s how every meal began.
Of course, we continue to break bread in our own lives every day—several times every day. But, in our world, breaking bread is usually only metaphorical. We have to eat, and we do. We break bread. And breaking bread can cause us some serious problems. Indeed, we face a host of difficulties tied directly to eating. We hear again and again about the epidemic of obesity and few of us would be foolish enough to argue that overeating is not a cultural problem. People have trouble with food—whether eating too much, too little, or using food for the wrong sorts of things like painkillers or psychological diversions. This is not a particularly modern challenge. There’s a good reason that one of the seven deadly sins is gluttony. Mishandling food is more than a health or social issue; it is a sin. It’s a very wide-reaching sin. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to suggest that every sin is a form of gluttony. Gluttony is the inability or unwillingness to control desire. It is the abuse of a good gift. What is meant to feed and satisfy, is made into an idol of desire, an object of abuse. Gluttony is all about satisfying desire. It’s about answering a craving and feeding a need. We’re not told how much Adam and Eve had to eat that day in the garden under the boughs of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But whether they ate a basketful of fruit or just a single small bite, it was gluttony that was driving their sinful action. They craved something that they did not have, and they did what they had to do to satisfy that craving: they reached out and took the object of their desire and they ate. They ate what was forbidden. They ate what they could not have. They indulged their craving. They fed their desire. They sinned.
We do the same. We see what we want, we reach out and take what we want—even ignoring the clear command not to lust, not to touch, not to eat. We don’t care. We want what we want, and we take and we eat. Whether or not you have a problem with food, you do have a problem with gluttony. Gluttony is simply the willful demand to have your desire fully sated, now. Remember, daily bread includes all that we need to exist in this world. God is well aware of what is necessary for you to survive. He knows about your need for literal bread and for all the other essential forms of bread. Gluttony, is the refusal to receive God’s provision on his terms and in his timing. It is the attempt to have what you want when you want it and the way you want it—without any restraint. Understood this way, breaking bread and indulging our desires is a fundamental and pervasive problem for us all. We take. We eat. We overeat. Things we should not even touch much less taste, we devour. The cravings may take the form of very tangible and material things: a new bigger TV, an updated smarter phone, a newer car, a better house, a nicer vacation, a more comfortable retirement. You want it. You want it, now. And so, you take it—even if it means foolish and crippling debt. Or maybe the craving is for a relationship that is off-limits—a friendship that is becoming more than a friendship in spite of commitments and promises already made to others, or it might be simply the lust for nameless images, or the false dream of a fantasized and idealized lover who perfectly understands you. You want it and you take it and you destroy the real relationships you have with real people in your life. Or maybe the craving is for the praise of others, or the prestige of power and influence, or the stroking of your pride. You want it and you take it even if you must bend the truth or trample on others to get it.
You see, you want, you take, and you eat. And you pay the price. And for your sin, others also pay the price. How often do you spoil a good gift of God by abusing it? How often do you twist what is beautiful and true into something that is false and ugly? How often do you miss God’s provision because you are trying to supply your needs your way? How often do the basic concerns and worries of surviving and thriving in this life lead you away from simple trust in God and his promise to provide? Getting bread, breaking bread, and consuming bread are big problems for us. Rightly handling all of the countless forms of daily bread that make up our lives proves an often-overwhelming challenge for us. Dealing with our daily bread so easily and so often lands us in the middle of deep sin. We don’t handle bread very well. Broken bread reflects our own internal brokenness and moral failure.
So, in addition to the consistent and sufficient provision of your physical, daily, bread, God also gives spiritual bread to meet the greatest need of all. God gives you Jesus. In our text from John 6, Jesus delivered one of the hardest of his many hard messages. He told those who were ready to follow him that he was the living bread from heaven sent from the Father. He declared that the only way for anyone to live was to eat his flesh, and to drink his blood. Think about how that sounds even now, 2,000 years later. They are stunning and hard words. When the people following Jesus heard those words, many were so shocked that they walked away. They couldn’t deal with such an absurd and audacious claim. It was too much. Jesus was making an extraordinary claim. He was saying that he was the one and only source of true sustenance. He was claiming that he was the only way anybody could ever hope to live and thrive in this life and in the next. Jesus was saying that he was the one essential thing that every person must have to survive and grow. It’s true, of course. Jesus is more vital and necessary than bread. Instead of feeding yourself and satisfying your own desires, you must eat the bread that God gives. You must feed on Jesus. You need to take and eat not the bread of your cravings, but the living bread of Jesus who gives life.
But before you can eat the bread of life from heaven, the bread must be broken. And that is precisely what happened at Calvary. On the cross, the living bread from heaven was broken. Jesus body was broken. His blood was shed. For you he was broken. For you he bled. Like the Passover lamb, his bones were intact, but his body was torn, pierced, and broken. The final Passover lamb—the one all the others had foreshadowed—was broken at Calvary…and the gift was given. The breaking paid for sin. The breaking gave life. The broken bread gives you life. Every time that you receive the host in your palm, you eat the bread of life. Every time you hear the word of absolution spoken to you, or the sermon preached into your ears, you eat the broken bread of life. Each time that another person speaks grace to you, you are eating life-giving bread. Yes, you eat the bread at the Lord’s Supper, but you also eat that bread every time God’s grace and forgiveness is delivered in the proclamation of the Word.
The broken bread of Jesus, whether given at the altar or in the Word, is the one and only solution to the brokenness of your life. Your trouble handling your cravings and desires, your trouble with breaking daily bread, your failures when you try to handle all the forms of bread that God gives to sustain your life, are all perfectly answered in the bread of life broken for you. God gives what you need. This does not mean that once you receive the living bread of Jesus all of your desires and cravings will simply vanish. And it doesn’t mean that when you eat the living bread of heaven your desires will never get the best of you, or lead you into trouble. And eating the bread of life doesn’t mean that there won’t be times when God’s provision of daily bread is more meager or delayed than you like. What it does mean to receive the living bread of Jesus Christ again and again is that you have a way through life. Your desires do not conquer. Your needs are not what drive you. Your life becomes rightly ordered more and more. And, your trust increases, and so does your contentment with the daily bread that God provides. In other words, when you eat the bread of life, everything changes.
This is the shape of the Christian life. Daily you enjoy breaking bread—receiving the gifts that God gives to sustain and enrich your life. And daily you enjoy feeding on the Bread of Life, receiving his broken bread for your forgiveness and for the strengthening of your life. The bread of life was broken for you, and that makes you entirely new. Eat up, the bread has been broken, the blessings are waiting for you. Amen.