Normal Bread and Normal Wine

 August 11, 2024

John 6:35;41-51

Breaking of the Bread
Rick Berry

 

What we started last week and will continue to look at

until the end of August is the Bread of Life Discourse.

It’s one of several of Jesus monologues 

written in John’s gospel.

In that gospel, Jesus has many more monologues

than in the other gospels (and in the other gospels

Jesus has more parables). This bread of life discourse is

what follows the feeding of the 5000 in John.

 

Last week, the people following Jesus wanted to

know more about that miracle,

they asked him how they could do what he just did.

They see Jesus as an equal who has learned

to do something that they could learn too.

They don’t yet know that Jesus is who he is.

 

Jesus tells them that having faith

is what they should be doing to get that.

They ask what they should have faith in.

 

Jesus says believe in God,

and believe that God is the one who sent Jesus.

He says if you have faith in that, then you’ll already

have the bread that never goes stale.

 

But they don’t really understand.

So they ask again,

“How do we get this bread that never goes stale?

Where can we buy it or find the recipe?”

 

Then, in this week’s portion of the interaction,

Jesus gets a little clearer.

He says “I am the bread. I am the bread of life.”

He spells it out for them.

  

Now the religious leaders and the church people

have apparently come to listen in on this conversation

by now, and they get offended at this direct statement.

they’re like:  “He’s the bread of life?

How dare he say that. He’s just Joseph’s son.”

 

We have to remember that Jesus wasn’t a big deal then.

He looked like everyone else. He came from the same place.

They didn’t know who he was or what he would do.

 

“He’s the bread of life?”

But he’s just one of us. We watched him grow up.

We knew his father. He did the same things my kids did

and he knows the same people I know.

And yet he knows God?

God is working through him? He is God? He’s the bread of life?

But he’s so normal.”

 

We can understand their confusion

and maybe even their offense.

 

God is great and amazing and powerful

God is the creator of the universe, the galaxies,

the oceans and mountains

They worshipped God, they feared God,

they are humbled before God.

So what is God doing with Joseph’s son?

What’s God doing with someone they know?

What’s God doing with such a seemingly normal person like us?

 

Now we have the benefit of hind-sight and scripture.

We know that Jesus was human and God.

 

We know that God chooses over and over again

to use and work through things that we consider ordinary.

We know how God has a habit of

using the normal things of this earth

to carry out God’s great and awe inspiring plans.

 

To be honest, at times we might rather have

the great and powerful creator of the universe

come down make a spectacular show that no one can deny.

 

So we tend to only look for God in the astounding,

in the majestic mountain, and the stunning sunset.

Or we look for God in the exceptional event,

the greatest turn of fortune, the miraculous recovery.

Or the overwhelming sense of joy.

 

That’s not how God works.

God uses the normal, the things of this world

and makes them extraordinary, just by God’s presence.

 

And by doing this,

by working through the normal world,

God redeems the normal world.

 

So to see God, we need to look at what is in front of us,

at the people we know, the normal things we encounter that

we might overlook, and see how God is using that,

instead of pushing those things aside and

looking around those things in order to see the big show.

God sees us, normal people, through the eyes of faith.

God has faith in us. God doesn’t just look at the flaws.

God sees past them and just sees great possibilities in us.

And we are asked to see the normal

through the eyes of faith too, and see God’s work in everything.

Not to just see just bread and wine,

but Jesus body and blood given for us.

 

My theology professor told a story once,

that I still remember.

He said he was in France before he decided to go to seminary.

And he said it was a little cliché, but everyone

was walking around with a long loaf of French bread.

And he followed suit and had one sticking out of a back pack.

 

He was walking through a crowded place

and a man came up behind him.

He took my professor’s loaf of bread out of his backpack,

he held it in front of him, and broke it in half.

He took half and gave it back to my professor,

and said, in French, “This is for you”.

And then he disappeared into the crowd

with the other half of the bread.

 

My professor saw it as an obvious image of Christ right before him.

Now someone else, maybe even a Christian,

might have this same experience, and have a different story,

they might have been scared, they might have seen it as a threat.

A thief, an annoying, aggressive street person

taking their personal property.

 

But through the eyes of faith,

my professor saw the presence of God.

An experience of the living Christ

in an unexpected, but ordinary moment.

So much so that he told us the story 20 years later,

and I’m telling it to you 20 years after that.

 

The amazing in the ordinary.

 

That’s what the sacraments are.

God takes the normal things of this world:

food and water and uses them to bring his infinite love to us.

Sacraments are the divine from the earthly.

 

We take normal tap water, and use it for baptism.

It’s still everyday water, but with God’s promise,

it makes us God’s children,

it unites us, it forgives us, and it calls us -

Normal people – to do great things in this world.

It calls us to care, to work for justice and peace,

to change the world.

 

And the bread we eat every week is

just normal bread, just flour and water

and oil and a few other ingredients.

 

And the wine we drink is just the kind

you get from the liquor store down the block,

the same wine people drink all the time.

 

Bread and wine. The same things that

have been sitting on dinner tables

for thousands of years.

 

And yet, it is the presence, strength

and forgiveness of God.

It is only through the eyes of faith

that we can see this.

 

Jesus is the bread of life.

Jesus, a normal human -- biologically speaking.

But with the eyes of faith, we see he was

infested with God’s Spirit,

he was one with God’s love and will.

He lived and he died like everyone does.

But through that normal act, God saved the world.

 

In using the normal, God blesses the normal.

God makes the average wonderful.

In the life of Jesus, and in the water, bread, wine.

 

Week in, and week out,

we come to this apparently normal table,

and eat common bread and ordinary wine.

But through faith, we are at Jesus table,

and we see, and feel, and taste God’s acceptance,

love, and forgiveness.

 

Jesus is the bread of life.

In Jesus, God comes to us to be at one

with this normal world and a thoroughly flawed humanity.

 

But our faith tells us that when we eat

this bread, we become one with God.