Jesus the Living Bread; We Are What We Eat

12 Pentecost Cycle b  Proper 14 August 12, 2018 
1 Kings 19:4-8  Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25-5:2  John 6:35, 41-51

Lectionary Link
The Gospel of John includes what has been call a "Book of Signs."  The Greek word for sign is "semeion," and it is word used in John's Gospel to refer to the special work of Jesus in helping people come to faith.  Faith has to do with embracing more than what we can see with the eyes, more than empirical experience.

The writers of the Gospel of John were the mystagogues, the mystical teachers for the community.  They believed that Jesus Christ had initiated them into a way of wisdom which would transform their lives.  And they wanted to initiate others into this way of wisdom.

In John's Gospel, the Signs are teaching tools; they are used to teach the initiates to switch from merely literal and empirical understanding to a spiritual understanding of life.

John's Gospel as a book of signs, is a teaching about a symbolic order.  To live in the symbolic order one has to be converted or born again or born of the Spirit to understand one's life and the world differently.

We Americans live in a symbolic order.  How many people who come to America for the first time understand what the Bald Eagle means?  How many immigrants or tourists immediately understand the significance of our flag, its history and the changes it has undergone?  How many new people to America understand the comical figure of Uncle Sam dressed in American flag clothing and wearing a top hat?   How many new people understand phrases about "sticking a feather in his hat and calling it macaroni?"  Was that the Italian pasta influence in the American revolution for such a Yankee Doodly Dandy?

To live in America as an American one has to understand our symbolic order or to say this in another way, one must understand our system of signs.

John's Gospel is a system of signs for the Christian initiates.

The community of John's Gospel met regularly and they broke bread together and they offered the blessing, thanksgiving and prayers over the bread and the wine.  And they believed that their lives were actually transformed by this symbolic participation.

As native born Americans, we might take for granted our symbols of citizenship.   We live in the transformative power of the American symbols based upon ideals that have been successful in helping us live together in a way that never would have been possible without these dynamic symbols of participation.

So too, with symbolic participation in the church which wrote the Gospel of John.

They understood than in the tradition of Jesus, "you are what you eat."

Not literally, but eating or consuming the types of facts, inspiring ideals and information which become internalized and then re-expressed in our speech, our writing and in our body language deeds.

We are consumers.  Every IT geek who chides the office worker who has a computer issue, says or thinks, "garbage in, garbage out.  It is what you do by your actions which causes the computer to malfunction; it's not the computer's fault."

In the Hebrew tradition, the Torah or word of God in the divine law was also regarded to the manna or heavenly bread of heaven.  The writers of the Hebrew Scriptures, and particular the Psalmist implore people to "taste and see that the Lord is good."  The law of the Lord is sweeter than honey.  

Just as the Torah was regarded as the bread from heaven for the people of Israel to consume and to change their lives by a practiced devotion to this great Law,  the Gospel writer of John believed that Jesus was the new equivalent of the Law.  Jesus was the Christ, the eternal Word and Word is the realization of existence by human beings.  Without Word, we would not know whether we existed.  John's Gospel's says that the Word was in the beginning, it was with God and it was God.  But such a Word is too general because such a word would include everything that could come to language in speech, text and body language deeds.

Such an ocean of Word needs a guiding exemplar; that Exemplar was Jesus.  The Word was made flesh and dwelled with us.  So general Word, became particular Word in the life of Jesus to help us make the right word choices in our lives.

We are what we eat; we are what we consume;  we are the words that we have consumed and especially the ones within us which have coalesced to become the guiding scripts of our lives.

So, let us remember the symbolic order of our Eucharist today.  Jesus is the living bread who is God's perfect exemplar human gift to us to guide us through the morass of all possible words in life.

We come to Jesus as the living bread from heaven to remember how we want our lives created by the very best words of life which have been given to us in the example of Jesus Christ.

If we partake of Jesus, the bread of heaven, we will live forever.  Why?  Because we will become a part of the absolute past to be remembered into the future by God, who is able hold us together as personally worded beings who will retain our identities into the future.

And this bread of life; this is what the mystics of John Gospel taught their initiates.  And we too are initiates in this wonderful bread of life tradition.  This is why we come into the symbolic order of  Holy Eucharist.  We are what we eat.  And so we do not want to take bad garbage in because we know that such garbage can become a controlling impulse within us and become a "garbage" out in our word and deeds.

By working upon the words of our lives which we take in, we build the reservoir of words within us which form and motivate our speech and body language deed.

The Gospel of John is a book of Signs.  The Word is God from the beginning.  And so we look to Jesus to take within us the very best words of all so that our output will always be expressive of the life of Jesus Christ.  Amen.