1 Kings 19:4-8 Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2 John 6:35, 41-51
Lectionary Link
I retell one of my favorite jokes to illustrate something at the heart of the construction our Christian identity.
So, the rabbi and the priest are having a drink together, and the rabbi says to the priest, "Father, you Christians have stolen some of your best ideas from us Jews." And the priest responds, "Rabbi, what do you mean?" And the Rabbi, "Well, take for example the 10 Commandments; you've stolen them from Judaism." And the priest responds, "Yes, that true Rabbi, but we haven't kept them."
The point of our Christian identity is this: We, as Christians, have taken much of the symbolic order from the Hebrew Scriptures, but we haven't kept that symbolic order in the same ways in which the Jews as a continuing and separate community of faith has kept them. The Christians believed that the symbolic order of the Hebrew Scripture became significantly altered, innovated, fulfilled and changed as the early followers of Jesus were trying to understand and articulate the significance of Jesus for people who were Jews and increasingly for people who were Gentiles. We can say that Christians completely appropriated the traditions of Hebrew Scriptures and other apocrypha writings which came from the Jewish people.
So we "stole" from Jews, and we have not retained what we have stolen in the same ways in which the Jews have; we have integrated it in our understanding of Jesus and the community we call the church.
Bread of heaven, may seem to be original to Jesus, but of course it is not. It has a long tradition within the Hebrew Scriptures and the commentaries of the rabbis.
The bread of heaven in the Hebrew Scriptures refers to the story of the provision of Manna from heaven on a daily basis to that pre-historic group of people who came to know themselves as the people of Israel. The pre-historic identity stories of the people of Israel did not come to their full textual form until after the exiles into Babylon and Persia.
One of the most identifying event in the identity of the Hebrew people is Moses and the Law, the Torah. The rabbis understood the Torah to be the bread of life, and even the substantial source of life for the identity of the people of Israel. The Psalmist speaks of the sweetness of the commandments and statutes, as something which people are supposed to consume as the tasteful perpetual dessert of living which delights our life. It is the dessert course to finish the meal of the ordinary entrees of life. The story of the giving of the Manna is also a story of the sustaining bread of the Torah being given daily to the people to sustain their moral and spiritual identity as a people who are trying to follow the best recommended behaviors for humanity.
As Moses and the Torah are central to the identity of the Hebrew faith and the subsequent developments in Judaism, so Jesus is central to the identity of Christianity.
The Torah is the eternal word of God which becomes manifest from heaven in written form. Christ is the Eternal Word of God from the beginning who becomes manifest in the flesh in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
What is more important to the life of Judaism, the harvest of the actual physical bread for eating or living according to the teaching of the Torah? The Torah is the living bread of God which organizes the entire inward word life of the people so that they not only can organize their lives to be fed daily, but also to organize all of their behaviors for living well with each other and before God.
Whether the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament, the prophets and preachers are trying to get people to move from the literal to the figurative and spiritual as being the substantial force of life. Why? because the entire connection with our physical world is governed by our inward life of words which guide how we manipulate and interact with the exterior physical word.
How do the masses of the people get fed? Is it only by the food and drink that enters our mouths? Food and drink are the aftermath of people inwardly knowing that it is our duty to feed everyone who needs food. So, can we see how inward and spiritual and moral obligation actually comes before the delivery of food to the people of our lives.
And this is what the Bread of Heaven discourse is all about. The oracle of Jesus is a teaching about the contrast between literal and spiritual and moral significance.
And the message of Jesus is this: Don't put the physical ahead of the spiritual, because in fact the spiritual is more significant than the physical because inward values precede how we organize and act in our outward and physical behaviors.
In his discourse Jesus points out that people can be addicted to bread or food as mere animals, like Pavlov's dogs waiting for the bell of opportunity to trigger our instinctual need for food.
But food for human beings is not not food for animals; it is more than instinctual. It is the organization and division of labor of the entire community with the moral imperative to provide food for everyone.
How do we go from dependent babies instinctively seeking breast milk and grow into becoming the moral and spiritual communities to organize our live together to provide enough for everyone? Can we understand the priority of the inward moral and spiritual issue which comes before the actual partaking of bread.
The words of Jesus are not about providing a meal or two for people. Jesus is saying, I want to be inside of you being a moral and spiritual force guiding you to prepare meals for each other endlessly so that all will have enough.
To take the bread of Christ in the Eucharist is to embrace the spiritual essence of Jesus becoming the bread provider of the entire world through moral and spiritual behaviors to always be at the task of taking care of each other.
And what do we know about bread and food? It is the most important medicine for the life of the people of the world. Hunger and thirst are the most basic human illnesses in our world. Jesus was aware of this and so the Risen Christ as the bread of heaven within us becomes within us the conscience of God to provide for each other in the loving care of the world.
Let us take to heart the movement from the physical to spiritual and moral and inward words of life. We have to be changed inwardly before we order the physical world of hunger and thirst to the satisfaction of the love and justice needed to elevate every person in this world to their true dignity.
As good scientists we take seriously the physical world; we take seriously it in our observation of the manifold suffering of the world. But as those who are implored by Jesus to be substantial moral and spiritual people, we move from simply observing "that the world is," to how we want this world to be best for the qualitative life of all people.
The Gospel words of Jesus are this; don't minimize the physical needs of the world, but also recognize the priority of the moral, spiritual and inward word life of us for living lives to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter for everyone. Let us appreciate what Jesus is teaching us about needing inward change to effect outward results. Today, we receive the Eucharistic bread of life hypocritically if we are unwilling to be spiritually and morally changed to care for this world, our home and the home of our neighbors. Amen.
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