Greg Batson commented last week about being given a difficult passage to preach on by the lectionary. Well, friends, I can vouch for the fact it's happened again this week. If you were squirming in your seat as you heard the passage from John's gospel read a few moments ago, I can empathize with you. Those of you who watched Archie Bunker on TV back in the '70s may well remember Archie's comment about all those things that would be just too crazy to believe if they weren't in the Bible. And I believe Archie would have a field day with this passage. Now, some of us may have heard these verses so often they don't rattle us any more. But imagine you are hearing for the first time about living bread from heaven. What on earth is living bread? Are we dealing with magic here? Modern science has produced all kinds of high-powered breads that claim to nourish our bodies in high-tech ways, and media ads can make a loaf of bread sound pretty impressive. But no one has dared to call their product living bread, or claim that it will supernaturally give life to the consumer. Wouldn't you want to buy stock in that venture if it were a reality? And what's this about bread enabling us to live forever? We are very much into extending life today, and some scientists are saying we will soon know how to increase our lifespans by as much as 50 years or more. But forever? That's beyond our imagining. Then comes the real zinger: Jesus says, "The bread that I give is my flesh." No wonder his hearers shot back, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Was Jesus into cannibalism or vampirism? These words were definitely not for the faint of heart. Even some of Jesus' disciples commented, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" And some of them parted company with him at that point.

Now, if we're not bothered by this passage, it's because we've gotten used to this language, and we've likely come to understand that it is metaphorical language which has to do especially with the sacrament of Communion. In remembering Jesus' giving of himself for us, we are enlivened spiritually and participate now in the eternal life which Jesus tells us is our destiny. Many New Testament scholars question whether Jesus really used this kind of language about himself. John was the last of the gospels to be written, probably 60 or more years after Jesus' lifetime; and the point of this particular passage may well have been to underscore the importance of the sacrament for Christians in that era. But in any event, the gospel writer is using the imagery of living bread to make a potent affirmation about who Jesus is to us. Jesus is the one through whom God's life-giving nourishment is given to us. If we want to be fed so that we are spiritually alive, we need to take Jesus' bread seriously.

But that still leaves us sophisticated Christians with a very big question-indeed, one of the most basic questions of the spiritual life: how do we partake of spiritual bread? If Jesus is the living bread, how does that bread get inside us so we are truly fed and our lives are shaped by it? How can we be nourished into the more loving, caring, joyful, purposeful, value-driven persons God wants us to be? It doesn't happen just because we eat bread and drink from a cup in a Communion service-no matter how often we partake. Surely that's not the total message of our gospel passage-though Communion is important and should help. Considering the gusto with which some of us eat at church potlucks, it would appear that eating our way to salvation may be a more consequential part of our belief system than we might want to admit! You're likely aware that using food to try to satisfy emotional and spiritual hungers is a widely recognized psychological phenomenon today. I happen to live with someone who makes part of her living by helping people disengage themselves from that kind of confusion.

When we talk about being nourished by Christ's living bread we are talking about a spiritual chemistry; and there is a mystery to its working that we cannot analyze as, for example, we would analyze the nutritional effects of eating a slice of bread. We are talking about God's spirit working within us, helping us see and value and care. We are talking about spiritual transformation and growth; and while we know some things we can do to help facilitate the process, we really don't know how to make it happen. The writer Eugene Lowry talks about two ways of coming to internal understanding. One way is to zero in on something with all our mental prowess, as for example in trying to solve a math problem. We work and work until finally we say, "I've got it! 2 + 2 = 4." But another way is when, for example, we go to a wonderful movie or play that catches us up, and when we emerge from it, we realize that now we see life a bit differently than we did before. And we don't say at that point, "I've got it," because we know the truth is that it has got us. I believe this is how living bread works in our lives. For all we may try to "get it," ultimately it has to get us and transform us, as it will.

Last month Jean and I spent a week in Cedar City, Utah, attending the excellent Shakespeare Festival there. Now, Utah, of course, is Mormon country, and in the 27 years Jean and I have been together, we've managed to visit Utah and its various Mormon churches and shrines a number of times. There's something that fascinates me about the commitment and sense of calling I so often find in Mormon people, which is so often reflected in the beautiful churches and temples they have built. Cedar City has a beautiful stone church built back in the 30s which serves today as a center for Mormon life for that whole area, and like a moth drawn to a candle, I had to check it out. Now, because they are shrewd evangelists, Mormons always escort you on tours of their buildings; and so an elderly white-haired gentleman wearing a white shirt and tie came forward to give me a tour. The facility had been modernized and was beautifully maintained, better than almost any Protestant church I can think of in southern California. But my guide implied there was nothing exceptional about that for a people called to do God's work in the world. He had been a lifelong Mormon and took obvious pride in all the services his church provided for his community. But what I came away thinking about from that tour was not the building itself, but the commitment and sense of calling which my guide's faith had inspired in his life. Clearly his faith had got him, and, evidently, many other Mormons in that community. Now, have those Mormons, in fact, found living bread? Only God can answer that. I do not see their particular form of bread as living bread for me. But how much I envy the hold and the shaping power their faith has had on them! We Methodists do, in fact, have John Wesley's legacy of a heart strangely warmed, giving rise to a passion for a vibrant spirituality and a renewed social conscience. But that comes alive for us only to the extent that our hearts get strangely warmed and a vision of what God wants to do in our lives gets us.

So what can we do to help this happen? How can we open ourselves to getting fed with living bread? You are taking one of the steps by your presence here in worship. But of course it isn't just your presence that's important, but the seeking of your spirit to connect with the living God in a vital way. The heart of worship is not the ritual we recite, nor the sermon we hear, nor even the music that inspires us. Rather, it is the encounter of our spirits with God's spirit, touching us and feeding us and shaping us. It is God getting us-our minds and hearts and wills -- so we become more God's people, perhaps even beyond what we ever intended! It is believing the promise of scripture that "if with all your hearts you truly seek me, you will surely find me" -- and we will be fed with living bread. But, of course, our finding God is not limited to formal worship in church. It is available to us in our times of personal prayer and Bible study and devotion. It may happen in a study group, or in sharing our lives with others, or in the midst of a service project.

And yes, it may catch us unawares in the midst of everyday living. The religious writer Frederick Buechner talks about "listening to your own life." Some years ago, at the age of 50, when he reflected back on his life, he concluded that if God had spoken to him any place, it was in the everyday stuff of his life as he lived it-in the encounters with others, in his daily work, in the joys and challenges life brought him. His role was to try to tune in to what God was saying in each happening. Listen to your own life, he urges us. And one specific I would add to this is, listen to the hungers of your own spirit. Where are the empty spaces that call for more substance -the dark places that need light -- the negativity and doubt that needs challenging -- the despair that needs to lay hold of hope and a broader vision? Now to be sure we may want to resist staying in touch with spiritual hungers like these because they may weigh heavily on us and we may be ashamed of them -- or we may want stubbornly to hang onto them. I know that's true of me. I know, for example, how I can get hooked on feeling that some part of my life is unfair; but rather than opening myself to God's fuller perspective on the matter, I want to hang onto the "poor me" feelings that my limited view gives me. But if, at a deeper level, we really do want to be fed with living bread, we need to open especially those parts of our lives where we are most aware of our need. Surely, God is best able to feed us when we know and do not hide our hunger.

Our reading from Ephesians today instructs us to "be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time." We are those who live with Jesus' promise of living bread. So for us, to be wise, to make the most of the time of our lives, is to go for the bread of life, in the confidence we will get some surprising good news when the living bread begins to get hold of us!