I don’t need to tell you that bread is one of the primary symbols of our faith heritage. In the exodus from Egypt, manna in the desert was one of the key signs that God was keeping faith with God’s covenant people as they journeyed toward the promised land. One of Jesus’ most notable miracles was providing bread for the hungry five thousand. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus instructs us to pray for the daily bread we need. And in today’s reading from John, Jesus speaks of himself as “the bread of life.” Clearly God cares about the human family having bread to eat, in both the physical and spiritual sense. If you want a justification for abundant church potluck suppers, I suppose that’s it. But of course that’s also the reason for worship and the devotional life, so that our need for spiritual bread can be met. And sometimes we need to remind ourselves that both kinds of bread are essential to having the abundant life that is our birthright under God.

The first century crowds following Jesus had a similar struggle. The setting for today’s gospel reading is the day after Jesus had fed the five thousand. Overnight Jesus and his disciples have gone across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum; and when the crowd figure that out, they too head for Capernaum where they engage Jesus in conversation. Jesus seems a bit harsh in suggesting they were pursuing him only in the hope of some more free meals. That may have been on their minds; but surely they sensed he was a man with unusual power and authority. They must have been asking themselves, what else can Jesus give us for our well-being? Can he heal us? Can he free us from the iron yoke of Roman rule? Can he give us answers to life’s difficult dilemmas? It’s likely they could not readily articulate what they hoped for. Yet they followed Jesus across the lake because they felt some hungers of the spirit as well as of the body. And as Jesus talks to them about the bread of life that endures, they respond by saying, “Give us this bread.” And twenty centuries later, at our various levels of awareness, we too know our hunger for the bread that makes life all that it can be.

It’s widely agreed that we live in a time of spiritual hunger when many are searching for bread that truly nourishes. Those who are less perceptive simply assume that money can buy whatever is needed to make them happy and fulfilled. I think it’s not just happenstance that money is often referred to as “bread.” But many of us know better than that. We know that a spiritual hunger requires a spiritual response. But if Jesus has been known as the bread of life for twenty centuries, why are not more hungry people turning to him today for the nourishment they need? And why do some of us in the church continue to feel spiritually undernourished? Why is the “bread of life” not more fully bread for so many?

Is it possible that many of us think we know the bread of life—and yet we’ve never been intentional about eating and digesting it? We accept that “Jesus is the answer—Jesus is the bread of life”; but then we fail to take the next step, namely, of taking Jesus’ bread into our lives and “chewing” on it, if you will, to see how it speaks to our hungers and needs and hopes. Jesus’ bread becomes bread for us only as it connects with our inner self and so helps us find meaning and purpose and joy and assurance and direction for our living. The bread of life doesn’t just drop into our lives; we have to take it in, and reflect on what it means for us, and do the work of extracting its nutrients and digesting it so that we truly are fed. And yes, that’s work. But it’s holy work—for it’s the process by which we grow as sons and daughters of God.

The religious writer Frederick Buechner talks about “listening to your own life.” Some years ago as he was reflecting back on his life at the age of 50, 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 his 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. So 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 places that call for more substance—the dark places that need more light—the negativity and doubt that needs challenging—the despair that needs to lay hold of hope and a broader vision? Surely God is best able to feed us when we are conscious of our hungers as we search for bread.

Given our “druthers,” most of us would want to avoid the crisis situations of life as much as possible. And yet so often, those situations prove to be redemptive times that push us to new spiritual growth. When a marriage is threatened, or children get into trouble, or we lose our job, or we have to cope with a debilitating illness or we lose a loved one, we are often made aware of what bread is for us, in a way that just doesn’t happen at other times. In the aftermath of the Farmer’s Market tragedy of two weeks ago, have you noticed how many people are saying they want to invest more time and energy in ways that matter, whether that be in personal relationships or other causes that will make their lives count? You see, that tragedy was also a moment of grace, for that’s when many people came to recognize in a new way their need for bread and got a new sense of the form that bread may take.

This morning we gather again at the Lord’s table to remember in this special way Jesus who is the bread of life, and who calls us to recognize and find bread and let ourselves be nourished by it. One of our newer communion hymns reminds us, “You satisfy the hungry heart with gift of finest wheat.” May our goal, today and always, be to find that true for ourselves.

© Larry Young, 2003. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.