First U M C Santa Monica | Sermons

When we invited sermon topics for this summer, it was suggested that humorous or even whimsical topics might be included. A few of you took us at our word; and one of the titles that came through was “Junk Food Jesus.” Now I have no idea whether the submitter of this topic had any serious thoughts as to what it might mean. But when I saw it, a whole bank of lights lit up in my brain—and especially when I remembered I would be preaching on a Communion Sunday! So today you’re getting my response to what for me was an evocative image.

In this nutrition-conscious age I’m sure I don’t need to spell out what junk food is. It’s all that tasty stuff that has lots of sugar and carbohydrates and who knows what chemicals, but little if any nutritional value. It’s the Krispy Kreme donuts and candy bars and French fries and popcorn and cotton candy that we love to indulge in, even at the cost of unneeded calories and maybe a stomach ache. So if we were to apply the junk food image to Jesus, what would that look like? Now your first response may be, “But Jesus isn’t junk food. Jesus is the bread of life that truly nourishes us.” I would certainly agree with you that that is who Jesus is meant to be. But in reality do we always respond to Jesus in that way? Are there not times when we treat even Jesus like junk food?

Let me give you a few examples of a junk food Jesus. It’s a Jesus who is all sweetness and light, who tells us only what we want to hear without making any demands on us. It’s a Jesus who only gives us comfort food, a Jesus of religious fluff who makes us feel good about who we are without any sense of challenge. It’s a Jesus who goes along with whatever status quo level of faith and commitment we’ve settled into, but provides us with no growth because we resist any substantial food he has to offer. This is a Jesus of sweetness without substance, of carbohydrates and fat without the protein, of junk food without the bread of life that can truly nourish us and cause us to grow.

When Jesus describes himself as the Bread of Life in John’s Gospel, this junk food image is clearly not what he had in mind. Now parenthetically let’s acknowledge that today we know bread is a carbohydrate which has less nutritional value than some foods. But in Jesus’ time, bread was the mainstay of most diets. So when Jesus speaks of the bread of life, he’s referring to that which truly nourishes. The real food Jesus offers—the living bread—consists of the totality of his life and teaching. It’s not ours to pick and choose
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which aspects of it we will take seriously. The Bread of Life is all that Jesus tells us and shows us about how life is to be lived. It’s about values worth having and purposes worth pursuing and love and caring and commitment. It’s what gives substance to the core of our faith that Brad has been talking about the last two weeks. So to be receptive to the Bread of Life is to take in all Jesus has to give us, and to expect to grow in our faith journeys, to become more than we are, to care more and love more and, yes, to serve more.

I want to speak more about the service dimension. When we think about being fed, our tendency is to focus on how our quality of life will be improved, which of course we hope it will. Part of what draws us to Jesus is his promise of abundant life in him. Yet when we look at how Jesus modeled this quality of living, it becomes very clear that abundant life is not something to be kept just for one’s own benefit. What Jesus models for us is living our lives in such a way that others also are blessed and enjoy more of life’s abundance for themselves. In fact I believe he is showing us that our doing for others is an essential ingredient to our own experience of abundance. So Jesus’ whole ministry, as he once put it, was to serve the goal that all people—all the diverse sheep in the Good Shepherd’s flocks—might have life in all its fullness. And today as we partake again of Holy Communion, we recall that Jesus’ commitment to this goal was so complete that he willingly sacrificed his own life for it.

So we are fed with the Bread of life so that we may be blessed and so that we may have strength and sustenance to give to others. Make no mistake about it, friends—we need real food if we’re going to be effective in service and outreach. Brad said it so well two weeks ago when he said that what we have at our faith core will determine whether we have good news to share with others. So junk food won’t cut it. We need authentic nourishment to make our core all it needs to be. As today’s reading from 1 Peter said, “Long for the pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.”

In the sacrament of Communion we receive bread and juice as concrete food symbols of the nourishment Christ offers us. We remember that Christ gave his life so that we might be fed, and so we might know how important it is that we find the Bread of life for ourselves. So come, let us be nourished by this sacrament; and may it stimulate in us a desire to receive a full measure of the bread Christ has to give us.

Junk Food Jesus - Not! Sermon preached by the Reverend Larry Young August 7, 2005

Junk Food Jesus - Not!
Sermon preached by the Reverend Larry Young
August 7, 2005