Well, for once no-one can say that the lectionary readings are not connected with each other! And what their subject is, is so blatantly obvious that there’s no way I’m going to be able to introduce the topic gradually. So, farewell, subtlety! It’s about bread! What we’ve heard is the story of the bread God provided for the Israelites wandering in the desert, and for our second reading, we’ve heard Jesus’s description of himself as the Bread of God – the Bread of life.
Now, we’re clearly talking, in these two readings, about food and health. The Israelites were no doubt having a very rough time in the desert, and their level of health must have been at a very low ebb, what with the shortage of food and water, and the general harshness of the desert. Food and health were a primary concern for them. At the time of Jesus, with the infrastructure of physical necessities better established, Jesus came to offer what the people then needed just as much, namely spiritual nourishment and spiritual health.
Food and health must be about the most perennial of all topics. They are certainly very much in the forefront of many people’s minds today, and get a large share of media attention. Research proliferates to the point where it seems that, if you took notice of everybody, then everything would be bad for you, and if you went with every latest food craze to promote health, your body would get totally confused. If, as they say, you are what you eat, then it’s not surprising if we’re rather confused anyway, because one thing is certain, and that is that we really don’t exactly know what is in the food that we’re eating. All the pressure in favour of clearer and better labelling of our foodstuffs, shows how important it is to us to know what it is that we’re eating.
As we’re talking about bread, I’ve brought in a couple of bread labels. Here’s one:- ‘Finest Rustic Multigrain + Flour Treatment Agents’. Well, that tells us a lot, doesn’t it? What is it? What’s in it? Actually I enjoyed it, and it doesn’t seem to have done me much harm, so that’s what we do, isn’t it?: we take it on trust. Perhaps we really shouldn’t grumble!
But talking of grumbling, that’s definitely something the Israelites were getting quite good at, on their way back from slavery in Egypt, through the desert to their promised land. And I can’t say I altogether blame them. All right, so they had been slaves in Egypt, but they do seem to have lived rather well there. Listen to what they say, just before the passage we heard this evening: “In Egypt … we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.” So they grumbled against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You have brought us out into the desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
One really interesting point, is the fact that it is against Moses and Aaron that they grumble. It’s a point that we’ll come back to later on. It is true, in a sense, that Moses and Aaron were responsible for leading the people on this long exodus, even though Moses and Aaron, for their part, were doing what God had told them to do. When they talk to the Israelites, they pass the buck, if you like, when they say, “Who are we that you should grumble against us? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.” If that was all there was to it, that would be a very questionable, even despicable response, wouldn’t it? To avoid blame by saying, “You can’t hold us responsible for what we’re doing to you. We’re only doing God’s will.” No, rather than squirm out of it like this, they actually make themselves even more vulnerable by promising a miracle from God. Now, just think what would have happened if that miracle hadn’t materialised: their authority would have been in complete ruins. They’d probably have been lynched, and history would have been very, very different!
But as we know, the miracle did happen. That very evening the Israelites were fed with flocks of quails, and when they got up in the morning, they found a covering of flakes, which turned out to be the bread from heaven that God had provided for them. That seems to be a truly remarkable story, and shows amazing faith, an amazing closeness of relationship with God, and an amazing example of the mercy of God in providing in such a practical way for their needs. What makes it even more prodigious – so much so that some commentators regard it as the greatest miracle recorded in the entire Bible – is the fact that this provision of bread from heaven didn’t just happen the once; it happened from then on, on a daily basis (with some adjustment at weekends) for the rest of the time that they were in the desert, until they reached the borders of Canaan, forty years later.
Well, that stopped the grumbling about food, although they did have a thirst problem after that apparently. But don’t you find God’s response to grumbling rather astonishing? Would you have thought that grumbling was what God paid attention to? It’s probably lucky for them that Moses and Aaron did ‘pass the buck’ to God, as I suggested, because if they had taken the grumbling as being against themselves, they might have found an altogether different way of silencing it. But where’s the justice in God showing such love for his grumbling people? Seems to me it’s unadulterated mercy! The result was that, against all odds, they reached the promised land well-fed and healthy. Thanks to Moses and Aaron, or not! I’ll leave you to decide.
What I want us to think about next is the labelling on the package! What was it that they were feeding on? What was this so-called bread from heaven? We have a description of what it looked like: “there was a layer of dew … when the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor”. Later on we get more details: “it was white like coriander seed, and tasted like wafers made with honey.” But what was it? And the fact is that no-one ever really found out. The Israelites took just it on trust and ate it – for forty years – and it didn’t seem to do them any harm! But for all that time they called it ‘manna’, proving that labelling was even worse in those days than it is now. You see, the word ‘manna’ actually means ‘What is it?’ We are told, “When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was.” What they actually said when they saw it was, “Manna?” So manna should always have a question mark. If you ever use the phrase ‘manna from heaven’, you are really saying, ‘what is it? – from heaven’.
That story sheds quite a lot of light on the conversation Jesus had with the crowd that had followed him across the lake, in which he described himself as the Bread of Life. This crowd is probably, more or less the same crowd as the five thousand people that Jesus had fed the previous day with the loaves and the fish – a miracle which must have recalled in many of their minds that old story of the feeding of the Israelites in the desert. Now although feeding five thousand like that wasn’t at all bad, how does it compare with feeding the whole tribe of Israel 14,600 times? As I said, on the Richter scale of miracles, that one does come very high up. The question in their minds is something like, “Is this guy anything like as powerful as Moses?” And so they put it to him straight, “What miraculous sign will you give us that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert, as it is written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
It is at this point that Jesus reveals the depth of their spiritual darkness. Just as the Israelites had directed their grumbling at Moses, and, to a lesser extent, Aaron, so the present day Jews seemed to be giving Moses the credit for the miracle. Moses had told them that they were in reality grumbling against God, and he had told them that it was God who had heard them and provided the manna. It seems that no-one had learned from that the simple fact that it wasn’t Moses’s doing. Jesus has to spell it out, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven.” And then he subtly shifts the focus by going on, “It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Did I say, ‘subtly’? I should have said, ‘dramatically’. Jesus dramatically shifts the focus onto himself, his relationship with his Father, and his role in the world.
The response to this from the crowd is reported to be, “Sir, from now on, give us this bread.” But I can’t for the life of me decide what tone of voice to say it in. Sincere? Or mocking? Whichever it is, Jesus then makes his unmistakable declaration, “I am the Bread of Life.” and in it he conveys his total faithfulness, his relationship with his Father, and the amazing mercy of God. In a way which recalls how Moses attributed everything to God, Jesus makes a similar point. “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.” He couldn’t make it clearer that whatever he does, he does by his Father’s will.
By referring to himself as bread, Jesus, of course, is using a very powerful image. Bread is recognised as a basic foodstuff for everyone. It is prepared and eaten practically throughout the entire world. The work of many people generally comes together in the preparation of a loaf. And as it is eaten – sacrificed you may say – it is often shared out amongst a group of people.
With a mixture of amusement and sadness, we discover, just past the end of this reading, that we’ve come full circle, You see, just as the Israelites had started off by grumbling, and then been provided with bread, here Jesus offers himself as the bread of life, and this makes the Jews start grumbling. We’re told, “At this the Jews began to grumble about him, because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” I’m afraid it’s a question of labelling again! You see, they know what the ingredients are, or they think they do: “Is not this the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” In a strikingly similar way, they are looking at Jesus and saying, “Manna?” – “What is it?”
It is the very question we all have to answer for ourselves. What is this Jesus? It is a bit of a mystery. But even if you can’t figure out what the ingredients really are or what the words on the package all mean, it may be another good case for taking it on trust, and partaking of this bread of life. It seems to taste a lot better than wafers made with honey, and the research suggests that it does have real life-giving properties.