“Bread from God”  St. John 6:41-51

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+ In Nomine Jesu +

     Man does not live by bread alone. . .  We need vegetables, fruit, meat, a balanced diet coming from each of the major food groups.  Try to live on bread alone, and your body will grow weak.  It will become susceptible to illness.  Our bodies need more than the complex carbohydrates found in bread and pasta.  They need the protein found in meat, and the vitamins and nutrients that vegetables and fruits provide.  To try to sustain yourself on nothing more than bread is a recipe for all sorts of health problems.

     And yet here Jesus is in today’s Gospel, telling us that we can live eternally only upon a diet of bread alone.  Exclusively.  But our Lord is not speaking of earthly bread.  He’s speaking of Himself.  I am the bread of life, Jesus says.   I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. 

     Eternal life, attained by feeding upon the bread of heaven.  What does this mean?  How are we to understand this mystery?  Plainly the Jews in today’s Gospel didn’t understand it.  Or, maybe they understood it all too well; they just didn’t like what our Lord was saying.  At any rate, they grumbled about Jesus because He claimed to be the bread from God, come down from heaven.  They didn’t like it.  They didn’t like what Jesus’ words said about Him.  And they didn’t like what those words said about them.  So they grumbled.  They spoke against Jesus, vilifying Him because He was telling them that they could not live eternally unless they had faith in Him.

     Many today still vilify Jesus, for exactly the same reason.  They vilify His Bride, the Church, when she is faithful to her Lord’s words, and faithfully and exclusively proclaims Him as the only way to forgiveness, life and salvation.  Such exclusivity is unloving, many people think.  It’s narrow-minded and judgmental.  Surely what one person believes about God is just as valid, just as true as what another person believes about God.  Surely the devout Buddhist, or the devout Muslim, or the devout Hindu, is just as much a child of heaven as the Christian is.  It doesn’t matter what you believe, they claim.  What matters is that you believe in something.

     So much for the reasoning of the sinful Old Adam.  It may sound like love to embrace all religions as equally valid paths to God, but it’s actually a deadly counterfeit of love.  The type of love the Old Adam displays always leads to hell.  The Old Adam will stroke your ego, tell you that sincerity covers a multitude of sins, and do his level best to conceal from you the fact that all roads don’t lead to God. Biblical orthodox Christianity is absolutely unique.  All other religions are religions of the Law.  If your performance attains the required degree of excellence, then you’ll be saved.  With enough good works, enough devotion, enough love, you’ll earn God’s favor.  The question that Luther ran aground on, and that we run aground on, is this: how much is enough?  How can you ever be sure you’ve worked enough, loved enough, shown enough devotion to whatever God you believe in?

     The truth is that all roads but one lead to hell. Christ alone is the way the truth and the life.  Christ’s apostle St. Paul tells us that we are saved not by works, but by grace, through faith in His Name.  Peter preaches that there is no other Name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.  That’s why it’s not a matter of our works, devotion, or love.  It’s Jesus’ works that count – His works of keeping God’s commandments, in our stead, and of dying on the Cross for us to take the punishment for our sins.  It’s His devotion to His heavenly Father that counts.  This devotion led Him to love the Father with all His heart, soul, mind and strength.  It led Him to drink the cup of suffering in obedience to His Father’s will, so that we, in faith, could drink the cup of salvation.  Finally, it’s Jesus’ love that counts – for as He says, greater love has no man than this – that He lay down His life for His friends.  And so He showed His love for our fallen race by laying down His life on the Cross, as a ransom for all.

     Jesus alone is the bread come down from heaven.  Every thing else we sinners try to stuff ourselves with to appease our hunger for meaning and truth and God, merely gives us salmonella of the soul.  We try to nourish ourselves on success, status, sex, pleasure, wealth, possessions and a thousand other things.  But the end result is always the same.  We sicken in our souls and die.  But it’s not that way with Jesus.  He is the bread of life eternal.  Our Lord says that whoever believes in Him has eternal life.  He says that He is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and live forever.  And the bread that He has given for the life of the world is His flesh.

    St. John writes in the prologue to His Gospel: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.  Conceived by the Holy Spirit, God the Son took upon Himself human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  He did it so He could live among us as one of us, true Man, in order to make us citizens of heaven.  He took upon Himself the flesh of our humanity so that with that flesh He could keep God’s commandments for us, and then offer up that flesh on the Cross as payment for the sins of the world.  God became Man so that by His life, death and resurrection He could set us free.  He sacrificed His holy flesh on the Cross in order to cleanse and redeem our unholy flesh, so we could be completely forgiven, and completely reconciled to God. 

    Jesus says that the bread He feeds us with is His flesh, given for the life of the world.  To feed upon Jesus’ flesh is simply to have faith in Him as the only Savior from sin and eternal death in hell.  To feed upon Jesus’ flesh is to know that in this present world we don’t live by earthly bread alone – or by any earthly thing -- but on every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Specifically we live by the life-giving Word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  To feed upon Jesus’ flesh is to treasure the gifts of the Gospel above all earthly goods.  It’s to know that the forgiveness of sins that comes to us in Baptism and Absolution and Holy Communion is more precious than gold and silver and diamonds –or any earthly thing we can set our hearts upon.  

     To feed upon Jesus’ flesh is to partake of the Sacrament in faith, believing that Jesus does exactly what His Word declares – that in, with, and under the bread and wine He gives you the very Body and Blood sacrificed on the Cross for the sins of all mankind.  That means for your sins too.  Eating and drinking forgiveness, for Jesus’ sake – that’s the Sacrament of the Altar in a nutshell.  Receiving, through faith, the forgiveness, life and salvation that Jesus gives in Word and Sacrament – that’s the shape of our life in Christ. 

     This, then, is what the holy Christian Faith is all about: The Triune God’s activity in Christ, through the Means of Grace, to draw us poor lost sinners to Himself in order to save us and make us His sons.  Through these same Means of Grace the Holy Spirit continually works to keep us in this relationship of sonship.  God is the One who is active – not us -- and we are completely passive in receiving the bread of heaven come down for the life of the world. 

     Think about today’s Old Testament lesson.  There we saw how the prophet Elijah had His hunger appeased by bread from God, and had His thirst quenched with water from God.  Elijah didn’t work for this bread.  He was faint, he was weary, he was discouraged, he had no resources of His own, but God miraculously refreshed and sustained him with heaven’s gifts.

     It is indeed the same for us.  Our Lord Jesus Christ is the true bread from God.  We live eternally by faith in Him alone.  Jesus says that whoever comes to Him in repentance and faith, drawn by God, shall never hunger, and whoever believes in Him shall never thirst. He has given His flesh on the Cross for the life of the world.  In faith we eat of this bread, are forgiven, attain the resurrection and live forever.  Only Jesus can make this promise.  No other religious figure can make this claim to be the bread of God come down from heaven.  Man lives eternally by bread alone.  And that bread is our Savior Jesus Christ.