John 6:51-58

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Richard was 33, lonely, and living on his own for the first time in his life. A former monk, he had just left a catholic monastery because he could no longer square his sexuality with his religious vocation. So he moved to New York city and after a few weeks, he met a southern gentleman named Peter, an avid activist and community maker. As Richard tells this story, they fell for one another fast. They couldn’t get married back then, but they lived together and the foundation of their relationship was hospitality. Every week, they hosted a communal meal and the center of that meal was bread; fresh, home baked, gluten morgan, baby. Richard was a bountiful bread baker. And he describes how at these meals, all sorts of people would show up, family, friends of all kinds. And just as quickly as their relationship developed, a community dedicated to caring for another formed around this bread, this meal they had every week.

About five years into their relationship, Pete got sick. It started with pneumonia, then neuropathy in his legs, and then even the loss of some of his vision. They both knew what was happening. Peter tested positive for the HIV/AIDS virus. He lived with this for a long time, but after many years, Pete’s mental health began deteriorating, and he spiraled into these deep depressions. In 2012, Pete was the sickest he’d ever been and he jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

Richard says, “When Pete took his life, a big chunk of me died with him. I stopped working. I didn't want to see family or friends. I became a hermit in my own apartment. I was just this hollow, solitary, shell of a person.” It’s as if the grief, the shock, the hurt, had pulled the life right out of Richard, leaving him empty.

Maybe you know what’s thats like, feeling like the life has been pulled right out of you. For some of you, like Richard, it was losing the love of your life. But it could be so many things: a divorce, a diagnosis, debt, depression. We all go through experiences and events that make us feel like a hollow shell of ourselves. We pull back from community. We isolate ourselves from family and friends. We stop doing the things we once enjoyed. We feel empty and wonder what, if anything, can give me life again…

Jesus seems to have a simple answer to our question. You want life? Then eat me… eat my flesh and drink my blood and you will have life, for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. When reading this passage, I couldn’t help but think of the question someone asked in our CrossRoads class last week.

+Mark and I mentioned that not everything in the Bible ought to be taken literally. To which someone responded, “how do you know which parts to take literally and which ones to not?” A thoughtful, faithful question, perfect for today’s reading…

Does Jesus actually mean what he says? Or as the crowd around Jesus asked, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The questions are warranted, especially from those of us who cannot indulge in an entree al la Jesus.

Yet no matter how hard I’ve looked in this gospel or the other three, Jesus doesn’t flesh out an answer for us (pun intended). But I think the rest of Richard’s story might help us understand what Jesus is talking about.

Five months after Peter died, Richard found himself alone and hungry in his apartment. So he did something he hadn’t done at all in those months: he baked bread. A lot of bread, eight baguettes to be exact. He was never going to eat all of that. So that next morning, he forced himself out of bed and down to the Browery Mission, bread in hand. As soon as he walked through the door, a guy said “sorry, department of health rules, we cannot accept food donations from anybody”.

So Richard turned, walked out, and went to the park across the street. Some guys followed him, wanting some of that fresh, home baked gluten morgan. After they devoured the seven baguettes, the men asked Richard if he would come back next week…

So that next Sunday, Richard made eight sourdough loaves for the guys and brought them to the park. This time, they talked a little more, shared some things about themselves, and even began connecting over their bread memories. One told the group how he missed his grandmothers cornbread she made in a skillet. Richard said, “well I make cornbread, I’ll make that for you next week.” Another man, a Jewish man, reminisced about running home before sundown on the sabbath so he could rip off a piece of hallel to eat. So Richard made hallel for next week, too.

“In the ensuing weeks” Richard recounts, “there were an awful lot more bread requests. Over the next five months we started talking and laughing and sharing more than bread. And I started to heal. I became lighter.” In other words, he didn’t feel so empty. It is as if the bread filled Richard with life once again. And that story helps me appreciate what Jesus is offering to us here in John. Because it wasn’t really the bread that gave Richard life again… It was all that came with the bread, the sharing, the talking, the offering of one’s self to someone else, in ways as simple as breaking baguettes together in the park.

In much the same way, I don’t think Jesus is really saying “eat me”. Rather, he is telling the crowd and us, that he will sacrifice his flesh and blood for us and for the whole world, so that you might believe and have life now and forevermore. Flesh and blood was a Hebrew idiom meaning one’s whole self. Which is exactly what Jesus offers up on the cross and here at this table too.

We might only get a small piece of bread, or a little sip of wine, but through it we receive all of Christ; everything he has to offer us: forgiveness, grace, love, all that we need to fill the emptiness we feel and give us life here and now. So if you feel like life has been pulled right out of you, come to the table. If there is an emptiness you can’t fill, come to the table.

Come to the table where Jesus offers us his whole self in, with, and under the bread and wine.

Come to the table where we are united not only with Jesus, but with one another, too.

“The real miracle” Richard said, “was that we had created this wondrous sharing, and giving, and life affirming community”. And that is the same miracle that this bread does right here in this place. Jesus is at work in this meal, forming us, shaping so that we too can be a wondrous sharing, giving, and life affirming community. That’s what this world needs, what this country and county needs, and what your neighbor needs! A people willing to offer up themselves, sharing and giving who they are and what they have so that others may have life. In that way, we are a Christ to our neighbor, just as Jesus offered himself to me and to you.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean you die on a cross for someone. No, we can offer ourselves to one another in smaller, still meaningful ways; like breaking bread together, talking and laughing together, connecting over stories and memories.

And in doing so, we will be sharing more than just bread. Amen

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Some of you have heard me mention one of my new, favorite theologians, writers, and poets, Pádraig Ó Tuama. A few years ago, maybe in response to the Covid Quarantine craze of sourdough-bread-starters, I’m not really sure why, but he shared a favorite bread recipe online. And because he’s a poet and a theologian, his recipe for bread hits a bit differently than most cook books I’ve seen.

First of all, he calls it “Irish Wheaten Bread (aka: Gluten Morgen Baby),” and he acknowledges that it came to him by way of a friend who got it from someone else who learned it from the TV chef, Delia Smith, and that the details of it all might have changed along the way. After listing the ingredients, which I will share with anyone who actually wants to give this a go (I’m looking at you Joyce Ammerman/Sue Weisenbarger/Linda Michealis), Ó Tuama, offers up the following instructions, among others:

First, he suggests that every bread-baking session should begin with a reading of “All Bread” by Margaret Atwood. “It’s the rule,” he says.

Then he says to “mix the whole meal and plain flour together with the bicarbonate of soda – and sieve them. It helps the bread rise while it’s cooking.

Then add in the pinhead oatmeal, wheat germ, salt and buttermilk. Mix it up.

He says, “I throw in some nice sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, too. Whatever feels good. Apart from fish-sauce. Don’t put fish sauce in there, even if it feels good.

“At this stage,” he says, “you can put in the egg. Or, if you’re feeling very adventurous, you can separate the yolk from the white, and add in the yolk. Whisk the egg white and then fold that in. If you do that, you need to do some dancing to prove what a badass you are.

“Grease the tin.

“If you want, you can put poppy and sesame seeds on the bottom and side of the tin as this will make the crust be ‘seed-infused-crust’ and there’s no home-made-organic-authentically-handcrafted-bread like ‘seed-infused-crust-home-made-organic-authentically-handcrafted bread.’ If you do this, you’ll need to read Jericho Brown’s “Psalm 150” aloud, with joy, for the sheer brilliance of its language, as well as all its other glories.

At this point, he says, “The whole mix should look like a thick porridge. Pour it into the greased tin. Often I put fresh oats on the top too. And, please don’t forget to say a blessing for the bread. Without it the bread won’t do its work. Choose a blessing of your choice, or make it up. That’s where they all come from anyway.

“Normally,” he says, “I put tinfoil over the greased tins, so that the oats don’t burn, but also to make sure the tins generate a lot of heat. That might be because I’ve got a temperamental oven though.

“Put it all into the oven, and read Margaret Atwood’s poem again. It’ll convince the bread that its purpose is to feed the body and soul.”

And of course there are instructions for bake time and temperature and whatnot. …

I like Pádraig’s recipe because I don’t consider myself a cook, or a chef, or a baker by any stretch. And I’ve always been under the impression – especially when it comes to baking bread – that there’s a right and wrong way to do it; that bread can be finicky; that if you don’t get it all measured or mixed or leavened or greased or timed just right, it won’t turn out. That it will be flat or doughy or ugly or taste terribly – or all of the above. And some of this may, indeed, be true.

But Pádraig O’ Tuama’s recipe reminds me of Jesus and this morning’s Gospel story. Yet another bit in this series of Gospels about his identity as – and his affinity for – God’s “bread from heaven.”

Now, it’s worth knowing –if you didn’t catch it – that Jesus is mad today … that we’re listening in on a hard conversation – an argument, even, some might say – between Jesus and the crowds who have been following him, and challenging him, and questioning him for quite awhile now. Someone smarter than me, has even suggested that when Jesus says, “do not complain among yourselves,” that what he really means is “zip it,” “shut up,” “pipe down,” “quit your whining.”

And that side of Jesus matters to me – the human, frustrate-able side of Jesus, I mean, who must have gotten mad more often than we hear about. Mad, here, because he’s trying to “bring the kingdom” to the people around him and they just don’t see it or get it or want it or know what that means. Mad because he’s been having this same conversation for like, 6 chapters and 51 verses, if the Gospel text is any kind of measuring stick for that sort of thing. And after all this time, they’re still just bickering over the details and not believing or receiving what they’ve seen or experienced or heard about Jesus.

My point is, I kind of think Jesus is just trying to get the people in this morning’s Gospel to quit fussing and fretting over the recipe. And I imagine he was so frustrated and angry, and sad, too, that they still didn’t get it, or want it, or understand him, just yet.

Because what matters in all of this back and forth between Jesus and those people so hungry for faith is that it took place very near to the festival of the Passover, the great national and religious holiday for the Jewish people. The Passover was where they celebrated their release from slavery, their Exodus from Egypt, their journey toward the Promised Land. Just before this morning’s reading (or last week if you were here) we heard about how the people complained to Jesus for not giving them signs like the ones their ancestors received in the wilderness back in the days of Moses – after some grumbling of their own. They complained that their ancestors got that miraculous manna in the wilderness – actual bread from heaven – and they thought they deserved something like that kind of a miraculous sign, too; to feed them, to fill them, to fix them, to SAVE them.

And now, along comes Jesus, claiming to be that bread from heaven. He’s claiming, not just that he was there to bake or deliver this bread from heaven they were looking for, but that somehow he was … that he would be … that he is, this bread – this miracle – that would do more than just fill their bellies, but that would give life and hope and salvation to the world.

And since most of us know the rest of the story, we know how this ends: with Jesus crucified and raised to new life. And we can read this little bit of it all as a preview of sorts. Jesus was really hinting, if not declaring outright for those who could read between the lines – that he was the new Passover Lamb, with that national holiday just around the corner – come to take away the sin of the world.

Jesus … from Nazareth … this son of a carpenter, this boy born of a peasant girl – this neighbor kid whose parents they knew – was claiming to have come down from heaven with this monumental, holy task of giving up his life, in the flesh, for the sake of the world.

Which means, Jesus was messing with their tradition. Jesus was undoing what they expected. Jesus was replacing the old with something new. He was changing the rules and messing with the recipe, if you will, of everything their faith had always told them. And he was inviting them to live and believe something altogether different because of it. He was replacing their bread and that lamb with his very own body and blood.

Jesus was inviting people to see and to receive – God is calling us, still – to open ourselves to the new ways of God’s kingdom among us: things like grace and forgiveness; things like humility and generosity; things like peace and love for the “other” and love of our enemies, too. But we’re just not always so great at that, if we’re honest. Our necks are stiff and our hearts are hard and we are stuck in our ways – we get tied to the recipe and to our own rules too much of the time. Just like the Jews of Jesus’ day, Christian people are notorious for “complaining against each other” about too many rules, and too many recipes, and more.

So we get this bread from heaven, in Jesus Christ, who offers us forgiveness, who fills our hearts and minds and lives with the same kind of mercy, love and promise we’re meant to share with the world. We get this bread from heaven, in Jesus, broken and shared with such abundance that our hands and our hearts can’t hold it all.

We get this bread from heaven, in Jesus, and we’re called to share the goodness of it all like Pádraig Ó Tuama, and any good friend would share their favorite recipe, with no strings attached – generously, like poetry and so many seeds … with psalms and blessings included … by example … and with invitation and room to be fed and nourished by a grace that comes through the very life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, breaking every rule along the way, and wherever necessary.

It is something altogether new and better and different. It can be difficult to believe, this bread from heaven. For some, this kind of grace is hard to swallow, for sure. But this Jesus, this bread come down from heaven, this forgiveness, grace, and mercy, is for us and for all people. It feeds and fills every body. It saves and redeems all things – and all of us – by God’s grace, for the sake of the world.

Gluten Morgen, Baby.

Amen

Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Bread Recipe