10th Sunday after Pentecost

When I was a kid growing up in western Lower Michigan, most of my friends and their families spent at least a week during the summer relaxing at a lake, either at the “big lake”, as we called Lake Michigan, or at one of the many inland lakes. They did this every year, often going to the same place year after year.

Not my family. Instead of spending a quiet week or so at a lake, my parents took us on road trips. We went all over the country: South Dakota, Wisconsin, New York City, New England, Washington D.C., Williamsburg, and, since we were driving, all points in between. One year we flew to Phoenix and then spent a couple of weeks driving around Arizona, Nevada, and California in a rental car. Seeing all those places was exciting, but, with three kids, things could also be interesting inside the car. At times, there was a lot of whining and complaining:

▪      I have to go to the bathroom.

▪      I'm hungry. I'm thirsty.

▪      She's being mean to me.

▪      I want to go home.

▪      When will we get there?

Of course, as the oldest kid, I wasn't doing any of this. I just had to endure it! And do my part to keep the other two in line, which wasn't always helpful.

I expect that many of you have been in similar situations, either as an adult or a child. So you can probably identify with what's going on in our reading from Exodus.

The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for over 80 years by the time Moses arrived to confront Pharaoh. “The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor.” (Exodus 1:13-14a) The Pharaoh even ordered that male babies be killed at birth, which is why Moses was hidden among the reeds in the Nile, where he was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter.

“The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.” (Exodus 2:23-25)

At the point where this morning's lesson begins, it's only been about 45 days since the Israelites were delivered from slavery in Egypt, but they have already forgotten what life was like there. They have forgotten the misery and injustice. They have forgotten that God answered their groaning and prayers for deliverance in a big way by sending plagues on the Egyptians until Pharaoh finally let them leave. They have forgotten how God saved them and destroyed Pharaoh's army at the Red Sea. They have forgotten how God provided fresh water when they complained that the water at their campsite was bitter.

Now the Israelites are grumbling again. This time they fear they are going to starve to death in the wilderness. In verse 3 they confront Moses and Aaron and say “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Another translation makes it easier to see how unrealistic this description of life in Egypt was: “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted.” (NLT) Now I don't believe for one minute that the Israelites were eating that well as slaves in Egypt. But they clearly don't trust Moses and Aaron, and ultimately they don't trust God.

So the Lord tells Moses, “I am going to rain down (blank) from heaven”. How would you fill in that blank if you were in God's sandals? If it were me, I think it would be something like “hellfire and brimstone”. But that's not what happens because God is merciful and answers the people's complaints by raining down bread from heaven.

Now this bread isn't what they expected, and it seems like they might not have been too pleased. I can imagine them making a face! They say “What is it?”, a rather rude question that you were probably taught not to ask at the dinner table or when you got a gift. But that's how it got its name. A few verses after our reading, the Bible says the people called it “manna”, which means “what is it” in Hebrew. If they'd spoken English, it might have been named “whatchamacallit” or something like that. When I was a kid, I imagined it being like Communion wafers, just like the artist who painted the picture on the slide did. You can click on this link if you want to get a closer view. But the Bible tells us manna was like coriander seed, so it was round, like a globe, and tasted like honey. Some scholars think it was similar to a sweet substance that is produced by insects and deposited on tamarisk trees; it melts in the sun and is still considered a delicacy by Bedouins today. God provided manna for the Israelites for forty years until they reached the land of Canaan.

And this brings us to today's Gospel lesson. Last week, we heard about another miraculous provision of food, Jesus feeding thousands of people with just five barley loaves and two fish. As Pastor Anke pointed out, John doesn't refer to events like this as “miracles”; instead, he calls them “signs” because they point to something beyond themselves. Think of a sign along the road. Its meaning doesn't come just from the sign, but also the direction it takes you.

A frequent pattern in this Gospel is that Jesus performs a sign, then has a discussion with the bystanders, and finally gives a long speech or discourse on the meaning of the sign. The discussions often involve a misunderstanding where the listeners take what Jesus says literally, but he has something else in mind. It works something like this. Imagine that you come up to me on a Sunday morning and say, “I went to a party last night and had a ball.” I respond, “That's great! Was it a baseball or a football or another kind of ball?” How do you react? You'll probably try to keep your eyes from rolling and explain what you meant. Now you can understand a little about what Jesus was dealing with.

In today's reading, Jesus is talking with people who had been looking for him and finally found him in Capernaum. At least some of them had been at the feeding the day before. The misunderstanding here involves the meaning of “bread”. The conversation is about bread, but at the same time it's not about bread. The crowd is thinking of the stuff they eat. Jesus has something totally different in mind, and he uses the confusion as an opportunity to point his audience to what is more significant.

When the people find Jesus, the first thing they ask is when Jesus had come to Capernaum. Jesus doesn't answer their question. Instead, he accuses them of only being interested in him because he had provided a free and filling lunch the day before. They did not come because they saw the sign and realized what (or who) it pointed to. Jesus urges them to look beyond satisfying physical hunger to something that is more important: “the food that endures to eternal life.”

The idea of imperishable food seems to have suggested to the crowd that something spiritual was going on because the next question they ask moves in that direction: “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Presumably they thought that this was the way they could get the imperishable food Jesus had talked about. Jesus responds that what matters is to believe in the one God has sent. Notice that while the people talk about the “works” of God, Jesus talks about the “work” – singular – of God. There is only one thing that leads to the food that endures to eternal life: believing in the one whom God has sent.

Next, the people ask for a sign like the manna which fed the Israelites. It makes you wonder if they've already forgotten the events of the day before! Jesus reminds them that in the Scripture they mention, “he” refers to God, not Moses. It was God who provided the manna, not Moses. Jesus also changes the tense of the verb: “Moses …  gave you the bread from heaven, but ... my Father ... gives you the true bread from heaven”. And then he says, “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (v. 32 – 33) Jesus is saying that manna wasn't just something that belonged to Israel's past. It's an on-going gift from God in the present that is available to those who are listening to Jesus right now.

The people are beginning to understand the importance of this bread, so they ask, almost demand, that Jesus to give it to them. They are associating Jesus with Moses as the giver of the bread, but they have yet not understood that Jesus himself is the bread. So he responds clearly to their request: “I am the bread of life.” This is the punchline of this whole question and answer session. It reorients everything that led up to it. Jesus was not talking about interpreting the story of the manna. He was talking about himself; he is the manna. Jesus himself is the gift from God who gives life.

What does it mean for Jesus to be the true bread from heaven? How is Jesus like manna? Sometimes we are no better than the crowd at understanding what this means. We are as confused as the crowd and as the Israelites, for that matter. The Israelites had been brought out of Egypt and delivered from Pharaoh's armies at the Red Sea, but they still didn't trust God to take care of them. Similarly, the crowd didn't understand what was happening right in front of them and worried about where their next meal was coming from.

We behave in the same way sometimes. It's so easy to let “the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14) distract us and displace Jesus. Sometimes they are necessities, like food, water, and shelter. But often they are things that would make our lives more comfortable or successful. We pour our time and energy into a career or acquiring more stuff or spending time with family and friends and soon discover that Jesus has been pushed aside.

Jesus warns us not to fall into this trap: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (v. 27) The word that is translated as “endures” here is a significant word that occurs over 40 times in John's Gospel. He uses it to refer to being in relationship with God and Jesus, and that's exactly what believing means. It's about being in relationship with Jesus and trusting that everything you need will be provided by God.

The best thing about all this is that it is a gift, just like the manna was a gift to the Israelites. The “work of God” that John talks about in verse 29 is not something that we do for God. It's something that God does for us, namely to create belief in Jesus. We only have to receive it by the grace of God and through the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

Jesus is the Bread of Life, and he promises that those who come to him, who believe in him, who have a relationship with him, will never hunger or thirst. He is the source of spiritual contentment as well as the source of joy and contentment in any situation, in plenty and in want, in easy times, and in times of struggle and challenge. Jesus is the true bread that sustains life in every sense of the word. Don't settle for less!

Amen!