Bible Text: John 6:41-51 | Preacher: Rev. Jenn Geddes
Did you know that the smell of fresh baked bread can trigger a happier, more optimistic mood and therefore makes us kinder to strangers. It is apparently, scientifically true, I read it on the internet. Published in a 2012 journal of social psychology, researchers at the University of South Brittany in France discovered that the smell of baked bread triggers a more positive mood, “which leads to a great degree of altruism in strangers.” In fact, good deeds also apparently rise when fresh bread is in the air. Perhaps it is something in our DNA because the baking of bread goes back to at least 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe that unleavened bread was consumed as early as the Paleolithic period during the time of early Homo sapiens who were predominantly hunters and gatherers. Bread became a staple during the Neolithic period, about 10, 000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent which includes modern day Israel and Palestine. Bethlehem in Hebrew means, house of bread. Bread in some form is the only food that is a staple in diets around the world.
Jesus’ dialogue last week, this week and next week will be entirely based on bread. Just as the miracle three weeks ago was the story of the loaves and fishes. I’m sorry to say that this is not a gluten free series. This is actually a challenge for preaching because we cannot live on bread alone and you don’t want me preaching on bread alone. It can, quite frankly, get very stale. However, while these passages are interconnected and all come from the 6th chapter in John, each section has a separate theme and development. I believe it is for this reason that the World Council of Churches breaks up the lectionary in such a way. If we tried to unpack all of John 6 in one Sunday it would be one very long sermon. And You know, I don’t like long sermons. As a result we will carefully seek to draw out the differences within the readings. Last week was a prologue and it introduced us to Jesus’ analogy. Jesus was attempting to explain that he is the gift from God for the world- just as bread nurtures the body so Jesus nurtures the soul. This week we begin to see that Jesus nurtures the soul by drawing us into God. But as Jesus tries to explain this concept the crowd struggles to see past a few things and struggles to understand what Jesus is saying.
Immediately in our section the crowd cannot move past that Jesus said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” Two things catch them and they just seem unable to move beyond it. First, they are taking Jesus’ words literally and that literally does not work. Jesus communicates predominantly through parables and stories and analogies in an attempt to make all this difficult theology understandable but it seems to have certainly failed in this instance in part because the crowd is taking it too literal. When we take certain passages in the Bible literally instead of understanding God’s wisdom we get caught up in those words. The Bible is full of history, emotion, story, parable, culture, and mostly it is about people trying to navigate their relationship with God. The greatest divisions throughout the Christian church is because we refuse to be open to the God breathed allegorical beauty of Scriptures. The passage for next week will continue this concern and highlight the dangers of thinking that Jesus is literally bread.
The crowd also complains about Jesus’ message because they have a presumed knowledge about Jesus. When Jesus says he comes from the Father, from God, the crowd looks at each other and says- “but don’t we know his parents? Isn’t his father the carpenter up the road? We know his parents and therefore we can’t possibly believe a word this yokel local says.” The crowd decides that he can’t possibly come from Heaven because they know his parents. Familiarity breeds contempt. Due to their presumed knowledge they are not open to understanding what Jesus is trying to say.
New Testament scholar Brian Petersen calls this “theological irony” because the crowd professes to know Jesus’ father and mother but that only reveals a total ignorance of the Father who sent Jesus. The truth is not found in knowing the human parents but rather the truth is found in knowing that Jesus has come from the Father in Heaven. The crowds self-assured “knowledge” blocks their ability to know the truth. I would argue that we, certainly me, have this problem also. We have difficulty seeing beyond what we “know” to be true and therefore we are unable to see the divine truth amongst us. A trivial example, I KNOW I put my keys down on the counter and therefore can not move beyond looking for them on the counter….only to discover that they are actually on the table. The crowd knows who Jesus’ parents are and therefore they cannot move beyond his earthliness- if only they could look beyond to discover that they are actually experiencing the divinity God- right in front of them.
Jesus doesn’t loose patience- at least not yet- because he explains that the only way to be drawn into faith is by the Father. The truth can only be revealed by God. Basically it is a two way relationship. We do not sit idly by waiting for God to open our eyes but God also doesn’t wait for us to finally see the truth through our own merit. This is challenging for us to understand because, as Petersen puts it, there is paradoxical tension in this text between the call to faith and the declaration that faith can only come from God. But this is also not a paradox that is to be unwound, it is simply the mystery of faith. Jesus’ words are to be heard and believed so that we may be drawn in by God and have faith. This bread from heaven not only nurtures our souls but also reveals our hearts to new possibilities and with God those possibilities are endless.
We can be fed by the Word, meaning that if we consume this bread, make it a staple of our diet, without the pretence of what it is supposed to taste like, what it is supposed to smell like, what it is supposed to feel like and instead just allow this bread to become part of our bodies then our eyes will be opened and we will be welcomed by God. But this means leaving some of our predetermined bias at the door. It basically means acting as if baked bread is in the air, all the time, as we remain positive and are kind to strangers and leave our selfish knowledge behind. It means being open to the allegorical wisdom of God and it means giving up our fallible knowledge for the truth found in God. Because there is going to be a greater theological irony and a tougher paradox found in faith when the bread from Heaven gives life to the word by dying for it. Amen