Sermon: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, John 6:35, 41-51

August 11, 2024 

“Heavenly Bread in the Flesh”

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Jesus is the bread of life. We’ve been focusing on this theme for three weeks now – exploring what it means in relation to Holy Communion. And with each passing week, the words of Jesus traveling through the centuries take us deeper and deeper, or maybe also higher and higher. 

We started with Jesus feeding the 5000 when a little bit went a long way – five barley loaves managing to feed thousands of people. And then we also heard the beginnings of Jesus’ teaching that he provides more than a good lunch, namely himself as the bread of life. 

Now let’s be truthful with ourselves. Jesus is saying some pretty outlandish things at least in terms of common human experience. Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” Well, there are occasions when even we as Jesus’ followers have been hungry and thirsty, physically and spiritually. 

This week, Jesus takes still more deeply into the holy mysteries about himself. And he offers this zinger: “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 

At this point the religious leaders among the crowds who knew Jesus and his family had about enough: they complained, or murmured among themselves when Jesus said that he is 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?’”

A natural and excellent question. The religious leaders had perhaps known Jesus his whole life, for three decades at this point. They knew his parents. And his siblings. In short, they had every reason to conclude that they knew where he came from. And from what they had seen with their very own eyes for 30 years is that he didn’t come from heaven, but from his parents just like everyone else. Except that there’s always more to Jesus than meets the eye.  

In all of our relationships, even our closest ones, our loved ones at some level persist as mysteries to us. Isn’t that right? We are even mysteries to ourselves. Isn’t that true? My son is a teenager. I’d love to know what’s going on in his deepest thoughts, in the hidden places of his heart. He is flesh of my flesh and I’ve been with him his whole life. And yet, he’s largely a mystery to me. I suspect that you can relate to this….

Because of our mortal finitude, our views and understandings of each other and ourselves are limited, are clouded. And then, of course, various forms of sin, willful disregard, and brokenness, get in the way of clarity about ourselves, and each other. 

How much more, then, with Jesus and his divine origins? Like all of us, because of their human condition, the religious leaders who complained were not able to see the greater truths about Jesus and his relationship with God, the Father. 

Thus, in our finitude and brokenness, we need help seeing the bigger picture. That’s why Jesus observed, as we heard in today’s gospel passage, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me…” Which is to say, we need God’s help.

Thanks be to God, our ability to believe the divine realities of Jesus are made possible by the stirrings of God within and among us, of God drawing our hearts and minds to the truths about Jesus. The apostle Paul also makes this claim when he bluntly and simply states that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.’” (1 Corinthians 12:3) 

And Martin Luther teaches this as well in the Small Catechism when he states: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church…” (Explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed, Small Catechism)

In short, we are given grace by the gift of God which opens our eyes of faith to see what Jesus saw and sees, that indeed, he is the bread of life that came down from heaven. This graced vision frees us from the constraints of limited human understanding that is otherwise held captive by our mortal nature and sin.

And what is it that we are drawn to see with our graced vision? We come to see that Jesus is indeed heavenly bread in the flesh, which is a paradox, because how can heavenly things be of the flesh? For we associate heavenly things with the immaterial spiritual realm, the seeming opposite of the flesh from our perspective. Moreover, we associate being of the flesh with being dirty and things of the spirit being pure and clean. And yet in Jesus, the word of God, who is God, made flesh, the spiritual and material are joined, are united, the seemingly insurmountable chasm is crossed. 

Which is to say, yes, Jesus was the son of Joseph, whose father and mother the religious leaders knew, and at the same time Jesus is the Son of God who is also the bread of life who came down from heaven. Both realities are simultaneously true. And it is the Spirit of God who draws us to affirm this paradoxical truth.

Which brings us to the Eucharist. In like manner to how Jesus was both Joseph and Mary’s boy whose siblings were known and the Son of God, the bread from heaven, so, too, in Holy Communion we confess that yes, it’s ordinary bread and the fruit of the vine, and at the same time also the true body and blood of Jesus. 

The more we eat and drink of this meal, the more we see the truth of Jesus as the bread from heaven, that ultimately we don’t hunger and thirst in him, that eating and drinking join us to Christ’s death and resurrection, and that we’ll be raised up on the last day. And the more that we come to this table, we see that in our believing we have eternal life even now, and that when we eat of this living bread, death will not have the last word. We will live forever. And when we eat and drink, we come to see that Jesus is indeed the life of the world. And we see that this bread is also Jesus’ flesh which joins our mortal nature with immortality and makes holy our embodied existence. In short, in Jesus, known to us in the breaking of bread, we affirm that flesh is not dirty. 

We cannot apprehend these realities by thinking too much about them, because if we do so, we end up complaining and doubting in our skepticism like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. So don’t think about it too much. Just come and eat and let the Father draw you to seeing transcendent truth in the power of the Spirit. When God the Father draws us, that’s when our eyes of faith are opened wide and we realize how much we’re being fed with heavenly bread that is also flesh. 

And here’s another thing: when we eat at this table, we become Jesus heavenly, fleshly body on earth now to be broken and given for the life of the world – yet another mystery of heavenly bread in the flesh that the church is Christ’s body in the world today.

For as church, Christ feeds us so that we can go and feed the world. We’re given work to do. And that work is oftentimes hard. Remember that Elijah, in our first reading for today, would rather have died than go on his God-ordained journey. But an angel of God gave him the food that he needed for his missionary work. “Get up and eat,” the angel said while touching him to wake him from his slumber (cf. 1 Kings 19:4-8). So, too, we’re awakened here in this place each Sunday with the same invitation: “Get up and eat.” And on the strength of the fleshly spiritual food we’re given here, we can persevere in the work that God has given us to do.

And in the strength of this heavenly bread in the flesh, we find that we can speak the truth in love with our neighbors. We find that our anger will not get the best of us, and that we can share our things with the needy. When we get up and eat, we discover that our words build others up and give grace to those who hear us, and that in Christ we can put away bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander and malice and can be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven us. In short, when we get up and eat the gift of heavenly bread in the flesh we become imitators of God, walking in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (cf. Ephesians 4:25—5:2) 

In short, and in conclusion, the heavenly bread in the flesh that enables our missionary work is a profound gift for the life of the world, a world torn by strife and enmity and all the negative things that being fed with Christ, the fleshly bread from heaven, alleviates. Lord, give us and our world this bread always! 

Next week, we will go still deeper with the theme: “Eating Flesh? Drinking Blood? Are You Kidding Me?” 

In the meantime, for now, get up and eat. Come to this table to be fed with heavenly bread in the flesh that strengthens our sacred, earthly flesh for the work that God calls us to do in offering the living bread of Jesus to the world. Amen.