Pentecost 12

August 11, 2024

“The Bread of Life” 

Jesus, in the wilderness, was hungry, just like Adam and Eve outside of paradise, just like Israel following the great Exodus.  Satan went straight for the most basic of all needs and called upon our Lord to provide for Himself by miraculous means turning stones into bread.  The problem, not recognized by Satan – or even Jesus’ contemporaries – and hardly even noted by us nowadays – was that our Lord had not come to perform miracles for His own benefit, nor “to be served, but to serve and give His life” in payment for OUR debt.  He serves us! as startling as that may seem, starting with the most basic of all things, bread and life.

Bethlehem, translated, means “house of bread.”  In the fullness of time, according to divine plan and by divine intervention, “though the least of [villages] of Judah,” that sleepy little town becomes the birthplace of the “I AM” who calls Himself “Bread of Life…” the life-giving bread, who gives His life for the life of the world.

“Chaiyim” is Hebrew for “life.”  The Hebrew word for bread is “lechem.”  A bit of a grammar lesson here: both words grow from the same root.  Bread and life are Hebraic-ly yoked.  Where there is bread, there life is found.  In the wilderness, neither bread nor life were expected.  The desert does not spawn life in bits, let alone abundance.  When those flecks of bread are found on the ground, the Children of Israel, remark, “Manna,” literally, “what is it?”  It is nothing less than God’s way and means to supply what is necessary in that place where it could not otherwise have been found, and if there is no bread in the wilderness, there is no life in the wilderness.  Jesus is “lechem chaiyim” – the Bread of Life!

Into the wilderness – that is our life and world on account of rebellion and sin – Jesus comes.  He heals, He teaches, He feeds – physically and spiritually!  His words are “bread” that provide spiritual nourishment. His words are life that promise life, bring life, and actually distribute life.  Still, that is not enough.  God is not satisfied until justice is done.  We couldn’t do it, that is, bring justice to its rightful conclusion so that our Creator and Judge would end up happy with us.  So, we deserved to die…we do die… and we are heading in that direction since the day of our birth, thank you Adam and Eve!

Jesus declares the following truths that we might be comforted and live.

Jesus calls Himself, “I AM.” Human flesh alone can do no good or eternal thing but link up human flesh with divinity, obedience in the place of disobedience, and holiness for sinfulness, and now you have a new and unique formula for the salvation of mankind, for you and me.  Jesus the man, born of Mary, identifies Himself as God, and the mystery begins. 

But remember, in the land of Midian, at the foot of Horeb, the mountain of God, by way of a burning, yet not consumed, bit of shrubbery, God reveals His gracious name and kindly disposition to a former son of Pharaoh and a present-time shepherd named Moses.  And God said, “This is my name by which I am to be known,” “I AM is My Name,” “I Am that I Am.”  This name reveals the God of Horeb, the One speaking to Moses, as the God upon whom all things depend.  From Him “all things live, move and have their being.”  He is the source, the ending.  He is the Prince and Author of life, the beginning and the One who sustains it so that every creature “looks to Him and He gives them food at the proper time.”  He is Life in its very essence.  And where He, the Creator, finds nothing but barren emptiness without form and void, He wants there to be life – good, and in abundance.  Where He, the Resurrection, finds death, there He replaces death, hell, and the grave with life… life, and even more life, on earth as in heaven.  This is God’s proper work for which “I AM” wishes to be known and acknowledged. 

We mess up life, especially our own.  “I AM” is the Life-Giver.  So then, when Jesus says He is “I AM” we now know, without any doubt, what’s on His mind as to His mission.  He most certainly is not seeking out who He is, He already knows… and that is what affects what He does.

“I am the bread of life…”  Even better translated, “I am life-giving bread.”  It is strange in our ears to hear Him not only declare this about Himself (that He is bread), but it gets even more weird when He directs us to “eat of His flesh…” and we will live forever.  It is inherent in Him, it is what He is made of and made for, that whoever believes in Him lives a life that has no end… a new life which begins right now. 

How often St. John repeats this in His Gospel and Epistles: “whoever believes in Him shall not perish.”  He is “I AM.” He is water that wells up to eternal life.”  He speaks the “words of eternal life.”  He is “the resurrection and the life.”  He is “the way, the truth, and the life.”  “Whoever has the Son has life.”  Jesus, “He is the true God and eternal life.”

But only sinners need apply!

Those tormented by their sins, and the consequences that await them should they remain in them, Jesus says to you… “I am the bread that comes down from heaven… not like the manna that my Father sent to your fathers, and they ate of it and still they died.”  Jesus says to them, and to us, that He is the Bread who comes from heaven… who does His Father’s will (unlike us).  He, the bread of life, lechem chaiyim, does what we can’t do or even begin.  Dead men don’t do righteous deeds.  Dead man can’t please God… and because of sin, original and actual, we are most certainly and certifiably dead.  This the Scriptures declare.  But Jesus is the Bread of Life!

His Father’s will, which Jesus completely fulfills, is to keep the commandments. From which commandment have we gotten reprieve? Which commandment no longer applies to us?  And which commandment have we kept, ever?  “There is none righteous, none who does good and seeks after God,” and so we die.

The bread of life comes among the dead and dying, and dead men’s dry bones rise up and live, if they hear His word and trust in Him; and even as they eat His body and drink His blood… they live!

Jesus doesn’t come to improve life’s conditions or change our status as persons in this world.  For the poor are more likely to stay that way, yet still trusting in Him they gain heavenly riches and not earthly wealth.  The weak are more likely, in this world, to never gain power or any authority, and yet as they and we believe in Him, “His grace is sufficient.”  “They inherit the world” in the end.  Men remain men and women remain women, although in Christ “there is neither male nor female; we are all one in [Him].”  And, I might add, we all live in Christ, if we feast on Him and trust in Him. That is the sure and certain promise of God to redeemed sinners. That is the promise upon which you now live, if you have the life He gives.

Jesus “did not come into the world to condemn the world,” but that through Him the world might live.  He descended to us that we might ascend to Him.  He brought peace and rest which cannot be silenced or swept away by natural or supernatural disaster.

Don’t begin to think that you know better than God… remember this is His church and in this place can be found His people who listen to and do what He says… who when they stray they return to the words of life… who when they sin and repent they long to hear His word of forgiveness and find it dripping with holy blood… who, when spiritually hungry and thirsty, they eat His flesh and drink His blood.  Don’t think that Jesus’ human parentage had much more to do with our salvation other than by it He could assume human flesh as God to redeem our very weak and human flesh. The God-man is bread… the most basic of our needs in this wilderness… and without Him… we may walk, talk, work, play, love, and laugh – and still we would not be living.

Learn from God Himself what matters and what brings life. His word, even as it flies in the face of all human knowledge and philosophy, is more sound and steady than anything else found in all the textbooks and among the authorities and wise men of this age.

So then if you desire life to its full – and forever, the only formula that works is to rest in Christ, to trust what He says, no matter what, and to know that by all His works done to perfection, He has pleased His Father and ours.  If God is pleased for His own Son’s sake, then, all those clothed in Christ, live by Christ.

“Life!”

Jesus came into this world that we might live!  Feast on Him; rest in Him; trust in Him for life, and you have it, now and forever!  Amen.