Creekside Church Sermon of July 30, 2000 "More" John 6:24-35	Rev. David Bibbee
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You come most Saturdays, too, but not for the coffee and rolls. Saturday is the day they bake the sourdough bread. The girl behind the counter says it will be just a few moments until it cools. It cannot come too soon because you love sourdough bread. While you wait in a booth sipping black coffee you catch another whiff of baking bread, and the smell takes you back to when you were growing up. You always associate bread and your grandmother, which makes you associate bread with love. You remember that as soon as it was cool enough for her to cut, you were ready to devour it.

You smile, remembering your culinary creativity at that young age when you put peanut butter, bananas, and mayonnaise between two slices of her bread and said it was the best sandwich in the world. A voice breaks your concentration. "Your bread is ready." Before you pay the cashier you are already salivating. The loaf will arrive home with a couple of slices gone. You sit back down in the booth, butter the slices up and slowly savor them. From the look on your face it appears you are having a mystical experience.

The girl behind the counter pulls the empty tray from the display case. You see that empty space and you remember what it was like not to eat anything, not with the tube coming out of your nose and stomach. You remember how sick you were. It was touch and go for awhile. The surgeon said it was only by God's grace that you made it, and day by day you are learning what God's grace means.

The girl puts the tray back into the case now filled with glazed donuts with chocolate icing. You notice things now that you hadn't noticed before. What you used to think was so important doesn't matter much now...making lots of money, having lots of things, early retirement, settling into a serene, secure retirement, all the material needs taken care of. What you used to think amounted to nothing now means the world.

Take that picture on the wall at the end of the counter, for instance. You had seen it who knows how many times, yet you hadn't really seen it before your illness. The picture is of an old man seated at a table. Silver beard, green flannel shirt. Before him is a loaf of bread. His head is bowed, his eyes are closed in prayer. What is the man praying? "Give us this day our daily bread," maybe.

You hadn't paid attention to it before. Now it is your touchstone. Saturday, sourdough, the picture-it all reminds you of the preciousness of life...of your life.

Prayers of thanksgiving are now never far from your lips. Holding the last bite of bread in your fingertips you think of communion, and the bread which endures to eternal life and the One who told us he would be present in the breaking of bread and that his love alone would provide us with all we need to live.

And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger, and they who believe in me shall never thirst."

Now I'd like you to go back two weeks with me to Kansas City. Annual Conference and the Ministers Conference were over. My flight would not leave till early the next morning, so I had an afternoon and evening on my own. I followed a tip and went to a place called The City Plaza. It's a beautiful four- block section of Kansas City whose 1930's architecture has been wonderfully preserved. The fact that it is flanked by the Ritz Carlton Hotel and is two blocks away from the Country Club Christian Church (I kid you not) tells you something about the social strata it appeals to. The Plaza was lined with fine restaurants, specialty shops, boutiques and clothing stores and yes-Saks Fifth Avenue.

I walked into a men's clothing store. The first thing I saw was a white Rolls Royce parked in the center of the store. Then I saw signs that read, "50% off." That appealed to the Brethren in me, until I saw that the half-off price of a dress shirt was $80. A salesman who appeared fresh from modeling school asks, "May I be of service to you?" "Not in my lifetime," I thought to myself.

I decided to splurge and went into a restaurant and ordered a seven-layer $7 piece of chocolate fudge cake. The restaurant was called The Cheesecake Factory. At the table next to me sat three women and men immaculately dressed and discussing their latest cruise and their hottest investments. One of the men pulled a $100 bill off a roll of $100 bills, gave it to the waitress, and said, "Keep the change."

I spent the afternoon walking and watching the people carrying their bags of treasure. I saw hundreds of people, but not one who appeared particularly happy. Everyone seemed in a rush to get somewhere else. Then I became aware of an unexpected unpleasant feeling which came over me. It felt like a deep loneliness or emptiness. Maybe God was letting me know what it feels like to be well educated, well-fed, well cultured and well off, but at the same time, empty. I thought about the words of Jesus, "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life." In the midst of all the trappings of wealth, there was poverty. In the Hollywood studios you see beautiful homes and buildings constructed for the movie camera. But they aren't homes or buildings at all. They are only facades with nothing behind them.

Since coming home, I came across something written by the Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor which describes what I felt at The Plaza. She writes: "In the land of plenty, the cause of hunger can be difficult to diagnose. It is not often until we have tried to ease it with everything else that we discover, by the process of elimination, that our hunger is for God. Our problem is not too few rations, but too many. The proof that we are in the midst of a famine of the Word are the suffocating piles of our own dead words that rise up all around us on either side. It is because they do not nourish that we require so many of them. It takes thousands of words, coming at us every moment, to distract us from the terrible silence within."

There is competition for our souls. Television tells us that what we want we deserve. It tells us that we must be beautiful and tanned and have great abs to be somebody. We're told that the goal of relationships is hopping in bed. Our culture mocks commitment and fidelity and forgiveness with a non-stop stream of sex and violence. We cling to the temporary and lose sight of the permanent. We have words without the Word. We fill ourselves with junk food, and say we have no room for the food that endures.

And Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger, and they who believe in me shall never thirst."

From a bakery, to Kansas City, let us go now to Capernaum. Jesus has just fed five thousand people with two sardines and five loaves of wonder bread. The miracle made quite an impression. Jesus and the disciples retreated afterward across the Sea of Galilee, but it didn't take the people long to find them. And Jesus told the people, "You didn't come here because of the signs of who I am. You are here for your next meal." Surely Jesus knew that many of those people were poor and hungry. Who could fault them for wanting food?

Let's not make the interpretive mistake of simply assuming these people's stomachs mattered more to them than their souls, or that they didn't care about Jesus and his message. They followed him because it seemed the right thing to do. In response to the miraculous feeding they said, "This is indeed a prophet who has come into the world." But Jesus challenged them to look beyond their immediate wants and needs. He hadn't come to rearrange their furniture, but to instead build them a new house according to his design, not theirs. He wasn't offering them the daily Blue Plate Special. He was offering them the food that endures to eternal life.

And Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger, and they who believe in me shall never thirst."

Father Eugene Lauer is a theology professor at Notre Dame who I heard draw an important distinction. He said that being a Christian is knowing the difference between beholding and grasping. We should behold the beauty of the world, of people, and of relationships. When we behold, we see all of life as a gift to be enjoyed, never something to possess. "Grasping," he said, "is the root of all sin." It is taking nature and doing with it whatever we will. It is using people to meet our needs. To illustrate he told of when he and another priest were on vacation at Daytona Beach. One afternoon they were relaxing on the beach watching the ocean when a very attractive lady in a bikini walked past them, and after a moment of silence the other priest said to Father Lauer, "Remember brother...behold, not grasp."

It is important that we ask ourselves whether we want to grasp Jesus or be grasped by him. Often the bread we want from him is to bless the plans and systems we have designed for ourselves. We want him to make everything all right. Keep the hassles and heartaches to a minimum. But Jesus didn't come to fulfill our plans. He came to fulfill God's, and he feeds us with food that endures to eternal life so we help fulfill his plan.

Our plans and projects and dreams may be good and fine, but they are only temporary. Aside from Christ and our relationship to him, nothing is permanent. When Jesus said one must work for eternal food, the people asked, "What do we do to do the work of God?" NOTHING. It is a thing God does. We can only ask for it, and make a conscious effort to pry our fingers from that which won't last, and accept the bread he offers us.

The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis tells the story of a bedouin traveler who was crossing a great desert. He had run out of water and came upon a well. Lowering the bucket into its depths he prayed there was water. When he pulled the bucket up it was heavy, but when he pulled it to the top he found it was full of silver coins. He emptied the coins on the ground, again lowered the bucket and this time it came back full of gold coins. Gazing up at the sky he said, "My Lord God, I know how powerful you are and what miracles you can work. I am thankful for the silver and gold, but right now, if I am to live, I must have water." Then came a moment of illumination. He scooped up the silver and dumped it into the well. The gold followed. Then he lowered the bucket and heard a splash!

And Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger, and they who believe in me shall never thirst."

There is more to life than meets the eye. There is more to our lives, our relationship and our faith than we know. Let's not store up for ourselves treasures on earth where moths and rust consume. "What good does it do to gain the whole world," Jesus said, "and then lose your own soul?" "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?"

Indeed it is, this is why we pray as Jesus first followers prayed, "Lord, give us this bread always."

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