Passionate About Bread

Delicious bread... What about the bread of life?

This sermon was preached at St. John’s Church, Decatur, AL on the Third Wednesday in Easter. The lessons used were the following:

Acts 8:1b–8
John 6:35–40

When I was a child I loved bread so much. I would save whatever roll or toast or croissant or biscuit was on my plate until the very end. My obsession over bread was so well known in my family that they often made fun of me for it. They thought it was funny how I saved my bread for last or made subsequent trips back to the kitchen not for more of the main course, but for a side roll. I wonder sometimes if I have that sort of passion for the bread of life. Do you? Do we?

We find ourselves during this Third Week of Easter in the midst of John 6, which is all about bread. The bread of life to be more specific. We will hear this chapter again for five weeks this July and August. By the end of that time, we may all be too stuffed to hear any more about the bread of life. But, at this moment, when we are less satiated by glorious gluten, Jesus being the bread of life tastes fresh. So, if I am passionate about that bread—if I do not merely consume the Body of Christ, but allow it to consume me and to transform me, what happens? Well, our story from the Acts of the Apostles gives us a couple of hints.

Yesterday we heard the story of Stephen’s martyrdom and today we heard the story of Saul’s persecution of the early Jesus movement—both point to how the bread of life not only feeds but transforms our selves, souls, and lives. Stephen heard the story of Jesus, he was transformed by the bread of life. He was called to distribute sustenance to the poor. In his death he relied on Jesus as his source of strength. And, even after his death, as Evan reminded me today, his grave would have been a place where early Church members shared Eucharist to commemorate and celebrate his life and his second-birth into heaven. Stephen’s life, death, and example point to the power that the bread of life can have on an entire community. What about Saul?

We may be familiar with the story of Saul, but how was he transformed by the bread of life? Saul, the pious of the pious among the People of Israel, devoted his life to being devout. When others stoned Jesus to death, they laid their coats at Saul’s feet. He was a persecutor of the early Church because it threatened his own Faith. Of course, all of that changed one day on the road to Damascus. There he was blinded by God, heard God’s voice, was healed by a Christian, and his life turned from a persecutor of Christ to one of his greatest evangelists. God gave Saul a new name Paul. Right then, his old life died and he was born again.

In this new life, Paul was nourished by the bread of life. Through consuming that bread he was transformed, and he became consumed by the Body of Christ. He articulated that image for us, such that we hold onto it to this day. Paul would eventually die his own gruesome death standing up for the very thing he had persecuted others for. This sounds very much like transformation. How did it happen? Through being nourished by the bread of life.

So, what about us? How will we be transformed by the bread of life? When we come to this table, when we approach the Good News of Christ Jesus, when we share in fellowship with others, when we give of ourselves to God’s work in this world, when we pray to God, when we dwell in silence with God, in all of these ways and many more we take in the bread of life. The changes that we may show are probably too numerous to name; however, we will look something like Stephen and Paul.

We will be filled with God’s Good News. We will share it in churches, in public spaces, and even to the powers that be. We will care for the weak and the outcast. We will feed others with the bread of life physically and otherwise. Wherever it is we go we can be fed by the bread of life. And wherever it is we go God will be there to transform us, just as God did with Stephen and Paul through Christ who was and is the bread of life.