Taste the Bread
John 6:24-35
August 3, 2000
David Beckett, D.Min.
St. John United Methodist Church

I’m getting old. My oldest daughter, Jenny, turned 18 last week. Ever since she has been bugging me to get her own Sam’s Club card. It seems like yesterday when she toddled around our house making life interesting. When she was three she had a mind of her own, a mind which generally asserted itself at meal times. We never knew how she would react to what we put on her dinner plate. For example, if we gave her spaghetti she might love it. One of her favorite comments was, "You’re a good cook, Mom!"

But two weeks later if we dished her some spaghetti she would throw a fit and scream, "I don’t like sghetti!" No matter how many times we would say to her, "But you haven’t tried it yet, Jenny would yell, "But I don’t like it!" That’s the way it is with children….you never know quite what to expect from them.

In our gospel reading today Jesus had fed the 5000 with 5 barley loaves and two small fish. It was indeed a miracle. The great crowds followed him seeking more miracles. But as with all of his signs Jesus wanted people to see them, not as the central focus, but as windows to a deeper spiritual truth. And the spiritual truth in this case is recorded in vs. 35, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry." If Jesus is the Bread of Life then it has occurred to me that people treat him in different ways, just as we have different feelings about food. Let’s take a look at the various ways in which we eat physical bread with the hope that we may learn something about how we receive spiritual bread.

Probably the best known eater is the Picky Eater. There is probably not one person here who has not had at least one picky eater in their family. Of course the picky eater is one who under no circumstances will eat certain foods. I must confess that I am a bit of a picky eater myself. There are certain foods I have tried and cannot stomach. For example, I hate lima beans with a passion! I am so bad that if you put a serving of succotash on my plate I will pick out all the corn and leave the lima beans!

Aren’t there those who do the same thing with Christ? They are very picky about what parts of Christ they will digest. For example they may gobble up his teaching about forgiveness and love. But they cannot stand the taste of his words to love your enemies.

And then there is the Segregated Eater. This kind of eater has to have his or her food placed exactly on the right spot on the plate. And the first commandment this eater lives by is: Thou shall not mix any foods on the dinner plate. Oh no! I can remember my brother whining to our mother because she put his corn too close to his mashed potatoes! You would have thought she had just committed the unpardonable sin!

In a similar way there are people who treat Christ in this manner. When they look at Jesus they can only see fragments, pieces of him. They find it too difficult to integrate Jesus and see him as a whole person. For example, they cannot see how tithing your income to God’s kingdom has anything to do with feeling an inner peace and joy in life.

Do you have any Sports Eaters in your family? This is the person who plays with his food. Yes, for many people dinner time can be an exciting game of skill and chance. When I was a youth minister I was always amazed at the creativity of teenagers when it came to playing with their food. One year at camp I witnessed some sports eaters whom I would recommend for induction into the Sports’ Eaters Hall of Fame. One group took a piece of posterboard and made a collage of the entire week’s menu by smearing food all over it. Another group played that famous game, "LET’S MIX ALL THIS JUNK TOGETHER AND SEE IF WE CAN MAKE ANYONE SICK."

Yes, some people play with their food. Are there those who like to play with Christ? Do we see the Christian life as a nice game to play? It can be fun at times. It can get us attention. It looks good on our resume. But taking the Bread of Life seriously is the farthest thing from our minds.

There is another type of eater I call the Convenience Eater. This type of person hates to go through all the trouble of cooking a balanced meal. When I was a bachelor teaching 8^th grade in Georgia I was a hardcore Convenience Eater. I quickly became an expert at heating frozen TV dinners, frozen waffles, frozen rolls, frozen anything! And I was a regular customer at al the nearby fast food places. It wasn’t that I didn’t like good food. It was just that I hated all the work and clean up.

There are folks who see Christ this way. They really don’t want to make a big commitment and do a lot of work. And so they settle for less…a sort of "fast food Christianity." They come to church, they give sacrificially, they reach out in love to others ONLY when it is convenient.

At this point I will resist the temptation to go on. Instead, I will conclude with one more type of eater: The Sneaky Eater. I have a personal illustration for this one. When I was a boy growing up with my two younger brothers our mother did a cruel and inhumane thing. She made us eat our peas! I like peas now, but then, none of us boys like them. So we became very good Sneaky Eaters when it came to peas. One of our tricks was to toss our peas down a rather large floor register when our parents were not looking. One of our favorite tactics was to hide them in our mashed potatoes. But my brother, Tim, came up with the grandaddy of them all. He would hide his peas in his napkin and then ask to go the bathroom where he would flush them down the toilet!

I don’t know about you but there are times when I try to be sneaky with Jesus. I come to church with a heart full of guilt and brokenness and then try to hide it from God. I can place some money in the offering plate with the knowledge that I am not giving all I can. I can live my life trying to pretend on the outside that everything is okay on the inside. Does this ever happen to you?

Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry." When I was a youth minister in Kim’s home town of Sidney, Ohio, our youth group experienced a 30-hour fast to raise funds for world hunger and to sensitize us to the pain of hunger. Thirty hours without food may seem like a long time but it really wasn’t that hard. What I will remember most about the fast was the meal we were given at the conclusion. It was a simple meal of watered-down soup and bread….very similar to what millions of people on this planet eat every day….a meal most of us Americans would reject. I will never forget the taste of that soup and bread in my mouth. After having gone without food for 30 hours I savored every chew of that bread. I cannot remember ever enjoying food as much as I did then.

Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry." The point is that the table has been prepared for us. The gift of life in Jesus Christ has been given. Now it is up to us to come and receive. It is up to us to come to this table with a hungry soul. It is up to us to taste this bread and cup…to eat a healthy portion, to chew and savor every bite, and to find our life and strength in Christ. This is what the sacrament of communion is all about: Christ’s body broken for us so that we may have life everlasting.