26^th September 2009

The Bread of Life (Or eating bread in a consumer society)

 

Lessons -- Exodus 16:2-4; Psalm 78:10-20; John 6:25-35

 

    'Believe me,' said Jesus, 'You are looking for me now not because
    you saw my signs but because you ate that food and had all you
    wanted.' (John 6:26 JB Phillips)

 

People have always asked the gods to give them 'everything they've ever wanted'. Today in our consumer society, we want our material desires satisfied 'as soon as possible'. The 'state of the economy' is our foremost national and global concern. If it is 'healthy' then we will be happy and secure and the country / world will prosper. So we want politicians to 'deliver the goods' so that we will have more than enough money and assets to be comfortable. Public Relations firms spend their time devising ways to appeal to our greed and exploit our envy of others, knowing that the most important thing for most of us is to have our needs met.

 

In such a self-centred culture Christian faith is often understood as the religious means to get what we want. It is often said by promoters of a 'prosperity gospel' that Jesus is the answer to all our problems and that, if we have faith in him, our material and spiritual security will be guaranteed. 'God' then becomes the ultimate guarantor of our desire to get 'everything we've ever wanted', and 'faith' is the means by which our desires are satisfied. Such a 'god' is an idol -- a product of our self-centredness.

 

Like all idols it attracts a strong following, taking the form of a powerful secular religion which permeates our society / culture and promises material security, physical health and sensual pleasure. This is a religion based on self-satisfaction which projects our desires onto 'God' who is thought to exist only to give us what we want. God's self-revelation in Christ cannot and must not be confused with such religion! God as attested in Scripture and worshipped by the  Church is Creator, Judge and Redeemer who challenges our desire for security, forgives our greed, envy and self-will, and calls us to put our faith in the future of God's goodness and grace which already has been embodied in Jesus.

 

The clash between self-centred faith and faith which looks to God to challenge, forgive and renew our lives is at the heart of the Biblical story. Faith in God who is faithful to us flawed human beings creates in us a freedom to face the future and act now without being pre-occupied with our material security. Still, true faith is always tempted to seek a life of comfort. This is true of the ancient Hebrews. Freed from slavery in Egypt they complain about their new life and long for the relative security they had known.

 

Gratitude quickly turns to grumbling when they find themselves in the wilderness. They plead with Moses and Aaron to take them back -- preferring to suffer at the hands of a tyrant than to live by faith in God who doesn't promise material security, health or pleasure (Exodus 16:2,3).Their attitude isn't really surprising. When life is tough and our needs are not met -- either immediately or in the way we want -- we often long for the security of what we have known. The past may be full of painful memories but it is preferable to facing a future based on the faithfulness of God. To live by faith in God who promises nothing but costly grace is far riskier than believing in the gods of our own making who give us 'everything we've ever wanted'. This doesn't mean that God is indifferent to our material needs. The Israelites are provided with water, meat and bread for their daily  necessities. The crowds are fed. Jesus eats and drinks with sinners.

 

The Kingdom of God is likened to a banquet. We are to pray for 'daily bread' and those who neglect to feed and clothe the hungry will be judged harshly. Our economic well-being is God's concern!But having our material and physical needs met is not the result of our faith. God doesn't meet our needs because our faith is strong. Bread is provided to feed a grumbling, ungrateful, faithless bunch! Jesus provides the wherewithal to feed the masses. Nor is having our material needs met proof that God is after all like the gods of our own invention in giving us all we want. Our deepest needs are not satisfied by economic solutions. The Israelites are called to faith in God as they continue to wander in the wilderness.

 

The crowds are called to believe in the embodiment of God's reconciling goodness and grace in Christ. It is not enough to 'work' so that our need for nourishment, refreshment and security is satisfied. There is much more important 'work' to be done! The 'work' required of us to experience full satisfaction in life is to respond to God's gracious invitation and 'believe in him whom God has sent' (John 6:29). What a strange answer! We know what it means to 'work for a living' but  we don't usually think of 'faith' as something to be worked at. You either have it or you don’t! Here, however, Jesus describes it as 'the most important work that human beings can do'. Our material needs are important but that is not all there is to life. Of primary importance is the work we must do to nourish our relationship with God -- to 'work
not for food which perishes but for the food which endures to eternal life' (John 6:27).

 

Jesus is not advocating a spiritualised religion which is unconcerned for the world -- a piety that ignores the body and lifts up the soul. No. He speaks of the 'bread of God which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world' (John 6:33). This 'bread' is a real, solid food which comes from outside our everyday experience ('from heaven') and gives hope to the earth. John leaves us in no doubt about the identity of the person who sustains the world. He tells us that Jesus said 'I am the bread of life; those who come to me shall never hunger . . . ' (John 6:35). Thatis, by embodying God's eternal love for our strife-torn world, Christ sustains our lives in hope. What does this mean for our faith? Instead of  being the way to get 'everything we've ever wanted', faith lays hold of the God whom we could not imagine, let alone invent, if it were not for the fact that 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth'  (John 1:14).

 

Thus faith is not directed to the satisfaction of our desires but to the glory of God's incarnate presence in Christ.  Because we are easily tempted to put faith in gods who meet our consumer needs, we must constantly 'work' at deepening faith in Christ. Otherwise, he will become merely a god -- not the fully human Son of God who restores our humanity and enables us to live freely in the midst of the world.

It is very easy nowadays to let ourselves be defined primarily by our need for bread. Consumerism is our faith, shopping is our liturgy, the  market is our god and capitalism is our creed. The old arguments between communists, liberals and capitalists about how best to produce material benefits for all are less important now that we share the belief that economics is the most important sphere of activity. The global financial crisis has done little to unsettle this belief. Economic debate about the way in which all peoples can share in material prosperity is extremely important. But of itself economics does not create hope for our divided world. The catastrophic result of the communist experiment is one example of misplaced faith in the economic god.

 

Economic theories and the creation of wealth cannot heal our rifts, overcome evil, affliction and death, or bring hope to our  strife-torn world.  We should not put our ultimate faith in them, even though we must work to produce means by which the world's population may be better fed, clothed and housed. Genuine faith is found wherever the promises of God, which have been displayed in the history of the Jews and embodied in Jesus Christ, are believed -- where they have become the 'work of a life-time'. Such  faith doesn't necessarily solve our problems or satisfy our desires.

 

But, unlike faith in the gods which aims at getting 'everything we've ever wanted', faith in God's revelation in Christ gives us what we could not have imagined if it were not for his presence on earth: the embodiment of God's mercy and righteousness as a sign and pledge of God's eternal commitment to the human race. This staggering promise is contained in the final verse of our reading where Jesus said, 'I am the bread of life; those who come to me shall  not hunger . . .  .' (John 6:35). The One who sustains us in faith, hope and love -- Jesus Christ -- is none other than the Creator and Redeemer of all things. In the sacrament of Holy Communion we are met by this One who sustains our life and the life of the world, in hope.

 

Prayer: 'O God, who hast made us that we live not by bread alone, but  by every word of God; and who hast taught us not to spend our labour on that which cannot satisfy; cause us to hunger after the heavenly food of thy Word and to find in it our daily provision on the way to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  'Prayers for Divine Service', 1923, Church of Scotland, in 'Uniting in Worship' page 230.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of
Confessing Congregations within the UCA. (Sunday 2 August 2009)