August 2, 2009
The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ps. 78:14-16, 23-29
John 6: 24-35

Some years ago I received a loaf of Amish Friendship Bread and with it a cup of the Starter and the recipe. It was so delicious - I gratefully received it. I read the instructions:

Cover loosely at room temperature: On day 2 and each of the following mornings through day 4: stir starter with a spoon On Day 5 stir in 1 cup of flour, I c. sugar and 1 cup milk. Days 6 thru 9 stir only. On Day 10: stir in 1-cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. Remove 1 cup to make your bread, give 2 cups to friends along with this recipe and, and begin the 10 day process over again.

What fun! Well, by the middle of the second 10 day period. This thing was a living organism! It needed to be fed and cared for. I felt as though someone had given me a new pet without my asking.

Now, if that had been the only bread I had to live on - you can believe that the first thing I would have done every day was tend to it. But I also love the abundance of living in an incredible diverse and international city: I love, tortillas, Challah, Sour Dough, Pita - what is your favorite bread?

Come with me now to the Sinai desert: when the Hebrew people were starving in that Wilderness, crying out, begging for sustenance - God didn't give them a drop-down menu from BreadsoftheWorld.com; God instead rained down Manna every morning during their sojourn for 40 years as the story goes, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. (Ex. 16:35). It was so good - It tasted like wafers and honey - so good on their empty stomachs, so gentle and so welcomed, so amazed were they - to be provided and cared for in what they thought to be a god-forsaken desert.

Manna from heaven: unlike Amish Friendship bread it was quite easy to maintain: you eat it - daily - as much as is needed until you eat you fill. No muss, no fuss, it is renewed every morning directly from the hand of God, who, like a loving mother, is up before everyone else, preparing this life- giving bread. However, Manna had no preservatives, and the Israelites could not keep it overnight, they could not store it just in case they got hungry later, or it didn't come the next morning; they couldn't hoard it. It required that they trust that God would provide it morning by morning, day by day, going to bed every night hoping that it would be there tomorrow.

The Israelites and millions today know exactly why Jesus put that line in his prayer "Give us this day our daily bread."

Bone deep hunger: some children in the post-war orphanage were so distressed with the fear of hunger even though their tummies were full, and had been every day for months, the experience of and fear of being that hungry was so deep that they couldn't sleep. The surrogate parents came up with a brilliant plan: they tuck the children into bed each night with a small loaf of bread to sleep with - not because they are hungry, but because they do not trust that bread will be there for them when they wake up in morning. They snuggle down with their little loaf and go to sleep, evidence that it will be there when they wake up.

Jesus knew all too well what that kind of hunger was about. He had spent 40 days in desert near Jericho. He was well-acquainted with the kind of hunger that could drive people to desperation and hopelessness. He understood where the crowd was coming from, why they chased him around the Sea of Galilee from the hills to Capernaum, just to near the one could produce bread and fish - in overwhelming abundance, on demand. Perhaps is they made him King, he would keep on doing it!

So it was with compassion that Jesus entered into this rather testy exchange that Dave read to us this morning. It sounds like an interview where the people want to know his qualifications to be King and if he passed, Savior. Jesus challenged them to consider whether they were focused on the bread that fills the stomach - which is necessary - but they were going too far in defining their lives around the quest for food. They seemed to live to eat, rather that eating in order to live.

Jesus urges this crowd to consider what it might mean for them to reach out and within themselves to receive more than survival rations: to reach for the Bread of Life - he invites them to look to him to see what that might mean.

As we pray the prayer he gave us, what has become known as The Lord's Prayer, think about what Jesus includes in that prayer. It being with awareness of the Divine, living for a greater vision than just surviving - for the coming of the Reign of God, the joining of heaven and earth; forgiveness received and given; community - contributing together to the life-giving goodness around us; and celebrating that all is in God our Creator from whom we come and to whom we return.

We want and need to eat our fill of not only that which sustains our physical well-being, and we long to be filled every day with the Bread of Heaven. We want and need awareness of and connection to a continuous, intimate, interactive, living giving, loving relationship with that which is Life, what gives life, what increases aliveness, intensifies relatedness. Call that what you will - the Divine, the Holy, God, The Real Bread of Life. Like the people on the grassy hillside near the Sea of Galilee, to come to see in Jesus the embodiment of who God created us to be; in him we experience who we are becoming.

Nearly every week I go to visit my Mom for lunch or tea in her garden of roses, and birds, and of course, spiders. I come away filled with the Bread of Heaven: fresh scones and fruit; the fragrance of the redwood trees; the songs of the Junko bird, the call of the Jays, the taste of the Green Jasmine tea, and our conversation: sometimes about an article in the Economist Magazine; other times about the most recent books we are reading; always about praise of God for the gift of our being together in this exquisite garden.

What makes this a feast on the Bread of Heaven? For starter, the acknowledgement of the presence God and the Gift of the Spirit; the giving and receiving of love; the sharing of stories about our respective church communities; the sharing of a meal; the common goal of letting ourselves be challenged by our call to share this Bread with others.

At home this morning, I wrapped my arms around my 2-year old granddaughter, visiting from Seattle - awash with those feelings of gratitude and love beyond words.

And here, at FCCB this morning we share in the fullness of the Community of the Bread of Life. Here the feast is open for all - no matter who you are, where you are on life's journey, whether you have come from a loving family or are recovering from an abusive environment - you are welcome here to come, taste and see the abundance of God's love shared here. Some of you may have tasted this at Pat and Sam's Farm yesterday in Sonoma. Others of us will be going to Camp Cazadero the first weekend in October (sign up in a couple of weeks from now) - and right now, all of us gathered here in this place, are sharing this abundance around this table. This is the expression of the invitation of God in Jesus, this is the center of our community experience, and the breaking open of God's invitation to all.

Wherever we are, we can trust that the Hand of God opens and we can receive what we crave in inestimable abundance as we let the Divine feed us.

In the life and work of Jesus, we are invited to see each other and see ourselves as God sees us. There are two candles on the Communion table most Sundays: They are more than a nice touch to balance the table or fill the space: they represent the two natures of Christ: the human and the Divine - complete, whole, divine/human - human/divine. Wherever two or three are gathered - there is the divine/human Manna. That is also who we are: as we become more fully human, we see that we too are on the journey to wholeness: The words of the little letter of I John put a big frame around this picture: he said, "we don't know what we shall become, but we know that we will be like Jesus" -- fully Human, who knows how to receive, and to give the Bread of Heaven.

The Bread of Heaven is here at all times, day and night: Like Amish Friendship Bread, it needs to be nourished, stirred daily, and on the seventh day baked and shared - a natural outpouring of the abundance which will spill over. This time in contrast to the Manna in the desert, there is a preservative - love - through which heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, are wed.

For the Israelite people in their wilderness, manna rained down fresh every morning. For us and for all people everywhere, and for the whole cosmos, the Bread of Heaven is here now, and always available for our health, wholeness and transformation. Once it rained Manna; now Manna Complete reigns in our hearts and in our lives - the Bread of Life.

Come, receive, give and live.

Amen.