Sermon Sunday 4^th August Trinity 10

Scripture quote

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and

whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.( John 6.35)

OLD TESTAMENT READING: Exodus 16.2-4,9-15

Psalm 78.23-29: ”God’s Goodness and Israel’s Ingratitude”

NEW TESTAMENT READING: Ephesians 4.1-16

GOSPEL READING: John 6.24-35

Sermon

Andrew and I were talking about our holidays the other day and were reminded of the lovely fresh bread we bought while we were on Holliday in Spain. Have you noticed that in many parts of Europe, especially France, people buy bread every day? Bread is baked fresh and doesn’t have preservatives, so it goes stale quickly, which is why you need to buy some every day. This need means there are local small bakeries everywhere providing bread. Whereas in the UK the bread comes from supermarkets and is full of preservatives to make it last longer, so we don’t have to go to the shops again and again. Sometimes we buy more of it and stick it in the freezer so that we’ve saved some for later. We no longer have a network of small local bakeries making fresh bread, or if we do, they’re scarce. Our actions and change of shopping habits, has changed the food industry and put small business out of business, giving the profits to large companies who pay small wages to their workers and the profits to share holders.

I’m not saying that stopping shopping at supermarkets is going to change the world, this is just one small example of how our innocent habits can lead to injustice. This kind of injustice happens because we all succumbed to a lifestyle or habit in our life that worked for us rather than reflecting on what the impact of our actions would be.

In our reading from Exodus, we hear the Israelites are in the dessert are complaining to God because they are in the middle of the wilderness with no ready supply of food. So, God provides them with bread from heaven in the morning and quails in the evening. Yet, even when the food is provided every day, some of the Israelites don’t trust that the food is always going to be there and they try and store it up for the next day, only to find it has gone off and become inedible. This story reflects the bigger picture that happens in the world. There is enough for all on this planet to have enough, the scarcity comes from a minority taking the majority. This theme runs throughout the Old Testament and New Testament and is therefore a crucial aspect of our faith and a Christian imperative. God provides the Israelites with bread from heaven every day, enough for them to eat and been satisfied. In the same way God has provided this planet to provide for all of us, yet some take more than they need, which impacts the most vulnerable. This scarcity in our world has caused conflict, natural disasters, famine and rising tension and anger. However, instead of focusing the blame on those who compromise the needs of people and the planet to satisfy the need for profits, those who are vulnerable get the blame. Those who flee from war or natural disasters caused by climate change, get blamed for the scarcity in the world or the lack of resources that we might have locally.  We pick on the most vulnerable instead of a looking at the root cause of the problem. In our reading from Exodus, the Israelites’ root problem was that they weren’t trusting God. They preferred to hark back to the good old days when slavery provided security to them, even if at a  cost. We are all vulnerable to the temptation to hark back to times that seemed perfect, or more secure, and using that as an excuse to not be open to change.

This week all the clergy in the deanery received an email from Bishop Gavin which called for all of us to be united against racism and any kind of abuse against those who have fled to this country because they fear for their lives. Since the devastating attack on small children at a dance party, killing three little girls in Southport, there have been violent protests popping up across the country. Most of these stirring up hatred and misinformation. Organisation such as the English Defence League are encouraging people to believe that this attack is solely due to immigration, when the accused in question was born in Cardiff. The irony is that many of those involved in these protests are involved in organised crime, which I would argue have killed and devastated the lives of countless children across our country by using them to sell drugs. Groups like EDL, want to divide people, they want to blame anyone who isn’t them and hark on to the so called good old days to make us think that what they preach can bring a better way of life. As a disciple of Christ, there is no teaching that aligns with this belief. Jesus doesn’t teach us to hate our neighbour, we are taught to love our neighbour as ourselves.

In our gospel reading Jesus is revealing that he is God to those around him and encouraging us to understand that to be fully alive comes from eating the bread of life. But bread, can be both good and bad for us. Some bread can be full of good things like seeds or olives or sun dried tomatoes, providing a diversity of goodness to our bodies. Other bread doesn’t provide us with the sustenance we need, and we are soon hungry again or it could make us unwell. It is the same in our lives.

Listening to those who preach mistrust and hatred forms us to mistrust and hate those around us. It is like cheap white sliced bread. There’s no goodness in it, it might taste good sometimes but only up to a point and then it leaves you hungry. Yet the bread of life, forms us and sustains us if we put our trust in it. It might taste funny to some at first, but the more we eat it the more we realise how good it is, not just for ourselves but for others too.

I’ve been reading a book called, Take this bread, by Sara Miles. She is a journalist who one day in her mid forties walked into a church, having lived a secular life with no real interest in organised religion and ate the bread and drank the wine of communion. It changed her life completely. There was something about sharing that meal that satisfied a need in her that she didn’t even realise she had until that moment.

When we share communion, we are not only reminded of our physical hunger but our deeper hunger for wholeness and for redemption. We eat the bread and taste the wine together and confess our hunger and our trust that Jesus Christ, the love of God incarnate, not only nurtures our hunger, but also meets it with his own unconditional love, the bread of life. (Pg.213 Connections).  

Saint Irenaeus of Lyon said that the glory of God is a person fully alive. Let us therefore live fully on the bread of life. Let us taste and see what goodness overflows when we put our trust in God, the way the truth and the life.

Amen