“I
am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever
believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Since
I started my full-time preaching career in the summer of 1997, I’ve had to
endure nine summers when the Revised Common Lectionary sticks us with four
consecutive Sundays in which the gospel lesson focuses on Jesus as the
bread of life. Come to think of it, it’s actually five Sundays because
the Sunday lesson which precedes all that bread is the story of the feeding of
the 5,000. That’s a lot of bread. I mean, come on! Just how much can you
say about bread?
Over
the decades I’ve figured out ways to avoid this redundancy. I could always
preach from the Hebrew scriptures or from the epistle lessons. Or—and I like
this idea the best—I can go on vacation for a few of those four weeks and let
someone else talk about Jesus being the bread of life. This summer I have a great
Assisting Minister, the Rev. Natt Pour formerly of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church of Liberia. I’m going to let him preach this Sunday. I feel confident
Pastor Natt will rock the house. He has a rather thick accent so whatever he
says will sound unique. Of course, many folks can’t understand a word he says anyway, so at least they won’t notice
the repetition next Sunday. But, whatever Natt may lack in English
pronunciation, he more than makes up for in preaching zeal. I’ll have one of
the deacons tag in for me when I go on vacation in two weeks, so I’ll only have
to come up with two bread of life sermons. (If you do this job long enough, you
learn some tricks!)
But
there’s one thing I can’t quite maneuver around. We’ve started a new program
for kids at Faith. I do a quickie children’s sermon just before we read the
week’s gospel lesson, then the kids leave the worship space and get a short,
age-appropriate Bible lesson in an adjacent room. A lesson for preschoolers has
always been a bit of a challenge for me since I have no biological children of
my own and my teaching experience was mostly with middle school youth. I’m not
sure I can make a meaningful analogy for the little tykes, but this is what I’m
going to try:
I
will show the children a half-eaten loaf of bread I’ve taken from the
refrigerator in the church’s Fellowship Room. I’ll explain that bread is one of
the most common foods eaten by people on the planet, and ask the youngsters if
they ever eat bread and how do they eat it. I’ll try to explain that when we
pray “Give us this day our daily bread” we’re really asking God to see to all our needs.
So
far so good?
I
will then explain that I keep the bread I use to make my lunch at church in the
refrigerator. It might get a little dry or stale that way, but I toast it so I
don’t mind. I’ll ask them what they think would happen if I just left the bread
out. I hope they’ll understand that the bread will eventually go bad if it’s
not refrigerated or eaten in a timely manner. If they get that, I can tell them
there are some things which don’t go
bad—ever.
Jesus
came to teach us about love and sharing and kindness to others. He wanted us to
look out for one another. If we really believe in this love, it won’t ever
leave us. We can be thankful for and loving to our moms and dads, our brothers
and sister, our teachers and friends, and everyone we meet. The love we feel
inside will never spoil unless we let it. We can eat bread today and be hungry
tomorrow, but the love Jesus teaches will give us joy forever.
Do
you think children will understand that? I hope so. At least that’s what I’ll
try to teach them. It’s just too bad there are so many grown-ups who have never
learned this.
Thanks
for reading, my friend. May you have a blessed week and always enough “bread”
for your journey.
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