8-13-15- The Bread of Not-Life

The book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible tells the story of how God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, where they had become an oppressed slave class, through the Red Sea to freedom. Only freedom quickly turned into a stuckness of another kind, as they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, journeying slowly toward the promised land. (One scholar estimates that they took forty years to make a two-week journey…) During that time they complained loudly and often about their conditions, wishing they could return to their days of bondage when at least they knew where their next meal was coming from. Most of all, they complained about the food, and sometimes the lack thereof.

At one point, they began to receive a daily gift of manna, a coriander-like substance which fell from the sky six days a week (two days’ worth fell before the Sabbath day). This could be collected and milled into flour. In the conversation Jesus is having with Jews in this week's passage, this is what they bring up to him. He replies that that “bread from heaven,” though a gift of God, was not the same kind of “bread from heaven” that he himself is:
“This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

There are many sorts of gifts in our lives, things and people that nurture us. But they are not the Living Bread. They might enhance our lives, but they do not give life. They are given to us to enjoy and to share but not to become the focus of our yearning or worship. When we start seeking God-Life from the gifts God gives us, we often lose our focus on the true Bread.

And when we lose our focus on the true Bread, and seek sustenance in the good things in life, we find they cannot meet our deep hunger. Then we often turn to things that are less life-giving – to relationships, or work, or accolades, or any number of substances that numb the pain or temporarily fill us. We turn from bread to not-bread, and become hungrier still.

What kinds of “not-bread” have you looked to at times to met your deep needs? What is different about receiving the Bread of Life in Jesus?

The thing about not-bread is it often fills us quite well, for a time, and often faster than the bread of life Jesus is. It takes awhile to realize that, as the cliché about Chinese food goes, we think we’re full and a half-hour later, we’re hungry again.

Jesus is not so much about meeting our hunger as transforming it into a deep hunger for true Love. When we begin to let that bread in, we truly will not hunger again.