The Bread of Life

Only a short message this week, as some people were needing to get off early to go to an event at a sister church.

“I am the Bread of Life,” said Jesus. “Those who come to me will never be hungry; those who believe in me will never be thirsty.”

But what, exactly, did he mean? His followers were totally unsure: “But he can't be – don't be silly! We know his Mum and Dad, he's not something that came down from heaven!”

The thing is, we are used to these words. We have heard them so often, and we associate them with the Sacrament, where the minister says over the Bread: “This is my Body, given for you”, and over the Cup: “This is my Blood, shed for you”. We don't actually hear them any more.

Those who were listening would have had no idea that he would take the Jewish Friday-night ritual and lift it and transform it into something very different, yet essentially the same. For them, when he said, “You must eat of my flesh and drink of my blood,” what they thought was cannibalism.

And, of course, that was seriously offensive to them, as it would be to us. Perhaps even more offensive than it would be to us, since we have no taboo against eating blood. But the Jews, like the Muslims, do have a terrific taboo against it, believing that the “life is in the blood”. I'll come back to that in a minute – and so to them it is probably not only unheard-of to drink blood, but rather sick-making, too. Whereas other cultures – the Masai, certainly, drink blood as a matter of routine. And even we have our black puddings, although I think we'd blench at being offered a nice warm glass of fresh blood.

And, of course, there are things that we wouldn't normally think of as food that other cultures eat routinely – think of the Chinese and their dogs and snakes, for instance. Or even the French with their snails, which are actually delicious if you like garlic butter! And I know that many West Indians follow the example of the Jews and Muslims and eat no pork, and probably feel rather sick at the thought, just as I expect Hindus do about eating beef.

You may well know that Jack Rosenthal play, “The Evacuees”, where the two Jewish children are presented with “delicious sausages” for their supper and expected to eat them. And although they've been told and told that as it is a national emergency, they may eat food that is normally forbidden, they simply can't bring themselves to try. The taboo against eating pork runs so deep, for them, that they simply can't overcome it.

And Jesus' followers certainly felt most uncomfortable at his words. To start with, they simply couldn't understand what he was on about: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Visions, there, of Jesus cutting great chunks out of his arms, I shouldn't wonder. Or of people cutting up a dead body and preparing to eat it - in some cultures, that would be considered quite normal, and the correct way of honouring the dead, but not for the Jews, any more than for us.

St Paul, or whoever wrote the epistle to the Ephesians, takes this concept – although he was, of course, writing long before the Gospels had been written down, but he would have been familiar with the teachings – he takes this concept and runs with it. He gives us that list of instructions as to how Christ's people are to behave, and summarises it: “Since you are God's dear children, you must try to be like him. Your life must be controlled by love, just as Christ loved us and gave his life for us as a sweet-smelling offering and sacrifice that pleases God.”

Jesus said that his flesh is the Bread of Life, which he is giving so that the world may live. We think of Holy Communion, but his first hearers couldn't think what he meant. Jesus tells them that what God wants is for them to believe in the one who was sent. But, as I said, they can't see that at all – how can he possibly say that he came down from heaven when he is Joseph's son, and they know his parents quite well.

It is, of course, one of the famous “I am” sayings in John's Gospel. The thing is, of course, that it wasn't just Jesus saying something about himself, because it echoes – and his first hearers may well have heard those echoes – it echoes the bit in Exodus, where Moses asks God his name when confronted with him in the burning bush. And the answer is “I am”, or perhaps “I am who I am”. And here, Jesus appears to be using the same phraseology:

I am the bread of life

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

I am the light of the world

I am the gate for the sheep

I am the good shepherd

I am the resurrection and the life

I am the way, and the truth, and the life

I am the true vine.

Jesus is claiming to be divine. All very strange, because on another level I rather think Jesus was trying to put things into words that won't really go, like so much of Christianity doesn't quite go into words – even what happened when he died on the Cross; even what happens when we make our Communions. We all have a mental picture of it, which is certainly partly true – but none of us will ever know the whole of it, as the more we know, the more we know we don't know. And I think this Bread of Life discourse is something a bit like that. And yet, it was a definite claim to the divine. But how are we to come to him, to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood? There is Holy Communion, of course – but is there not more to it than that? Wesley would say that Holy Communion, one of the means of grace, is only helpful insofar as it brings us closer to God. It is not, in and of itself, something magical!

Paul is more practical, of course. Tell the truth, don't steal, help those in need, don't be angry in a destructive way, and don't feed your anger. “Get rid of all bitterness, passion, and anger. No more shouting or insults, no more hateful feelings of any sort. Instead, be kind and tender-hearted to one another, and forgive one another, as God has forgiven you through Christ.”

Hmmm, well, I don't know about you, but I'm not good at most of those things! But it isn't really a matter of outward behaviour, as I'm sure you know. It really is much more about allowing God's Holy Spirit to change us, to make us into the person he designed us to be. St Paul reminds us that “the Spirit is God's mark of ownership on you, a guarantee that the Day will come when God will set you free.” The day will come when God will set us free. So we are not yet free from the things that harm us, the things that bring us down. We are not yet able to live wholly surrendered lives as God's person – and yet, one day we will be.

Jesus said “I am the Bread of Life, those who come to me will never be hungry; those who believe in me will never be thirsty.” So let us come to him again, let us recommit ourselves to him once more. Amen.

It's you, dear!

I want to talk about our Gospel reading in a minute, but first of all, we need to look at the Old Testament reading, the story of David and Bathsheba. This is, in fact, the second week of this story – you may have heard the first part last week, but just in case you didn't, I'll recapitulate.

David is now King of Israel and Judah, a united kingdom. He has built a very splendid palace in Jerusalem, and is one of the richest and most powerful men in the region. And, like many rich and powerful men, he has a high sex drive, and, of course, many women find riches and power very aphrodisiac.


So David can more-or-less have any woman he wants, and, quite probably, the reverse is also true – any woman who wants the King can have him! And there is Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, who allows herself to be seen while having her ritual bath – and responds to the King's summons.


Unfortunately, what neither Bathsheba nor David had any way of knowing, given the state of medical knowledge back then, was that when you have just finished your monthly purification rituals is when you are likely to be at your most fertile. And so it comes about that Bathsheba finds herself pregnant, and there's no way it can be anybody other than David's.


And they panic. David could arguably have got away with it, but he wasn't going to abandon Bathsheba like that, and, it's probable that it was she who panicked. Uriah, from what we read about him, strikes me as very much the kind of person who always does the right thing, no matter what the personal cost to himself, and in this case, the right thing to have done was to have had Bathsheba, who had obviously committed adultery, stoned to death. Yes, killed. Even if he hadn't wanted to do that. He was far too prim and proper to sleep with his wife while on active service, no matter how hard David tried to make him do that – if he had, he would have accepted the coming child as his own, and their problems would have been solved. But he refused, because his country was at war and he was a soldier on active service, and wouldn't even go and see Bathsheba, even when David got him drunk, but just slept on his blanket in the guard room.


So David feels he has no option but to get rid of Uriah, which he does by causing him to be sent into the front line of battle, and get killed. And as soon as it is decently possible, he marries Bathsheba.


End of story? No, not quite. You see, it might seem to have all been tidied up and nobody any the wiser, but they had forgotten God. And God was not one bit pleased with what David had done.


So he sends Nathan the Prophet – brave man, Nathan, wasn't he? - to say to David that there is a man who only had one sheep, just one, and a rich bully had taken that sheep away from him. So David said, well, who is this bully, I'll deal with him – he can't get away with that sort of thing in my kingdom, so he can't! And Nathan looks him in the eye and says, “It's you, dear!”


And, then David sees exactly what he has done. The lust, the adultery, the deception, the murder. He looks at himself and does not like what he sees, not one tiny little bit. He doesn't know what God must think of him, but he knows what he thinks of himself – and he knows, too, that he needs to repent. Which he does, and some of the words he is said to have used have come down to us:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your great goodness;
   according to the abundance of your compassion
      blot out my offences.
  Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness
   and cleanse me from my sin.
  For I acknowledge my faults
   and my sin is ever before me.
 Behold, you desire truth deep within me
   and shall make me understand wisdom
      in the depths of my heart.
Turn your face from my sins
   and blot out all my misdeeds.
  Make me a clean heart, O God,
   and renew a right spirit within me.
  Cast me not away from your presence
   and take not your holy spirit from me.
  Give me again the joy of your salvation
   and sustain me with your gracious spirit;
Deliver me from my guilt, O God,
      the God of my salvation,
   and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness.
  O Lord, open my lips
   and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
  For you desire no sacrifice, else I would give it;
   you take no delight in burnt offerings.
  The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.


And so on. There's a bit more, but I've not quoted it all – it's Psalm 51, if you want to have a read of it.


Anyway, the point is, his repentance is genuine, and he will be reinstated. The child will not live, though. And there is that lovely scene where the child is born, and David is told that it cannot live – it hasn't “come to stay”, as they used to say – and he prostrates himself before the Lord in prayer. And the baby duly dies, and the servants are at a loss to know how to tell him, thinking that if he's in that sort of mood, he might well shoot the messenger, but when they have stood outside the door for ten minutes going “You tell him,” “No, you tell him!” he realises what's going on – and when he finds out that the baby has died, he astonishes them all by going and washing his face and going to comfort Bathsheba, and when asked, he points out that while the baby was still alive, there was hope that God might yet be persuaded to let it live, but now that it's dead, there's no hope and it won't help anybody to lie on the floor rolling about in grief.


And as we know, just to round off the story, Bathsheba and David do eventually have another child, who becomes King Solomon, arguably the greatest King of the combined kingdoms.


David's main fault, I think, that started the whole sorry saga, was greed. He was greedy for life, and for women, and for pleasure. He wanted to have it all, and had to learn the hard way that it wasn't all his.


Jesus says much the same to the followers in the Gospel reading, doesn't he? It takes place almost immediately after Jesus has fed five thousand or more people with a small boy’s packed lunch.
He then sends the disciples on ahead of him, so he can spend some time in prayer and being quiet for a bit –
in some of the gospels, we’re told that he’s just heard about his cousin John’s execution and needs a bit of space to grieve.
Anyway, he then walks across the lake to join the disciples,
and next day the crowd finds him on the other side of the lake than they’d expected.

But Jesus reckons they’re not following him because of his teachings,
but because they want another free lunch.
“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs,
but because you ate your fill of the loaves."

And this is not what he plans for them.
“Do not work for the food that perishes,
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.”


Jesus points out that in the wilderness, it wasn’t Moses who provided manna for the children of Israel to eat, but God.
And it is God who gives the true Bread from Heaven.
“I,” said Jesus, “am the Bread of Life”.
You know what I’m reminded of here?
The story of woman at the well, a little earlier on in John’s Gospel.
She asks Jesus to work the pump for her, which he duly does, but he tells her that he is the Living Water, and any who drink of that water will never be thirsty again.
Same sort of principle.


Many – not all, but many – of those who followed Jesus did so because they wanted the spectacular. They wanted a free lunch from a small boy's packed lunch. They wanted to see the healings, the deliverances, the people collapsing on the floor as evil spirits left them, and so on. They weren't interested in the teachings, in the way your faith has to manifest itself in actions or it isn't really part of you, in loving their neighbour, in feeding the hungry.... they were wanting to believe in Jesus without having to become Jesus' person. I don't want to pre-empt what you'll doubtless hear about next week, but many of them walked away when the teachings got too hard for them to cope with.


And what about us? What about you and me? Are we just interested in the next thrill, the next sensation, the next fashion? Are we willing to be Jesus' disciples, and pay the price that the Bread of Life requires – all of us. Even the dreadful bits, even the bits that we'd rather keep hidden. David had to surrender all of himself before he could receive God's forgiveness. Can we do that? It's very far from easy, and I don't pretend to be able to, at least, not all the time. It has to be a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment surrender. And when you find you've taken yourself back again, as it were, then it's all to be done again. What it needs, of course, is the will on our part to be Jesus' person, even if we don't succeed all the time.


King David was not a wicked man. He did a very evil thing when he allowed his lust for Bathsheba to overtake his common sense, but normally he was God's person – and when it was pointed out to him where he'd gone wrong, he came back.


My friends, let's be like David. When we go wrong, when we take ourselves back and live our own lives again, and when we realise we're doing that, then let's recommit ourselves into God's hands. He will be there to welcome us back with loving arms. “There you are, there you are at last! Welcome home!” Amen.

Dancing before the Lord

David, we are told in our first reading, danced before the Lord! And if we are to believe his wife, he was really rather over-enthusiastic about it, especially given what he was, or was not, wearing! But what is happening, and what is this story all about?

Well, to answer that question, we need to go back some forty or fifty years, right to the story of Samuel in the Temple. Now, we call it the Temple, but it wasn't the Temple that we think of in Jerusalem, the one that Jesus chased the money-changers out of from. In fact, it wasn't in Jerusalem at all, but in a place called Shiloh. It was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided.

The Ark had been built very soon after the Israelites had left Egypt. It was a box of acacia wood, gold-plated, and richly decorated. You can read about it in Exodus, if you've a mind to. It was designed to be carried, but you didn't ever touch it – it had carrying-rings through which two acacia-wood poles were pushed, and they were a permanent fixture, apparently. The Ark travelled with the Israelites during their wandering in the desert, and when they stopped, it had its own special place in the inner room of its own special tent. Only the priests were allowed to look at it – when it travelled, it was covered up with hides or material, and only the priests were allowed into the inner room of the tent. When the Israelites reached the promised land, the Ark was taken to Shiloh, and it looks as though a more permanent home was made for it, although we're not told when, or by whom. And it did still occasionally go with the Israelites into battle!

The Ark contained the tablets on which Moses had inscribed the ten commandments. Hebrews tells us it also contained a jar of manna and Aaron's staff that had flowered. But the thing about the Ark was that it was not only a sacred object in its own right, it also represented God.

Anyway, we rejoin the story in the days of Samuel, when Eli was the priest in the Temple.

Back then, being a priest was something that only certain families could do;

and if your father was a priest, you usually were, too.

It’s actually only within quite recent history that what you do with your life isn’t determined by what your father did, and back then, you followed in your father’s profession,

and if your father was a priest, as Eli was, then you would expect to be one, too.

Unfortunately, Eli’s sons were not really priestly material.

They abused the office dreadfully –

taking parts of the sacrifices that were meant to be burnt for God alone,

sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the temple.

I don’t think these women were prostitutes –

temple prostitution was definitely a part of some religions in the area,

but I don’t think it ever was part of Judaism.

These women would have been servants to Eli and his family, I expect,

and considered that service as part of their devotion to God.

And perhaps, too, they helped people who had come to make sacrifices and so on.

Whatever, Hophni and Phineas, Eli’s sons, shouldn’t have been sleeping with them,

and they shouldn’t have been disrespecting the sacrifices, either.

There had been a prophecy that the Lord would not honour Eli’s family any more, and that Hophni and Phineas would both die on the same day,

and a different family would take over the priesthood.

Eli had tried to tell his sons that their behaviour was unacceptable, but they hadn’t listened, and one rather gets the impression that he had given up on them.

He was not a young man, by any manner of means.

And then Samuel hears God calling in the night, and when he answers, this is what God has to say. It was not a message of encouragement and reassurance, such as you might expect, but this:

“See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.

On that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end.

For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever,

for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God,

and he did not restrain them.

Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”

There will be no escape for Eli;

he could, and should, have stopped his sons from being blasphemous,

from disrespecting the offerings of God’s people,

from sleeping with the temple servants.

I get the feeling Eli has rather given up, don’t you?

When Samuel tells him what the Lord has said, his reaction is simply,

“It is the Lord;

let him do what seems good to him.”

And sure enough, there was a battle with the Philistines, and because it was going rather badly, the elders decided to have the Ark brought from Shiloh because it would give heart to people and tell them that God was with them. Big Mistake. The Ark arrived, and all the Israelites shouted for joy. The Philistines were rather disconcerted by this, so they decided to attack again – and things went horribly wrong. About thirty thousand men were slaughtered, including Hophni and Phineas, and the Ark was captured! Eli, too old, too blind and too fat to fight, was so horrified when he heard the news that he had a heart attack or stroke and died. It wasn't so much his sons' deaths, but the loss of the Ark.

But you don't capture the Ark with impunity! The Philistines took it to their capital, Ashdod, and put it in the Temple of Dagon, only to find that the statue of Dagon had fallen down before it, as if in worship. And the next day, they found the same thing had happened again, only this time the statue was in pieces. And the townsfolk began to get ill, so after seven months the Philistines said they would send it back. Only how? Any couriers they sent with it would certainly be killed out of hand. So they decided to load it on a cart pulled by two cows, and allow the cows to take it where they would, assuming that if the Ark wanted to be back with the Israelites the cows would take it to the nearest Israelite town. They also put some gold treasure in a separate box and sent that, too. And, sure enough, the cows went straight to the nearest Israelite town. And eventually the Ark settles down in a place called Kiriath-Jearim, which is about 15 kilometres from Jerusalem, and a man called Eleazer the son of Abinadab is consecrated to look after it.

And the years go by. Saul is anointed king, and then David. The wars with the Philistines continue. David and Saul fall out. There are all sorts of adventures and battles and sadness and misery, and some happiness, too. And now, at last, we come to today's reading. David has now conquered Jerusalem, the City of David, and has decided to move the Ark there, too. So they all go down to Baale-Judah, which appears to be another name for Kiriath-Jearim, and the Ark is put on a new cart to be brought home with great rejoicing. But then, and this bit was omitted from our reading, something dreadful happens – the oxen pulling the Ark stumble, and someone rather thoughtlessly reaches out his hand to steady it. Now that is what you simply didn't do with the Ark, and the man, called Uzzah, fell down dead on the spot. David is very worried, and thinks, well, maybe I'd better not have the Ark in Jerusalem with me if this sort of thing is going to happen, and he leaves it in care of a man called Obed the Gittite for about three months. Until, that is, he learns that God has richly blessed Obed for taking care of the Ark, and he decides that, after all, it can come into the city. And so we see him leaping and dancing before it, bouncing all over the place and, just possibly, showing a little more of himself than perhaps was polite. Whatever, his wife, Michal, was most embarrassed on his behalf – imagine the King behaving like that! And to round off the story, when David gets home at the end of the party – because of course, when the Ark arrived, there was a huge party – Michal says rather snottily, “Oh my, look at this great king exposing himself before all the serving-girls.” And David said, “It was before the Lord, who anointed me King, and bother the servant-girls!” And Michal, apparently, remained childless, although whether that's because she was actually barren or because she and David didn't go to bed together again, I'm not sure. David did, after all, have lots of other wives and concubines.

So anyway, that's the story, and some of the background, but what does it have to say to us today? How is it relevant?

I think it's about sacredness, and about whole-heartedness. The Ark was a sacred object. David would have liked to have built a proper temple for it, but God said no, and in the end it was his son, Solomon, who did so. But wherever the Ark was, it was in its own inner room, and it was the most holy place. Only the High Priest ever went in there, and he would always take blood with him, so the letter to the Hebrews tells us. And, of course, Hebrews reminds us that it is Jesus who is our great High Priest, and the Holy of Holies on earth was only a copy, a shadow, of the real one in Heaven. And because of Jesus' sacrifice, we can enter with boldness into God's presence.

The Ark was a sacred object, and nothing and nobody unclean could touch it. It's long since vanished – after all, it was no longer necessary once Jesus had been raised from dead, and you may remember that when he died, the curtain covering the entrance was torn in two. But when it was there, it was a real, and present, symbol of God's presence, and you touched it at your peril. It does serve to remind us that God is holy, and we who are his people need to be holy, too. We can't achieve holiness, wholeness, if you like, by ourselves, but only through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. But because we are now bound by the New Covenant, rather than the Old, we can enter God's presence with boldness. But we do well to remember, at least some of the time, that God is holy.

And the other thing is about whole-heartedness. David danced before the Lord with all his heart. He didn't care that his hair was all over the place, and his face was red and sweaty, and his loincloth had slipped. He was worshipping the Lord, honouring the One who had brought him from being a humble shepherd-boy to one of the most powerful rulers in the region. David was very far from perfect, as we know, but he never, ever forgot what he owed to God, and he worshipped God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength.

And we? Do we remember what we owe to God? Do we remember that Jesus came to be one of us, to live among us and share what it's like to be human, and to die for us? Do we worship God with our whole being, forgetting to be self-conscious about what we are doing, focussing solely on God?

David danced before the Lord. Do we?