In Year 1 of the three-year lectionary, we are treated to some rip-roaring yarns in our OT readings from the Deuteronomic History as recorded in the books of Samuel and Kings. Again, these stories remind us that without a knowledge of history, we can only stumble around blind in the present. These OT stories have a soap opera quality, and they function similarly. These stories of the societal machinations among ordinary Israelite folk cast a powerful spotlight on our contemporary societal machinations. It’s another OT book – Ecclesiastes that reminds us that what has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

While our OT readings have offered ringside seats on ancient goings-on the gospel readings from John’s sixth chapter have been focused on Jesus’ perplexing and provocative bread metaphors. Jesus’ complex riff on bread metaphors is the unique characteristic of John 6. Consequently, the chapter forms the bedrock of Christian eucharistic understanding – of which I will say a little today but much more next week.

Two weeks ago, Kaley offered a reflection on the feeding of the 5000 as recorded by John. She began with a description of the nature of barley bread. I don’t know if I have ever eaten barley bread. Certainly, her description of its density and squishiness sounds very unappetizing to me. However, Kaley’s sermon got me thinking about bread.

As a child, I remember bread being delivered along with milk in glass bottles to the mailbox at the end of our drive in the early morning. My earliest memory is of bread that came as whole loaves in a waxed paper wrapper. It came in either white or brown. I remember when a third bread option became available – sliced. The arrival of the slicing machine in the bakery meant that in our house bread now came pre-sliced in a plastic wrapper. Pre-sliced bread was such a huge cultural achievement that it has found its way into the English language.  It’s the best thing since sliced bread – we say to describe something new or innovative.

I remember bread as the staple of my childhood, not as the specialty item to be savored by the denizens of Seven Stars Bakery. Bread was bread, white or brown, sliced or not – used as toast or to make a sandwich or a bread pudding –a great favorite of visits to my maternal grandmother.

I also remember a time when eating bread had little downside. Unlike the overly processed wheat that goes into modern commercial bread, the bread of my childhood was baked from minimally processed grain – the purity of which and the metabolism of youth allowed me to consume bread without regard to quantity or consequence. Alas, the slowing of my aging male body’s metabolism now means that for me bread has become chiefly identified as the source of unwanted carbs.

Bread is the staple food in all cultures where wheat is the staple grain. In wheat-growing societies, dependence on bread as the staple food has led such societies to view bread as a symbol of divine generosity – an embodiment of God’s care and concern for human beings. Our own collective religious memory contains countless instances and references to bread as a sign of God’s presence, God’s blessing and involvement in human affairs.

Hence Jesus’ use of bread is not only a teaching metaphor for spiritual sustenance but a metaphor of connection with God – a metaphor for his unique relationship with God and through him our relationship with God.

We should recall that hunger was a commonplace experience for the masses of displaced peasantry that flocked to hear Jesus. 1st Century Palestine was undergoing an agrarian revolution with land being increasingly vested in powerful landowners who like corporate agribusiness in our own time – were intent on squeezing out the little guy – the peasant farmer – reducing him to the status of an itinerant day laborer. This is a story as old as time, and one alarmingly familiar to us as we view with a sense of increasing alarm the monopolistic trajectory of economic developments in our own day.

Jesus speaks to the crowds using a series of bread metaphors – two of which we hear in today’s gospel reading – I am the bread of life, I am the bread that came down from heaven. Interestingly, John records that this teaching didn’t go down well. It makes little sense to the crowds, and they begin to grumble – even scandalized to leave him.

Eventually, Jesus focuses his bread metaphor through the lens of collective memory – reminding the crowds of the mana – bread from heaven – that fed their ancestors in the desert. Perhaps if Jesus had read Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs he might have realized that it’s a tall order telling people about spiritual bread as mystical nourishment when their bellies are empty.

Bread is one of the central metaphors of the Christian Faith. We pray: Give us this day our daily bread – extending bread as a metaphor for all of life’s basic needs. Daily bread encompasses not only something to eat, but also somewhere to live, something meaningful to do, and someone to love and be loved by. While we long for the bread from heaven that feeds our spiritual hunger, we have a spiritual imperative to ensure that there is enough to go around for everyone to receive their daily bread.

Paradoxically, we have the opposite problem to Jesus’ 1st-century hearers. To them the mention of bread reminded them of their hunger – bread to stave off starvation – they had little bandwidth for spiritual bread. Whereas we are all too comfortable with praying for the bread from heaven that feeds our spiritual hunger while ignoring or being complicit in systems that ensure that some have daily bread but not all.

The great Dom Helda Camara, Liberation theologian and bishop of the Brazilian diocese of Recife between 1964 and 1985 was a hero of the Liberation Theology Movement so disliked by John Paul II and his rottweiler – the then Cardinal Ratzinger. He asked the awkward question -why when he gives bread to the poor, they call him a saint but when he asks why the poor have no bread they call him a communist.

Our Christian faith costs us. Fulfilling our Christian responsibility to ensure that everyone has their daily bread – bread being used here as a metaphor for multiple poverties – will cost us in terms of the sharing of the resources we currently claim for ourselves.

In the Eucharist, Jesus gives himself as the bread from heaven that feeds the life of the world. This is not a heavenly world, but a real world in time and space. In the Eucharist when we celebrate the bread from heaven given for the life of the world we are also – in the same moment – making our ethical commitment to the life of this world.

The spiritual bread of the Eucharist cannot be separated from being also the physical bread of food and shelter – of love and life purpose – made available in the everyday world. The Eucharist as the spiritual bread of communion with God is also the physical bread of food and shelter – of love and life purpose made available in the everyday world.

Note my use of the verb made – made available – not just miraculously available. The daily bread of the Eucharist is made available through the process of our participation in worship – sending us out into the world for political action – by which I mean our commitment to service and witness to truth-telling. More about that next week.