Heavenly Bread

"Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." John 6:48-51

My mother used to bake bread in great quantities when I was a child at home. We ate them at home but mostly the large quantities were used for fund raisers at the church. We had a big coat closet in our house that had a heating pipe running through the back of it, so the closet was always warm in the winter. She would put the 2 dozen or so pans on the shelves above the coats and let them rise there. Getting your coat out of closet always made it hard to leave. The smell of rising bread was intoxicating. The smell of baking bread was even more lovely. They say that if you want to make your house instantly appealing to possible buyers, than you should put bread on to bake in the oven. It some how evokes a real sense of love, warmth and home, even to people who never grew up with home made bread. It is a link to something warm and wonderful for many.

Jesus speaks to us today and says "I am the living bread that came down from heaven." Although so many of us shun bread for our diets and our figures but bread is still, to this day, a symbol of life and health. Jesus says God sent his son (Jesus)so that every single one of us may have life and health. Spiritual and bodily health as well as eternal life. Well, that's a pretty amazing promise. Pretty hard for many to believe. And if we are to have faith at all, we have to find a way to accept that God's gift to us is life and health, now and forever. Sometimes it is hard to believe when we are hurting and broken. And yet we are invited today, despite all of our limitations, to accept the bread of heaven so that we may live more fully now and forever.

Today, I know more than ever how hard it is to take in, especially when times have been challenging. Especially when set backs and hardships come, it is hard to take in. And Jesus promises that God, who lovingly created us all, loves us beyond our capacity to believe and love. The bread and the belief are gifts from God. So today, we are simply invited to accept the bread. Accept being fed, believing that God will use the little bit of energy and renewal we receive for the renewal of the world around us. Today, all we have to do is to accept and eat. And God will do the work in between.