You may not be surprised to hear that with three kids in my house, I make a lot of sandwiches. Mostly peanut butter jelly sandwiches, but also the occasional grilled cheese or ham sandwich as well. Making these sandwiches, we go through a lot of sliced bread. And the worst thing about sliced bread? The heel. Now, sometimes I can convince my eldest child to eat the heel as part of his sandwich, but oftentimes I find I have bags upon bags of these heels just sitting in our refrigerator. Anybody else encounter this problem? Now, anybody who knows me knows I hate wasting good food, so I have worked to find ways to re-use this bread for something outside their original purpose. Usually it involves breaking up the bread and turning it into bread crumbs for a breaded coating on a piece of chicken or other dish. But what I do is I take something designed for one purpose and then re-purpose it for something just a little bit different. And yet, it’s still bread. It’s just no longer in its original form.
Quick show of hands – how many of you grew up in or near what you would call “a small town?” You know, the kind of town that maybe had one stop light, but more than likely maxed out at a four way stop, where people would wave as they drove past each other on the road? As most of you know, I grew up near a town like that, and growing up in that environment, most people knew who my parents were, who my siblings were, et cetera. In that kind of environment, there are often expectations placed upon you based on your family history. You knew which families were troubled. You knew which ones were respectable. And for kids born into those circumstances, it really made a difference how your family was perceived on how you ended up being treated. Speaking for myself, there were times where it seemed like there was a certain box I was put in, and there was no moving beyond the box.
Jesus grew up with a similar life story. We know he spent much of his growing up years in Nazareth, which was a small village where I’m sure everybody knew everybody’s business. You can almost hear the scoffing tone that comes out of the mouths of the religious elites when they remark, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” And it’s easy to reduce their skepticism down to the nature of who Jesus’ parents are, but there’s more to it than that. Because the people who are questioning Jesus at this moment are questioning not just his upbringing – they’re also questioning who he is claiming to be in this moment. They’re questioning how he could possibly step beyond the box that his heritage had put him in. And Jesus is unafraid to agitate the religious leaders with his challenging claims. And it goes beyond being bread from heaven. By even phrasing who he is in the way that he does, he is laying claim to a heritage far beyond his earthly family. And this doesn’t go unnoticed by the religious elites who confront him today.
Jesus uses the phrase – multiple times in our reading today, “I am.” This phrase is used intentionally by Jesus as a way to echo the words of the Lord God, who tells Moses – the one who led the Israelites in the wilderness where they received manna from heaven – “I am who I am.” The writer of the gospel of John is using this particular phrasing because he wants there to be no doubt that Jesus is from God. And the religious elites that John sets against Jesus in our scripture reading here today also recognize this claim. To say this leaves a bitter taste in their mouths would be an understatement. And because these religious elites are skeptical of who Jesus is, and threatened in some ways by the work he is doing and the claims he is making, they try to force him back into the box that they think he should have never left.
But the thing about Jesus? He never fit into the box. He is so much more than the family history he was born into. He is God’s son, who in God’s tender mercy comes down to forgive the sins of the world. And the living bread from heaven? Jesus tells those gathered that if they eat of this bread, they’ll never be hungry again. If they fully commit to this journey with Jesus, then they will also receive real life far beyond the life that is found in the boxes that their world puts them in. Jesus’s disciples already have a foretaste of this life. They all had lives apart from him, but when they received the call to follow Jesus, their lives changed. They could never be the same. And the bread of life, Jesus Christ, renews and enlivens them in ways that daily bread – even heaven sent daily bread such as manna – can never accomplish.
It’s obvious to us that Jesus is far more than the box that he is placed in by his society. We know the story, and we see how he never really fit in the box in the first place. But as the story continues, it becomes apparent that his disciples also are far more than the boxes that their world places them in. Galilean peasants aren’t supposed to become teachers of entire communities. Galilean peasants aren’t supposed to leave their nets and follow a Rabbi when they’re supposed to be settling down and having families. But when they do, the Holy Spirit opens up to them a world of possibilities far beyond the box that the world wishes to keep them in. By experiencing the bread of life for themselves, they are no longer who they once were – they are becoming who God intends for them to be.
That’s the amazing thing about receiving Jesus – the bread of life. When we receive this bread, we no longer can remain in the boxes that life puts us in, because we receive more than bread – we receive the eternal life that comes from knowing God in the flesh. Today, and every day, we become more than our boxes. By participating in this holy meal that we will receive today, we will be receiving again the reminder that the bread that truly satisfies – relationship with God – is ours. And when we are in relationship with God, our souls are restored. Who we were is no longer who we are becoming. And new possibilities belong to us all.
But that leaves us with a challenge, because even when we know we are becoming more than we are, we also know we can never fully depart from our families of origin. We can never fully separate ourselves from our pasts, no matter how much some of us may like to try. And we all sometimes fall into the habit – much like the religious elites of his day – of trying to keep people in the boxes that we think they were made for. But God knows our pasts. God knows who we were. And God takes us just as we are – all of us. And in God claiming us again in the waters of baptism and in this holy meal, we are transformed into something new. In Christ, we are no longer afterthoughts. We are no longer the spare heels of life that are rarely used. We are no longer simply replacement parts to keep an imperfect system working. We are now the body of Christ, a body called to work for the bread of eternity, not the bread of tomorrow. And called and claimed, just as we are, to become more than we have ever been, we know the truth – that Christ, the true bread from heaven, unites with us again this day and gives us new, eternal life found in him; not for our own sake, but so that the whole world might be fed and nourished with the love and abundance of our eternal God.