Thanksgiving Eve C2022
@ Mountain View Lutheran Church, Phoenix, joint service
John 6:25-35
You may know that I served Grace Lutheran Church in downtown Phoenix for 12 years, and many in the Grace community struggle for daily bread. Many are experiencing homelessness, and the things people need seem to never end. Open the office door, and there are people asking for food and water, clothing and hygiene products, help getting an Arizona ID, to use the phone, to use the bathroom, for medical and behavioral health resources, for shelter referrals, for places to take showers, and on and on. The people of Grace need bread, daily bread. Martin Luther teaches in the Small Catechism that daily bread, for which we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, includes all that is necessary for daily life: bread, yes, but also clean water, clean air, and electricity to power our air conditioning and heat, health care and education, safety and a place to live. Regardless of our social location, regardless of our socio-economic status, we all need bread.
In tonight’s Jesus story, the crowd finds Jesus the day after he multiples five barley loaves and two fish to feed 5,000 people. It’s the next day, and being human, they are hungry again. Right away, Jesus souses out their intentions. “You are looking for me,” he says, “not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Or in other words, you are looking for me not because you seek relationship with me but because you’re hungry, and yesterday, I fed you. He goes on to distinguish between the food that perishes and the food that endures for eternal life. Jesus teaches the crowd to seek the food that endures for eternal life instead of that daily bread. At first glance, quite honestly, I struggle with Jesus’ words—because of all the dear people I know and love who slept on cardboard on top of concrete last night, the lucky ones under tarps. I struggle with Jesus’ words because the fight for survival is real, not just in downtown Phoenix but around the world—in Ukraine and Afghanistan, in island nations disappearing due to climate change, in places where drought means long walks to dirty water, in nations around the world where people are silently suffering. In a world beset by challenges such as these, why in heaven’s name do we seek the bread that endures for eternal life? Really.
In November 2010, I met Claude. He was part of the Grace community and came every week to GLOW, Grace Lutheran On Wednesdays, an evening meal and Bible study, mostly attended by people experiencing homelessness. Claude had a reputation. He kept things real. He said things how they were, straight as an arrow, whether or not the truth sounded nice to other people. Claude wasn’t sure if he believed in God and every week raised critical questions. Still, he always came to GLOW, always shared in prayer and song and community. A few months after I met Claude, he began losing weight and was diagnosed with stomach cancer. One Wednesday, I brought my plate of spaghetti over and sat down next to him. Claude was twirling the spaghetti unto his fork and then dropping it. “This looks really good, but I can’t eat it,” Claude said. “I’m here for the Bible study.”
One of the many lessons I have learned from people who struggle to access daily bread is something Jesus himself taught: that we do not live by bread alone. For there is a fullness to human beings that goes beyond the merely physical, and that fullness is what Jesus recognizes in the crowd. Or if I may be so bold as to share a poem I wrote last year entitled “More”:
The oft-repeated lie
of this and many cultures is:
Money is all you need.
Yet we give more than money
and need more than money.
The oft-repeated lie isolates until,
stripped bare, the one
who always received
has nothing
and no one.
My friend taught me,
my friend who is poor in cash but rich in love,
“It’s just money.”
There is more.
Jesus tells us,
Jesus, full of grace and truth,
“We do not live by bread alone.”
There is more.
More love
More joy
More freedom
No one has ever become poor by giving
so give
and receive
more.
When Jesus tells the crowd to seek the bread that endures for eternal life, he teaches them that life is more than daily bread, that love and joy and freedom come through relationship with Jesus and the people of Jesus’ community (that would be all people, of course). We know, don’t we, that relationship with Jesus isn’t always comfortable or easy. Full of grace and love, yes, but also full of invitation to grow and change, to give of ourselves, to serve all people, following his example, to love even our enemies. Jesus pushes us beyond our perceived capacity, especially with our neighbors who differ from us, our global neighbors who are easy to ignore, our neighbors who straight up denounce our very way of being in the world. The food that endures for eternal life is not the manna in the wilderness that appears like dew each morning, pure gift from heaven. The food that endures for eternal life is not a product that can be bought or sold. Rather, the food that endures for eternal life is relationship with the one who said: I AM the bread of life. Tonight and every time we receive the bread and wine that is for us the body and blood of Christ, Christ empowers us through Christ’s presence in our very bodies to give and receive more: more joy, more love, more freedom. On this Thanksgiving Eve, an evening of gratitude, we give thanks to God for Jesus, the bread of life, who feeds us and who, through us, feeds the whole beloved world. Thanks be to God! Amen.