"You Are What You Eat!"
Sermon on John 6:24-35
Pentecost +9-B
August 6, 2006
Rev. J. Curtis Goforth, O.S.L.
“For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’” -John 6:33-35
A good friend of mine who I met on an archaeological dig in Israel had been carrying around about 100 more pounds on him than he needed to be his ideal weight. Even though he was out swinging a pick axe in the desert for 3 months, he still seemed to not lose any weight. So, when I saw my friend the next year back on the same archaeological dig, I almost didn’t recognize him because he had lost 80 pounds! He was a different person. It was almost as though his whole being had been changed.
Anytime you see somebody who has lost a significant amount of weight, there is this compulsion you feel that you have to ask them how it was that they were able to lose so much weight. I succumbed to that compulsion and asked my friend how on earth he was able to lose his weight. I knew it had to be something dramatic since 14-hour days full of physical exertion in the desert last year didn’t seem to affect his weight. I asked him what sort of tremendous regime of diet and exercise he used to knock off so many pounds.
He said, “Well, I ate a lot of meat and cheese and I sat on the couch!” This was back in 1998, well before the Adkins Diet had become so popular. I couldn’t believe it! I thought he was joking with me because he was just that sort of guy. But he told me about the book Dr. Adkins New Diet Revolution and about how he had lost so much weight just by taking bread and other carbohydrates largely out of his diet. Well, on my way home in the Tel Aviv Airport I rushed into the first bookstore I could find and I bought a copy of that diet book and read it on the long flights home that summer.
I tried that diet once I got home and I lost all kinds of weight too. I would go to the grocery store and buy cream cheese and salami and steaks and pork chops and sausage, but I had this insatiable craving for a big hunk of sourdough bread. I would pass the big loaves of fresh baked artisan breads and a stream of drool would drip down my chin. It is funny how much a diet can rule your thoughts. When you are on a diet, the only thing you can think about are those foods you can’t eat. Oh to have a feast of Snickers bars and ice cream and bread! It’s funny how much a diet can rule your thoughts and take over your life!
Apparently food dominated the minds of the people during Jesus’ time as well. In the story from John’s gospel this morning, the people who had eaten the bread that Jesus had multiplied in the feeding of the five thousand go to Capernaum in search of Jesus. When they find him, Jesus reprimands them that they came to see him there not because their minds and hearts were filled by his mysterious presence in that miracle of a meal, but because their stomachs had been filled.
The crowd is reminded not to let their mind be focused on the bread that gets mold on it and is thrown away; the bread that fills their stomachs only for a short period of time. Jesus tells them not to work for food that perishes but to work for food that endures for eternal life that he himself will provide them with.
As is typical of a group of people insistent on getting their own way, the crowd demands that Jesus perform a sign for them; another sign. One begins to wonder if the people don’t just want to see Jesus do some sort of magic trick to entertain them or to give them what they want. It is tempting to follow this crowd in the things that we expect to see Jesus do for us sometimes too, isn’t it? Like the crowd we want visible results in the here and now, we want our stomachs and wallets filled and once that happens we can focus so much better on filling our hearts and minds, right?
So, the crowd has been reminded that what is really important in this life is not the physical bread that molds and decomposes, but the bread eternal which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Jesus further said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
The bread of heaven is no fad diet. The bread of heaven does not provide us with an easy pathway to get the things we want, whether it is to make our body look more attractive to the opposite sex or whether it is to fill our garages with the best vehicle on the car lot. Jesus works miracles for us, but he doesn’t put on a magic show.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw my friend that next year when he was 80 pounds lighter. His voice was even a little different. His diet had made a huge difference in the way he looked on the outside. But it hadn’t changed him much at all on the inside. He was still very immature. He was still selfish. He was still very much the same person he had been when he weighed 80 pounds more.
That next summer I ran into another friend whose appearance had dramatically changed. I hardly recognized him either. He had been through a nasty divorce. He didn’t have a job. His children now lived over eight hours away from him. He had been forced to sell his house. Life had been hard on him the past few months. Usually, stressful events and times like that cause a person to engage in self-destructive behavior or gain weight, but this guy looked and sounded great. Once again, I had to ask this other friend of mine how he had managed to change so dramatically. He told me about a different diet, but he told me that he couldn’t explain it to me adequately. He said that very few dieticians could explain the way this diet worked, but that it worked. He said that I could tag along with him when he went to his next meeting.
I was eager to shed those pounds that had crept back on since my last failed diet, so he told me he would pick me up behind my dorm and that I could ride with him there. When the weekend came, I got in his car about ten o’clock one morning and we drove for a while through the country until we came to a small, stone building.
We got out and joined the others who had shown up for the meeting. We took our seats and listened to the speaker for a while. We were even allowed some time in silence to think about what it was we doing in our daily routines that kept us from being the people we wanted to be. We read from the book the people there had based their new way of eating and living around. The speaker reminded us that this wasn’t some sort of fad diet that we could go on and come off of whenever we wanted. He told us that this diet was a way of life and that it took constant practice to live in the way the diet called for. I could tell this new diet was going to be very different from the one where I was able to fill up on meat and cheese and sit around on the couch. That meeting was fantastic because every week when the people met, they shared a meal that reminded them about the truth behind the diet. I went up to get my plate and my fork, but there weren’t any. I looked around for the iced tea, but there was just this one gold chalice of wine on the table and a loaf of bread that I was supposed to share with everybody else there that Sunday morning.
I ate my piece of bread and I drank from the chalice when it came around to me. And I could tell that this diet was real. I couldn’t explain how this diet worked on me, but I know that it does. It also helps to read the book that goes along with the diet, but once you get on it, you’ll want to share this diet with everyone. It’s funny how much a diet can rule your thoughts and take over your life!
