Meg Peery McLaughlin
I AM, So you Can: The Bread of Life
April 6, 2025
John 6, selected verses
In John’s Gospel, Jesus is always trying to tell us who he is.
We’ve been in a sermon series examining his seven I AM statements.
We haven’t been moving through these “I AM” statements in order.
Today’s reading – though it falls later in our series–is actually the first time Jesus makes an “I AM” statement in the Gospel of John.
We’re hearing it on the 5th Sunday of Lent because it makes sense to hear I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE on the day when we gather to break bread in his name,
around this communion table.
This gospel word cannot be divorced from the real, physical hunger people experience– which is why, I think, Jesus describes himself as bread
after feeding five thousand people with two fish and five barley loaves.
After Jesus feeds the multitudes, he hops in a boat for some alone time,
which doesn’t last long because the disciples follow him across the sea,
and as they are rowing a storm comes and the disciples are scared,
so Jesus walks out to them on the water and says It is I; do not be afraid.
When the disciples hear the words ‘it is I’ — “Ἐγώ εἰμι” in Greek—
their ears perked up for “Ἐγώ εἰμι” is the phrase God used with Moses at the burning bush. So when Jesus uses it, people aren’t just hearing a name.
They’re hearing divinity echo through the centuries.
And so with ears open for this echo, primed for this self-revelation of Jesus the Christ,
let us pick up this story, and listen for God’s Word for us in the Gospel of John,
chapter 6, beginning at verse 22.
As we approach the text, let us pray:
Holy God, You are who you are.
You will be who you will be. Right now, we pray that you’ll speak
and that by your Spirit we can quiet every other noise
so we can hear the voice that we most deeply recognize, yours, O Lord, yours.
Amen.
Scripture:
22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea saw . . . that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went looking for Jesus.
25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.
30 They said to him, “What sign are you going to give us, then, so that we may see it and believe you? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” 32 Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35 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.
41 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.
56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Sermon:
Are you hungry, church?
Not just for a breakfast sandwich or scone,
though I’m sure Franklin street would take your business,
And Jesse and Carolyn Beverly are at the ready with snacks on the landing.
But are you hungry for change? Hungry for hope?
Hungry for the ache in your heart be satiated by something?
I think we are all hungry.
So much so that when someone offers up substance,
goodness do we stand in line for what they are serving up.
We saw this Tuesday, on the national scene,
when Cory Booker broke Strom Thurman’s record on the Senate floor,
talking for 25 straight hours about his concern for our common democracy.
His speech got 7.5 million views, people kept going back for seconds, wanting more.
Yes, we’re so hungry.
Hungry for justice. Hungry for peace.
It’s even showing up in our dreams.
I got an email from one of you this week saying,
“Lately I’ve been stewing on what’s mine to do right now—
with that phrase from the Lord’s prayer running through my mind
your will, O God, be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Last night I had a dream about how we could put our faith in action,
and I wanted to send this before it escaped my mind.”
The email went on to describe a kind of mission fair mixed with match making:
One person’s skill met another’s needs,
One person’s calling met another’s ache.
We’d connect person to person, family to family, church to community—
and make a real impact.
Yes, we are hungry—for what to do, for how to engage,
for how to hold together in this world right now.
This consistent hankering makes it easy for us,
I think to identify with the crowd in this story.
The crowds who were on that hillside
when Jesus took bread, broke it, and gave it,
and everyone was fed, like every single one was fed.
They got a taste and wanted more.
The crowds sense that they were part of something big,
that they just witnessed something real,
they still have the leftovers,
but they know that the guy who fed them yesterday is gone,
so they go looking for him. I mean, wouldn’t you?
And when the crowds find him, there’s all this back and forth.
Jesus says – you’re only looking for me because your bellies are growling—
You don’t yet get who I am–
Stop looking for the bread that will only get you through lunch,
look for the bread that will get you through all of life .
Church, Jesus knows that mouths are watering for normalcy, stability,
for eggs to go back to $2 a dozen and our 401ks to recover
for a quick fix to a big mess, and Jesus says, okay, I hear that,
and there is yet still a deeper hunger that I can fill in you.
You yearn for relief, I’m offering you life.
Jesus pushes back —
ever challenging, ever bigger than we bargained for.
I don’t know how we take that, but the crowds seem to take Jesus’ challenge in stride,
so much so that they just keep trying–
Okay, Jesus, they say, fine, we know our bible.
We know there is special bread out there.
Bread that came down from heaven, from God.
Of course we know that story of our ancestors. Manna!
God fed the people with manna, every day in the desert.
If that’s what you mean, Jesus, then yes, give us some of that.
And Jesus, bless him, he must have taken a deep breath before he said to them, to us.
I AM the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.
I AM.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.
That. . . . is a lot to take in.
At those words, the crowd….well, I bet their stomachs flipped.
No more growling, just queasiness.
And this, of course, was to them as Jews,
an abomination according to the law and prophets. You don’t drink blood, touch flesh.
And us? You knew this was coming, but did you also shrink back in hearing this?
Jesus words don’t square with our reason, don’t fit our sensibilities,
and, if we’re to be honest, they all sound just a little gross.
And yet here we are, church, followers of the one who said this and meant it,
with a table set in our midst .
One preacher tells a story of a particular communion Sunday with his congregation– the table was draped in starched linen and set with silver chalices and plates.
The congregation was silent, even somber, as the pastor began carefully to read the words of institution in a solemn tone meant to add dignity to the proceedings.
And “On this occasion,” he said, “when I repeated Jesus’ familiar words,
‘This is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you’
a small girl suddenly said in a loud voice, ‘Ew, yuk!’
The congregation was completely and utterly shocked— which I suppose we all should be when in this sacrament God promises to be one with us, to stick with us and even in us forever no matter what. ”
This Lent, we’ve heard that Jesus is the deeply empathic shepherd,
the illumining light of the world, the gate by which all come in.
But in these words from John chapter 6, as one scholar writes, “language is pressed to it’s limits—stretched to express an inseparable union. For those who receive Jesus his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. Jesus can no more be taken from the believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can be plucked from one’s body. ”
Are you hungry, church?
For what you can name and what you can’t?
Are you hungry not just to get through this day,
but hungry to come alive no matter the circumstance around you?
Is your hunger showing up
in what you watch for during the day
and in what you dream of at night?
Listen: Jesus says, I AM the bread of life.
Consume me, he shockingly commands.
Get as much of me in you as humanly possible,
and then get a bit more with an assist from what is divinely possible,
because then you will have internalized not just my body and my blood,
but you will have also internalized my teachings and my prayers,
my actions and my decisions,
my extravagant love and my, well, my entire life.
You’ll have it all .
Consume me.
Take the whole of who I am into every moment of your lives,
every decision that you make.
Let my life shape who and what you are, and watch what happens.
Church, if we dare do this,
we might begin to grasp that not a split second of our lives is ever devoid of holy presence .
We will start to comprehend that God’s life does cling to our bones and course through our veins. We cannot get away from it.
So come to the table, hungry as you are.
I know what we may want is relief, what we’ll get is life.
For he is the bread of life.
Take. Eat.
Be satisfied.