Rev Helen preached this sermon on Sunday 11 August.
I don’t remember a lot about RE when I was at school but I can remember at A Level doing a module on the gospel of John and my teacher telling us we were doing a lesson on I am’s. After staring at a classroom of students with blank faces he then went onto explain what he meant by this was he were going to learn about one of the key theological devises in John’s Gospel which is Jesus I am statements. There’s seven of these in John’s gospel and they all say something about Jesus, his mission but most importantly who he is and why he came to earth. This Jesus basically saying I’ve come from God and I am God but Jesus being Jesus he has to be a bit more cryptic than that, they sort of do what the parables do in the synoptic gospels.
Jesus makes seven of these statements in John’s gospel ‘I am the Resurrection and the life’, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’, ‘I am the light of the world’, ‘I am the way the truth and the life’. You read these statements and the exclamations that come with them and you can see the things that Jesus is saying about himself cryptically. We have another one of these statements in the gospel today when Jesus says ‘I am the Bread of Life’, to put this passage into context it takes place more or less immediately after Jesus has fed 5,000, it’s one of those stories that amazes me every time I hear it. Jesus has been speaking about the Mana God has sent them from heaven to feed his chosen people while they were in the wilderness and then Jesus makes this grand statement. He says ‘I am the Bread of Life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’, he then follows this up with ‘I am the bread of Life your ancestors ate the mana 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’. If you take this statement as is Jesus is implying that God gave bread from heaven to nourish the people of Israel them while they were in the desert. In the same nature Jesus has performed another miracle and received bread from heaven (by making 5 loves of bread go round 5,000 people with leftovers). When the people need to be nourished God is there to do that for them and you see this in the Old Testament reading today when you see that Elijah is on the run in the wilderness because…well he’s upset the king and queen of Israel Ahab and Jezebel because they were worshiping the canite god Ba’al. He’d challenged 450 prophets of Ba’al to a competition, build an alter and ask your god to set it on fire, then I’ll do the same, they failed and he didn’t much to the annoyance of Ahab and Jezebel. So Elijah ended up going on the run and ended up in the wilderness, can you see the contrast here to the story of the people of Israel in the desert. Elijah is hungry and he needs food to nourish him so he calls to God and his prayers are answered, he sleeps and he is given cake and water for a couple of days which refresh him for 40 days and 40 nights while he continues his journey in the wilderness.
So we have the Mana, food given by God, which needs to be collected daily by the people to nourish those who ate it, we have the cake and water, given to Elijah by God to nourish him for forty days while he is journeying through the wilderness and then we have todays gospel, Jesus making that huge doctrinal statement about being the bread of life but how is this different and what does he mean?
Well Jesus is saying that he is the bread of life, the gift of nourishment that is the same as what went to the ancestors in the faith as food through God, well this food is different as this is Jesus calling himself that. He is that bread sent from God, his words, his actions and the things he did are the same as the nourishment from the mana and the cake. Jesus is God with a human face, the one sent by God to save people. ‘I am the bread of Life, your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died. This is bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.’ ‘Who ever believes has eternal life’. Not just sustaining for a while when in need, it will sustain them in this life and beyond.
So these great statements Jesus makes, the I am statements when Jesus cryptically and metaphorically tells us all who he is and why he was sent to earth. We’ll as with many of these things different people say different things and all have different meanings and interpretations, however they do all point to Jesus character and his telling of who he was and why he was sent. When we hear this one toady it just reminds me that Jesus words will nourish, help, teach and support us when we need him as long as we take him into our hearts and listen to him. He is the person who was sent by God, ‘This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him’. Amen
St Margaret's Church Prestwich 