St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Helen preached this sermon on Sunday 4 August.

I’m going to start with a question: Just want you to think about this for a moment. What is your favourite food? Is it something sweet or something savoury? Something that you make sure you have a lot or something that you treat yourself too occasionally? Is it making your mouth water just thinking about it, I know it is mine, nice piece of Lamb lovely.

Now just think about this? What would you do if I told you that food ever again, that’s it gone! How would that make you feel? I think if it was me I’d feel a bit hard done by and a bit upset. When something is taken away from you that you really like. Sometimes there are things that you are forced to go with out that don’t really matter if I never eat lamb again, I’ll survive, it’ll be ok…hopefully. There are worse things to go without like what if you weren’t able to get food at all, there are so many places in this world where people go hungry. We see images of famine around the world and even in our own country there are people who go hungry. If that was you how would you feel if someone fed you, that would please and satisfy you right?

Not everyone, as you’ll have heard from the first reading today. We have the Israelites, who have come out of Egypt and they are in the wilderness on their way to Cana, looking for the promised land. As seems to be the way with these people they are having a bit of a whinge because they are hungry. They are even going as far as to say they would have been better off staying in Egypt where they were slaves and abused than to be brought into the desert and to starve, some people are just never satisfied! However despite this God hears the complaining and still wishes to provide for the people who are hungry. God sends two things for the people, they are sent quails in the evening but in the morning there is something different. The surface of camp is covered in, well this is how it is described in passage we’ve just heard ‘a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground’ and Moses describes this as ‘the bread that the Lord has given you to eat’, this is what the people called Manna. Bread from heaven to save them and feed them when they were hungry and it sustained them in that moment of need.

This is interesting and puts todays gospel into perspective, Jesus has just performed a miracle (or a sign as this is what they are called in John’s gospel and that where this story is from). Jesus has just fed 5,000 people with five loves and two fish and then having more leftover than were started with. It’s one of those stories that just amazes doesn’t it every time you hear it. This narrative takes place afterwards between Jesus and some of those who have witnessed the miracle and they are making a comparison between what they have just seen and the story passed down from their ancestors about being hungry in the wilderness and being fed by Moses. He asked from bread from heaven and it was delivered, sort of like what is happening here. Jesus makes the correction and says that the bread they ate didn’t come from Moses but it actually came from God. That when the people were most in need they were fed by God.

Now you will have probably noticed the connection Jesus is making here? The panic on some faces in this congregation just now, is she expecting an answer here? What Jesus is saying here is that you are hungry, you need fulfilling and you are asking for God to send you bread from heaven again to feed and sustain you. Remember the narrative of John’s gospel and what it says about Jesus, he is the logos he is the word of God made flesh that has come to dwell on earth, the beginning the word was with God the word was God. So Jesus is the God who fed the hungry on earth, now doing that in humans form and he solidifies that with the grand statement he makes here ‘I am the Bread and the Life. who ever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’, the Manna didn’t completely satisfy them as they still want more. Jesus is different as his word will nourish and sustain those who are willing to hear, listen and take him into their lives.

We all have a favourite food that we find it difficult to go without. It can be difficult, however Jesus comes to earth and if we listen to his teachings, live as he lived and do as he does, he will make sure that we are fulfilled. How do we have the manna from heaven as our ancestors in the faith did, as Jesus said that he was the bread of life. We do it through communion when we received the body and blood of Jesus in remembrance of what he did, in remembrance that he died for us and feed on him in our hearts with faith and thanksgiving.