Not once, not in early pandemic lockdown when everyone else was doing it, nor any other time, have I been tempted to bake my own bread. I’m generally just not that interested in bread. I don’t crave it; don’t choose restaurants on the quality of the breadbasket like one of my friends does. It’s just there, more or less, in a sandwich or on the table.
Until I bite into it.
And then – sometimes – everything changes. I’m in love. Fresh baked bread, a little butter? Mmmm, heaven. Give me more.
It’s not the idea of bread that matters.
It’s the experience of it.
There’s so much talking and thinking about bread, though, in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel – the part we’re reading today, and next week, and last week, and the week before that.
Bread Jesus gave people, bread from heaven, Jesus being bread, and us eating him as bread. It’s a lot of talking about bread and it can get a bit abstract. And confusing, if you stop and think about it, like the religious leaders who oppose Jesus do.
They argue amongst themselves, John tells us. “What does this man mean? How does he think he can give us his living flesh as bread to eat?”
It’s not just kind of a gross idea, it’s also not really possible or plausible to hand out your own flesh as bread.
Jesus hears that and doubles down.
If you don’t eat, you have no life.
Those who [do] eat my flesh have eternal life. They abide in me and I in them.
He never answers the “how” question.
Instead, Jesus’ response to “how does this work?” is “Do it.”
He doesn’t offer explanation. He insists on experience.
Really active, full-on experience, too. He starts talking about eating his flesh with a specific verb that evokes chewy, crunchy, active eating – not easy or tidy eating.
It’s not the idea of bread that matters.
It’s the experience of it.
I suspect the reason Jesus doesn’t offer any explanation of how this bread-flesh-eternal life thing works is because it only works as an experience. You can’t explain it, you just have to do it.
We can’t get nourishment from reading about a good meal, after all. You can’t taste the recipe video on the internet, can’t fuel a long day of work from the sizzle of breakfast sausage on TV. Food only works as an experience, by participation.
And faith turns out to be the same.
Jesus turns out to be the same.
The idea of Jesus doesn’t change the world, or my life, or yours.
The experience of Jesus does.
It happens first when God made flesh shows up touchable, interactive, and real, in first century Palestine. The day-to-day and peak moment experience of Jesus turns a bunch of fishermen and tax guys and even some religious people into world changers themselves.
Then it happens to us. You and me.
It’s not reciting the Creed that gives us faith.
It’s having the experience of God’s presence – as a comfort in grief, or a restlessness that drives creativity. Experiencing Jesus in the healing of a physical or emotional hurt, or the kindness of a stranger or an old friend. Experiencing the power and action of God in the experience of accomplishing some small act of justice in an unjust world, finding the power to forgive what you never thought you could, or actually finding yourself forgiven.
There are hundreds, thousands of ways to experience Jesus, to experience the presence and power of God with our bodies and hearts and selves.
And very few ways to explain Jesus.
If you’ve ever tried to explain Jesus to a very practical teenager or preschooler, you know how quickly explanation can fail.
But that same child won’t hesitate to experience Jesus.
A two or three-year-old, coming to the altar, sees their priest put a wafer into mom or dad or granny’s hands, and reaches out because that’s food.
At eight or eighteen months, a child isn’t very interested in the promise of eternal life, and isn’t listening to any theology about the forgiveness of sin, but knows that that’s water in the font, and generally wants to get their hands into it. Baths we understand, through experience, whether we can explain what makes us “clean” or not.
A child can’t explain love. Most of us adults can’t, actually.
But we receive hugs and give them. We sacrifice our own interests for someone else of receive a gift that show great care or we become more truly ourselves in someone else’s presence and we know we’ve experienced love.
I believe that when Jesus responds to that “how could this work?” question today with “Do it; if you don’t eat, you don’t live,” he’s encouraging us – no, commanding us – to stop thinking about him and focus on experiencing him.
Because we trust what we experience more than what we’ve been told.
We learn what we live.
And that’s what Jesus is insisting on.
The eternal life that Jesus is offering is the unshakeable certainty of God active and present here and now, in all things, starting with – but not ending with – the provision of our fundamental needs.
That’s why Jesus identifies himself with the most basic of food in his culture: bread, what we need for physical life. Eternal life – the vivid assurance of God present and active in and with us – starts from the basic experience of receiving physical life in what we eat to fuel our bodies.
More than that, the eternal life Jesus is offering, with the bread of his flesh, is participating in Jesus, participating in God. Not watching, or explaining, but living the daily reality of taking part in the transformation, healing, and redemption of the world, knowing by that experience that evil doesn’t win.
With all this talking about bread this month, Jesus is inviting us – commanding us – not to think about his gift of faith and life, but to experience it.
We do that when we receive communion, eat the bread Jesus offers through the rituals of the church. But we also can experience Jesus in so many other ways. We can seek out that experience by looking for the power and wonder and love of God in the dailyness of life – the way your muscles move when you walk, the snuggle of a child or squeeze of your hand, the incredible network of relationships that spread out from every interaction you have at work – yes, even a reply-all meeting scheduling email.
Just paying close attention to experience in all things will help us experience God in many things.
And sometimes, that experience of Jesus seeks us out when we are thinking about other things.
Last month, I spent two days at a retreat center because I knew I needed to renew my experience of Jesus, my assurance of God’s presence. As soon as I got there it was time for dinner and, well, I wasn’t off to a good start because I did not love the food. So I slid into my habit of eating quickly, keeping my mind on anything but the dry pork and overcooked beans. I tried to plan a calendar of reading and prayer and exercise to get this right, make a perfect retreat.
As I mused, I bit into a very ordinary roll from the dinner tray – probably a bake-from-the-fridge mass produced type, with butter from those little frozen peel-off packets. And the deliciousness of that very ordinary taste woke me up, suddenly, to a crunchy, chewy, life-affirming experience of God’s goodness and presence and provision I hadn’t known I was looking for. That ordinary bread was a little piece of eternal life, here and now.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
We don’t need to ask how. Because it’s not the explanation that matters.
It’s the experience that gives life.
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