Preached by Pastor Grant Lynn Ford at the Sunshine Cathedral, Fort Lauderdale, first on Sunday, August 7, 1988; revised greatly and preached again on Sunday, August 13, 2000, and again on Sunday, August 13, 2006.
The Light of the Early Church
The Gospel of Philip
Before Christ came there was no bread in the world, just as Paradise, the place where Adam and Eve were, had many trees to nourish the animals but no wheat to sustain humanity.
Men and women used to feed like the animals, but when Christ came, the perfect human, he brought bread from heaven in order that humanity might be nourished with the food of humanity....
His flesh is the word, and his blood is the Holy Spirit. The one who has received these has food and drink and clothing....
The Light of Truth!
Robinson’ 55:6-14; 57:6-9
The Light of the Master Teacher
John 6:35, 41-51
35“I am the Bread of Life.” Jesus declared. “The one who comes to me will never go hungry; the one who believes in me will thirst no more.”
41Well, that really upset the religious leaders! “How can he say, ‘I am the Bread that came down from heaven’? 42This is Joseph’s son! We know his father and mother! How can he say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
43“Stop your fussing and fuming!” Jesus said to them. 44“No one’s being forced to do anything. God simply persuades, and if someone responds, then they’ll be with me to the end and beyond. 45Didn’t the Prophets say: ‘They will all be taught by God’?” If a person listens to what God is saying, they’ll hear that same Truth in what I teach. 46It’s all the same Truth. I’ve received it firsthand from my Heavenly Parent. 47The truth is, the person who has this kind of trust and faith has grasped everlasting life.”
48“I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, yet they died. 50But I’m offering you heavenly bread that lasts for a lifetime and on into eternity. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever. The bread that I offer the world is me, real ‘flesh-and-blood’ me!”
I’ve got a new diet plan. It’s great because it doesn’t take a lot of exertion. For instance, you can burn 100 calories by ‘jumping to conclusions’. Or 75 calories by ‘beating around the bush’. Here’s a good one: 150 calories by ‘swallowing your pride’. And we’ve all burnt 100’s of calories ‘climbing the walls’.
Important people can burn anywhere from 100 to 300 calories ‘throwing their weight around’. The rest of us can burn 50 calories every time we ‘pass the buck’.
And I’m amazing how many people get absolutely skinny ‘bending over backwards, jumping on the bandwagon, and making mountains out of molehills’!
But the greatest one of all: 350 calories for ‘running around in circles’.
A party of engineers was studying the dense jungles of South America. Separated from their guides, they wandered helplessly and aimlessly until their food supply dwindled to nothing. They came upon a clearing teeming with bright red berries that satisfied their hunger.
After several days had passed, even though the berry supply remained in abundance, the engineers began to die. When a search party finally arrived, none of the engineers had survived.
The rescuers began to wonder why they died. After all, they reasoned, there were plenty of berries to sustain them. But upon analyzing the berries, they found them to be absolutely worthless as a nutritional source. Though the engineers’ appetites were satisfied, they actually starved to death!
Is it possible that some could go to church Sunday after Sunday and return home fully fed but completely undernourished? Could it be that some are starving to death spiritually on full stomachs?
Listen to Jesus, who says: “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, yet they died. But I’m offering you heavenly bread that lasts for a lifetime and on into eternity.”
What does he mean? There is truth that satisfies the hungry heart and mind and lasts for all time and beyond. We know from last Sunday that it is not to be found in power, plenty, prestige, or even in religion.
This truth begins, says Jesus, with faith and trust, a confidence that God is Good. Emma Curtis Hopkins says, “The first name of God is Good.”[i] God not only wants our Good, but Spirit is the impulse toward God that draws the entire cosmos forward in a positive direction. Look at the grand sweep of humanity’s history. Have we not moved forward to our own Good?
The other side of the bread that brings eternal satisfaction is this: God is Life. Auntie Mame said, “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.” And I might say, even when the greatest feast in history is laid out before some folks, they still refuse to dine. They would rather eat the empty-calorie, no-nourishment junk food of instant gratification than dine on the bread of heaven.
Dag Hammarskjold, a deeply spiritual gay man and an early Secretary General of the United Nations, once said: “The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them.”[ii]
Jesus promises: “I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly—full to the brim and running over.” John 10:10
There’s a wonderful story in the Hebrew Testament that tells of Elijah, who had just had a successful revival. In fact, fire came down from heaven and licked up his sacrifice, even with all the water that he had bravely poured on it, showing up the false prophets of Baal. But sure enough, in his exhaustion he let fear drive him to the mountains to hide in a crevasse, praying: “I’ve had it! Let me die!” Then he rolled over and went to sleep. Sure enough, after he got some rest, the angels came along, saying, “Wake up and eat!” He again slept and again they woke him and fed him. “Wake up! Eat! You’ve got a tough journey ahead.”
Not a bad deal, Elijah! Earlier you get fed by ravens, then you get several home-cooked meals from the widow at Zarephath, and at your lowest point angels feed you.
How do we get in on a deal like that? Do like Elijah. Listen for the call of angels who are telling you: “Wake up and eat. You’ve got a tough journey ahead!”
Dine on what? Life itself, the feast spoken about by Auntie Mame. It was Ernest Holmes who wrote: “The life which we live is the Universal Life expressing through us…else how could we live?”[iii]
When we understand that the life force flowing in us is Divine Presence, that we are made in God’s image, that we are one with the Infinite, then we have, as Jesus said, “grasped eternal life.”
Jesus says over and over: “I am....” He knew that this truth was not just something to be believed, that life is not a mental state alone. This truth is the basic component of life itself: God is Good, Good is Life.
It is not something we simply affirm, it is some that is expressed by living fully, completely, freely, lavishly, abundantly, joyously!
Even as Jesus declares ‘I AM’, so can we, too. And when we do, says Charles Fillmore, we declare, “I discern that I will be that which I will be.”[iv] (emphasis mine)
Even as this truth expresses who we are as individuals, it also expresses who we are as a community of faith. When the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians about their abuse of the communion, he says: “There’s only one loaf, though made of many individual grains. In the same way, we are one body and we all share the one loaf.” [1 Corinthians 10:17]
Dr. Holmes reminds us that the Divine Life each of us expresses is Universal Life. It is the life that fills the Cosmos, that makes everything grow and prosper. When we recognize that this power brings us together as a church, and that it is not the building but the people who gather in it that makes up the church, then together we celebrate the Eucharist in truth, whether we literally eat the bread or not.
This community can be as small and limited as our understanding of Universal Life. Or it can be as inclusive as Life itself. It can be a gay church, or it can be a ‘house of prayer for all people’, made up of a glorious palette of people of various orientations, expressions, genders, political parties, ethnic backgrounds, beautiful skin colors.... you name it, we can include it if we believe it for ourselves!
When I first preached this sermon, we were talking about finding a new church home, a true ‘rainbow church’ where God is alive and expressing in and through each and every one of us! Well, we found this home, and now we’re invited everyone to come and dine, to join the party called life. And beginning this next year, we’re taking our feast on the road, carrying this invitation to all of South Florida, and through our Web Ministry, to the whole world.
It will work for the church; it can work for you. As Dag Hammarskjold also said: “Is life so wretched? Isn’t it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied?”
We can have as much life as we choose to take hold of, to reach out and draw to us by believing we can do it. We can either try to get by on the empty calories offered by power, prestige, plenty and even religion, or we can say, like the Psalmist: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
Claim your Good! Embrace your Life! Dance the Tango of Truth with the Master Teacher, who only asks us to allow him to lead, and we will have more than enough bread for the journey. And we will cry out together: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Remember what Jesus said: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. The person who trusts me and believes what I say has grasped everlasting life. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.”
That’s not empty calories; that’s the food of angels…and that’s the Truth!
[i] Emma Curtis Hopkins, Scientific Christian Mental Practice (CA: DeVorss), p. 18
[ii] John Cook, compiler, The Book of Positive Quotations (NY: Gramercy Books, 1993), p. 225
[iii] Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind (NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1938), p. 35
[iv] James Gaither, commentator, The Essential Charles Fillmore (MO: Unity Books, 1999), p. 121
Jesus is the Bread of Life.
I, too, am the Bread of Life.
We are all fed by angels,
nourished by the Holy Spirit,
while feeding others who are hungry.I join the Banquet of Life,
I dance the Tango of Truth,
with Jesus as my partner.And I like it like that!
And so it is! Amen!
