Preached by the Right Reverend Grant Lynn Ford at the Sunshine Cathedral first on Sunday, August 20, 2000, and again on Sunday, August 20, 2006
Proverbs 9:1-6
1Wisdom has built a palace, a beautiful house with seven pillars. 2She has prepared banquet of meat and fine wine with all the trimmings. 3She has sent out her maids with invitations. She calls from the highest point of the city: 4”Come, you who are simple; come and learn of me! 5Come, eat my food and drink my wine. 6Put your foolish ways behind you. Walk in the way of Life, the way of ‘Knowing’.”
1 Corinthians 10:16-17
16The Cup: When we lift it to give thanks aren’t we linking ourselves to the blood of Jesus? And the Bread: When we eat it with grateful hearts aren’t we affirming that we are the Body of Christ? 17There’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.
John 6:51-53, 57-58
51“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus said. “Anyone who eats this bread will live forever. The bread that I offer the world is me, real ‘flesh-and-blood’ me!”
52Now the religious leaders were really upset! “How can he say these things? How can he give us his flesh to eat?”
53Jesus responded to them, “The truth is, You don’t have a choice here! If you don’t partake of the Son of Humanity, you don’t partake of my truth or my life.”
57“I’m here for a purpose, sent by the Living God. I don’t have a life of my own apart from my Heavenly Parent. It’s the same with the one who partakes of me, whose life is eternally connected to my life. 58I’m talking about heavenly bread, spiritual bread. I’m not talking about manna, which our ancestors ate and died nonetheless. No, I’m talking about eternal bread that imparts eternal life!”
I made a powerful discovery while Googling the words “Jesus” and “toast”. There were more than dozen appearances of Jesus in the toasters of the world! One is currently on sale on eBay, though it’s only drawn bids up to $5.00.
It would seem that his mother does better. Goldenpalace.com, an internet gambling site, paid $27,000 to Diane Duyser, right here in Florida, for Mary on Toast. Diane also claimed good luck from the grilled cheese sandwich because of winnings of $70,000 in a nearby casino.
“We will definitely use the sandwich to raise money for charity, and we hope it will raise people’s spirits as well,” said Richard Rowe, the casino’s CEO, according to BBC News. [i]
One of my favorite expressions is: “That’s the best thing since sliced bread.” I know it sounds silly, and probably meaningless. But there’s really a story behind the saying... and here it is.
The first electric toaster appeared in 1909. It toasted one side at a time, so you had to watch it carefully. When the toast was brown, you pulled the plug. The first automatic electric toaster was designed in 1919 by Charles Strite, a man sick and tired of burned toast. Americans were skeptical at first about investing in a single-function appliance, but prices dropped and sales mushroomed. From 1922 to 1930 sales tripled, from 400,000 units to 1,200,000, thanks in part to the introduction of sliced bread by Wonder. Before this, bread was sold in whole loaves. If you were going to enjoy your new toaster, though, you needed the convenience of sliced bread.[ii] Some people thought that pre-sliced bread really was a wonder. It’s no wonder they began saying, “That’s the best thing since sliced bread.”
Once again we hear the words of Jesus: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats of this bread will live forever.” John devotes the entire sixth chapter of his Gospel to this one theme: Christ is the bread of life. He is nourishment for our hungry souls.
A respected mission organization sent a group of translators to a small and remote tribe in South America. When the translators reached the passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus speaks to a crowd saying, “I am the bread of life,” the translators realized that there was no such thing as bread in that culture. The tribe did, however, use a specific kind of banana a bit like we use bread. Thus, for their purposes, Jesus said, “I am the banana of life.” That sounds silly to us—but, for them, it was eternally true.[iii]
I remember the first time I visited Israel. We stopped at a restaurant for a snack and everyone was ordering wrapped goods and bottled drinks. They wanted no encounters with native germs. I saw our guide, an Egyptian man, eating a bowl of something that looked like a cow pie. He was scooping up this beige mess with pieces of what I later found out was pita bread. Of course, I had to ask what he was eating. His response was, “Here! Sit down and try it.”
So I did just that. It was wonderful, garlicky, lemony, with parsley and a slick of olive oil on top. And the pita was hot from a nearby oven. I was introduced to humus, which is ground chickpeas and sesame seed butter. Ahhh! And without the pita bread, you just couldn’t eat it.
An Armenian Christian says that Westerners don’t understand what Jesus was saying when he said, “I am the Bread of Life.” You see, in the Middle East, bread is not just something extra thrown in at a meal. Pita bread or another big flat bread is the heart of every meal. Those folks wouldn’t think of taking forks and putting them in their mouths. To put an object in your mouth defiles it. You certainly would not take a fork out and put it in again and go on defiling yourself like that. Instead, you break off a piece of the bread, pick up your food with it and eat it. Indeed, the only way you can get to the main dish, he says, is with the bread.[iv]
When we understand this metaphor we hear what Jesus is really saying when he says, “I am the Bread of Life.” Obviously he is not bread (or a banana), so we needn’t take him literally here (as is true in many other places). Jesus loves to speak with word-pictures, and this is a powerful one.
Note first that the Bread of Life is Universal. No one is left out. Listen: “Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.”
There are all kinds of folks who would like to say to all kinds of other folks, “You’re on the outside and you can’t come it.” But Jesus says,”Come on in. Let’s eat!”
Jesus is not just American white bread, or southern corn bread, middle eastern pita, Russian rye, Chinese rice cakes, or even Mexican tortillas. His Truth is Universal. It’s for Anyone and Everyone!
And what does he mean when he says: “The bread that I offer the world is me, real ‘flesh-and-blood’ me!” Certainly his listeners at the time didn’t understand, because they took him literally, saying, “How can he give us his flesh to eat?”
Here’s the second important lesson from the metaphor. Jesus is pointing out that Truth is not an objective ‘IDEA’ outside ourselves. It is a living Force within us, the very Presence of the Divine. That’s why we call it the Incarnation, or ‘God in human flesh’. Just as it is true for Jesus, it is true for us, and we must swallow this Truth whole, or miss the point of the Realm of God entirely.
Jesus says to us: “I don’t have a life of my own apart from my Heavenly Parent.” He knows that the very life force within him is the Presence and Power of the Living God. He is One with God, which makes him the Christ, the Anointed One. Then he says to us: “It’s the same with the one who partakes of me, whose life is eternally connected to my life.” We have that same life in us, an eternal life that has no beginning and no ending. We have that same Christ-consciousness, that awareness of being the Anointed One of God.
What does this make Jesus? He’s our Wayshower, our Truthteller, our Lifegiver.
And what does this say for us? The Apostle John tells us in his first letter to the churches: “Good friends, that’s who we are: the children of God. Oh, we don’t know what this means completely just yet. But we’ll understand it all when the Anointed One is fully and openly revealed. We’ll see him for ‘Who He Is’ and then we’ll understand fully ‘Who We Are’. We’ll be just like him!” And Paul tells us: “When Christ is made manifest, you’ll be seen for who you really are: the genuine, glorious you!” 1 John 3:2; Colossians 3:4
Some folks plan to wait until they die to grasp this manifestation. Others are waiting for Jesus to literally return to earth. I say that Jesus is already revealed for who he is, so it’s time for us to manifest who we are: the genuine, glorious daughters and sons of God!
So what do we do with this Truth? How do we ‘partake’ of Jesus’ body and blood? Is he talking about the Eucharist? No and yes. First, I believe he is telling us to accept the truth of our Divine Life, and then to live it with him, dining with him on Living Truth which lasts forever.
How do we do this? Romans 10:10 tells us to 1) confess Truth, and then 2) believe it with all our beings. To believe something is to live in the confidence of that Truth. We believe in Eternal, Divine, Universal Life when we express it in our everyday living. We begin to act like Jesus, to live like Jesus, and to love like Jesus. We begin to break bread as Jesus did, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the homeless, and heal the sick.
Then when we approach the communion table, it becomes a living metaphor for the Truth of partaking of Christ the Living Bread. When we break the bread and share the cup, we acknowledge and honor the divinity in each other. We affirm that we are one in Christ, as Christ is one in God.
That’s revolutionary, life-changing.... even better than sliced bread. And that’s the Truth!
Jesus is Way, Truth and Life.
I AM Way, Truth and Life.
I walk the Way joyfully.
I embrace Truth eagerly.
I live Life abundantly.
I am wondrously blessed,
filled with all Goodness.I pass it on to others,
and I like it like that!And so it is! Amen!
