A sermon for the Hot Springs Lent Lunch Series
March 17, 2025, at First United Methodist Church, Hot Springs, AR
Reading: John 6:22-35
“Can I get some bread over here?!” The little boy was with his mother at Olive Garden. “Can I get some bread?” The boy could not have been older than 7 or 8–old enough to know better, if you had asked me. He had already eaten, and his mother was waiting for the check. She kept telling him to be quiet because he had already eaten; he kept on. “Can I get some bread?” What came next really put me over; he started asking other customers if he could have a piece of their bread. “Can I have a piece of your bread?” The boy finally asked me. I was sitting there with a priest friend. We were enjoying our bread and had every intention of eating every bit of it ourselves. But we were in our priest collars, and it was Lent, and other people were looking, and wasn’t it the right thing to be charitable? My friend divided his breadstick in half and gave it to the boy. “Here, kid,” he said. “Now go sit down and give your mother a break.”
The crowds encounter Jesus today, a little bit like that 7 or 8 year old boy. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus fed the multitude with five barley loaves and two fish. There were 12 baskets left over. As soon as Jesus perceives that the very amazed crowd is going to try to name him their king by force, he withdraws with his disciples. But the crowd hunts him down. When they find him, he knows they are after more bread. “You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves,” Jesus says. You want more bread. Who can blame them? In a time and place dominated by empire and famine, bread was something to seek out. But Jesus continues, “Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” The crowd is all for it. To hungry people, it sounds like a deal. “Sir, give us this bread always,” they say.
When you find something good, you want more of it, especially if you’re coming from a place of scarcity, where there isn’t enough. I grew up poor, so I know the signs. That little boy and his mother in Olive Garden that day were poor. Maybe not dirt poor, but poor enough; the kind of poor we see all around us everyday. She was coming from work, with scrubs still on. The little boy was in his school clothes–no doubt some of his best–but his shoes had holes in them. They looked too small. It had been his mother’s birthday. They had brought out a slice of cake, and the two of them had shared it. The little riotous boy, unable to be restrained, had sung to his mother loudly. “Happy birthday to you!” It was kind of infectious, and before it was over our corner of the restaurant was all singing with him. And he beamed. Then he ate most of the cake. It was after that that the young child started asking for more bread. I think she was embarrassed, the mother. She shouldn’t have been. Who could blame the boy? Who knows when he might get to eat in such a place again. I imagine they got in the car after they left. The little boy, beaming at his exhausted mother, must have said something like, “Mom, can we come back here everyday?” Like the hungry crowds without enough: Sir, can you give us this bread always?
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” To a people so physically hungry and thirsty, it must have been something to hear.
What does he mean, Jesus, when he says that he’s the bread? He will go on to say that we must feed on him–on his life. He will say a little later, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh… Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” When we hear this, we rightly hear the language of the Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper. We hear the promise that Christ is present, mysteriously and mystically, when we break the bread and bless the cup. Christ is present, certainly, assuredly, in that moment.
But what about other times? Is Christ not present, feeding our souls, in that sweet hour of prayer, just us and him, as we pour out our brokenness to him? “I am the bread of life.”
Is Christ not present when we open the Scriptures together, around a table at a Bible study in an unassuming room, seeking to be nourished by the promises of God’s grace springing forth from the page, hoping that we might catch a glimpse of God’s will for us? “I am the bread of life.”
Is Christ not present when we reach out to the poor, lift the faint, support the weak, give of ourselves so that others do not want? Does Christ not feed us, our very souls, in that moment, kindling our compassion, stoking our love for our unseen neighbors? “I am the bread of life.”
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” This is the soul bread that sustains us, that keeps us going, that gives us the grace we need to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbors–each and every one of them, no exceptions–as we love ourselves. “Sir, give us this bread always.”
My friend and I kept eating, but I watched as the boy and his mother walked toward the door. He was still flying high. Who knows how many breadsticks he had eaten. As they got to the door, I noticed the manager come over. He had two bags. He gave one to the mother. It had a couple to-go containers in it. The mother said she hadn’t ordered it. “On the house,” the manager said. Then the manager knelt down in front of the boy and gave him a bag. It was full of breadsticks. He jumped up and down, so excited, so lifted up. For a boy who didn’t have much, what a day it was. He nearly jumped in the manager’s arms with excitement. He said over and over again, thank you, thank you, thank you. The manager smiled. “You’re welcome,” was all he said. He just as well could have said, “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”
Storied Grace 