True Bread

THIS WEEK I’m writing to you from Opelika, Alabama, a little town next door to Auburn. I plan to visit Auburn University tomorrow. A few hours ago I visited a church associated with the college, and after the service a woman named Mary, the Activities Coordinator for the Auburn Christian Students Center, greeted me. When she learned that I had come to visit the college she offered to show me and my parents around the Student Center. We accepted her offer and when we visited the Student Center building she told us all about the interesting student group. As it turns out – and you know I don’t believe in coincidences – Mary doesn’t usually come to the service I attended today, and I am grateful that I got to meet her and to get information about that interesting group.

On the long car ride to Alabama I spent part of the time working on my art journal. I’m planning a revised version of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” and my attention has been drawn to that beautiful scene. It is the Passover meal that Jesus eats with His twelve disciples in the Upper Room, during which He declares that one of them – one of His closest companions and dearest followers, the twelve – would betray Him. He knew it had to happen because the Scriptures predicted He would be betrayed, and He was not surprised. And since He knows everything, He knew that it was Judas Iscariot who would betray Him. So while the disciples were filled with sorrow and surprise, He did not raise His voice or declare the name of the man responsible. He said that it was the man who dipped with Him, the man whose hand was on the table with Him, the man to whom He would give bread after He had dipped it, but He did not name Judas. I think it is because He did not plan to cause a scene or to incite the other eleven to kill him. He knew Judas had it coming to him, and He did not want anybody to defend Him because He knew this had to happen as part of His suffering and death for mankind.

But what did He do instead? He passed bread and wine around the table, calling it His body and His blood which are given for the sin of the world. He did this before Judas left, not after. Luke 22:19 “And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this is remembrance of Me.’” Today we repeat this scene in Communion with tiny crackers and cups of wine or grape juice, in remembrance of Jesus.

Think about a time when you have been hungry. There is nothing for satisfying to the hungry stomach than for the mouth to be full of bread. When I have a piece of bread in my hand, and when I stop and notice it before I have eaten it, I have the grateful feeling that everything is alright, that God has given me what I need, because there are in fact people who don’t have any bread.

In John 6 Jesus explains to the people that He is the bread from heaven which gives eternal life to anyone who eats it. He had very recently turned only a few loaves of bread into way more than enough to feed about 5,000 people, so they were interested in what He was saying about bread. V. 32-33 “[32] Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. [33] For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” The people tended to think that the ‘bread from heaven’ was the manna that gathered like dew on the grass in the time when the Moses and the Jews wandered in the wilderness for forty years. This event was not only to feed the people but to foreshadow how God would give Jesus as ‘bread’ from heaven to nourish His people. Jesus was explaining that He is the “true bread.”

The Jews started to complain because they did not approve of what He was saying. V. 51 “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” They did not understand that He was not speaking literally. Because they were not spiritually-minded and because they did not believe in Him, their eyes were closed so that they did not understand. V. 52 “The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?’” What He meant was that if we believe in Him and abide in Him we shall have eternal life because, as bread is wonderful nourishment for the body, He would be eternal nourishment for our souls. He will fill us so that we do not hunger for something else. If we seek him and find the nourishment we need in Him rather than trying to earn peace, joy, or salvation by our own efforts, we will find that we are filled with peace, joy and salvation. Our hearts have longing needs that are like bottomless pits. Only something endless can permanently fill an endless space. Only He can satisfy our needs.

V. 27 “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

This amazes me. It speaks to me. How great God is, that He has come to assure us that He will never abandon us and that He is enough for us. The most important thing in my life, the one thing I simply could not live without, is the one thing I cannot lose. I believe this is the happiest way to live. I see myself and others being envious because somebody has what we do not.

This one has an amazing house. How about the mansion Jesus promised is surely waiting for each one of us in God’s kingdom? That one has the love of a faithful husband or wife. What about a life with God, an unending embrace of perfect true love? This one has a mouth full of food and a glass full of water. How about the living bread which came down from heaven? All of these things are good to have and perfectly fine to want. It’s definitely not wrong to want things. But when the desire of the heart is for that which cannot be lost, that which truly satisfies and never fails, we find our needs met completely.

Isaiah 55:2, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.”