“Lessons from My Mother’s Kitchen”

John 6:24-35

August 17, 2003

St. Paul UMC

Rev. John Fleming

I would like to invite you into a memory of mine this morning and a time in my life that given half the chance, I would jump back into. We have done this sort of thing in our sermons before, so you know how it works. I will paint a picture using words and invite you in as innocent by-standers. Before we continue, I need to tell you that this memory of mine needs a disclaimer. If you skipped breakfast and are almost ready for lunch, this memory might send you over the edge. For sure it will make you hungry. Where I want us to go this morning is to my mother’s kitchen of my growing up years. You need to know what a treat this is. When my brother left for Hendrix College in Conway in 1980, my mother quit cooking. At the time I was twelve years old and my sister was thirteen. It is not that my mother quit providing for us. It is just that she quit cooking. The pantry was always full of peanut butter and bread and the freezer always had pizzas in it. I played baseball and my sister was a cheerleader. After a few weeks, my parents gave up with trying to have a set dinner time. In 1980 they started eating out. Now that they live in Conway, they eat out three meals a day. Sometimes they go out for a snack in the middle of the afternoon.

This memory of mine is older than that. Let’s go to this memory of mine. We will need to travel to Jackson, Tennessee. We will need to pull into the driveway at 177 Laurie Circle, in the heart of the city. We are going to go into my mother’s kitchen. I know that there are a lot of us here this morning, but that is all right. Through the power of our imaginations, we will be able to fit into mother’s kitchen. There is my mother, pulling out a concoction from her refrigerator. I have seen her do this before. Some days she feeds this concoction and on other days she makes it into bread. My mother has a sourdough starter that is over forty years old. I now am the caretaker of part of that starter. In my memory, mother has the starter out, she has added flour to it, she is kneading it and rolling it out. I wish you could have been there to see how she carefully laid the dough at the bottom of a couple of bread pans. I will admit that when she put in there, it did not look like much, but now that it has risen over night, it is much more impressive. You can put your hand on it and plop it down. You need to know that when my mother made homemade sourdough bread, I was never far from the kitchen. You need to know how special it is that I have invited you into this memory of mine. My mother’s sourdough bread is great, but it is never better than when it first comes out of the oven. My Uncle Jim and I were talking about my sermon this morning. He is in Conway visiting my parents. I went there last night for supper. My uncle told me about a preacher who actually baked a loaf of sourdough bread during his sermon. Can you imagine the smell? That is what I want you to do. I want you to imagine the smell of my mother’s bread. Watch as my mother puts on her oven mitts and removes the two loaves from her oven. You will have to wait a minute or two. You will have to be patient. The bread will need to cool down for a few minutes. I want you to know that I can eat a whole loaf of hot sourdough bread. We saw the bread and we have smelled it. Now I want you to use another of your senses. Taste the bread. I think that I just saw someone drooling onto their worship bulletin. You will not need to swallow the bread; it is not necessary. The bread will melt as it makes it’s way down your throat. I want you to know that there is nothing better than my mother’s bread, especially hot from the oven. Listen to this truth. What bread is to the stomach, Jesus claims to be for the soul. Listen to that again. What bread is to the stomach, Jesus claims to be for the soul.

For some reason, the people following Jesus around in John’s gospel do not seem to understand that. Those who compile and assemble the lectionary dole out five weeks worth of lessons from this sixth chapter. I have never preached all five of these texts, one right after another, in my years as a preacher. Bryan Gray and I were talking about that before worship a few weeks back. He told me the story about the time when he was in the first year of his first pastorate. He was preaching every week and he saw the first of these bread passages. Bryan gave it all that he had; he preached everything that he knew about bread on that first Sunday. Unfortunately he had not looked ahead in the lectionary. I would have liked to have been there when he realized that there were four more Sundays and four more sermons to preach on the subject of bread. I wonder, really, what it means and what Jesus is getting at when he says that He is the bread of life.

Well, et us look at this passage. In fact, if it is all right with you, let’s just look at this entire chapter quickly. I think that you have to do that to understand what Jesus is about here and what He is trying to say. The chapter begins with a tone of disappointment in His voice. The first verse of the sixth chapter comes right after Jesus has said, “I have come in my Father’s name and you do not accept me. If another comes in his own name, you will accept him.” Jesus knew that the ones following him, for one reason or another, were not understanding who He really was. The crowd followed Jesus up to a mountain. John, the gospel writer, wants to make sure that you understand that this event happened at the time of the Passover. There is no last supper in John’s gospel. This is as close as John gets to such a supper. You are supposed to, as you read these words, remember what the Passover was like. God led the people through Moses to a promised land. During those days, manna fell from heaven. Every day there was manna, a bread-like substance, that strengthened the people on their journey. Enough fell for a single day and come Saturday, enough fell for two days so that God’s people would not have to gather it on the Sabbath. Every day manna fell down from heaven and now Jesus goes up to a mountain. There are many people around. You are supposed to make the connection between manna from heaven and the Passover story and Jesus, the bread from heaven. There are people everywhere when Jesus turns to Philip and asks, “How are these people to be fed?” Now, Jesus knows, don’t you think? Philip says, “Lord, we don’t have enough money to feed all these people.” Then someone said, “Lord, there is someone down the hill who has five barley loaves and two fish. It will not feed everyone, but it is a pretty good start.” Jesus took that bread and broke it. He gave it to his disciples who distributed it among the crowd. When the distribution was finished, there was more than enough to feed everyone. There were even left over pieces of bread. That crowd wanted to make Jesus a king because of the miraculous feeding. Jesus wants no part of that and so he high tails it out of there, disappointed again because the crowd saw the miracle, but they did not see Jesus as the sign of life. Jesus walks across the water to get away from the crowd. Sometimes when we are disappointed, we, too, try to get away.

That is where we catch up with the story this morning. The crowd comes to Capernaum. They are looking for Jesus. They ask him, “When did you come over here, Lord?” Jesus has a conversation with them that is our lesson this morning. Among his words are these, “I am the one who gives the sign from heaven.” This is a powerful passage. Jesus says, “I am the true bread from heaven. I am the one who fills your soul.” The people said, “Manna came down from heaven. Moses gave the people manna. What sign will you give us?” I want to say to the people in this passage, “Wake-up! Did you not see Jesus feed the five thousand of you?” Jesus says, “It wasn’t Moses who fed you. It was God who fed you.” John wants the ones who read his gospel to see the connection. Jesus is the bread from heaven. Jesus is the one from whom we get strength for the journey. Jesus is the one who feeds us in so many ways.

I wonder if Jesus saying that he is bread is a great image for us today. I think that there has got to be a better image. I think that there has to be a better way of talking about Jesus. “I am the bread of heaven?” What does that really mean? There are two parts of this passage that I think are really important. I want us to think about them for a few minutes. The first thing that Jesus says is this, “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.” I like another translation of this verse, from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. If you will read it, you will find these words, “...work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life.” Would you mind if I meddled a bit? Is it all right with the choir? None of us can be convicted of filling ourselves with things that don’t satisfy, could we? Perhaps we are involved in a relationship that is not satisfying and so we fill ourselves up with a good stead dinner. Steak makes things better, right? Or maybe you have thought, “My job is not as great as it could be, so I will just fill myself up with credit card debt.” That really satisfies you, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it satisfy you when the bills arrive and you get the chance to pay off the debt? Jesus tells us to fill ourselves with things that satisfy us.

What is it that satisfies your soul? Do you remember the days when families met at grandmother’s house for Sunday lunch? Some of us still have this tradition, but for the most part, we end up eating out on Sundays at noon. A family gathers at grandmother’s house after a worship service. The pot roast has been cooking during Sunday school. I am trying to make you hungry again. Mashed potatoes and green beans are in casserole dishes on the table. There is sourdough bread in a basket. You have just been fed in church, hopefully. You have received God’s Word and it has gone down to be a part of your soul. Now you will enjoy a different kind of nourishment. It is the kind of meal that when you are finished, you are thankful for elastic waistbands. It is the kind of meal that requires you to loosen your belt a notch or two. You are so full. Will you eat again? Sure you will. You might have a snack by four o’clock in the afternoon. Will you eat again on Sunday night? Probably. Will you have lunch or supper any time during the next seven days? Of course you will. Will any of you not eat again until the following Sunday morning? Of course you will eat again. You come to church for worship once a week. In the hour, you are fed spiritually. Will you eat again, spiritually, during the week? Probably not. That is what we do with our spiritual lives. We fill ourselves with things that don’t really matter. We try to do things that fill us up and we are empty inside. Now, what would happen if you had a little spiritual food during the week? What would happen if you filled yourselves up with Bible study? What would happen if we ate a little bit everyday that fed us in a great way. Mother Teresa in her first visit to the United States was asked what she thought of our prosperous nation. She said this, “I have never seen such a starving people.” Do you know what we are starving for? We are starving for meaning and we want to be full. Another great thinker said this, “The danger is not that there isn’t bread. The danger is that we will convince ourselves that we are not hungry.” We are hungry. I saw it in fifty people taking various Bible studies last year. We need to fill ourselves with prayer time and Bible studies. We need to fill ourselves with things that have the power to satisfy us. I need to be filled everyday.

The second thing that I want to say to you is that Jesus is the bread of life. What does that mean? Bryan, if I had preached this text when I was supposed to, today would be communion Sunday. I did not preach it then, so I want you to imagine that the table is set. I want you to imagine that the communion servers have come forward and that you are kneeling at this rail. I want you to imagine that the bread has been broken. I want you to imagine that as you take this bread and as you swallow it, that it fills your soul. Nothing holds juice better than sourdough bread. When I focus on the bread that is communion bread, I can feel Jesus inside of me. I am the bread of heaven. Those who believe in me will not hunger or be thirsty. These are lessons from my mother’s kitchen. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to my mother who made growing up at home so wonderful. The sourdough bread filled my stomach and her love, along with my dad’s, continues to fill my life).