August 11, 2024
Pentecost 12 (Lectionary 19) , Year B
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 35, 41-51
Epiphany, Winnipeg
That first reading is missing a lot of details.
So here’s what’s going on: It’s about three thousand years ago, and David is the king of Israel. The same King David we heard about a few weeks, with all the wrong and the harm that he’s done to Bathsheba and her late husband Uriah. There’s division brewing in the kingdom, and David’s own son, Absalom, is plotting to take over his dad’s throne. So King David and the factions of the army who support him go into a great battle with Absalom and his army in the forests. Right before the battle begins, David says to his generals, “Go easy on my son Absalom, my son, my flesh and blood who has turned against me….go easy on him.”
But they don’t go easy on Absalom. His army takes a beating, and as Absalom tries to escape through the forest he gets caught up in a tree – apparently he has long beautiful hair that gets snagged in low-lying branches - and one of David’s generals kills him right there. As the episode ends today David is torn apart with grief: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom.”
When we hear about David we usually hear about David the hero – the young boy who killed the giant Goliath and saved his people, the greatest king, even one of Jesus’ ancestors. But David is not so charmed or good. There’s this family that so often, right from the start, seems to be infected by deception and rejection and conflict. David’s not innocent in it all. Family members turn against each other again and again in lust or greed or anger or ambition, yet still there’s this father who can only cry and have a broken heart when his son who has become his enemy dies.
The story of David the king and his family is ancient, but maybe it’s fresher than we thought; it shows us a family like a family we’ve known, at a distance or close, too close. Maybe it shows us something we might know about ourselves; how we can have such anger living right next door to such deep love in our hearts. How regret when it’s too late to change can break your heart. Or how in some strange way, sometimes, all that has gone wrong doesn’t hang on forever, and what’s left in the end is a parent’s love for their child.
Maybe the story opens up a place in our heart for some sympathy for someone like David, the dad who has done such awful things, and Absalom, the son who tried to take down his own father. Maybe it stirs up some feeling for everyone in the story, because it’s really just a story about flesh and blood people like us who win or lose or suffer or celebrate of or who knows what? Maybe it stirs up sympathy. Or maybe it doesn’t. If you know the details of the story maybe it still just stirs up righteous anger about wrongs done to David’s daughter Tamar and his neighbour Bathsheba; wrongs that are so much at the heart of all the family troubles.
However we might feel about all this, these are our stories too. They are all stories of our own people in this faith; they’re our ancestors too. They’re stories about real people acting like real people, who are even called children of God. That’s us too – real people acting like real people, who are even called children of God. Now fast forward a millennium or so, and Jesus is in a long conversation
with a crowd. Now Jesus was a good Jewish boy who grew up to be a good Jewish teacher; he knows all these stories about his ancestors, beloved and blessed and so broken. I‘m sure he’ll remember them from time to time, and while he carries those stories around inside, when we meet him today he can’t stop talking about being bread. The most everyday kind of food. The bread of life.
These twelve small verses from John are filled with bread and eternal life and never being hungry again. They’re full of bread that draws us close to God, and bread that raises us up back to life on that last day when everything breathes its last and everything is made new and raised again. That’s some kind of bread.
It’s bread that teaches and passes on wisdom; it’s Bread of Life that we trust and that will never leave us empty. Jesus, the bread of life.
How can bread do all this? Or like the religious leaders say, “How can Jesus says this about himself? Isn’t he Joseph and Mary’s boy? From just down the street?”
How can bread do this?
When I was five years old I snuck up to the kitchen counter a few minutes after my mom had pulled fresh white bread out of the oven, and I grabbed a knife – probably the first time I’d ever grabbed a knife – and I sliced off the end of the loaf, and then I picked my way through the entire loaf, getting all the good stuff in the middle and leaving an empty crust behind. I didn’t think I was being sneaky or bad or anything; it just tasted so good. And I couldn’t figure out why mom was a little miffed about the whole event. I knew that this bread would satisfy. But it’s not just me. There was a young girl we knew, maybe eleven years old, in a parish Val and I used to serve. She hadn’t been baptized, but she wanted to be so with her parents’ permission she came to us to talk and to learn and, after a time, to be baptized. The first time she came up for communion she stepped up to the rail, reached out for the bread, took the cup and drank, and walked right back and got in line again to come up for more. With great conviction and a huge smile. She’d never read a book or a chapter about John 6:41-51, and I don’t think she had theological thoughts rolling around in her head, but she knew that that bread was for her and for all those people with her, and she knew that she belonged right there with all those people.
There’s a young student who buys a loaf of bread at a market before they board a train for a long ride through European countryside. They don’t know anyone on the train, they’re alone, but the bread brings fullness and comfort. Before the trip is done they’ve torn off a few pieces to share with travellers.
There are people eating bread at the Urban, just down the street and around a corner or two. Sometimes there’s soup. And there’s always bread. Sometimes the chili is served up fresh and hot. And there’s always bread. Sometimes there are sandwiches, made of white bread, brown bread, bannock, Winnipeg rye. There’s always some kind of bread.
And of course, there are some with no bread. Close by, far away, maybe in your own place. And bread would make such a big change.
It’s tempting to try to explain this Bread of Life in some deep theological way, but maybe that’s not really needed. It’s just that bread fills hunger. This hunger the Bread of Life fills…it’s not just spiritual, it’s not just heavenly; it’s not just emotional, it’s not just healing the pain deep inside. But it’s also not just bread that fills my stomach for awhile. It’s all these things. The Bread of Life fills all these hungers, for you and for me, for whoever is on a flooded street in Montreal, or standing in the ashes of their Jasper home, or sorting and searching through the rubble in Kiev. Bread of Life is a promise that everything broken will be brought together again. The grief of a neighbour or the grief right here inside won’t have the last word. The promise of Bread of Life rises like bread ready for the oven, and soon fills the creation with such taste and that fresh bready smell. Bread coming right out of the oven. Bread coming right out of the tomb.
Even we become bread (Bread of Life, the Body of Christ; you are what you eat!), bread sent into the world to bring that fresh taste and rich fragrance of bread for everyone who is hungry, for a world that is hungry – for food, for life, for peace inside here and for peace all around.
This all started out today with a story of people like us who are loved by God and who can live such broken lives. And they, and we, and all, are loved by God with a love that will not leave us hungry… The story goes way back, the story keeps on now; it’s with us here today and for all the time to come. In all of these stories, there’s always this bread. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. It’s a promise…we’ll see…we’ll taste it…and catch that aroma…and we’ll never be hungry again.