Whole meal bread

John 6:56-69; Exodus 16:4a, 13-15.

More years ago than I care to remember, when I was about 14, my family and I lived for a while on the coast of southern Spain. My early-morning task each day was to walk perhaps a quarter mile along a cliff-top path some 50 feet above the Mediterranean Sea, and then cut inland another quarter mile to a small village. My objective was the local bakery.

This was back in the days before electricity had made it in any meaningful way to small communities in that part of the world, so the baker’s oven was heated by oak cut years before from the surrounding hillsides and seasoned by many dry summers. The oven itself was a dome shaped device perhaps 15 feet across, with two small iron doors. The lower door gave access to the fire pit. When it was opened for more fuel, it was like looking into the depths of hell — flames leaping and dancing, the deeply seasoned wood glowing almost white as it gave itself up to produce heat. The draft from the door’s opening would make glowing ripples scatter across the embers. A few more logs would be thrown in, and the vision cut off by the closing door. While the image from the fire could be a mesmerizing picture of Hades, it was the upper door that contained heaven, and it was for the opening of that door that I would try to time my arrival.

Standing in line with other customers I would watch as at a signal from the baker — who stood ready with a device that looked like a long-handled wooden paddle, the edges blackened by heat — a young boy of perhaps 8 or 9 would throw the latch and draw the door back on a set of rollers. Inserting the paddle, the baker would then deftly collect and extract several loaves of fresh-baked bread at a time and, drawing them from the oven slide them into a waiting basket. Another young lad would pick them up with wooden tongs, and drop them into the cotton bags of the waiting customers.

The memory of the combined smell of burning oak and fresh bread stays with me today. But the best was yet to come. With my purchases practically glowing in my bag, I would hurry home as fast as I could. In my absence my brother would have set the table and on my return he and my parents would join me in consuming the seemingly heaven sent manna.

I can still remember the sound of the bread knife as it cut through the crust, and see the steam rise from each slice. And I can still recall the fresh-bread smell as the butter melted into its depths, and the sensation as the hard, crusty exterior and the creamy interior yielded and dissolved in my mouth.

Oh my. When bread is that good, you don’t eat it, you experience it. Heaven.

As opposed to most of the breads we can buy today, that bread, baked by a true artisan of the craft, had character.

God, too, is an artisan baker who knows all about character and all about the nutrition, taste and experience of fresh, filling and fulfilling, whole meal, “real” bread- the bread of life.

Jesus is the Bread of Life, the whole meal bread conceived in the mind of a master artisan, a meal that brings people into a deep relationship with God, uniquely crafted to satisfy the recommended nutritional allowance for eternal life for all who feed on his words and works, who learn from his life and teaching.

“Feeding” on Jesus is a way of taking in all that he means, and all that he offers — the daily sustenance of the Holy Spirit providing the strength to live life to the full with an eternal perspective.

Sadly, Jesus-as-bread is a concept too hard for many people. Rather than turning to Jesus, they turn instead to a wide variety of cheap, processed, mass-produced “breads” — money, sex, power, “stuff” — full of empty calories that satisfy in the short term but ultimately leave them starving to death.

Jesus’ call is to reject these stale supermarket spiritualities that the world offers. Instead, he calls us to seek out the intimacy of the village bakery for a loaf of the Bread of Life — always hot, always fresh, always nutritional loaves with a unique and life-giving character crafted by the Master Artisan’s loving hands especially for us.

My friends, there is a spiritually hungry world out there looking for something to fill the gnawing emptiness in the pit of its collective soul. The church is the village bakery, offering the real Bread of Life, the Whole Meal Bread of the love and grace of Jesus Christ. So go out, invite everyone in the door and let’s freely share what God has given us.