Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die 

(John 6:49-50)

Your remember being in lockdown for COVID? During that strange time a lot of people took up making bread. I did. It fitted in well with working from home. I got a stand mixer, threw the few simple ingredients in and made up the dough then the two stages of rising and knocking back then baking fitted in nicely with breaks from work. It was fun to be doing something that people have been doing across the planet for thousands of years. Apart from the stand mixer obviously.

For the Jews of Jesus’s time and before and after bread had a special significance. There’s the role of unleavened bread connected with the Passover. There’s also the manna in the desert that Jesus speaks of in our passage this morning that kept the Israelites alive on their journey to the Promised Land; a reminder of God’s providence in providing all that we need to stay alive, whether you see that as a daily miracle or as the outworking of the laws of nature that God  created. These may well be the same thing. Either way the bounty the land provides gives us our daily bread and we should be grateful for all that keeps body and soul together.

I say soul because Jesus does speak of the manna in the desert but points out that was simply food for the body. But our bodies wear out. We die and they decay and they return to the dust from which they are formed. Sorry. Getting a little gloomy there. Jesus speaks of being the bread of heaven and offers hope that death is not the end: offers the prospect of eternal life. How? Because we are not just our bodies. We are not just physical beings. We are also spiritual beings. We have hopes and dreams and a sense of purpose. We have values and beliefs that, at our best, we try to live out in the ways Paul describes in Ephesians. Above all we have that sense of that other; that presence; that being beyond ourselves that we call God.

The bread of Heaven that is Christ sustains us in life - our spiritual life - and offers us hope as the bread offered to Elijah sustained him at one of the lowest moments of his life and that is what this place, and places like it, are for. To offer those who cross their thresholds hope in Christ; the bread of Heaven. The staff of life. The opportunity to live brilliant lives here and now and spend eternity in the presence of God.

I wonder, though, what people out there think the Christian faith is all about; what they’ll be asked to do when they cross those thresholds. Something’s increasingly struck me over the years. See bread? It’s so simple. Just a few simple ingredients: flour, salt, water. Yeast if you’re not making flatbreads. That’s it. I enjoy cooking and I’ve seen recipes with ingredient lists longer than my arm. Give me a simple recipe though and I’m happy and there are few simpler than bread.

And I wonder, sometimes, if we’ve made things more complicated than they have to be. We have our creeds and our dogmas. We have our complex theologies. I remember when I first applied to be a preacher the Interim Minister at Dryfesdale saying that as long as we held fast to the doctrine of total depravity things would be fine. I hadn’t the heart to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about. And we’ve fallen out over that kind of stuff for two thousand years. Council of Nicea the bishop who would become St Nicholas - Santa - thumped another bishop in an argument over the nature of Christ.

But what if it’s simple, like bread? What if we take Christ and Paul at their words? We are saved through faith, trust, in God through Christ? God so loved the world that he gave his own son that we may not die but have eternal life. What if we don’t need to sign up to a bunch of complex doctrines - and don’t get me wrong, I love a complex doctrine to keep the old grey matter ticking over in retirement - but just accept the offer Christ made to his disciples on the night before he was crucified: “Take, eat, this is my body broken for you” and simply accept the love God offers in Christ, the bread of Heaven. The staff of life.

Bread. The universal food. Every country, every culture, every cuisine has its forms of bread. And now Christ is known and worshipped across the globe. In every country. In every culture. Why? Because the love of God is for everyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from; regardless of the language they speak or the customs they observe; regardless of what they’ve done in their lives and the times they’ve messed up. 

The Gospel of Christ is for all humanity. Maybe the biggest mistake the Church has made has been to condemn and exclude those we have condemned as sinners while forgetting that we are all sinners. We all fall short of what God asks of us; of who we are meant to be as children of God and citizens of Heaven. But we are not just sinners. We are forgiven sinners. We are beloved sinners. We are sinners offered the chance, like dough when yeast is added, to grow with every new day.

When people come through these doors and doors like it they should come to hope, come to joy, come to acceptance. They should come to encounter not just an act of worship but a community that rejoices in taking the bread of Heaven, the staff of life, that is Jesus Christ, and offers it to them

Preached at Baxter Hall Eastriggs and at Annan Old parish church

Complete Service