John 6:35; 41-51

Common Moments Full of Christ’s Presence

In this passage Jesus uses the ordinary element of bread to describe the extraordinary nature of Godself revealed in Christ. I imagine during the first few weeks of ordinary time it is appropriate to talk about the ordinariness of God, which may strike most people as unordinary. We spend a lot of our time in the church milieu searching for, and discussing the extraordinary. We long to see miracles and hear incredible stories of transformation and change. We wait for God to show up in our worship spaces, and at times attempt to coerce God to bring about sensationalized revival. It does not stop with the church. The American culture is filled with superhero tactics and news reels of spectacle so continuous it begins to feel mundane. We are trapped searching for God as the biggest, best, and brightest as we look past the lowly, typical, everyday man from Nazareth because he is too familiar and too boring. On the contrary we do everything in our power to escape the boring and distract ourselves with as much entertainment as we can afford to fit into our day. “What good can come out of Nazareth” is like asking “What good can come from my morning commute.” Both are so familiar we tune out and pay no attention to the breathtaking glory happening right in front of our eyes.

It is important to familiarize yourself with the context of any passage, but specifically with this passage, the timing of the first “I AM” statement comes right on the heels of Jesus performing a spectacular miracle of feeding over 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread. Now those same people who have seen him do this miracle want more. They are not satisfied. Like my two year old who is hungry 5 minutes after eating dinner, the crowd is hungry for more. But what Jesus has to offer is more than a miracle and it is more than the sustenance of daily food.

There are seven “I AM” statements from Jesus in the gospel of John, only seven. In these seven statements Jesus peels back the layers of who he is, and what he has come to do. He gives us a glimpse into the Kingdom of God on earth. So why, if he only uses seven statements to describe himself, does he waste one of them on bread? C’mon Jesus, couldn’t you have said something like “I AM as powerful as lightning” or “I AM as unstoppable as the mighty river”? I mean even a Michelin star steak would do. Instead we get bread. There is nothing extraordinary or extravagant about it. Bread was a common element for common people. However, bread has something these other things may not. It is actually in spite of it’s ordinariness that brings out something extraordinary. Bread was a daily provision. Every day they would eat and it would sustain them through their labor. So what Jesus is saying is that he is not only the one who gives the provision, as the manna in the wilderness, but he in fact is the provision. When we look to Him as our source, we find only He can satisfy our deepest hunger. Alexander Schmemann, describes it this way in his book, For the Life of the World:

“In the Bible the food that man eats, the world of which he must partake in order to live, is given to him by God…All that exists is God’s gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good.’”

What we find through our daily experiences with mundane elements, such as food, we are able to encounter a communion with God in all things. Jesus shifts our communion from the temple to the table. Communion and access to God goes from the special place of worship to the ordinary moments of everyday life. Worship goes from a sacred and set apart place, to commonplace, as our lives become an act of worship.

This is precisely the aim of the Christian life. Our relationship with God is too often experienced as a supernatural encounter where you have to transcend the ordinary in order to find God. However, the reality is we spend 90% of our time in the ordinary. Most of our lives are made up of moments that don’t carry a lot of “spiritual” significance like making lunches for kids, mowing the lawn, or sitting in traffic. More than half of the church calendar is made up of “ordinary time” between the highs and the lows of our faith, between Easter and Advent. But what if we saw these common moments as what makes up our days, which make up our lives? These moments would start to hold heavy significance. It seems to be the purpose of Jesus in this passage to help draw you into life with him by opening your eyes to his presence in the ordinary. When you find God in the ordinary moments like brushing your teeth or the feeling of a gust of wind on your face, you are then able to embody a new way of being in every moment. You start to perceive, and respond, to the ways God is present in, through, and beyond everything that exists.

As pastors, it is our call to eliminate the gap between the sacred and the secular. Water the seed of the ordinary so we are able to experience the flourishing of the extraordinary that lies within. In light of this passage I would encourage each pastor and their congregation to participate in the Eucharist this Sunday. For a majority of Church history the Eucharistic sacrament, not the sermon, was the focal point of the worship service. Yes, you may feel that receiving communion, especially weekly, can become ordinary, mundane, or familiar, but what if this is actually the point. It becomes your provision and connection to what you have always been attempting to satisfy. The Eucharist does what the sermon cannot do which is offer the worshiper a direct encounter with the life of Christ through his broken body. It is through this encounter that we begin to become more and more aware of God’s presence in all of our life.

To put it plainly, Jesus as the bread of life means we are sustained and satisfied in every moment of our lives, even the most ordinary ones. Each of us are involved in a million moments a day. What if we interacted with the things we do as if Christ was intimately connected to each one of them? I have two boys under the age of five, so as you can imagine, life is mass chaos most of the time. What I have learned is I don’t always have to sit down and read my Bible or have a quite time to connect with Christ. While these things are good and necessary, I have started to find God more and more in the construction of pillow forts, random dance parties, and listening to the same song in the car with them for twelfth time in a row. They have taught me God is all over the place, you just have to be awakened enough to smell the Bread. This is sacramental living, this is living with and from the Bread of life, this is (as the message paraphrase reads) real life. Like Father Zosima in the The Bothers Karamazov counsels young Alyosha:

“Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire universal love.”