Become the Bread of Life

I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never hunger.

Whoever believes in me will never thirst.

As many of you know, I just returned from vacation

where I was hiking in the Colorado and Utah Mountains.

It was beautiful.

I had this one hike in Colorado Springs called Pikes Peak.

It is 14,150 feet to be exact.

It has been a number of years since I have done a fourteener

and I forgot a couple of things.

Like first, how painful that last couple of miles are!

It was a 12 and a half mile, one way climb

with 7,600 feet elevation shift up to 14,000.

It was brutal but beautiful.

One of the things I knew was that you can drive up to the top.

That is always been disappointing when you get up there

and all these other people have gotten there by driving.

I decided to leverage that and I was going to hitch a ride down.

I was not going to climb back down.

That would have been 25 miles and that was just not on my agenda.

I ended up miscalculating the amount of water I needed.

That is a pretty major mistake to make, right?

I just want you to know that I carried a lot of water.

I just drank it fast.

I was trying to get the weight off my back,

so I just drank it instead.

And when I got to that last hour,

I forgot that it takes hour to do the last mile.

People are coming down as there is a camp halfway down,

so a lot of people are hiking back down.

I knew there would be a lot of people,

but I was really thirsty and I had like only this much water left.

People were asking me, “Hey, how are you doing?”

Obviously I was not looking very good

because they would say, “Are you okay?”

I replied, “Yeah, no, I am okay.”

Anyway, this one couple stopped and they said, “How are you doing?”

I said, “I am tired.”

They said, “Well, do you have enough water?”

And I said, “Well, I just have this.” And I showed them.

They said, “Oh, that is not enough water.

You have got a whole hour yet of climbing,”

I replied, “I only have one mile.”

They said, “Yeah. Exactly one hour”.

I then remembered that you can not go very fast at this altitude.

They gave me a whole bottle of water and I made it to the top.

There was plenty of water on top

so I was not in a danger in that sense.

But here is the reason I bring this up.

Here is the thing about saviors,

we need to know we need them for them to be a savior.

Those people were saviors to me, and I knew I needed them.

I passed several people before that,

but I did not ask them, nor did they offer.

And I wanted somebody to offer.

But here is the thing, I knew I needed it, that water.

And eventually when somebody offered it to me,

I said, “Yes, I'll take it.”

But we know we need the water.

Why do I bring that up?

Our savior, Christ Jesus, comes to offer us the bread of life,

the water of life as well.

But we need to know that we need saving.

If we do not think we need it,

then we are never going to accept that offer.

That is why this church is so empty.

There are a lot of people out there

who do not realize that they need the bread of life.

And that is the challenge for us.

We have to first of all say yes,

we have to acknowledge to ourselves

that we need this bread of life.

That we come because we need saving.  

That we first need it.

There is no point in saving all the other people who are not here.

They are not getting it because they do not need it.

We first need to acknowledge that we need this,

that we need the bread of life, the water of life.

Because that is what we need. We need saving.

Now, it is not that we are so rotten and so corrupt,

but we need this spiritual food that gives us the nourishment for life.

And so once we come from that sense of humility,

not just coming out of obligation or to worship the Lord,

but that we need his presence and his nutrition,

his nourishment for our souls.

That is why we come,

we come to listen to the word broken open

and that will give us nourishment.

We come to receive the bread of life,

that will give us nourishment.

So first we need to be able to say, “I need the help.”

Then we ask for it and accept what the Lord gives us at this table.

Now comes the second part.

What about all those people who are not here,

many of which are maybe your children and your grandchildren?

That is the struggle for so many of us,

that our young people are not coming back

because they do not know they need it.

They do not know that they need nourishment from heaven.

And you might say, “Well, why is that the case?”

Here is the challenge.

In our modern world, there are many substitutes

that inoculate us from temporarily from the hunger.

We satisfy ourselves in all sorts of alternative ways,

that feeds us temporarily but that are not everlasting life.

It does not give us the eternal food.

We make excuses for ourselves.

“Well, I am too busy. I  have to do this.”

Or “Sunday mornings are my only mornings to sleep in.

Oh, I can do that later”

“I can pray to God anywhere.”

All those things are true, but we do not realize

how much we need the Lord in our life.

Now you are all here.

So I am in a sense preaching to the choir.

You have already received that message.

But sometimes we come a little bit reluctantly

and we need to pause and say,

“No, no, I need, I need this spiritual nourishment.

I need this in my life.

I need the Lord to save me,

to give me this nourishment for the eternal food.”

Then comes the question

“How do we help those who do not know that they need it?”

Maybe even you are here and you are reluctant to admit that.

Well, here are a couple of things.

We who get the nourishment from here

have to be the first ones to witness the nourishment from here.

And we do that not by telling others,

“Oh, you need nourishment.”

We cannot save somebody who does not need to be saved,

who does not believe they need saving.

But what we can do is share this nourishment from here.

And what does that mean?

It is exactly what Paul says in the letter to the Ephesians.

He said, “We shed the old self and we put on new self.”

We need to become different when we come back from here.

We need in some way to be nourishment for the world.

We need to be the bread of life for the world.

That is what will convince people, it is the deeds that we do.

What does that look like?

Well, it starts with, and this is not a complete list, but only a partial list.

It starts with kindness and gentleness.

It starts with love and forgiveness.

If we witness that in our lives,

especially when we come from here,

then people will wonder what happened here.

What happened here that made them so kind and so gentle,

so loving and forgiving?

Then I want something from where they were,

whether that is the top of the mountain or whether that is here.

This is our mountain that we get to.

But unless we are those elements of kindness and gentleness,

loving and forgiving, and many other besides,

then people will not be convinced

that there is anything here or from the Lord that they need.

So the irony of it is that God offers it to us freely,

this gift of life, this bread, this manna from heaven,

and we gladly accept it and receive it.

Both here in the bread and the wine,

but also in the proclaimed word, and also in all of us scattered.

And then we must become what we receive,

the bread of life for others in our world.

So today, let us first of all acknowledge

that we need this bread from heaven,

and then let us receive it joyfully and

let our hearts be lifted high.

Then let us proclaim in word and deed

with words of kindness, gentleness,

loving and forgiving that we have received the bread of life

and now become the bread of life for all to receive.

I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never hunger.

Whoever believes in me will never thirst.