Sermon — August 11, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
You may know that I just returned on Thursday from a three-week vacation visiting Alice’s family on Long Island, which was exactly as chaotic and wonderful and relaxing as a family vacation with three kids six and under should be. You may not know that when we’re out there, I have a certain morning routine: I’ll wake up, and go for a run, and on the way home I’ll tend to stop for a treat, either at the Blue Duck Bakery to pick up a baguette and some sliced multigrain, or at NoFoRoCo, the North Fork Roasting Company, just down the street, which has some of the best pastries in the world as far as I’m concerned, but certainly the best in eastern Long Island. Or maybe at the farm stand up the road.
So as far as the saying “you are what you eat” is concerned, I return to you this Sunday consisting almost entirely of bread. And croissants. And peaches, actually, because it’s peach season in Long Island right now, and I could eat about a dozen of those a day. Also apricots. And figs.
But I have bread on the mind today, and so does Jesus.
“I am the bread of life,” he says. (John 6:35) And John’s gospel will spend the next few weeks exploring exactly what that means. It’s a rich image: Like so much of what Jesus says, it can’t possibly be true, it must be a metaphor, and yet there’s something more than metaphorical about this idea of the “bread of life.” On the one hand, we know that Jesus, when he says this, is not literally a walking, talking loaf of bread. He’s human being. We know that although we have come to Jesus, we still hunger and we still thirst. There’s clearly some spiritual meaning of “eating” and “drinking” in what Jesus says. Maybe it involves digesting and reflecting on Jesus’ words and teachings, because he quickly moves from this image of eating the bread of heaven, to being drawn to and learning from God in Christ. The hunger, at least in part, is spiritual hunger; the nourishment is spiritual nourishment.
And yet, on the other hand, we also find ourselves coming here to Jesus, week after week, and being fed; not just metaphorically, spiritually fed, but fed, with real bread, in which and through which we believe that somehow, mysteriously, Christ is here. We eat this bread, and even though the portions are small, it is real food. We digest it, and it becomes part of us, and the Body of Christ that we receive becomes part of our own bodies, and just as the living bread came down from heaven to us, we are brought up into the presence of God.
Both literally and spiritually, we are what we eat. We become what we consume.
I sometimes wonder about our mental or spiritual diets these days. What are we consuming, and what are we becoming?
We talk about “media consumption,” sometimes, and eating is a pretty good metaphor for reading, or watching, or listening to something. When we read anxious stories about the coming demise of the planet or the nation, we become more anxious. When we listen to angry diatribes about the people with whom we disagree, we become more angry. When we spend our summers watching Olympic commentary, we become opinionated experts on sports we only think about every four years, and in fact, that’s part of what makes it fun.
But I wonder whether the diets of our attention have become unbalanced, over time. Most of the media that we consume is the mental equivalent of junk food, in a very particular way. Just as food scientists carefully calibrate the balance of sugar and salt and crunch to make snack foods irresistible without providing much additional nutrition, our politically-polarized media outlets and especially our algorithm-driven social media feeds are designed to captivate our attention, not to feed our souls. Fear and mockery and anger generate a lot more clicks and a lot more ad dollars than joy and peace and respect. It becomes easier and easier over time to be sucked into a cycle of despair and fear, because we are what we eat; we become what we consume.
And I can’t help but compare what we become when we consume these kinds of media to the image Paul offers to the Ephesians of a life in which we’re filled with grace. Paul tells them, “Be angry, but do not sin… Let no evil talk come out of your mouths… Put away all bitterness and wrath and anger, wrangling and slander… and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Eph. 4:26, 29, 31–32)
For a minute, this morning, be honest with yourself. You don’t have to admit it to anyone else. Just think: How much of what you consume with your mind, how much of what you read or watch or see on your phone, fills you with bitterness and wrath and anger, with wrangling and slander? And how much of it is giving you a kind and tender heart? How much of it is leading you to forgive, as you have been forgiven? I suspect that for most of us, the ratio favors anger.
I don’t say this as if news or politics were bad. I don’t say this as if current events were unimportant. They’re very important. I say this because what the angel says to the prophet Elijah applies just as well to each one of us: “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” (1 Kings 19:7)
Elijah sits in despair, unable to go any further. He’s a prophet living in fear of what the people in power will do. He’s done what he can, and he’s all out of strength. But God isn’t done with him. God has greater things in store, and so God sends an angel, and says to him, “Get up and eat.” And Elijah eats, and goes back to sleep. And the angel wakes him up again, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much.” And he gets up, and eats, and travels forty days, and it’s then and only then that he hears that still, small voice of God.
This is not a theological statement about the nature of bread. It’s not a finger-wagging reminder or an exhortation to improve his diet, literal or metaphorical. It’s a simple statement of fact: if you don’t eat something that nourishes you, you’re not going to make it to the end.
Whatever your politics, the next three months or so will probably be an anxious time. Even politics aside, I can safely predict that this year will be full of opportunities to feed on anger, and anxiety, and fear, because every year is.
So what do you need in your spiritual diet this year to make it to the end of the journey? What do you need to put away bitterness and wrath, and to fill yourself on kindness and love? What sustenance do you need to “walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God?” (Eph. 5:2)
We’ll have a few weeks more to delve into the living bread: But what does it mean for you, today, for this meal to feed you, so that you can make it for another week?