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Living for. . . just what, exactly?                        John 6: 24-35                   August 2, 2009

Jon Katz, the author of several excellent books about dogs - and one whom I have quoted here several times before - wrote in a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune* that our beloved canine companions have fooled us, over the years, into believing they are our friends. "Dogs develop very strong, instinctive attachments to the people who feed and care for them," Katz said to the interviewer. "Over 15,000 years of domestication, they've learned to trick us into thinking that they love us."

As much as it hurts me to say so, I think Katz is actually right. In my heart of hearts I know that Doc, my beloved curly-coated retriever companion who curls up at my feet under my writing table when I'm working on my sermon each week and rests his chin on my lap when I'm sitting at the breakfast table; my good friend Doc would probably make friends with Jack the Ripper if he had a pork chop in his pocket.

It really is all about food. Like most retrievers, Doc is a chowhound. He lives to eat.

My knowledge of the motivation for Doc's devotion to me doesn't stop me from returning his love, though. He is what he is. He's happy to be around me, and I'm happy to accept his love for what it is.

In our New Testament lesson for this morning, Jesus holds us humans to a higher standard. The text, from John's Gospel, follows directly on the heels of the passage we read last week - the miracle story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

There are lots of explanations for and interpretations of Jesus' miracle. I shared my own understanding of the story with you last week. But whatever happens on that day when Jesus feeds the 5000, after it happens, the crowd is amazed. They follow him around the Sea of Galilee, wanting more.

Unfortunately, as our text makes clear, the crowd follows Jesus not because they're anxious to hear more of what he has to say. They follow him because they want another free meal. It's as if they are demanding, "Do what you did before, Jesus. Feed us. And this time, could you prepare the fish with a little less salt? Oh, and multi-grain bread would be nice as well."

For the crowd, it's all about food. Not unlike Doc, when you think about it.

Jesus, who understands the crowd's motivation, tells them that they are foolish to focus on food that spoils. Instead, he tells them to pay attention to food that lasts forever.

And, as is so often the case, Jesus' statement confuses the crowd. The connection between the bread they have eaten and bread that lasts for an eternity is unclear, to say the least, so they ask him to explain.

In response, Jesus says, "I am the bread of life. Whoever eats this bread will never die."

One of the central truths that the Bible reveals, over and over again, is that God knows us. Really knows us. In fact, God knows us better than we know ourselves. The Psalmist was spot on when he wrote, "O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from far away.** "

God knows what makes us do what we do. God knows how hungry we are, and what we will do to be fed.

Our Old Testament lesson for this morning is the same passage that Jesus refers to in his message to the hungry crowd. "Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness," he tells them. "God gave them bread from heaven to eat."

That text reveals that the Israelites, wandering in the desert hundreds of years before Jesus' time, were no different from the crowd that followed Jesus around the lake, and no different from us. They wanted God to feed them. They needed God to feed them.

Human nature and dog nature, once again, are not too different.

When Doc and I get back home after our morning walk, he immediately goes into his "feed me" dance. Though he can't verbalize what he wants, his actions make it clear. Please feed me, he says. If you don't feed me I will die. I can't possibly stand still until you feed me. Nothing else matters. Don't make the coffee or straighten up the kitchen. Just feed me.

The Israelites who were camped out in the desert following their miraculous exodus from Egypt acted a lot like Doc. They whined and carried on. "We may as well have died in Egypt," they said to Moses and Aaron. "At least there we ate our fill of bread. Instead, you brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

God listens to their pleading, of course. God feeds them, sending them manna - bread from heaven. Enough to sustain their life. "In the morning you shall have your fill of bread," God says to them. "Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God."

God knows that giving us "our daily bread" will only satisfy our hunger for a while. Tomorrow, we'll be hungry again. Similarly, Jesus discovered that the people in the crowd, who ate their fill when they participated in his miraculous meal, were not satisfied for long. They followed him, hoping to be fed again.

Why does God feed us, we might reasonably ask. Is it because we, like dogs and cattle and squirrels and birds, need food to sustain us, so we can be hungry again tomorrow?

I think not. The bread that God gives us is more than that.

New York Times op-ed writer David Brooks posed an interesting question in one of his recent columns: "What would happen," he asked, "if a freak solar event sterilized the people of the earth that happened to be facing the sun?" In other words, what would happen if half the people in the world could no longer reproduce? If half the earth's population suddenly realized that theirs was the last generation to inhabit their part of the earth.

"If you take an individualistic view of the world," Brooks suggests, "not much would happen immediately."

"Even after the event," he goes on to say, "material conditions would be exactly the same." People would still go to work, pay their bills and educate the children who are already with us. For 20 years, there would still be workers flowing into the labor force.

People, with no future to think about, would focus on living for the moment, valuing the here and now.

But not for long. As Brooks correctly points out, People aren't created to be individualists. We live according to what he calls "a compact between the dead, the living and the unborn." Something called posterity.

So, if such a cataclysmic solar event should happen, there would soon be an equally cataclysmic spiritual and social crisis on the earth.

If we knew that our nation and our families were doomed to simply die out, we would build no lasting buildings. We would not strive to start new companies. We would have no reason to be concerned about the preservation of the environment. After a while, we wouldn't have any reason to save or invest.

Because even if we, ourselves, do not have children or grandchildren, we live our lives and do the things we do with an implicit eye toward future generations. Our faith calls us to put tomorrow in God's hands, but without the hope that we can make the world a better place, we would have little reason to act on our faith.

If you reduce everything to the here and now, words like justice and peace lose all of their meaning.

Thankfully, our faith is bigger than that.

The God we worship is a God of hope. Hope for our generation and hope for generations to come. When Jesus tells his disciples "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty," he points them toward the future. He reminds them that the bread that God provides lasts forever.

It may take many lifetimes for the kingdom of this world to become the Kingdom of God. But when God feeds us with the Bread of Life, God expects us to set forth on a journey whose purpose is to make that happen. When God feeds us with the Bread of Life, God feeds us so we can work the works of God.

Brothers and sisters, we are here today because God has drawn us here. God pulls us along on our journey into the future, offering illumination along the way, helping us understand that we're heading in the right direction.

God inspires us, from time to time, to pick up a paintbrush or a scraper and help another member of our Christian family. God inspires us to cook breakfast for our neighbors who are hungry. God directs us to work long hours in order to prepare our church buildings so that a week from now a hundred and fifty children from the community will have a chance to be fed with the Bread of Life.

We may not always know exactly where God would have us go, but we know that God will continue to feed us along the way. Always has. Always will.

We may not always understand the direction we are heading, but God offers us the Bread of Life because we don't completely understand. The bread of life is the willingness to listen to God, to be in dialogue with the often difficult teachings of Christ.

Our job is to move forward. One step at a time. God feeds us because God wants us to walk in the way of Christ, listen carefully, and be drawn to even greater faith. For our sakes. And for the sake of generations to come.

Let us thank God for guiding us along the way.

                                                                             AMEN

* Eric Zorn in Chicagotribune.com May 7, 2009
** Psalm 139

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