John 6:35 - The Bread, a basic necessity for Life

John 6:35 “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

I enjoy eating, as I'm sure you do as well. Food just tastes good! Of course, I easily get bored eating the same things every day, and I'm guessing, so do you.  I love a good Lasagna, and I can happily eat a nicely grilled steak. I could munch on peanut butter and celery sticks and be content, and humus and chips are divine!  In fact I enjoy eating so much that when I watch television, often times I am tuned into the cooking channel which besides having the cleanest content on TV, also gives me ideas on things I can do to vary my own dining habits. I especially enjoy watching Iron Chef, a show about two cooks and their staffs having a cook-off against each other using a secret ingredient given to them at the beginning of the show. They  have one hour to make a multi-course meal revolving around that one secret ingredient. Watching it is fantastic! The energy, the imagination, the skill! But you know, every meal shares something. Every meal I eat at home, every cooking show, every Iron Chef battle all share something made with flour and water (or milk) – bread.  Bread is a staple food item in every culture, and is usually somehow involved with nearly every meal.  Imagine a pizza without bread, or burgers on a tofu bun. Imagine fried chicken without the breaded crust, or cream cheese without bagels. We can't think of it, bread is that integral to our eating!

Notice that Jesus says he is the Bread of Life, not the Swiss Cheese of Holiness, or the Chocolate of Righteousness. He is not the Soup of Splendour, or the Espresso of Sacredness. He isn't even the Poultry of Purity! He is the Bread of Life, bread being a basic necessity for us to have. We can live without cheese, chocolate, soup, coffee, chicken, fish, and beef. But bread is the basic staple of our diet.

Elsewhere in the Bible, Jesus tells us that He gives the water of life, another basic necessity for us, but Jesus tells us that unlike ordinary water, which cures our thirst for the moment, the living water which He gives us cures us of our thirst entirely!

Jesus claims that He is the staple of our life, the basic necessities which we need to live. He compares himself to each of those necessities, reminding us that He is a basic necessity! If He isn't around, if we are not partaking in Him, then we are missing something pretty major from our life, and our quality of life will suffer something tremendous.

This week, why don't we re-evaluate the basics in our life and see where we have shoved Jesus off to? Is He still the first go-to guy for everything in our life? Is He our basic resource? Or have we decided that He is a special occasion thing, hidden away in a cupboard until we want some spice added? He is the Bread of Life, our Life, not the Terriyaki of Terrificness.

Become to us the living bread
by which the Christian life is fed,
renewed, and greatly comforted. 
Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia! 

May Christians all with one accord
unite around the sacred board
to praise your holy name, O Lord.
Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!
                               Miriam Drury, 1970