A Devotion for the Bread That Endures

As I opened the lectionary texts for this week, my stomach grumbled. It was a bit of a cruel irony for someone who’s just restarted the Low Carb/Keto lifestyle to read the passage from John where Jesus describes himself as “the bread of life.”

From John, chapter 6:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (v.35).

I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (vv. 48-51).

What’s so interesting is that, in this story, Jesus doesn’t make the whole crowd of 5000 sit down and listen to his lecture before he feeds them. They have already had their fill of loaves and fishes, with leftovers spilling over. If he had tried to talk with them before their hungers were satiated, would they have even been able to hear him over the grumbling of their stomachs? I’d guess not.

As Frederick Buechner says, “We don’t live by bread alone, but we also don't live long without it. To eat is to acknowledge our dependence both on food and on each other. It also reminds us of other kinds of emptiness that not even the blue-plate special can touch.”

Many of the clients and families we serve might have had immediate Disaster Response help after the storm. And many of us participated in that response – feeding meals at shelters, or helping stock food pantries, or organizing and donating materials. Those efforts were necessary and life-giving, and provided much-needed sustenance and relief in those harried first few weeks.

But, as many of us know, as the months have passed since the storms, the support and nourishment that was available those few days and weeks has all but vanished. The most immediate cries of hunger have faded out,and what remains?

What bread is there left to give?

You’ll notice in this passage that Jesus doesn’t just call himself “bread.” He calls himself the “bread of life.” Or to paraphrase, the bread that endures, the One who sustains the world in a way that makes living possible.

Pointing people toward the One who ultimately sustains doesn’t mean we stop helping people seek and find and be nourished by the daily bread we all need to survive. Food, shelter, clean water, medical care, and financial means – these are all things that people need, basic requirements that have to be met for them to even be able to seek the Bread of Life.

As our fearless Recovery Coordinator, Laura, often reminds us, our work is focused on how we help this person (or family) recover from this disaster in this community.
What does the bread of life look like for the person before you today?

How can you help point them to the One who endures?

I’d like to think that our work is a bit like bread leading to bread. In our hours of working cases and construction work and leading teams, breadcrumbs are dropped, a trail is left that points to the Bread of Life, Jesus who nourishes and restores and feeds the deepest hungers of our souls and spirits.

The daily bread that we break and share invites others to come and eat and be filled.

Let us never tire of leaving those trails of crumbs!

With you,

Chaplain Amy