Today’s Gospel is the second of five consecutive recommended Sunday readings concerning bread in the Gospel According to John. As this one begins, the people following Jesus detect an interesting parallel between him and Moses. Just as Moses parted the water and spoke God’s promise of manna, Jesus fed the 5000, and then walked on water. The people are impressed, and hunger for more of the same. Jesus has in mind something different and more lasting for them.

“What have you got for us today, Jesus?” That’s what the crowd wondered, though they didn’t exactly ask it that way.

He knew why they spent the wee hours of the morning frantically searching for him. It was “not because you saw signs,” he says, “but because you ate your fill of loaves.”

He fed them – 5000 of them – in the desert on the far side of the Sea of Galilee the previous night. He looked like their meal ticket, their free pass to the front of the buffet.

“So what’ll you do for us now?” they inquired. Their mouths said something different, but it was written on their eyes.

My grandmother might have understood Jesus’ dilemma. My father’s mother was a loving, generous lady. She lived in another part of St. Louis. Whenever her car pulled in our driveway, all 5 of us kids dashed out the front door to greet her.

“Hi, Nanoo!” we’d shout, with smiles on our faces. (I don’t know how my big brother invented the name Nanoo!) “Hi, Nanoo! What’d you bring us?”  The first words from our lips.

Before she walked in the house, we were treating her like a vending machine. A candy dispenser. Or a rolling toy store disguised as a gray Buick she drove.

To this day, I am grateful my parents insisted we put a stop to that behavior and just treat her as a grandma – whether she brought us something or not.

The same attitude creeps up in other situations. Big crowds at Miller Park as long as the Brewers are winning. But nervous whispers that the fun may not last. “How many you think will show up if they stop winning?” people wonder.

Of course, nothing like it exists in the church! Except when people walk out saying, “I didn’t get anything from it today. The music didn’t move me. The sermon didn’t amuse me. The Communion bread was a tad stale … and my piece wasn’t big enough.”

The purpose of worship – and all of life with it, perhaps – isn’t what we get from it, but what we put in. We come into the world with nothing; and leave the same way. What matters is what we do while we are here.

As the old Presbyterian catechism says, the purpose of worship (and life as a whole) is to “glorify God and enjoy God forever.”

Yet, we try all kinds of substitutes for God. At the risk of offending any advertising folks in the room, I dare say that the goal of all advertising is to make us believe that decent alternatives to God actually exist. Advertising professes that the things of this world can satisfy our cravings and make us happy to our core.

As Exhibit A, I point to a story I read the other day, about a woman arrested for shoplifting nearly $800 worth of clothes. She’s a 37-year-old from Muskego, and was nabbed at Mayfair Mall. It was in the ’Tosa Now section of the Journal-Sentinel last Thursday. She said that, when she feels sad, she goes shopping. But her husband won’t let her spend much money. 

She clearly believes that clothing and other material possessions can give her life meaning.

You know how that turned out. Whatever jolt of happiness she expected to get from that venture turned out the wrong way. It’s poignant. And tragic. Isn’t it?

I suppose we’re all guilty, though usually in smaller ways. We work for bread and possessions that let us down. How else would “buyer’s remorse” become a near-universal complaint. You know the feeling – the disappointment after a big purchase, the gut instinct that “it wasn’t worth what I paid,” or “now that it’s out of the box (or off the lot), the thrill just isn’t the same as I expected.”

Wendell Berry, an ecologist, farmer, and Christian from rural Kentucky describes our futility with false gods this way. He says,

Close inspection of our countryside [reveals] strewn over it thousands of derelict and worthless automobiles, house trailers, refrigerators, stoves, freezers, washing machines, and dryers … broken toasters, televisions, toys, furniture, lamps, stereos … scales, coffee makers, mixers, blenders, corn poppers, hair dryers and microwave ovens …

All of us [live] in the midst of a ubiquitous mess of which we are at once the victims and the perpetrators. (What Are People For? 1990)

Barbara Brown Taylor, one of America’s most graceful Christian authors adds, “It is often not until we have tried to ease [our craving] with everything else that we discover [through the] process of elimination our [true] hunger for God.”

Surely that is what Jesus was telling the crowd when he said, “Don’t work for food that perishes, but for food that endures for eternal life …”

When they asked how they could work for such food, his answer was even simpler. Believe. “Believe in him whom [God] has sent.”

In our western culture, believing is a purely mental activity. It involves agreeing with a premise, idea, or proposition.

Not so for Jesus or the people around him. Back then, believing was a physical act of commitment and loyalty (Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Cycle B, p. 119). Believing meant entrusting oneself wholeheartedly to another person, or to a particular way of life.

To “believe” in Jesus was to enter into a relationship, a covenanted, steadfast relationship with him.

I think that’s what my parents were teaching us about my grandmother’s visits. They wanted us to greet her eagerly, and shower her with our attention, affection and love … whether or not she showered gifts on us all the time.

Imagine the church – and the world – treating Jesus and God that way. Not as miracle worker, or celestial dispensers of tchotchkes and trinkets and knickknacks and gadgets … but as our beloved Savior, Redeemer, Companion and Friend.

Imagine getting beyond the bread God gave in the desert to Israel, and beyond the bread Jesus gave on the far side of Galilee as the sole reason for chasing after Jesus and wanting to be near him.

Imagine entering a relationship with God and Jesus directly, not to get anything from it, just because of who they are. Imagine loving and enjoying them the way my parents wanted us to love my grandma … and maybe the way you love yours.

 Imagine being free of the distractions and anxious tendencies that cause us to buy and steal and acquire by any means, only to be let down any and all of our possessions after a short while.

Imagine too, that when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” we might answer, “Sir, give us this bread always” – so that our lives would be motivated and shaped, first and foremost, by a relationship of loyalty and commitment toward him.

Would such a transformation in ourselves cause treat him differently? And each other? I’d like to think so. I’d like to try it.

It seems possible. Anything is possible by the grace of God.

In the end, it’s not just about a person, or bread, or possessions. It’s about where we put our hope – in something that lasts, or something that doesn’t.

Will Willimon writes about a rabbi in England who died roughly a decade ago. His obituary told of his life, how as a young boy, he and his family were prisoners in a Nazi death camp.

They were given barely enough food to survive – some grain, a bit of stale crust of bread, a thin soup, and a few grams of lard every week.

Despite the harsh environment, the boy’s family continued to observe the Sabbath, the hallmark festival of Jewish life. Somehow managing to scrounge up a piece of candle and a little food each week, they said the Sabbath prayers and pronounced the Sabbath blessings.

One week, however, there was no candle. When evening came and the Sabbath was at hand, the boy’s father took some of their precious lard and molded it around a bit of string. Lighting the makeshift candle, he began to lead his family in their weekly devotions.

The son was enraged. When the prayers concluded he confronted his father. “How could you do that? How could you waste what little lard we have by making a candle? It’s the only food we have!”

His father answered, “Son, without food we can live for several days. Without hope, and without God, we cannot survive even one hour.” (Pulpit Resource, Aug. 6, 2000, p. 25)

Jesus said, “Do not work for food that perishes, but that endures for eternal life.”

I’d like to think we can do that as we come to the table … where bread waits, and beyond the bread, Jesus himself.