The bread basket.  Is there any better way for a restaurant to say, “Welcome!  We’re glad you’re here!” than with a bread basket?  Whether it’s garlic bread at an Italian restaurant, chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant, hushpuppies at a Southern seafood joint, or crusty rolls with creamy butter at a steakhouse, nothing makes me say, “Boy am I glad we went out to eat tonight!” like the bread basket!  To me the bread basket is a sign that, long before we got in the car to drive to the restaurant, someone was thinking about us, anticipating our arrival, and working behind the scenes to make the dough, let it rise, shape it, and bake it.  Bread is a sign that someone cares about my hunger and is preparing ahead of time to meet my needs.

Sometimes the bread tastes so good, I have to make a conscious effort to stop eating, so I don’t run out of room for my entrée!  For many of us, our biggest mealtime challenge is making sure we don’t eat too much.  But very few people in Jesus’ day had that worry. Most of the people Jesus surrounded himself with were poor.  Their biggest mealtime challenge—their day to day challenge–was making sure there was enough to eat.

The Roman officials, of course, knew how food insecure the people were.  So they made a show of giving out free food from time to time, in an effort to placate and influence the people.  The free food was a like a spoonful of sugar to make the unpleasant medicine go down.  People under Roman rule had a lot to be angry about.  Giving them food was a way to placate them and buy their cooperation.

I was surprised to read about this in my Gospel of John commentary, how the Romans used free food to keep the peace.  What a mean trick!  It was not a gracious sharing.  It was not food given with the people’s best interests at heart.  On some level the subjects of Roman rule probably knew that.  But they were under-resourced.  Scarcity was their reality.  So they took the food wherever they could get it.

Our gospel lesson today picks up just after Jesus has fed a large crowd of people, reportedly 5,000 men, plus we don’t know how many women and children, with five small barley loaves and two little fish.  Jesus turned this modest spread into such an abundance of food, that there were twelve baskets of leftover pieces of barley bread.  Talk about a sign that someone cares about our hunger!  We can imagine that every person who ate of that meal went home thinking, “Did you see that bread basket?  Actually there were twelve of them.  Boy am I glad we came out to hear Jesus tonight!”

Jesus wanted to be sure that the people could tell that this meal was a lot different from the typical Roman free food event.  Jesus called himself the bread of life and said he was nothing like the politically motivated meals they had experienced before. Jesus did not feed the people to try to convince them to feel better about a government that didn’t care whether they lived or died.  Jesus fed them to convince them to put their faith in the God whose primary goal is their abundant and eternal life.

Jesus’ teaching was so strange sounding, the people weren’t quite sure what to make of it.  The only thing they could compare it to was after the Passover, when Moses led the Hebrew people out of slavery, wandering in the dessert for 40 years before arriving in the Promised Land.  During that important period in Jewish history, every morning, except the Sabbath, God provided a bread basket of sorts:  manna, which the people gathered up from the ground and ate.  Manna was legendary stuff for the Jewish people.  But Jesus was standing in front of them today, and the food he had given for them was not manna.  They wanted to know, Jesus, who are you?  Are you a prophet like Moses who gave us bread from heaven?  Jesus says no, I’m not like Moses.  I’m not a mediator, the go-between who helps you get the bread from heaven.  I myself am the true bread from heaven.

Wow.  We can see why the people got upset.  John says that Jesus’ Jewish audience began to grumble and take offense at Jesus saying, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”  They pointed out, isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose parents we know?  How can he say, “I came down from heaven?”  He was born in Bethlehem.  He was raised in Nazareth.  He didn’t come from heaven.  He came from regular people we know, warts and all!  Who is he to claim he is so special?

All of us in worship today are here because we believe Jesus is, indeed, special.  But we can see how shocking that would have been for the people who knew him from the neighborhood!  Last week, when we talked about Jesus describing himself by saying, “I am the light of the world”, we saw how those words connect Jesus to the very beginning of time.  He was telling his Jewish audience that he is the light, the divine energy that created the world.  As we look at this week’s statement, “I am the bread of life”, Jesus is connecting himself with the divine energy that sustains all of creation.  He is drawing a contrast between the bread he offers—bread that leads to eternal life—and that of the Romans—bread that suckers the Israelites into submitting to an exploitative regime.  He’s drawing a contrast between the bread he is—a sign of God’s welcome, God’s planning and provision for our eternal needs—and the manna, also given by God, but with a much shorter shelf life.  These ideas were hard for the people to accept.  I am thankful that John, as he wrote his gospel, didn’t gloss over how difficult it was for the people in Jesus’ audience to truly believe.  It makes me feel better about the times I have trouble trusting!

I think that’s part of why such a big deal was made of the twelve baskets of leftover bread.  The bread basket at a restaurant is a sign of welcome, but it is also a sign of abundance.  It sends a message, “There will be plenty of food here for you.  You will get your money’s worth.  You will get your fill.”  The twelve baskets of leftovers from this miracle feeding are sending a similar message.  With God, you will never be under-resourced.  You will never be hungry.  Because there is plenty of grace for you.  There is plenty of love for you.  You will get your money’s worth!  You will get your fill.  Those twelve baskets of leftovers are meant to reassure us, that Christ is love enough for all of us.

We all need for reassurance.  Food insecurity is an issue for some families in our area—we learned in July that the Media Food Pantry serves 160 families a week!  That is a significant number of people.  But I think an even more significant number of people need reassurance about life in general.  Given all of our challenges, is there really “enough” in Christ for me?  For all of us?  Last Sunday morning, I woke up early from a dream, that I was being buried alive.  I knew immediately what this dream was telling me—that I have too much on my plate right now, that I have to many items on my to-do list.  I felt great anxiety about my ability to handle all the tasks that need doing right now.  So I did something I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly done in church before:  I asked for help for me.  Oh, I’ve asked for help lots of times in church: sign up for this event, volunteer at that, help fill these openings.  But last Sunday I straight up asked for me.  And guess what?  People said yes!  Before worship last week, I ked from the parsonage to the church feeling anxious and alone. I felt like all I had were five small barley loaves and two little fish to feed a large crowd.  But by asking for help, and people responding, I experienced abundance.  Even though I hadn’t eaten in several hours, I walked home after church feeling as if I had a fully belly, nourished and ready for the busy days ahead.

A full belly feeling.  Do you think, by calling himself the true bread from heaven, that is the exact feeling Jesus wants is to feel?  In her book, “Freeing Jesus”, Diana Butler Bass tells of a time when her pre-school aged daughter was fixated on the question, “Where does Jesus live?”  Diana was raised Methodist, so she told their daughter, Jesus lives in your heart.  Diana’s husband was raised Presbyterian, so he told their daughter, Jesus lives in heaven.  Both of these are good answers!  We call the idea that Jesus lives in heaven, “transcendence”.  God is “out there”, or “up there”, or from beyond.  Jesus alluded to this when he called himself the light of the world.  Something we can’t quite grasp, someone so much bigger and awesome than us.

The idea that Jesus lives in our hearts is an example of “immanence”.  God is close by and speaks directly to us and even small enough to fit inside of us!  Our Methodist heritage is big on immanence.  Diana Butler Bass did not explain these two words, transcendence and immanence to her daughter.  We may never have heard them before either.  But we know from our own experience, God is both out there and in here.  Beyond, and within.  Mystery, and practicality.  We know this paradox as well as we know our own selves.

Diana Butler Bass wrote that for a month, her daughter just couldn’t let the question go.  She asked everyone she met, “Where does Jesus live?”  Finally, after considering all the grown-up answers to her question, she turned to her mother one Sunday morning following Communion and announced, “Mama, Jesus isn’t in my heart. He’s in my tummy!”  Out of the mouths of babes, right?  Maybe what Jesus wants more than anything is for us to ingest, digest, and metabolize the truth of his being.  Maybe what Jesus wants more than anything is for us to have a belly full of his life.

The early church struggled with this image of Jesus as the bread of life.  Outsiders mocked them and called them cannibals.  Insiders wondered, what is this life all about?  It raises the question, why would Jesus give us such a provocative, even controversial image of himself?  What does he want us to see, as we look again and again, at this word picture?

What comes to mind for me today is the bread basket, a symbol of God’s prevenient grace, evidence of how God plans ahead and anticipates our needs, and is already at work feeding us because God understands our hunger better than anyone. Free food, not given to trick us or manipulate us or placate like the Romans offered.  But a table set before us, in the presence of our enemies, to fill us forever.  As we ponder this “I am” statement, let’s once again ask God to help us see things as they really are.  To see God’s abundant mercy, God’s generous provision, God’s faithful filling.  Can we see things as they really are, and leave here with a full belly feeling, with trust renewed, and hope restored?  The bread basket is proof that God sees our hunger, knows our needs, and is already on the job, working so we can be filled forever.  Amen.