More Than Good Service--August 7, 2024
"Then Jesus said to them, 'Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' They said to him, 'Sir, give us this bread always.' 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'." [John 6:32-35]
If you have ever eaten a truly delicious meal out at a restaurant somewhere and have asked your server to pass along your "compliments to the chef," you are acknowledging that the person who carries the trays out from the kitchen wasn't really the one who prepared your food. The server's job is to wait tables. The chef is someone else, often unseen, who is doing the real preparation--probably with a whole staff including a sous-chef, station chefs, and other skilled hands. When you eat a splendid meal in a restaurant, you know there is someone else to thank behind the swinging butler doors who has actually made your food. The waiters and waitresses are important in their own way, but you know they aren't the ones commanding the saucepans. A good meal comes from a good chef, even if it also comes through the serving and by the hands of good wait staff.
Well, I mention this simply to say that Jesus is only pointing out the same here as he continues to make connections between himself and the story of the manna in the wilderness that fed the freed Israelites after their liberation from slavery. Everybody remembered the big hero of that story was Moses, the great leader who had confronted Pharaoh, parted the Sea, and led the people forward into the land beyond. He was remembered as the one who had been in charge when the Israelites ate the mysterious "manna" that fell like dew each morning for all the years they were emigrating from place to place in the desert. But Jesus points out that Moses was really more like a waiter in a restaurant than a chef in the kitchen. Moses had simply been the means through which God's provision was provided, like a server bringing out trays of entrees that had already been carefully and skillfully prepared in the kitchen. If you wanted to know who the real Source of the manna in the wilderness, the "bread from heaven," really was, Jesus points us toward none other than God. And his point is to say that it's really been God all along who provides for us, sustains us, and brings us to life. It is God who has taken on the responsibility of feeding a hungry world and filling us with good things. Moses did a fine job as a server, but he was never the chef.
That's important because God is still in the business of filling the hungry with good things and bringing people more fully to life. Even though Moses is gone and no longer able to offer any help these days (you could say his shift at the restaurant has ended, and he's off now), we are not without sustenance. The wondrous food of Israel's ancient memory didn't really come from Moses anyway, but came through Moses' assistance from the living God. God has always been the One who takes responsibility for feeding the hungry. Even now God still is the One who feeds us and fills us where we are starving, in order to bring us back to life.
And ultimately, Jesus says, God's way of bringing the world back to life is through him--through Jesus' own way of laying down his life and offering himself to us to be our sustenance. Moses couldn't do that--he couldn't give up his life to save anybody else, but had to keep surviving personally himself in order to keep leading the people forward. But Jesus is different. Jesus can offer up his life for the sake of the world, like he is the very bread from heaven in his own person, not merely the wait staff who bring it out on trays. And this is the critical difference Jesus makes. Jesus brings us directly into the presence of the living God, who has been the hidden chef behind the kitchen doors all along, and he also offers his life up like he is the very bread we need for our lives. This is Jesus' gift to us--and if we dare to believe him, his gift to the whole world--he offers up his whole life for the sake of ours. Less like he is paying a penalty we owe, or placating a bloodthirsty deity with self-sacrifice, but giving us his own life to feed us like bread to hungry mouths. This is why it is worth staking our lives on Jesus.
It is a lovely and fine thing to have a good server at a restaurant, but at most their job is to bring the food someone else has prepared to the table where hunger diners will eat it. Jesus, however, brings us both the loving care of the Master Chef and the actual sustenance of the Bread that renews our strength. Jesus gives us what we have most deeply needed all along. Jesus offers more than good table service--he gives us himself.
Lord Jesus, sustain us for the day ahead with your own gift of life.
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