The bread-maker Allinson often have a slogan in their advert –

BREAD WITH NO’WT TAKEN OUT

suggesting, of course, that if you eat Allinson's bread you are getting the real thing with all the goodness of freshly home-baked bread using the finest materials.  I happen to think Allinson's aren’t bad as far as bread-making goes and I am happy to use their flour in my bread -maker.  The same sadly doesn’t apply to some of the others.

Yesterday I went shopping and out of the great array of loaves on the Tesco shelves I selected one known as the Kingsmill 50/50 It promises to give you 50% of the wholegrain you are supposed to need everyday.  It also assures us that ‘kids’ will love it.  So what does it contain?  Well, far from ‘Bread with no’wt taken out’ you get a surprising number of added ingredients.  There is, of course wheat flour (30% ) and Wholemeal Wheat Flour (30%) – hence the name – 50/50 but it’s the other 40% that worries me.  There is water and yeast which you would expect but also Soya Flour, Salt, Fermented Wheat starch; Vinegar!; Emulsifiers E471 and E472e; Vegetable fat; Flour Treatment Agent and Asorbic acid.  Mmm! sounds delicious.

It does come pre-packaged in a nice plastic container and they have kindly cut off the crust, thus removing any semblance of it looking like real bread which at least is honest but I do doubt that their slogan ‘Love Bread, Love Kingsmill’ could ever be true.

After my visit to Tesco’s, I popped into ‘Belgique’ and bought a ‘Spelt’ loaf – a bread made with a speciality Wheat.  It looks like bread, it smells like bread and yes, it tastes like bread.  Had I not been bringing it here this morning, I would have cut off a piece and enjoyed the texture, taste and smell of real bread.  It took a great deal of will-power to resist the temptation.  It reminded me of my childhood visits to Mr Deakin’s baker’s shop.

Mr Deakin would get up at 5am every morning  and fired his ovens long before we got out of bed.  We could see into the back of his shop where the ovens baked the bread.   The bread that he made smelt and tasted as real bread should.  It was still warm as we took it home and when we cut into it, it was rough and crusty, yet yielding if we pressed it.  It gave off a rich, comfortable smell and it whetted the appetite.

Of course, some of you make your own bread – either using a bread-maker or the time-honoured method of kneading and baking.  In both cases, you control the ingredients that go into it and, like the baker of old, you  produce bread which really is wonderful, crusty, tasty.

The difference between the two loaves I have shown you this morning is a good illustration of today’s gospel where Jesus claims to be the Bread of Life. 

To re-cap on last week’s Gospel, the crowd who were seeking out Jesus had just been fed in a miracle which gave food to five thousand people using just five barley loaves and two fish.  Now that’s a pretty impressive miracle, you’ll admit, and, hardly surprisingly they wanted more of it.   This crowd is so transparent!  They want something for nothing.  A lot of our society operates like that and if you think I’m getting at those who live at the bottom of the pile in our Society, let me remind you that dividends paid to shareholders is really on the same level.  For a modest outlay we want a big pay out.  Something for nothing.

All four Gospel accounts tell us of this miracle with slightly differing detail but John’s Gospel always takes things that bit further.  John always uses incidents that happen around Jesus to point us to a deeper meaning and the story of the feeding of the 5,000 is no different.  The crowd finally caught up with Jesus who had travelled a bit of a distance from them.  They were behaving like people who hear there is cheap petrol in Harlow and rush off in their cars to get some!  What they actually got was a bit of profound teaching.  They got the God-bit.  Jesus saw through their motives for seeking them out but he didn’t despise them for it.  What he did was what he always does – he made them look wider.  He opened up their vision.

“You are looking for me because you think I’ll keep feeding you” he seems to say, “but actually I can give you better food than that.”

They didn’t really understand what he was on about and what followed was a series of questions and answers through which Jesus tried to show them that it was belief in him that would give them the real food they needed – food that would nourish the soul.

What he was trying to do was to show people that God doesn’t just provide for our material needs but far more importantly, he sees to our spiritual needs.  To do this he doesn’t perform miracles to order.  It’s really quite laughable that the crowd demanded yet another sign from Jesus when they had just taken part in his feeding of the lot of them with meagre means.

Whether they understood this is debatable because there is something rather pathetic about their request that Jesus should give them the bread always, though this request is rooted in the knowledge they had of their faith story – that when the Israelites were going to the Promised Land , following materialistic complaints, God fed them manna from heaven.  They still seem set on getting cheap food to fill their bellies as God gave to their ancestors.  So Jesus concludes with one of his great ‘I Am’ statements.  There are 7 of them in St. John’s Gospel and each one is a claim to be God because he is using the exact words that God used with Moses when Moses asked him who He was. “I am, who I am” God had replied.   This time Jesus says that it is HE who is the Bread of Life and only when they feed off him will they truly never hunger and thirst again.

The Christian Church has always understood this saying to be linked with the Eucharist because at the heart of the Eucharist is the giving of bread which, blessed by Christ, becomes spiritually his body which feeds us.  In fact, this is the continuous miracle following on from the feeding of the 5,000.  By means of slivers of bread Jesus feeds millions week after week, day after day.  And it is the food for our souls which we need for our spiritual journey through life to God’s Promised Land of Eternity.

The Crowd missed this essential point in their quest for bread.  Given the choice of bread which satisfied immediate hunger and bread which endures for eternal life they went for the first.  The real challenge of this Gospel incident is that Jesus asks us to make a choice.  Do we go for the real thing or the cheap thing?  Processed bread or real bread.  That’s the stark choice which faced the crowds when challenged by Jesus and it is the stark choice we face.  We can either choose Jesus and live our lives in a way that shows we have made that choice, or we can choose other ways to try and fulfil our hunger and our thirst for meaning.

The trouble with these lesser things – what we might call the lure of worldliness, or material gain, of self-centred gratification, of our own immediate wants is that they will always leave us hungry. Nothing ever really satisfies.  Life without God is ultimately meaningless.

I am saddened sometimes when taking a funeral to realise that no matter how people have tried to fill their lives, if they have never had a relationship with God there has really been no point to their lives.  I struggle to make some sense of it because the only hope I can give is hope in the living God whom they have apparently rejected.  I can only hope for God’s mercy for them but I can’t help feeling that they missed out on something rather wonderful.  How much easier it is when a Christian dies.  There is a joyfulness mixed in with the sadness and a sense that though we shall miss them they have really lived a full and rich life close to God that it is obvious where they have gone and who they are with.

What Jesus is offering is an amazing life which is shot through with the joy of eternity.  The Real Bread is so much better.

And how do we know we are on the right track?  How do we know that we are in touch with Jesus and are fed by his living bread?  Or to use the question put to Jesus by the crowd:

What must we do to perform the works of God?

We could start by making sure that the prayer we shall say at the end of today’s service isn’t just a saying of words but rather a plan for action.

Those who are truly seeking Jesus as their spiritual food are people whose hands are dedicated to his service; whose ears are deaf to the clamour, dispute and lure of the world and who are listening to God’s voice in Scripture and in prayer.  Our tongues which sing God’s praises must not lash out at others, or disparage them, or gossip about them or lie.  We must use our voices to speak God’s words to others.  Our eyes must shine with hope and love as we seek to be Christ to others and see Christ in them; and our bodies, refreshed and renewed by Christ’s body should be both temples of the Spirit and filled with the joy and vibrancy and capriciousness that we see in Christ.  And finally – we are to live our life as an act of Glory to God who is eternally glorious.

Our Lord’s desire for us is to Choose Life and be fed by His Life.  The opposite of that choice is lives that are hungry and empty and there will be  a starvation of the soul which will ultimately kill it. It’s as stark as that.

(hold up the bread)

This bread?  or This bread?   The choice is yours.