“So much better than day-old Bread” by Pastor Nate

In the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John there is this crowd
of people who follow Jesus to Capernaum and when they find him Jesus talks with
them about the work that God is calling them to do and their response is:

What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see
it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31 Our ancestors
ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from
heaven to eat.’”

Here’s the thing you need to know about this group
though.  They are hinting at something
else here with their statement.  They
actually aren’t that interested in Jesus performing a sign so that they can be
reassured and commit their lives to the Mission of God.  No.
They are actually just trying to coax Jesus into giving them a free
meal.

Earlier in John chapter 6, Jesus miraculously feeds 5,000
people and this group that followed him to Capernaum, the ones asking about manna
in the wilderness? They were part of that 5,000!  They are following Jesus around because they
want more miraculous bread and they aren’t being at all subtle about your hopes
and intentions.

Sometimes in our walk of faith, we start thinking like this
group of people.  We start longing for
the day-old bread that God once provided. We look to the past and talk about
how great it once was and we try and find ways to get back to it.  In not-so-subtle ways we’ll ask God to return
us to the “miraculous” days of yore.

Here’s the problem with this type of thinking – it focuses
on the substance of the miracle and not the one who brought the miracle about.

When that group ask Jesus for some more bread, Jesus responded
by saying “I am the bread of life.”  Jesus
was trying to remind the group that the meal they had miraculously experienced
wasn’t the point, it was His love and his presence in the world that truly
matter.

When we think about the “glory days” of our church or the “mountain
top” moments of our faith, they are important, but only because of what they reveal
to us about God.  The loving, ever-present
God who authored those glory days and mountain top moments should be our focus.

If our attention is only on the miraculous moments of the
past then we are forgetting Jesus.  We
are looking for day-old bread when The Bread of Life is still with us and guiding
us into a new moment.