Pastor’s Corner – August 4, 2024
Our Daily Bread and More
John 6:24-35
Last Sunday, I was given a copy of Our Daily Bread and More, a cookbook published sometime in the late 1980s by our church as a fundraiser. It has over two hundred pages and nineteen recipes for baking bread, of which three are banana nut bread, my favorite! It’s simple and easy to bake (according to the recipes and I’m awful at baking). I suspect the title of the cookbook came from our Lord’s Prayer … “give us this day our daily bread” and this more is to suggest other recipes for dishes we love and serve on our table. I do have to say though, I don’t see much garlic as part of the ingredients because in Korean dishes there is always garlic!
In our gospel reading for this coming Sunday, the crowd that gathered around Jesus were now looking for him again. Over five thousand were fed and wanted to make him a king. When the crowd finally found him, Jesus said to them basically, “I know why you are here looking for me, it’s because you were fed, but don’t work for bread that gets spoiled, but work for bread that endures for eternal life.” Then Jesus reveals himself, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty!” To work for bread that endures forever is to do the will of God and to follow Jesus. The bread or manna people received in the Exodus story came from God, not Moses. In short, the bread of heaven is from above and Jesus is the medium, one sent by God. The bread we work so hard for in our world will one day perish and we can’t take it with us to our grave.
What this means is that as a church we are in the business of baking bread that means something enduring to feed our world. This bread of compassion, love, hope and mercy comes from above, to do the will of God. And how do we know the will of God? We follow Jesus who shows us the heart of God. Come join us in worship this Sunday, as we share bread together, we experience the presence of Christ in our midst. Amen.
Pastor Dae