A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Sunday 1 August 2021 by Revd Harry Ching.

The ideogrammic components of the word being fed 飽 食 eat + 包bread.

Taiwanese Director- Ang Lee‘s earlier works Wedding banquet (1993) and 1994’s ‘ Eat, drink, men, women’ were amongst the few films that we were made to watch in my seminarian days for the Pastoral theology module in Hong Kong. Both excellent story lines (the context is still relevant to our world 28 years later) that explored many aspects of intercultural conflicts and human relationships in New York and Taipei of our interconnected world. Being at a wedding banquet or an important family meal at home were not quality of the main course, but it is like in the film plot, the human relationships and social/ cultural expectations each characters need to confront or overcome. Nevertheless, good food smooths up the conversation or alleviate the deadlock created by race/ class /gender. People from all walks of life cross paths are invited to take part, Eating at home, an identity of a household eating at wedding banquet/ Funeral wakes or Baptism/Christening parties, a community and personal network of relative and friends that are part of the ‘head table’s‘ personal lives.

“The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ to serve the soul into lasting life”. “

We still get to hear it, but only once in our Eucharist rather than to every communicants. When we come forward to receive the body of Christ in the waver form, we are not looking for the earthly taste of the piece of bread or the strength of the liquor contained in the chalice, but the invisible grace offered in the physical substance in bread and wine. The bread of life in Christ Jesus, this is s bread that has no allergy warning, even if you are gluten intolerant. It has no expiry date that might harm in the stomach but instead cruel the pain/sustain in the soul.

This week’s latter part of Chapter 6 in John‘s Gospel evolved from a physical need into a spiritual need or perhaps something beyond the plain line from ’give us this day our bread‘ from the Lord’s prayer. After the Feeding of 5000, Jesus was confronted by earthly driven people who are looking for signs to prove that Jesus was the quick fixes for their earthly desires or a figure head to overthrow the oppression of the Roman occupation in Palestine. However, the incarnation of God is not purposed to stage an earthly revolution but in the hearts of all those living in 1st Century Palestine. Spiritual food that endures beyond the earthly thirst and hunger that sustain us in the spiritual life to prevent us, as Paul put it (in today’s epistle) from trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.

In much of St John’s Gospel-“Jesus points us to that other life, beyond what we can see and touch. He points our hearts and our minds to the realm of God his Father, the dimension of the Spirit in which we live, and that surrounds us, invisibly, everywhere. Another great hymn: ‘Seek ye first seek the Kingdom of God’, is what Jesus tells those who are enquirers as well as his disciples. Focus on life eternal, not on our needs in this life. These are difficult words of Jesus. We are so used to focusing on our life at present, that God and his world are often only the periphery in our life, or at the dessert hour but not the main course.

As Christians, we put aside our difference to come forward to receive the bread of life. As we gather in church to worship each time: We are in union with Christ. To bring out the true meaning of the gospel in trust and grace help others to see the Gospel of Christ with spiritual manna (in our parish and beyond) sustain one another.

We believe in Lord Jesus Christ is of vital importance because God offers himself as our bread. We are to believe in him and receive him in order to have eternal life. God offers his flesh as means for us to grasp eternity. St Paul spoke of the hardness of hard of the gentiles, in the context writes to his church in Ephesus and about their lifestyle of sensuality and greed. Their life centered on the immediate gains in contrast to the lifestyle and commitment that church instituted.

The early church doctrine discerned a specific teaching on Christology. The Apostles had taught them, dogmatically, theologically the identity of Jesus. St Paul in his writing reiterate : ‘you were taught in him’. To know who he is, is of great importance as, in the words of Paul, ‘the truth is in Jesus’. (Eph 4:20-21). The early Church did not present Jesus as a prophet (as in other Abrahamic faiths) who spoke words of wisdom, good words, and truth about God. Our church today presents Jesus Christ as Truth himself. As the incarnation of Truth- God himself. Just as Jesus does only not offer us bread that gives us eternal life. He says that he himself indeed the bread of life. He does not give a sign, he is the sign. He is the Bread that God gave from heaven for the eternal salvation of mankind- the real manna. His incarnation, the coming of the son of God to this world on earth, it is the message that Church proclaims.

Jesus, the son of God – born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who died on a cross and who rose on the third day, we meet with God; looking him in the Eucharist– transfers us into the world of God, into eternity. Beyond the law offers in Judaism or a dictation in Islam. In our Christian faith, God came himself. And he gave himself to die; he became our bread, to give us eternal life.

The idea that Jesus is like festive icon, whether it is the Santa Claus or ‘Choi Sun’ (the Chinese god of wealth in Chinese folk religion) that he gives us all we want, health and wealth, is not only untrue, it is also very unpastoral; What a miserable message this is for the millions and millions of suffering people in the world. For hungry people, for sick people, people who have stress in their business, who have family problems, people who are depressed… It sends them into a dark night by telling them that there must be something wrong with them. But we have the good news in Jesus Christ, the son of God, the bread of life.

God came down to be with us all in our hardest of times. To be with you, and me, in our problems, and failures, and sadness’s. He does not promise to change our circumstances now, but he promises to be with us, the word made flesh. What comfort that God offers himself in bread and wine to be part of our lives, to sustain us, to bless us with communion with Him – in the midst of our earthly problems of whatever sort they are.

And he gives us the gift of eternal life, his presence in our hearts and souls, and being with him in his eternal Kingdom as well, where all tears will be wiped from our eyes, and no more death, no mourning, no crying, no pain, for then – finally, these things will have passed away (cf. Rev 21:4)

“Land me safe on Canaan’s side:

Songs of praises, songs of praises,

I will ever give to thee.

Amen