The True (and only) Bread from Heaven

5 August 2018 – 11^th Sunday of Pentecost 

Numbers 21:1-9; John 6:26-35

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”  John 3:14

The incident recorded in Numbers 21 was not the first time the Israelites complained about the manna, but it does seem to be the first point at which they spoke so aggressively against it.  In Numbers 11 the complaint was, “There is nothing but manna”; but in Numbers 21 they finally crossed the line: “We HATE this horrible manna!”

There is nothing quite like having a basic need met but then deciding that’s no longer good enough, huh?

Years ago I worked for a trucking company in Little Rock; and though I was making a very good salary, the work days were long and often miserable because the environment was downright toxic.  In 1999 I had also begun my first appointment as a lay speaker to a small church outside of Conway.  

I would sometimes take the long way home from Little Rock to Conway via Wye Mountain and come out in Bigelow where this little church was.  One evening I was driving home the back way and decided to stop at the church for a little quiet time.  It had been an especially challenging day at work, and I needed to figure out how to clear my head.

In the quiet of the church with only the hissing of the gas heater, I opened my Bible randomly and found myself reading from Numbers 11.  I got stuck on vss 4-6: “The Israelites wept and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat!  We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at’.”

Moses had overheard the complaints and then went to The Lord, effectively saying to The Lord, “Just kill me now!  These people are more than I can handle!”  But The Lord told Moses to gather the elders so they could all hear The Lord at the same time when He declared they would get their precious meat – so much so that they will nearly choke on it to the point of it becoming “loathsome” to them (vs 20) … because they had all they needed – but – their personal preferences were not being met.  And they were ready to give up and go back.

The Lord was sustaining them on their wilderness journey with the manna; but they were deciding for themselves not only that this True Gift was no longer good enough for them, they also were falsely and selectively remembering the “good ol’ days” in Egypt when they were fed like livestock.  They had forgotten how they had cried out to The Lord under the burden of their cruel servitude.  They only remembered the food.

What struck me in my own bitter moment was my paycheck, my manna.  It was sustaining my family, but the journey (the work week) was sometimes more than I could bear to the point that I was not even grateful for the paycheck.  I was being given all I needed, but it was no longer good enough.  I felt like I was “choking” on it all.

Though I certainly experienced a profound moment of clarity that evening in that quiet church, it was not long before I had forgotten that moment.  I had been given clarity in being reminded I had all I needed.  I knew what I needed to do, and I knew I should not look a gift horse in the mouth; and yet, like the Israelites, I had moved from the disgust of chapter 11 to the utter disdain of chapter 21 in only a few short years.  Soon what I had held in such contempt disappeared completely.  I got laid off a few months before the company went under. 

Even then, I was luckier than many of my former co-workers.  I got severance because I had been with that company nearly twenty years, but those who got caught up in the final moments were lucky to have gotten their final paycheck.

It was ugly, and I was in touch with several co-workers who were scrambling at the end – right before Christmas!  And the funny thing?  The really funny thing??  I was still angry and bitter for having gotten laid off even while serving a full-time appointment in Magnolia (more manna)!  I had invested so much with this company and had often gone way “above and beyond” because of my personal ambition.  I could not – would not – see that The Lord was sustaining me, had sustained me, had led me.  All I had to do was connect the dots.

Sometimes we don’t get our preference and, thus, cannot see our basic needs are met.  Griping and complaining do not help.  Trying to reach into the past with false or incomplete memories does not help.  In fact, as we learned from the Israelites, it only angers The Lord because He has seen to our most basic needs, but what we’ve been given in abundance is somehow no longer good enough.  

We seem happy – HAPPY – to complain when, though we have plenty of bread, we are unsatisfied with the kind of bread.  We may sometimes even feel cheated and less-than-filled only because the bread, though plentiful, is not to our liking.  We lose sight of what is important.

The True Bread of Life is The Eternal Word which became flesh.  He is our our ONLY sustenance who feeds us not only in this life, but will in the Life to Come.  We often cannot see that because we have filled our heads with false hopes and misleading personal desires because we are too focused on ourselves and not at all on Him.   Sometimes even in worship!

Those who focus always on Him and His Way will always have enough; but if we focus too much on the kind of bread we’re being given and forget why we’re being fed in the first place, we will lose our way.  And we will never be satisfied.

We must be learn to be grateful for every moment we are being sustained, and we must never forget that He alone is the True Bread from Heaven sent to sustain us for however long the journey may last.  Lift Him up, and He will raise us up!  Amen.