Good Shepherd Lutheran

True Bread
The feast is spread out, the invitation is given, and the table is right in front of us. So, what stops us from sharing in the True Bread that gives us spiritual life? Sometimes it’s our life circumstances that are the stumbling blocks. But sometimes it’s just the feeling that we’re not worthy. Many of us mistakenly think that we’re too flawed and too sinful to receive the bread of life and the cup of hope.
But the feast is here. We’re invited. And in spite of our faults, in spite of our misgivings, we’re worthy to receive the abundance of God’s love and grace. But in order to receive it, we have to open ourselves to the gift. We have to make the effort to come to the table. We have to believe in the power of the meal, the cup, and the Word. We have to believe we’re worthy of the feast. And more importantly, we have to understand the nature of the feast.
Jesus came offering a new kind of bread. One that doesn’t spoil, one that isn’t temporary, one that nourishes perpetually and lasts forever. A bread that sustains relationships and bolsters hope.
Like starving children with swollen bellies, many people live as if they’re simply waiting to die. They live lives of malnourished separation. Separated from themselves. Separated from family and loved ones. Separated from parents, or children, or a spouse. Or separated from an old friend after an old argument. But especially they’re separated from God. Hopelessness breeds separation and separation inevitably starves the souls of human beings.
There are all kinds of reasons people become separated from one another and from God. Sin is certainly the biggest reason, but the point is that none of us are immune to broken relationships. And yet relationships are as necessary for life as bread.
God knows how fragile our relationships are, how fragile our very lives are, and God knows that we need to be continually fed. That’s why God sends us bread from heaven in the person of Jesus Christ.
He comes as the Bread of Life. As nourishment for the separated, the sickly and the lonely. We come to taste the hope, and peace, and unconditional love that is Jesus Christ. And we also come to realize, maybe for the first time, that the very presence of this bread means that there’s no disagreement, no argument, or no sin big enough to keep God from loving us.
This bread is not only an invitation to life, it is life. This bread gives us life because it’s our hope. It’s the very life of God made flesh in our human world.
Wherever love triumphs over human sinfulness, separation, and hopelessness, that’s where the Bread of Life is. That’s where True Bread is. It’s God’s own life given to us to share in eternal life.