Jesus said to them, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
My dad and his brother Ken were the second set of twins born to my grandmother, Alma Marie Plante Bellefeuille. John and Martin hadn’t survived. Nor had an unnamed girl. But my dad and uncle did, along with seven other children. I remember doing the math and realizing that my grandma gave birth to 12 babies over 21 years. Twenty-one years of cloth diapers, late night feedings, and croup.
Grandma died in 1982 at the age of 82, her spine bent nearly in half from osteoporosis, a common malady among fine boned women bearing so many babies in poverty. She died with the medals of saints pinned to her pajamas and prayer cards stacked next to her bed. She died in the sure and certain hope of life eternal with God whom she loved without reservation.
My dad loved to tell stories about growing up in that crowded house. My grandpa worked only half time so there was never enough money. Like many of your grandmas, mine had a huge garden and several apple trees. She had both a modern range and the original wood-burning stove in her kitchen. Both were in constant use, something always being baked, roasted, boiled or canned. My dad used to say about supper time: “There was enough but never plenty.” They never missed a meal, but they never got seconds.
When my dad graduated from high school and entered the Air Force, he weighed 145 pounds. He said the most marvelous part of military service was three meals a day, all he could eat. And he ate. He gained 35 pounds his first year.
Grandma always shows up for me in stories that connect food to God.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
I think about Grandma who literally gave her flesh for the life of 12 children. And her confidence in the bread that came down from heaven. She had so little. She worked so hard. She fed those surviving kids. Widowed early, she lived alone for over 20 years. And still her faith never faltered.
She was a devout Catholic. Having been raised Catholic myself, I understood the church’s position on many things, which, in those days, wasn’t exactly flexible. But Grandma revealed something of her God-shaped heart when she made the trip by bus from Callaway to Eau Claire where we were living at the time.
I was 17. My friend Amy had become pregnant over the summer. I was stunned and confused by the whole thing and eager to tell my grandma, this stalwart doyenne of the faith, praying constantly as she fingered the rosary she always kept in the pocket of her apron. I needed to know what she thought.
Her response? “Well, Chris, people do make mistakes.”
That’s it. No shock. No dismay. No righteous judgment. Only grace, understanding, acceptance and forgiveness.
Something sparked in me that day. After all these years, I think it was hope. Grandma showed me a side of the Christian faith that had not yet been revealed to me. Sure, my parents were forgiving but I never connected that with the religious experience of my childhood spent in weekly catechism. Grandma sparked hope inside me. Hope that we could get it wrong and still love God and be loved by God.
Hope helped make sense of my grandma trudging day by day to worship a God who seemed never to have lifted the burden of poverty from her narrow shoulders. Hope made sense of her life in that house which poverty eventually consumed, shingle by shingle, just as osteoporosis consumed her spine. Hope made sense of her joy in the radiant painting of Mary that shone down from the wall in a house with so few possessions.
Hope is a powerful legacy for a grandmother to leave her granddaughter.
Perhaps you are familiar with The Hunger Games movies? They are based on a trio of dystopian novels by Suzanne Collins. The central plot point is a national competition to the death, staged for the salacious pleasure and revenge of the capital. The combatants are children between the ages of 12 and 18. Only one child survives the competition. Only one “wins.”
In the first movie, evil President Coriolanus Snow is talking to one of his henchmen. He asks him: “Do you know why we have a winner? Hope. Hope is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it is contained. So contain it.”
Now imagine the days following Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the 5,000. Can you imagine the religious leaders, standing in the back of the crowd, watching the people respond to Jesus? Can you imagine them saying the same thing? A little hope is fine. It keeps people’s head up, keeps them moving forward, working, paying taxes.
But too much hope? More than a spark? Dangerous. Threatening. Hope makes people hard to control, fear becomes a useless weapon in the face of too much hope.
What Jesus fed the people was hope. And not just a spark. Jesus offered hope that filled their bellies and left twelve baskets brimming. Hope spilling down the hillside.
Sure, the people didn’t quite get it. They keep following Jesus for more actual bread. And Jesus is trying to help them understand that what he fed them was hope, truth, possibility. Jesus even gets a little bit testy with them.
“Look, this isn’t about flour, water, salt, and yeast. Even those who got manna in the wilderness eventually died. What I am offering you is the bread of life, my body, my love, my sacrifice, my willingness to shoulder the mantel of evil that is oppressing you. I am offering you the hope of liberation.”
“Just as God liberated you from Pharaoh. Not a spark of liberation but a thundering crowded exodus. Just as God fed you with water and manna and quail in the wilderness. Not just a spark of nourishment but plenty. Just as God brought you back from exile to flourish and multiply.”
“So will I, the bread of life, do more than sustain you for today. I am the bread of eternal life. Not a spark giving you hope for a faraway someday. But hope that rises up in you like yeast on fire. Stirring new life in you, eternal life as a daily journey of hope we make together.”
Hope is dangerous. Because no matter how many vertebrae crack with the effort of enduring, this hope rises up to eternal life. This hope is Christ’s life in you, Christ’s gift to you, Hope is God’s Spirit connecting with our spirit and coming alive in us as the bread that nourishes eternally.
I heard a great question this week: “What spiritual food are we feeding each other?”
We can take this passage from John, carve it up and plate it as a complex codex of how to get to Jesus and who gets left behind. Or we can take Jesus at his word and trust that this abundant, yeasty bread of life, offered up in his flesh, is enough to feed everyone with baskets left over.
The spiritual food that sustained my grandma was hope, hope burning unquenched because she returned time and again to the table where it was offered up with faithful hands.
The spiritual food that sustained my dad was hope, hope burning unquenched because he learned at his mother’s knee, he saw her forge ahead through difficulty, he saw her put on her hat and gloves and make her way to church every single day before breakfast, he saw her lips moving through the rosary as she sauteed pork for her meat pie, he watched and helped in those last days as she moved the pins of the saints from her apron to her pajamas and back again.
My grandma fed my dad a steady spiritual diet of hope. Hope in Christ. Hope in eternity. Hope in a God that never abandoned her. And my dad fed me.
And we, the body of Christ, we feed each other—returning to the living Word that nourishes, passing bread and wine from hand to hand in hospitality that is both cosmic and deeply personal. We feed one another the reminder of the water in which we are freshly washed day by day. We feed each other and offer to our neighbors a spiritual food that shores up our bones, lifts our hearts, and joins our hands. That dangerous hope—wielded in the name of Jesus—is life for the world.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Pastor Chris
