Did you hear what the Apostle wrote to the Ephesians in the Epistle appointed for today?  I mean the part where he says,

you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart . . .

Now, where have we heard about that before?  Where have we heard about hardness of heart?  . . . Well, it was the point of the Gospel Lesson for last Sunday, wasn’t it?  . . . The disciples of Jesus saw Him walking on the water toward them, and it became simply one more thing they could not deal with; . . . it was one more thing to make them afraid.  And the reason for this, Saint Mark tells us, is that “they did not understand about the loaves [with which Jesus fed five thousand people]; . . . they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”  . . . In other words, Saint Mark uses the reaction of the disciples to Jesus walking on the water; . . . Saint Mark uses the fear of the disciples to illustrate how a careless Christian life can be; . . . to illustrate how a human life is . . . when it is lived without understanding.  . . . And so, the Apostle, learning from Mark; . . . the Apostle writes to the Church at Ephesus exhorting them not to live as profane persons do, “alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”

    Because the disciples in the boat did not understand Who it was that blessed and broke the loaves to feed five thousand men, . . . their hearts denied that anyone but something evil had the power to walk to them across the water, and so, they succumbed to fear; . . . because profane humanity does not understand the grace that the Lord God Almighty gives to sanctify human life and make it holy, pure, and balanced, . . . they succumb to adultery and mean spiritedness of every kind.

    And because this is a very crucial issue in the Christian life; . . . because this is one of the chief things we are commissioned by Jesus to help everyone around us understand:  . . . that the power and grace of God is real and does change lives if we will but open our hearts and understand and not shut God out by denying the reality of what is miraculous; . . . because this is a very crucial issue, that humanity understand about the loaves and not succumb to fear, . . . the Prayerbook Lectionary -- the sequence of Lessons appointed for each Sunday; . . . the Prayerbook Lectionary interrupts Mark’s Gospel . . . and asks us to hear, instead, Christ’s Bread of Life Discourse as it is preserved in the Sixth Chapter of Saint John’s Gospel.

    In John’s Gospel it is the day after Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish and then walked across the water to join His disciples who had gone ahead of Him, just as Jesus did in Mark’s Gospel.  It is the day after Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, . . . and some of the crowd that Jesus had fed . . . have followed Him, John tells us.  Now what sort of people would have the leisure to follow Jesus around the countryside, do you think?  Well, men who were unemployed, perhaps?  Men who had lost their jobs in the hard economic times of Jesus’ day.  Perhaps there were men in the crowd who had lost their businesses; . . . shopkeepers and craftsmen who had been taxed into poverty by ruthless Roman monetary policies.  Perhaps some of the people who followed Jesus were also women with children in tow; . . . women who were houseless (and breadless) also because of Roman economics.  . . . Anyhow, Jesus sees many of the people he had talked with yesterday, and He says to them, “You know, you mustn’t follow me around because you ate your fill of bread yesterday.  Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures for eternal life.”  . . . Jesus doesn’t tell the crowd that God plans to improve their lives (economic recovery and health care for everyone).  Jesus says that it is the Father’s purpose that human life be different; that humanity assume a new identity, . . . an identity which has God as its object and not food or homes or jobs; . . . an identity that is sacred . . . and sanctifies everything it touches.  . . . The crowd asks Jesus what they must do to have such an identity.  And Jesus tells them, “The work of God is that you believe in him whom he has sent.”  . . . That you believe in Jesus.

    Now, let’s stop right there.  This is where a lot of people’s hearts become hardened because they don’t understand.  So I want to be very clear about what Jesus means when He says that you must believe in Him.  . . . Jesus does not require you to believe all the facts that you have been told about Him.  You remain the same whether you believe them or not.  Some three hundred fifty years ago Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wisely observed in his Homily on Faith that even devils believe that Jesus is the Son of God; . . . even devils believe (better than you, perhaps) that Jesus healed the sick and that Jesus walked on water; . . . even devils have no trouble believing that Jesus died upon the Cross for humanity’s redemption and that He rose from the dead for our justification.  Even Satan, God’s enemy, believes that Jesus is the Son of God.  So, the thing which separates ignorance from light; . . . the thing that makes a difference in your life . . . is not what you believe but that you believe in Jesus.  Or, as you promised in your Baptismal Covenant:  that you put your entire trust in the grace and love of Jesus, Who is your Saviour and your Lord; . . . that you assume an identity with Jesus at its core.

    Upon hearing this, the crowd who followed Jesus after He had fed them; . . . the crowed asks Jesus to show them that He is worthy of their belief, observing that Moses proved his worth by calling down manna from heaven for the Israelites to eat, . . . but Jesus says to them, “Moses was not the cause of the manna that fed your fathers in the wilderness.  My Father is the source of all bread, . . . and by such bread He gives life to the world.”  . . . And the crowd that had been fed by Jesus the day before says, “Lord, give us this bread always.”  . . . They call Jesus “Lord.”  . . . They started out calling Him “Rabbi”, but now they call Jesus “Lord.”  . . . And their Lord gives them what they ask for.  He says, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

    Jesus says, “I am”, which in Greek would be “Ego ami”, which in Hebrew is “Yahweh”, which is the Name of God.  Jesus is God!  That’s what Christ’s disciples didn’t understand about the loaves!  That the loaves were blessed and broken by the Incarnate God!  The loaves were blessed and broken by Jesus Who is the source of life, the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity “by Whom all things were made,” “and without Him was not anything made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”  . . . And so, when I place the Communion Bread into your hand and tell you that it is the Body of Christ and the Bread of Heaven, . . . I am telling you the literal truth.  Just as Moses did not create the manna from a formula God gave him, so the words I say over your Communion Bread do not make it the Body of Christ.  It is the Body of Christ because Jesus (Who is God) promised that it will be His Body when we bless and break the bread in Remembrance of Him; . . . when we bring ourselves into His Presence to understand His promise:  . . . that it is God Incarnate Who died upon the Cross for us . . . so that we might be reconciled with God and live.  And so, the bread which I place into your hand is the bread of which Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”  It is the bread intended by God the Father to radically change the focus of your life . . . so that, lacking what profane men and women prize in their ignorance, . . . you shall not hunger; . . . so that in the midst of the changes and chances of this mortal life you shall not thirst for the answers profane men and women grope about for in their ignorance.  It shall be so because you receive God the Son at His Altar, . . . and He will so provide for you that ignorance shall not lead you around by the nose  . . . If you will understand about the bread, . . . your heart shall be so open to Jesus that fear shall not govern your life.

    This is the first thing that Jesus has to say about His being the Bread of Life.  There will be more next Sunday.