Bread of Life

The Orangeburg Series

Readers of past posts may recognize sermons in this series. To anyone who may be disappointed to see a "rerun," I apologize. I dare say, however, that for a preacher, revisiting familiar sermonic ground is as delightful an experience as a walk in a familiar wood or a stroll on a favorite beach.

October 2, 2011
John 6:22-35,47-51

Have you ever been hungry? Have you ever experienced that gnawing feeling eating at you because you haven’t eaten? Every one of us has been hungry at one time or another. Some people are hungry on a regular basis. According to the most recent comprehensive study of hunger in America, “one in six Americans. . . . cannot make ends meet and are forced to go without food for several meals, or even days.” Fifty 50 million Americans—33 million adults and 17 million children experience hunger regularly.

In the New Testament, all four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—tell us that one part of Jesus’ earthly ministry was feeding the hungry. Again and again in the gospels, Jesus is said to have had compassion for the people he saw. He had compassion for people who were sick (Matthew 14:14) and compassion for people who were blind (Matthew 20:34) and compassion for people who were grieving (Luke 7:13) and compassion for people who were “harassed and helpless” (Matthew 9:36); and he had compassion, we are told, for people who were hungry (Matthew 15:32; Mark 8:2), and he fed them.

The good folk of First Baptist Orangeburg who gather on Thursdays to prepare and serve a hot meal to anyone in need, “anyone” numbering anywhere 125 to 175 people a week, are continuing the ministry of Jesus by feeding the hungry. And so do the good folk of First Baptist Orangeburg who gather in this space at 8:45 and 11:00 on Sunday mornings for the worship of God. “One does not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:4), Jesus said, quoting the book of Deuteronomy (8:3). Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6): blessed are those who hunger and thirst for right relationship with God and right relationship with the people around them.

You see, Jesus recognized that there is a spiritual hunger and there is a spiritual thirst that are every bit as real and powerful as physical hunger and physical thirst. And that’s why the meal-plan at First Baptist Orangeburg offers physical food on Wednesday evenings and Thursdays afternoons and spiritual food on Sundays.

In chapter 6 of the gospel according to John, the day after Jesus satisfied the physical hunger of a large crowd of people who were following him, the conversation turns from physical bread to spiritual bread. In verse 27, Jesus says to those who have come looking for him on the day after the feeding, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” “For the bread of God,” Jesus says, “is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Those who had come looking for him “said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’” (vv 33-35).

As is always the case in the gospel of John, a conversation about something physical shifted gears to become a conversation about something spiritual. So, have you ever been spiritually hungry? Have you ever experienced that gnawing feeling eating at you because you haven’t been fed, because you haven’t eaten? Maybe you’re hungry now, and not just because you didn’t eat breakfast this morning, but because you are hungering and thirsting for something deeper than food and more satisfying than a drink. If so, you’ve come to the right place.

This table is set for those who hunger and thirst. On this table is the bread of life for you. On this table is the cup of new life for you. Just as this congregation prepares a meal and sets a table for “anyone in need” for the physically hungry in this community on Thursdays, so also this congregation prepares a meal and sets a table for “anyone in need” for the spiritually hungry in this community on Sundays. It’s the bread of life for you and for the world.

The legendary preacher Fred Craddock tells the story of the first church he served as pastor in the hills of east Tennessee, not far from a sleepy little hamlet called Oak Ridge. In the 1940s, when Craddock was pastor there, Oak Ridge, TN, suddenly became one of the leading centers of work on the Manhattan Project, the now famous code name for the U.S. government’s operation to develop the atomic bomb. Almost overnight, says Craddock, “that little bitty town became a booming city. Every hill and every valley and every shady grove had recreational vehicles and trucks and things like that. People came in from everywhere and pitched tents, lived in wagons. Hard hats from everywhere, with their families and children paddling around in the mud in those trailer parks, lived in everything temporary to work.”

The church Craddock pastored met in a beautiful little white frame building over a hundred years old. “It had beautifully decorated chimneys, kerosene lamps all around the walls, and every pew in this little church was hand hewn from a giant poplar tree.” After church one Sunday morning, Craddock asked the leaders of the congregation to stay, and he said to them, “We need to launch a calling campaign and an invitational campaign in all those trailer parks to invite those people to church.” “Oh, I don’t know,” one leader said. “I don’t think they’d fit in here.” Another said, “They’re just here temporarily, just construction people. They’ll be leaving pretty soon.” “Well, we ought to invite them, make them feel at home,” Craddock said. They debated the matter, he says, and time ran out. They said they’d come and vote the next Sunday.

The next Sunday, they all sat down after the service. “I move,” said one of them, “that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in this county.” Someone else said, “I second that.” It passed. I voted against it, Craddock says, but they reminded me that I was just a kid preacher and I didn’t have a vote.”

Decades later, after Craddock and his wife Nettie retired to north Georgia, they took a ride one morning north to Tennessee to see if they could find that little church for which Craddock still held such fond and painful memories. The roads had changed. The interstate now goes through that part of the country, so he had a hard time finding the way, but he finally did. He found the state road, the county road, and the little gravel road. Then there, back among the pines, was that little building shining white. The parking lot was full—motorcycles and trucks and cars packed in there. And out front, there was a great big sign: Barbecue, all you can eat. It was a restaurant, so they went inside.

The pews were pushed against a wall. There were electric lights, and the old pump organ was pushed over into the corner. There were aluminum and plastic tables, and people sitting there eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs—all kinds of people, lots of different people from lots of different walks of life and lots of different places. In the course of the meal together, Craddock said quietly to his wife Nettie, “It’s a good thing this is not still a church; otherwise these people couldn’t be in here.”

The church is not a private dining club in which the food and drink are prepared for property-owners only, members only The meal plan of this congregation is the banquet of God in Luke 14 to which everyone is invited, the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind— physically and spiritually alike.

Whatever your grief, whatever your fear, whatever your loss, whatever your need, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). That’s nothing less than a promise of God, and that’s why if you come here with a gnawing feeling eating at you, you have come to the right place. Because here is the bread of life prepared for you. Here is the cup of new life prepared for you.

We’re going to pass it around. We’re going to share it with each other. And we’re going to go from this place to share with the world the good news that when you hunger and thirst, there is bread of life for you and a cup of new life for you. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Let’s eat and drink together.

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Bread for the Journey: Loaves Abound!

John 6:1-13
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany 2011


“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.”

“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!”

For the past several weeks, the primary focus of our stewardship emphasis has been on our journey, our bread. To be sure, the focus hasn’t been on us alone. We have included “fellow pilgrims on the road” from Cowpens, SC, to Guanajay, Cuba. Along the way, we heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, call for friendship and understanding with those who are enemies or opponents, as well as our friends. Along the way, we have included others or “the other.” But the primary focus has been on our journey, our bread.

This morning, our focus changes.
“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” That’s a lot of bread. Why bring it all at once, all on a single Sunday? It’ll go to waste, somebody will say. Well, where it’s going, I can promise you it won’t go to waste. Most of you are familiar with “Loaves & Fishes,” the “mobile food rescue organization” that was founded here in Greenville in 1991. Our own Jon Good is the chair of the Board of Directors. According to “Loaves & Fishes,” 27% of the food produced in the United States every year goes to waste. Do you hear that? More than a fourth of the food that is produced here is thrown away. It turns out that world hunger is not nearly the problem that some people make it out to be. World hunger is not the problem. World waste is the problem.

Last year, Loaves & Fishes rescued more than a million pounds of fresh food that would have gone into the landfill right here in Greenville County. By receiving perishable food items that would otherwise be thrown away by grocery stores, restaurants, caterers, wholesale food distributors, churches and corporate cafeterias and transporting those items quickly to food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs, last year Loaves & Fishes provided the food for more than a million meals out of the 27% wasted food in Greenville. Volunteers from Loaves & Fishes are standing by, just waiting to engage in a “mobile rescue” of this bread from our Sanctuary.

They are going to start by taking it to Project Host, “the soup kitchen,” on Academy Street just south and west of Greenville’s thriving downtown, a couple blocks too far west of West End to be fashionable. Last year, Project Host served 78,000 meals to people who otherwise would have gone hungry. Project Host serves 250 meals a day six days a week at lunch time. It also has a program called the Feed Hungry Children Project that serves full evening meals to 191 children at six different centers in Greenville County. I’m told that Project Host uses on average thirty loaves of fresh bread a day, and lately they have had to buy bread because rescue deliveries have not kept pace with their needs. Hearing that made me wonder if all that bread that gets bought off the shelves in the grocery story when the weather forecast predicts snow actually gets eaten? How much of it just gets horded and then thrown away? World hunger is not the problem. World waste is. If we have brought more bread today than Project Host can use in a timely manner, there are food pantries, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs standing in line behind the soup kitchen. Where this bread is going, it will not go to waste.

It was that way in this morning’s gospel lesson also. At the end of the story Jesus said, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” At the command of Jesus, the disciples became the first “mobile food rescue organization” as they moved among the people and collected what was left over. I’d like to suggest this morning that the point of the story is not just that there was more than enough to go around, as it is commonly preached. The point is also that none of it should be wasted. None of the sowing and the growing and the reaping and the grinding and the mixing and the kneading and the rising and the baking and the blessing and the breaking should be wasted. The problem is not hunger; the problem is waste. “Gather it up,” Jesus says, “so that nothing may be lost.”

The hero in the story, as everyone knows, is a child with a lunch, a lunch not nearly large enough to feed a hillside full of people. But children can be a resourceful lot. One summer day, dozens of First Baptist children were up on Paris Mountain for a children’s ministry activity. When lunchtime came, one little boy discovered that he had lost or forgotten her lunch. Bev asked the children sitting around him, “What do you think we should, do?” Before anyone could answer the question, another little boy sitting right beside took half of his sandwich and placed it in front of the boy who had none. “Here!” said a little girl, as she handed her bag of chips across the table. Another child handed over an apple, and another still fished out some cookies and passed them along. And before you knew it, a child who would have gone hungry had all he could eat and then some. That’s the gospel story. Like the little boy on the mountain in Galilee, the children on Paris Mountain were happy to hand over what they had so that everyone would have something. The problem is not hunger; the problem is hording.

“Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,” Philip said to Jesus. The gospels tell us that Philip was from Bethsaida, which according to its name, “house of fishing,” was probably a fishing village along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But Philip must have been in the accounting department of the fishing business. Because when Jesus asks him where to buy bread for these people to eat, Philip immediately estimates how much it will cost instead of answering the question Jesus asked. The deflection of the question from where the available resources are to the question of how much money is at stake is a common problem. Almost all of us get caught between the “two masters,” as Jesus calls them. You “will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth,” Jesus says (Matthew 6:24). You have to choose, Jesus says. Is God your God, or is wealth your god? This morning’s gospel lesson is a reminder that if our first question is always, “How much will it cost?” instead of “How can we make it happen?” then money has become our master. Jesus wasn’t asking Philip about how much it would take. Jesus was asking Philip about the wherewithal of God and God’s people to do it. The problem is not hunger; the problem is greed.

In the way the gospel of John tells the story, Jesus sees the hunger problem before anyone else when he sees the large crowd approaching him. No one has to tell him about their hunger; Jesus sees it coming. It’s not that Jesus is some sort of soothsayer or fortune teller. It’s not a power of prediction or prognostication. It’s a matter of sensitivity to the needs of others. We don’t need prediction or prognostication to know that that people are going hungry in the communities in which you and I live. We don’t need more information to see that people are starving to death on the planet we share with them. We don’t even need more production: most experts agree that the current production capacity of global agriculture is sufficient to feed the current population of the world. The problem is not prognostication or information or insufficient production but insensitivity.

But I would remind you that in this congregation there is a little boy who without even being asked handed over half his sandwich to a child who had none, and there is a little girl who gave her bag of chips and another child who shared an apple and another who passed along a bag of beloved cookies. And like those children on Paris Mountain, this morning you have joined the gospel story by bringing loaves of bread and commitment cards to the Lord’s Table as an expression of the stewardship of your life. It is a journey of sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of others. It is a journey of serving God rather than wealth. It is a journey of generosity rather than hording. And it is a journey of conservation and “mobile rescue” rather than waste.

“Wherever the road is turning, There is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” Thanks be to God!


“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” is from the hymn “Let us Talents and Tongues Employ,” by Fred Kaan, 1975.
“Wherever God guides, God will provide” is from an original composition by Kyle Matthews, 2011.
Photography by Bill Dunlap.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Children’s Sabbath: When Were You Hungry?

Mark 8:1-8
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost 2010

Last night about 8:30, I received an email from someone in this congregation who is so dedicated a soul that this morning’s sermon was already on his mind. The email informed me that there is a tradition among some folks in this place that “a perfect Sunday morning would be that the Gamecocks won Saturday, Clemson lost, and the Sunday sermon was short.” Truly, I say unto you, two out of three ain’t bad. It is no more likely that the Sunday sermon would be short than that the University of South Carolina could beat the #1 team in the country in football.

So in honor of an utter unlikelihood that borders on impossibility, I’m going to preach a ten-point sermon on a miracle this morning. Not three points but ten points, and here they are. One through ten. Nutrition. Attention. Affection. Compassion. Responsibility. Commitment. Thanksgiving. Breaking up what you have. Giving it away. More than enough. Got it? Good. Then may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. Don’t you wish? Don’t you just wish?

When were you hungry? When have you experienced a grinding, gnawing need for sustenance that is hunger? Nearly twenty years ago, our own Schaeffer Kendrick challenged this congregation by saying, “No child in Greenville County should ever go to bed hungry.” The Schaeffer Kendrick Challenge was this: every person who comes here on Sunday morning should bring one canned good or other staple, or place one dollar in a special offering that should be taken up in every adult Sunday School class. That’s why those large plastic bins are located at various places around our facility. It’s why this basket sits in the “Come Unto Me Window.” It’s why last Sunday morning in the Hope Sunday School Class I put a dollar in the envelope that was passed around before the lesson started. No child in Greenville County should ever go to bed hungry.

But they do, and here’s how we know. The most recent numbers that the School District of Greenville County has made available to the general public show that out of the almost 69,000 students in public schools in this county, more than 28,000 or 41% qualified for USDA free lunch assistance. In her children’s sermon, Laura illustrated the statistics for children living below the poverty line in the U.S. as a whole. In Greenville County, based on qualifications for free lunch assistance, the percentage of children who are hungry is not 1 in 5 or 2 in 10 but 2 in 5 and 4 in 10.

One of our own members is the principal of an elementary school in which 90% of the children qualify for free and reduced lunch. Do you hear that? Three miles from here one of our members principals a school in which 90% of the children are at risk for inadequate nutrition on a daily basis. They don’t show up in National Geographic; you don’t see them on CNN or FOX News; you won’t find relief agencies running heart-rending advertisements to adopt one of them by sending a monthly check. But children all around us right here in “River City” with our beautiful Liberty Bridge and Falls Park and downtown eateries bustling in the evenings are going to bed hungry and going to school without adequate nutrition. Point #1: Nutrition. Children are hungry for nutrition.

And for attention. One morning two years ago, I jumped into the car, backed out of the driveway, and as was my habit, I fired up my cell phone to check my work voicemail. The fifth-grader in the passenger seat beside me asked, “Dad, why are you always on the phone?” “There are a lot of people I need to be in touch with,” I answered impatiently, as I tried to listen over the sound of his voice and my own. His next question was softer, more hesitant: “Am I one of those people? Am I somebody you need to be in touch with?” Click.

Don’t think for a minute that children living below the poverty line are the only children who are hungry. We see it all the time around here. Children in affluent families don’t miss many meals, but children in affluent families can be starving for attention. Their parents are so caught up in their work or their home or their recreation or their community service or maybe even their church service that their children are left hungry for attention. By the way, it’s a small thing, but I don’t listen to voice mail on the way to school anymore, because there is someone right there in the car with me that I need to be in touch with. Point #2: Attention.

And affection. Several years ago, Bev and I fostered a child who was so abysmally starved for affection that he didn’t even know to ask for it or receive it. When he would hurt himself, for instance, by inadvertently hitting his head on the corner of the countertop as he ran through the kitchen, he would turn and walk away from the outstretched arms ready to comfort him into another room where he would cry alone until he had cried it out, and then he would return. His case was extreme, of course, but it stands for the hunger for affection that is experienced daily by more children than you would ever imagine. Their faces don’t show up milk cartons. Their descriptions don’t appear on Amber Alerts. But they are all around us and even among us, folks.

Affection is a fundamental physiological need as well as an emotional need. Insufficient affection results in a “failure to thrive” in children and adults alike that has physiological as well as psychological consequences. If you are among those people who happen to think that when Jesus says “Love one another,” that it’s a bunch of touchy-feely religious sugar-water hocus-pocus, then you don’t know your science. You haven’t study the development of the human brain, the importance of the human limbic system, and you haven’t studied primate social behavior, just for starters. Point #3: Affection.

In our family we have a tradition called the “goof hug.” The term was coined by our oldest son when he was very young, before he could pronounce “group hug.” Bev or I would call for a “group hug,” and his eyes would light up and he would say excitedly, “Goof hug!” “Goof hug!” Over the years our goof hugs have gone from three of us to four to five and now six. And it’s goofy alright. It can happen in the kitchen or the den or the living room or the driveway whenever or wherever anyone in the family calls for it: Goof hug! It’s silly, I know, but it’s also a parable. The people of God must always be the people of the goof hug, because there are always children and adults alike in our world and in our community and in our congregation who are “failing to thrive” because they are starving for affection. Nutrition, attention, affection.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus was surrounded by hungry people: “there was a great crowd,” we are told in Mark 8:1, “without anything to eat.” Jesus’ first response is my point #4: Compassion. “I have compassion for the crowd,” Jesus said, “because they have nothing to eat.” “Compassion” means “co-suffering.” It is the capacity to feel someone else’s hurt. Compassion is the essentially human response—and the Bible teaches that it is an essentially divine response as well—to another person’s suffering. Compassion.

But Jesus goes a step beyond compassion in verse 3. When Jesus says, “If I send them away hungry to their homes,” he is taking personal responsibility for their condition. If Jesus is our example, then it is not nearly enough to “feel someone’s pain,” as they say. It is also necessary to acknowledge our responsibility in relation to them when they are suffering. Compassion. Responsibility (#5).

Having had compassion and acknowledged responsibility, Jesus then commits the resources he has available to alleviate the suffering that he sees. Of course it’s not enough: seven loaves and a few small fish are not sufficient to satisfy the hunger of 4,000 people. But if you never make the commitment to allocate the resources that you do have to accomplish what you can accomplish, your expression of compassion is worthless, and your sense of responsibility is hypocrisy. Commitment (#6) of resources.

Jesus’ next step may be the biggest difference between Jesus in this story and us in our stories. In verse 6, Jesus offers up thanks (#7) to God for what he does have instead of whining about what he doesn’t have. That might be the miracle in the story: that the person with compassion who feels responsible for those who are suffering and is willing to commitment all he or she has gives thanks instead of whining when they only come up with only seven loaves and a few fish. But you see, if every group of 13 fishes around, so to speak, and comes up with seven and few, thousands can be fed. Remember that as you leave this morning where children stand at the door with baskets to receive an offering for seed money to launch an initiative in 2011 to feed hungry children in Greenville County. If everyone comes up even with just seven and a few, thousands can be fed.

Once you have given thanks, you have to break it up (#8) to give it away (#9). You can’t keep what you have intact and do any good with it. You have to break it up. And you can’t keep it to yourself to do any good with it. You have to give it away. Whether we are talking about nutrition or attention or affection, it has to be distributed—spread around—by breaking it up and giving it away. When we follow Jesus in compassion, responsibility, commitment, thanksgiving, breaking it up, and giving it away, we discover that we actually have more than enough (#10) to go around. Let’s make it so.

Nutrition, Attention, Affection, Compassion, Responsibility, Commitment, Thanksgiving, Breaking it up, Giving it away, More than Enough. Let’s make it so.


Photo of the mosaic floor of the Church of the Multiplication in Tagbha on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee by Steven Conger by license of Creative Commons.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.