Jesus said to them, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever.”

As many of you know, we have just come back from a holiday in France, and anyone who has holidayed in France will know just how important bread is to the French – you have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it’s often crisp, fresh and piping hot when you buy it!

And bread was equally important in 1^st Century Palestine, where it had become representative, almost, of life itself – so it’s not surprising that it was one of the images which Jesus used in his efforts to explain who and what he was!

In today's gospel reading Jesus is again (as he has been in a number of recent Gospel readings in our Sunday lectionary) talking about himself as the ‘Bread of Life’, reminding us that he also, is representative of life itself!

And today he takes this analogy to its extreme as he tells his audience that only if they eat his flesh (the very ‘Bread of Life’) can they have fulness of life!

It is obvious to us (I hope) that he was speaking in metaphors, using figures of speech, but many of his audience took him entirely literally, and not surprisingly they couldn't cope with what he had to say! 

As you will have heard in last week’s Gospel, (if, unlike me you were in church last Sunday), some of the audience simply left, but other disciples were more open-minded and began to debate with him! 

And from that debate, Jesus was given the opportunity to begin to explain what the metaphor meant in more detail, and this is the passage we heard this morning.

With the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight and with our knowledge of the resurrection, we're in a much better position to understand what Jesus was trying to say than were the people to whom he was actually speaking.

It's relatively easy for us to understand that Jesus was talking about the Holy Communion which we share this morning. But it wasn't until the Last Supper on the night before he died, that Jesus really explained this to the disciples by using bread and wine to symbolize his broken body and spilt blood.

That symbolic action, which is central to my understanding of who and what Jesus is, has sadly caused difficulty in the Church ever since, because different people interpret it in different ways.  Some take it entirely literally, believing that the bread of the Eucharist actually becomes the flesh of Jesus, and that the wine actually becomes his blood.

Others settle for non-literal interpretations of Jesus’ words allow for the symbolism of the Eucharist to be present without the literal!

However we choose to interpret it, there is still the opportunity for Jesus to "abide" in us.  Whenever we receive the Eucharistic elements we receive him.  We may not literally and physically receive Jesus the person, but we do receive his power and his love and his strength.

And never has the church, and those in its membership, in this country, been in greater need of that power and love and strength than it is in these challenging times in which we live!

There is a poem which speaks of the power of the symbols of the bread and wine of the Communion in which we share.  It goes like this:

Be gentle when you touch bread.

Let it not lie uncared for, unwanted:

So often bread is taken for granted.

There is such beauty in bread,

Beauty of sun and soil,

Beauty of patient toil.

Wind and rain have caressed it,

Christ often blessed it.

Be gentle when you touch bread.

Be loving when you drink wine.

So freely received and joyfully shared

In the spirit of him who cared.

Warm as a flowing river,

Shining and clear as the sun.

Deep as the soil of human toil.

The winds and rain caressed it,

Christ often blessed it.

Be loving when you drink wine.

Here, today in this sharing of Holy Communion, this heavenly sustenance – this power, and love, and strength is on offer for you and for me – may we receive it with joy, and with grateful thanks for the path of history which has brought it, from two thousand years ago, right into the heart of this church and community today, as we are reminded of what the Palestinian people of two thousand years ago discovered, that bread represents the very gift of live itself!

Jesus said to them, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever.”