As I am speaking here this morning, bread is being baked in the oven of our fellowship hall. If all goes well, the bread should finish baking at the end of our worship and we can enjoy healthy whole wheat bread fresh from the oven. We love our bread that comes in all sizes and shapes. We are amazed at how our bodies can digest the bread we eat. It starts with chewing the bread, then it is digested in the stomach, and eventually the nutrition from the bread finds it ways into our bloodstream to feed and nourish the cells in our body. This amazing process could not have developed by chance. It had to be designed.

In the 6^th chapter of John Jesus describes himself as the Bread of Life from heaven that gives eternal life to people. The chapter begins with Jesus feeding over 5000 people with five barley loaves and two small fish. This chapter includes this amazing claim just read to you, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever." Then Jesus adds this thought, "This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." The picture suddenly changes from bread to flesh, not the flesh of fish, or beef, or lamb, but the very body of Jesus himself.

Jesus had to qualify what he said about himself as the bread of life, because human beings corrupted by sin will easily distort the meaning of what he said. My sinful human heart wants to believe that Jesus is like bread that goes into my stomach, nourishes my body and gives me strength to help me be a better person and make myself acceptable to God. That is why Jesus has to be so pointed and so graphic in these words just read to you. He wants us to forsake and forget any such notions he is just a power source to make ourselves acceptable to God. He wants us to trust in what happened to his body here on this earth when it was broken for our sin, and his blood that was shed for us when he was beaten and nailed to a cross. Let’s see this amazing claim that Jesus makes for himself and how it changes our lives completely.

It is truly an amazing claim that Jesus makes for himself. Repeatedly he says, "I am" using words that the Lord God used to reveal himself to Moses and the people of Israel. Then he makes the claim that he is the living bread that comes down from heaven and if people eat from him they will live forever. What amazes us even more is what Jesus says about himself as the true bread that came down from heaven. "This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." How shocking these words were for Jewish people! They were taught by Old Testament law and extra laws of the rabbis to not eat raw meat or meat with blood still in it. They argued with each other, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" What in the world is he talking about?

So we ask Jesus the same question this morning: "Lord, Jesus, what are you talking about when you tell us, ‘This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world?’" With these words Jesus is pointing to the flesh of his body that will be beaten and his blood poured out as a ransom payment for the sin of the world. In this chapter Jesus is not talking about Lord’s Supper. That will be instituted the night before he died, specifically for his followers who believe in him and are able to remember him. Here he offers himself, his body and his blood on the cross, as the source of eternal life for all people. He appeals especially to the people who did not believe in him, not just his followers.

Jesus pleaded with these people to accept and believe in what would happen to his physical body with these powerful words, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have not life in you. Whoever drinks eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." When Jesus says, "I tell you the truth" he is making a powerful statement that he wants the whole world to hear. The King James Version always translated this with the words, "Verily, verily I say unto you." He describes himself as the Son of Man. Every time Jesus uses these words for himself, he wants us to focus on how he humbled himself, became one of us, and took our flesh and blood upon himself. You know the words from John 1:14, "The word become flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth."

All through the history of the world, people have mutilated and humiliated and subjugated their own physical bodies with the hope they could overcome evil and maybe move God to love them. In New Guinea there are jungle tribes where the women cut off parts of the fingers and wear them on their neck whenever someone they love dies. They hope this rids them of evil spirits. Martin Luther tried to subjugate his body to physical pain and suffering with the hope it would purge him from sin and make him worthy of God’s love. He described this agonizing journey in the words of the hymn, "Yea deep and deeper still I fell, Life had become a living hell. So firmly sin possessed me." In the book The Da Vinci Code, the evil albino monk named Silas wears a belt around his leg with a sharp spur that digs into his flesh and causes it to bleed every time he moves. There is nothing I can do to my body, or to my emotions, or to my life or to my heart or to my thinking that can create changes or any form of self-improvement to make me acceptable to God. "Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling."

Jesus says, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him." Eating and drinking is an excellent way to describe what happens with faith that is giving to you by the Holy Spirit. When bread is eaten or meat is eaten or vegetables are eaten, they enter into our bodies and become part of us. Jesus wants his suffering in his body and his blood shed on the cross to become part of our lives. Just as this piece of bread can be taken in my hand, put to my mouth, chewed, and swallowed, so the miracle faith created by the Holy Spirit takes and appropriates what Jesus has done for us almost 2000 years ago and makes it our own. What amazes us even more about these words of Jesus that encourage eating and drinking is the way they are spoken to people who are spiritually dead who do not believe in him. You can offer a fresh piece of bread to a person who has died and it will not bring that person to life again. Jesus offers himself, his body and blood as a ransom payment for sin to spiritual dead people and this very process of offering and calling and inviting creates the faith to believe. That is what we believe about being saved by grace and grace alone. Grace provides the source of forgiveness and peace with God, and grace provides the faith to believe it is true and real.

I am holding in my hand a cookbook that has dozens of different recipes for making bread. So it is with the way I came into this world. I was born believing I could pick and choose my recipes and formulas for creating my own way of earning God’s love using Jesus as my example. Several years ago it was popular for Christians to wear a bracelet with the letters "WWJD" standing for "What Would Jesus Do?" It is good to use Jesus as an example in our daily living of how to get along with other people, and how to show love and respect. As nice as these letters are to help us follow the right path and pattern, they do not take us to heart and core of how we are saved. I often thought it would have been better to wear one bracelet on one hand with the letters, "WHJD" (What Has Jesus Done) and then the other hand the WWJD.

What has Jesus done? Jesus answers that for us this morning by saying, "Eat my flesh and drink my blood." "Take what I have done for you in my body broken for you and my blood shed and make it you very own." In a sermon on these words Martin Luther has this comforting thought, "While our works will not and cannot stand the test, the flesh and blood of Christ does: it is equal to every situation. Christ will never give way, but my works can. If you remain loyal to this flesh and blood you need not worry."

Eating the body of Jesus and drinking his blood, believing in him as the Bread of life offers you and me some amazing changes in our personal live. "If anyone eats this bread he will forever." "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." Notice it does not say, "will have" eternal life, but "has" eternal life. This is past tense, a done deal. 1 John 5 says, "And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." In Psalm 118 the psalmist begins with the words, "O give thanks unto the Lord for he is good for his mercy endures forever." Some of us use these words when we offer a table prayer thanking God for the food and bread that sustains us in this life. Actually the main reason the psalmist gives thanks to the Lord is the hope of eternal life that is a done deal. "I will not die but live and will proclaim what the Lord has done." The psalmist did not say, "I will proclaim what the Lord will do." Instead he says, "What the Lord has done!"

Jesus reminded the Jewish people listening to him that the bread their forefathers ate in the wilderness did not keep them from perishing. "Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever." The manna that God provided his people had to be some of the most nutritious food anyone has ever eaten on this earth. It was hardly like some of the junk food that we eat today. It was able to sustain them and strengthen them for forty years of difficult travel in the wilderness, but eventually they all died. That’s the way it is with all food. Even the healthiest diet of grains, fruits, vegetables, fish and vitamin supplements will not keep you alive forever. Jesus is the bread of life, the bread from heaven. In his body and blood given for you Jesus has given you eternal life.

There was once an explorer, a Spanish conquistador who searched for something more important than Aztec gold. He had heard that there was a legendary fountain of youth. Ponce de Leon led his soldiers through the swamps of Florida searching for a fountain that would guarantee eternal life. We still search for new medicines that will allow us to live longer. We go on diets to lose extra pounds that will damage our bodies and shorten our lives. Billions of dollars are spent on products that make you look and feel younger. We may prolong life and even find ways to live better. Ultimately we must all die. That is why the words of Jesus are such a blessing for us today. "He who feeds on this bread will live forever." "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." Real food. Real bread. Real flesh. Real blood. Real faith. Real everlasting life. Really? Really! Amen.