SETTING THE CONTEXT

Today’s reading occurs the day after Jesus feeds 5,000 people with bread and fish, then he walks to his terrified disciples on the stormy sea. It is now the next day and the crowds are wondering where Jesus is since they know he did not leave on the boat with his disciples. This is where our Scripture picks up.

The bread imagery in this passage is very important and rich with meaning. It had great significance to the Jewish crowd. Bread was used as a sacrifice during the annual Harvest Festival. Twelve loaves of bread had been placed first in the Tent of Meeting or Sacred Tent then in the Temple for generations to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel. God gave the Hebrew people bread from heaven called manna to sustain them in the wilderness. The prophet Isaiah used the image of bread to talk about the word of God (Isa 55:1-3). As Jesus calls himself the Bread of life all these images come into play.

Read John 6:24-35

Our next reading challenges us to live what we profess.

Read Ephesians 4:1-7; 11-13

THE SERMON

We have many voices around us that try to tell us that we are not good enough. There are ads that tell us they can make our hair shinier and more beautiful, our teeth whiter. There are ads promising to make our bodies thinner or bigger (depending upon your need.) I have noticed that some of the credit card ads are now promising to bring us love as if we need expensive things to find love. The message plays over and over, you are not good enough or beautiful enough as you are, but it’s not just the voices of the media that send these messages. I am willing to bet that we have all experienced the sinfulness of this world where teasing and mistreatment and even our own internal critic have lied to us damaging the image of ourselves that was created in the image of God.

Today’s classic Disney movie was released in 1940. It was so successful that Time magazine planned a cover story about it until it was bumped from the cover by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.ⁱ The movie opens with Mrs. Jumbo, a circus elephant, longing for a little one to love. Mr. Stork finally delivered to her a baby who she named Jumbo Jr. unfortunately that name did not stick. Let’s watch.

SHOW MOVIE CLIP 1 FROM DUMBO.ⁱⁱ (Start as Mrs. Jumbo unwraps that cloth around the baby after the stork sings happy birthday end when she closes the door on the other elephants.)

Little Jumbo is different from the others and that difference quickly becomes a source of ridicule. The name Dumbo is the name that stuck and is the title of the movie. What is pointed out in the movie, and is so sad, is that we cannot seem to get it through our heads that God made us all unique. Our differences are part of God’s design. I read a newspaper article several years ago that said researchers at Texas A & M cloned a pet cat and found that the clone was not an exact copy. Even though the DNA was exactly the same, the cloned pet had a different personality and different coat markings.ⁱⁱⁱ I have to say I am delighted that we cannot thwart God’s design for diversity even with all of our science and technology. It is part of God’s will and plan that the world is full of a variety of creatures and creation and that we, humans, have different gifts, talents, interests and looks. It is arrogance that we devalue what God has made.

In the movie, Dumbo continues to be ridiculed by the other elephants and is picked on by a child who has come to see the circus (who by the way also has big ears). Mrs. Jumbo tries to protect her baby and is locked up as a mad elephant for her efforts. The circus decides to exploit Dumbo’s appearance and clumsiness by making him a clown. He becomes the butt of all their practical jokes. The elephants blame him for everything that goes wrong and shun him. Discouraged and defeated, he seeks out the love that he knows is always there for him. He seeks out his mother.

SHOW MOVIE CLIP 2 FROM DUMBO. (Start as Mrs. Jumbo reaches through her cage to Dumbo and begins singing ”Baby of Mine” end at end of song.)

In this sequence, we see the tender love of a mother. Some of us are lucky enough to have mothers who reflect this loving ideal, others of us do not. Yet all of us have the same Divine Creator, the same Source of life, the same Divine mother and father who loves us with such tenderness and passion. We have a Creator who has shown us that tenacious love that will not abandon us, will not let us go. In the wilderness God sustained the Hebrew people with manna, bread from heaven, that appeared every morning. The manna ended when their journey ended. In Jesus, in his life, his teachings, his death and resurrection, God provided the Bread of Life that would never go away, that would be available to all people.

Our problem is that we often believe the lies, so we turn to things other than God to find life. We turn to other things to fill the painful void. In the movie, Dumbo is befriended by a mouse, Timothy. Quite by accident they discover that Dumbo can fly. With the help of some crows, they give Dumbo a “magic feather” that they tell him allows him to fly. They teach him to fly using his big ears as wings. As the mouse says, “The very things that held you down are going to carry you up and up and up!” The magic feather is an effective tool and without the knowledge of his tormentors Dumbo learns to fly. He is going to surprise everyone, but he gets his own surprise. Let’s see what happened.

SHOW MOVIE CLIP 3 FROM DUMBO. (Start spotlights searching big top and clown show beginning end at Dumbo coming into mother’s arms.)

As always there is a happy ending, but there is also another very important message. We may grasp at magic feathers that take different forms, but magic feathers eventually fail. Jesus in our reading from John saw that the crowd was trying to turn him into a magic feather and he called them on it. In verse 26 he told them,” you’re not looking for me because of who I am, you just want me to fill your bellies again like I did yesterday.” And then he tells them not to work for the food that perishes, but to receive the food that endures forever, the Bread of Life. Damon in his witness on Wednesday said that at one point in his life he would go to church, but he was not in church. What he meant by that was that even though he showed up for church, he was not living a Christ-like life. He was living a lie showing one face on Sunday morning and a different face Sunday afternoon-Saturday. The lie did not bring him life only guilt and shame. This disconnect that many of us experience runs the gamut from hurtful degrading words of gossip or humor to breaking one of the 10 Commandments like committing adultery to sins of omission, simply ignoring injustice around us. The Bread of Heaven must be taken in; it must inform and nourish your life for you to experience it fully that is why I believe Paul begs the Ephesians and us “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” As we live in Christ and grow in maturity we move more deeply into the image which was the original intention for us. You see God wants us to grow and change, but not to be someone else’s image of perfection, but to be fully alive and fully what we were created and uniquely designed to be. Like Damon is striving for now, we want to not only go to church, but have “church” or the body of Christ live in us every day. The sustaining and transforming Bread of Life is a gift given to us by God who overcomes the sinfulness of this world through an abiding, tenacious love that sings to us day after day year after year, “you are so precious to me, Baby of Mine.” Listen and believe the song. Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Nancy Cushman on August 2, 2009.