Many years ago I mentioned in a sermon the ten scientific laws of dieting, and they’re so enlightening that I’d thought I’d share them again.

1. If you eat something and no one else sees it, it has no calories.
2. If you drink a diet drink with a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are cancelled out by the diet drink.
3. When you eat with someone else, the calories don't count if you don't eat more than they do.
4. Food used for medicinal purposes NEVER counts, such as hot chocolate, toast, and Sara Lee Cheesecake.
5. If you fatten up everyone else around you, you look thinner.
6. Movie-related foods do not have additional calories because they are part of the entire entertainment package and not part of one's personal fuel.
7. Cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breaking causes calorie drainage.
8. Things licked off knives and spoons have no calories, provided you are in the process of preparing something.

9. Foods that have the same colour have the same number of calories. Examples are spinach and pistachio ice cream, cottage cheese and banana cream pie, mushrooms and white chocolate.

10. For every burp, subtract 25 calories.

Well, in John Chapter 6 which has been the Gospel reading for the last three weeks now Jesus tells us about another law of dieting.  He says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty“.  By now we all know that for us at St John’s at this time in our life this scripture is a guidepost.  It sums up what God is calling us to do and to be at this moment in our history.  You’ll remember that we have identified that over the years God has used us to feed people.  We have fed them with literal food for the stomach, we’ve fed them with the sacrament week by week (which is not really food for the stomach, but food for our souls), and we have come to understand that our mission as a parish is all about introducing Jesus, the Bread of Life to people in our neighbourhood.  That way we can be a part of God feeding the needy, both the materially needy and those in spiritual need.

It’s important, I think, to remember why Jesus makes this amazing statement about being the Bread of Life. John chapter 6 is a conversation between Jesus and a group of people who were present at the feeding of five thousand.  And these diners had followed Jesus across the Sea of Galilee to get a bit more. These people were curious and hungry. Not hungry for physical food, of course, they had just eaten their fill of bread and fish, courtesy of Jesus. No, their hunger was for something more satisfying and long-lasting than a tuna sandwich. Their hunger was deep down in the part of their beings which restaurants can’t feed and doctors can‘t examine. A hunger not in their stomachs but in their souls. This crowd had full bellies, but still there was a rumbling of empty hearts, hearts contorted by the pangs of futility, frustration and failure.

Does anyone know the three most famous names in the world?  Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola. A bizarre trinity.  But a Texas author called Kinky Friedman believes that these three names are so famous because they reveal the three most powerful hungers driving human beings today.  Elvis is an icon of showbiz.  The world of entertainment. Handsome, cool, sexy, patriotic, he pushed boundaries, he invented a whole musical genre, he transcended the racial divide. Elvis represents the thrill offered by the ever-expanding world of entertainment.

As for Coca-Cola, well it is simply the biggest brand-name in history.

Happiness can be bought in a half litre bottle for a dollar. (Or 89 cents for 44 ounces at Speedway.)  Let me tell you some scary things about Coke. When the company introduced a slightly new recipe in 1996, it received a total of 40,000 letters and 8,000 calls from anxious customers in a single day. One customer wrote: "There are only two things in my life: God and Coca-Cola. Now you have taken one of these things away." Here is what someone says about Coca-Cola: "Coca-Cola is more durable, less vulnerable, more self-correcting that the Roman Empire. This product is destined to outlast the USA." And researcher named Mark Pendergrast has written that “Coke has achieved the status of a substitute modern religion which promotes a particular, satisfying, all-inclusive worldview espousing perennial values such as love, peace and universal brotherhood. It provides a panacea whenever daily life seems too difficult, harried, fragmented or confused. As a sacred symbol, Coca-Cola induces varying 'worshipful' moods, ranging from exaltation to pensive solitude, from togetherness to playful games of chase.” Coke was, in fact, invented by a Methodist bishop, and rather like a secular sacrament it invites people to participate in a loving, multicultural, multiracial, multinational human family that sings in perfect harmony.  I reckon we should scrap coffee hour and have Coke hour.  In fact, the “real thing” is 99% water and sugar.  But it is a powerful symbol of the idea that happiness can be bought, that consuming things will meet all our needs.  Last week, Cindy and I were on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, and we passed the Giorgio Armani store.  Passed it, I repeat.  And there in the window were clothes for two-year olds.  I was appalled.  I thought.  Is this what we have become?  People buy Giorgio Armani for their preschoolers even though they will have grown out of them in six months, and they’ll get covered in food, dirt, paint and all the other good things that two year-olds smear all over their clothes 

Elvis and Coke, entertainment and consumerism. The two greatest idols of our time. They both promise satisfaction, and to be fair both can give pleasure and a feeling of well-being. For a while. But they can’t satisfy a person’s deep down need for love, forgiveness and peace. These things are what we search our whole lives for these.  We try in vain to entertain ourselves and consume our way to finding them. But to a spiritually hungry crowd Jesus said “I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” And again, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

And not just back then, but today Jesus says the same thing to a world which has entertained itself to death and plundered God’s creation to dangerous limits in order to consume more and more. He says “come. Come and eat. Feeling empty? Come to the table. Needing forgiveness? Struggling to keep your head above water? Frustrated or weary or lonely or scared or worried or alienated? Come for dinner. The finest dinner ever prepared. Bread. Only bread? No -The Bread, the Bread of Life. The very staple, without which we cannot truly live.

At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the British people went into national mourning at the death of the great Admiral Lord Nelson. On his funeral day at St. Paul's Cathedral in London half a dozen sailors who had been privileged to serve on Nelson’s ship, HMS Victory, lifted his coffin onto their shoulders and solemnly bore their captain into the cathedral. Draped over his coffin was a large Union Jack. After the service, the sailors once more picked up the coffin and carried the body of the man who had borne the hopes of the nation on his own shoulders, this time to the graveside. With reverence and dignity they lowered the body of the world’s greatest admiral into its tomb. Then, as though answering to a sharp order from the quarterdeck, they all seized the Union Jack from off the coffin and started tearing it to shreds, each taking a piece as a keepsake of their Commander. And as he walked away from the graveside one young sailor proudly declared “I’ve got a piece of him, and I’ll never forget him.”

I would feel uncomfortable offering you a piece of Christ this morning, as if we were tearing up a piece of cloth as a reminder of a dead hero. This morning our hero is not dead. And neither does he offer a piece of himself. This morning Christ the risen Lord and Bread of Life offers us all of himself. Because he gave all of himself on the cross and he gives all of himself now. You can eat until you are satisfied.

Jesus refers to some other Bible bread in John 6. Manna, that mysterious wafer-like substance that God miraculously provided for the Israelites on their wilderness journey from slavery to the Promised Land. By the way, does anyone know what manna has in common with a kangaroo? Both words mean “what is it?” The word ‘kangaroo’ means “what is it?” in the language of the aboriginal Australians, and the word ‘manna’ means “what is it?” in Hebrew. You can imagine Captain Cook arriving in Australia and seeing a kangaroo and saying ‘what is that?’, and a local replying ‘That?  That’s a what is it’.

And what manna was was God’s way of sustaining his people in desperate times.  Without it they would have perished. Well, Jesus says he is like that manna, but better. He’s not just the best thing since sliced manna, he is better than even that. The manna, you see, went moldy. God instructed the Israelites to collect just enough for the day, and when they tried to store some until the next day it had gone rotten. Well, the Bread of Life doesn’t go bad. He is always fresh and will always satisfy. Not that that means we need to only feed on him once, of course. Quite the opposite, we need to come to him regularly, day in and day out to feed on Christ.

And that’s especially true if we’re going through desperate times, like the children of Israel.  They were saying ‘we’ve had enough.  We can’t go on.  God must rescue us.  Somehow he must change my circumstances – my miserable job, or my unhappy relationships, or my illness, or my financial situation.  I can’t take any more.”  But if we feed on Christ, the Bread of Life, he will give us the resources we need to make it through, to get up and face what he has called us to do. Often God doesn’t take away our bad circumstances, but calls us to eat and drink Christ, taking his resources into our lives and finding in them the power to face and overcome those situations. So maybe God won’t miraculously make your job enjoyable, but he might give you instead the resources to cope with its demands. Maybe he won’t magically wave a wand and make your marriage blissful, but he might give you the courage and love to face the issues you need to face with your spouse.  Maybe he won’t heal you completely until that day when he will wipe away every tear from your eyes.

Now let me conclude with saying briefly how we can feed on him. And if you’re wanting me to announce some foolproof, easy, pain-free formula or program which I have invented which will guarantee successful feeding off Christ then I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. We can be consumerist about Coke, but not about Jesus. There is no shortcut to feeding on Christ that bypasses the old disciplines. Personal prayer, Bible reading, public worship. Sorry, our consumer culture has trained us to think that there must be an easy solution that I can buy for instant results, but there isn't. To feed on Jesus the Bread of Life we need to read the Scriptures with faith that this is God’s revelation to us. We need to pray daily, getting to know him, listening to him and simply being still with him. And we need to be disciplined in worship here (including in the sacrament) and at home. These things are difficult and need us to wrestle with ourselves and with God, but they are the ways that God feeds us with his living bread. May he give us the resolve to follow these disciplines this week and on into the future.