Devotion for Tuesday, March 24

Lessons from the Daily Lectionary – Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Psalms 98, 135; Jeremiah 17:19-27; Romans 7:13-25; John 6:16-27

Meditation: Back in my high school days we used to bum a little money off one another in the lunch line from time to time. In our California surfer slang, we’d say: “Hey man, do have any bread you can give me?” It all sounded quite idealistic. We’d avoid saying anything about money so that it sounded like we were above it all – asking instead for “bread.” Yet, in truth, we’d buy anything but bread with it, maybe some junk food or worse. But by asking for bread we tried to dress up our mooching as something communal, even spiritual.

If you’re already read through the passage in the Gospel of John for today, you’ve already seen where I’m going with this. One on side of the lake, Jesus performs a miracle turning a disciple’s collection of a few loaves and fishes into a feast. When Jesus disappears in the middle of the night (walking on the water to the other side of the lake), the crowd hurries after him. Their pursuit of him is presented in a guise. They say that they are after something ideal, something spiritual, but Jesus discerns that they have come for much more mundane reasons. They liked that he could feed them.

It’s right and good that Jesus combines the physical feeding of the multitude with the spiritual truth where he says to us: “I am the bread of life.” I find that it is often good to be a “both/and” kind of person than an “either/or.” Jesus is that way. If he denied the value of material loaves of bread he wouldn’t have fed the folks. Yet, he does not neglect the larger point that what feeds the body also points to a greater hunger.

A daily time of reading and prayer is one way to pay attention to that greater hunger – to God in our lives. At times it’s hard to set aside the time for this. You may have noticed that today’s meditation didn’t arrive first thing in the morning, nor did one come at all yesterday. Ooops! As Paul says, the spirit may be willing but the body can be weak. In college I sought to read through the entire Bible in a year’s time. I was going to do this by reading three chapters per day. I found that if I kept the daily reading for eight consecutive days, the reading had now become a good habit. If I fell off my reading for only three days, a bad habit was formed. To get back to it, I would remember that I am a forgiven child of God. I’d confess the need for renewal and start reading, awaiting an eighth day in which my good habit could return. And it did. I finished the Bible with a few weeks to spare.

Today, let us keep our spirit even as we have moments where our physical and mental resourcefulness fail us. Let us know that Jesus offers himself as the bread of life, which sometimes means that he also gives us that material bread that is also a staple.

Prayer: Lord, we bless you for Sabbath rest. When we read scripture and pray we enter into a daily rest. We receive daily nourishment in our prayers and reading which helps us find you in the midst of life. Forgive us for our failings. Keep us encouraged in our faithfulness and in our relationship with you and others. Give us our daily bread and give us, Jesus, the bread of life. Amen.