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The Atkins Diet is a high-protein, high-fat, and low-carbohydrate weight loss diet originally developed by Robert C. Atkins, M.D. in the 1960s. It was considered highly controversial, and its popularity waxed and waned until the early 1990s, when Atkins published his best-selling book Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution. This book was on the New York Times paperback bestsellers list for over four years. It is estimated that more than 20 million people worldwide have tried the Atkins Diet. You will be glad to know that I am not going to ask for a show of hands on who has tried or is trying the Atkins Diet. As with all diets, the evidence is mixed as to its success rate and it has both believers and detractors. At the height of its popularity, The Atkins Diet was blamed for a terrible downturn in sales at Krispy Kreme and was seen as Public Enemy Number One by the Bread Institute of America!

For the great majority of the world’s peoples bread, in some form or another, is the basic, staple, food, necessary for life. As such many thinkers, poets, preachers and teachers have commented on life and its meaning by using bread as a symbol. For example:
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread - Mohandas Gandhi.
If the people have no bread, let them eat cake - the ill-fated Marie Antoinette.
We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it - Jose Marti, Cuban statesman and poet.
A hungry people listens not to reason, not cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers. [Brad Coulter reads the Latin: Nec rationem patitur, nec aequitate mitigatur nec ulla prece flectitur, populus esuriens.] - Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca), De Brevitate Vitoe (XVIII)

And then in our reading today in John 6, we hear Jesus discuss the gift of the manna bread to the Israelites in the wilderness and take a step back as Jesus offers the most astounding bread talk ever: Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

This is for sure an audacious claim. In Chapter 1, John establishes that Jesus is the co-creator of the universe and that Jesus, the Word is God! Now in Chapter 6 John records for us the claim that Jesus is also the active and central element sustaining the whole life of creation. It is not surprising that Jesus’ claim met with opposition, and this opposition came from those who knew or knew of Jesus. It was the people who knew Jesus who protested the loudest and the longest: Hey we know this guy, Jesus is one of us, born down the road; why would Jesus claim to the bread of Life? Hey I was in the same class as Jesus, we went to Middle School Camp together, we swapped baseball cards; how can Jesus be God?

It is interesting to notice Jesus’ response. Rather than offer a defense, or attempt to prove this claim, Jesus reminds his critics that it is God is bringing all this about. Those who get it, will get it and those who don’t, won’t. Don’t sweat it. God knows what God is doing. People will be drawn to the community of faith because of God. Just as the arrival of the manna in the desert changed the course of Israel’s history, so the arrival of Jesus as food for the world will change the course of all history.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." These words can help us correct an idea that is still so prevalent today: that to believe in Jesus is do nothing more than grant Jesus our intellectual assent. This image of eating bread suggests something all together more comprehensive than that. Faith in and from the Bread of Life is not an idea we possess, but a way of life that we come to embody.

You see Jesus is not someone we are to keep our distance from. Jesus the Bread of Life bans, prohibits and defeats distance. “I am bread, feed on me.” The faith relationship between Jesus and us, between us and Jesus is an intimate, earthy, carnal and fleshly relationship. Jesus is more than an interesting idea. Jesus is bread that we ought to hunger for, to eat, to savor, and to be satisfied by.

The Christian faith is about Jesus; the Christian faith is Jesus - it is about getting personal with Jesus. It doesn’t happen if we keep Jesus and his demands at a distance. As we see and hear and taste in today's gospel, faith in Jesus gets intimate and personal. Our faith sparks into life as we come to see that we are encountered by a person: Jesus. Jesus, Emmanuel not just at Christmas but all the time, Jesus, “God getting personal with us” - God engaging with us. God taking on and taking over our lives, possessing us.

There are people who spend some or much or all of their lines trying to figure out whether or not they are Christian people. They can be very intellectual, intelligent and analytical. It can be difficult for them to take the next step of faith; difficult for them to stop thinking about Jesus and start living with Jesus. Jesus’ preaching illustrates that the goodness of God does not independently arise within us, as we think about it. Rather, getting on track with God happens only as we partake of Jesus and receive him fully into our lives. By feeding on the very body and blood of Jesus, our faith becomes personal. By accepting the nourishment of the bread of life the Word becomes flesh in us and through us. By eating Jesus penetrates every fiber of our being, such that Jesus will nurture us, feed us, and strengthen us for living.

One problem we all have at some time or another is when we put ourselves on a spiritual Atkins Diet. When we deny ourselves the nourishment that Jesus alone can bring into our lives; when we cut ourselves off from the Bread of life; when we move away from rather than towards the One who alone can satisfy us; when we fill ourselves up with other things and people and we miss the life-creating and life-sustaining relationship which Jesus alone offers. We can do this in any number of ways: by not putting aside time to be with God, by neglecting to pray, by choosing not to participate in the sacraments, by staying away from the worshipping community, by refusing to forgive those who hurt us, by turning our backs on the poor, by speaking ill of others, by looking out for ourselves rather than the needs of our neighbor. Such a spiritual Atkins Diet in which we skimp on the Bread of Life will leave us at a distance from our Lord and Savior, it will frustrate us and diminish our faithful witness and negate any positive influence we could have on the world around us.

I wonder what would happen if we treated Jesus the Bread of Life like we treat our cell phones?

Our cell phones accompany us everywhere! We always turn back to get them if we forget to bring them with us! We need the Bread of Life, every day, every week; we need to deliberately turn to Jesus and come close so that we can truly discover the peace and joy of faith. We need to be able to recognize when we seem to drift away from Jesus and ask that we can be restored in loving fellowship.

We flip through our cell phones often, exploring, looking for new ways to connect! We pay rapt attention to the messages they deliver! What new things could we do, what new practices could we adopt to better enable us connect with the Bread of Life? At Sunday School, in worship, at home, at work? Can we make a deliberate plan to make sure that we and our family, if we have one, can participate at BUZZ on a Wednesday evening?

We give them to our kids as gifts! We can share our faith with our children in ways that are age appropriate, sharing the ways our faith journey has turned, our ability to pray, our sense of commitment and desire to persevere in believing.

We use them extensively when we travel!  We keep them very close when we face an emergency! Wherever we go in life, whatever situations we face, Jesus offers to share our lives, to bring us comfort and strength, guidance and direction, as we allow the Bread of Life to sustain us we can do great things for God everywhere we go.

Oh, one more thing. Unlike our cell phones, we don't ever have to worry about roaming charges or going over our minutes or the cost of our bill. Jesus is right with us all the time, Jesus has patience with us to listen to our rambling prayers, to hear our every moan and groan and to disturb us into living a new life, and Jesus has already paid the bill in full.

Trusting Jesus the Bread of Life we can realize our abundance, and we can get about the essential task of offering food, physical and spiritual, to others.

Tasting Jesus the Bread of Life and accepting the grace offered to us by God we can forgive ourselves and others, as God has forgiven us.

Absorbing Jesus the Bread of Life we are shown the truth by God and about and so we can live in the truth, and share it with others.

Journeying with Jesus the Bread of Life we surely know that we are loved by God and  so we can love one another, we can love our neighbors everywhere.

My friends eat right, feed on Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life. Live well: Participate fully in the community formed and fed by Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life. Exercise regularly: Walk in love, aware that you have a partner, a guide and a destination in Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ who is the Bread of Life.  Amen.