FORGET CHRISTIANTY, learn Christ

The word Christianity doesn’t appear once in the New Testament. Why not?

It almost seems we shouldn’t even be Christians, since that’s an unimportant word in the New Testament. It appears only three times.

We should be disciples, because that word, meaning a student, learner, follower in the way, appears 261 times.

When his followers found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him: "Rabbi, when did you get here?"

“At sunrise”, or “just after lunch” we might expect him to reply.

Not Jesus.

Why give a straight answer to a straight question about the timing of a ferry ride when you can say something really odd like:

"You are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves.

“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life."

If our life is not about literal bread, we still don’t get it. UK obesity is expected to have increased 50% by 2015.

Jesus has said: “Man cannot live by bread alone” and: “it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven”.

But according to the US food and agriculture organization, there are currently 800 million undernourished people and one billion obese people.

There are well over two billion Christians in the world, but the top one per cent of the adult population owns 40% of the wealth, while 50% of us own just one per cent of the world's wealth. 30% of us try to survive on less than the equivalent of 60p a day, while the phenomenon of super rich elites is increasing in the new and upcoming powers. In the West we are discussing living on the Moon and Mars but we don’t yet know how to live on the Earth.

So when Jesus says: “I am the true bread” it’s not the metaphorical bread of our free market capitalism.

Jesus isn’t even talking about the manna of the Old Testament, which appeared each morning as the dew evaporated. But that would be closer to the truth.

They didn’t know what manna was or where it came from. If anyone tried to hoard or keep it overnight, it went mouldy and revolting, rather like our world economic situation. In the West we regard a crisis as moving from obscene wealth to extreme wealth.

The miracle of life isn’t grasped but received, accepted. Jesus, like the very gift of life, our life, is to be used today, not exploited and amassed and hoarded.

But our obsession with wealth wipes out three animal or plant species every hour of every day.

Use life wisely or lose it altogether, God may be saying.

Jesus’ use it or lose it cannot be kept by for a rainy day, when we decide he will be useful.

He comes to us today or not at all, and facing our own mortality could teach us this.

But like the people in John 6, we ask: "What must we do to do the works God requires?" Jesus answers: "The work of God is this: believe in the one he has sent."

Is that it? It just all seems too easy. Surely the point is to achieve things, not let God do his work through us, in a living trust, releasing us from the narrative of attainment targets, policies regulations and post-mortem analysis.

But Jesus describes himself as "living bread", which reinforces the point. Bread is no use sitting on the baker’s shelf. To be part of us, to give us strength and grace and wisdom it has to be digested and made part of us and lived.

Christ is no use sitting on a mountain, on the page of the Bible, or on an altar.

That’s dead bread. Dead wisdom.

Living bread and living wisdom gets taken into our lives to make a difference to other people in the outside world.

Jesus declares, "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 this may be an illusion to a very contrary statement in Jewish literature, in the book of Sirach, 24:21, when Wisdom is speaking.

She says that her memory and possession is so sweet that: “those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more.”

Jesus on the other hand is wisdom personified, embodied and lived out, and this does satisfy us.

Look at our faces in the average street, any day of the week. Human beings are dis-satisfied.

Dis-satisfied because we work for the things of this world which run down, break down, rust away, crumble, corrode and die. None of us could make a loaf of bread if God was not first making all of nature.

Our daily bread is a gift. Sunshine, rain, good soil, the atmosphere which allows miracle to happen. Our daily needs provided, which is why we say: “Our Father.. Give us this day, or daily bread”. What we don’t say is: “Our Father.. we earn your daily bread for you by charging the going rate.”

So I invite you to think of a challenge you face, right now, before reading on.

Feeding the multitude is one of many challenges for Jesus. It looks like there are no resources as he faces feeding the multitude, but the first thing he does is to acknowledge what he already has.

In the New Testament, the first thing he does, before breaking those loaves, is to give his thanks, his thanks to the Father, for what he already has, just a few loaves.

This attitude of gratitude could be ours, the acknowledgement that life is an unlimited gift from God.

Our very selves are a gift.

But how far are the British from this giftedness.

The British are among the biggest borrowers in the world, personal debt twice as high as any other European.

Genuine happiness is in the giftedness of everything in us and around us.

Our need to: “put the bread on the table”, might be better put in the context of this beautiful prayer:

Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the Universe, who accomplishes everything. Remain, all the time, steadfast in the heart of the transcendental absolute. God is Love. God knows the past, present and future. He will determine the future for you, and accomplish the work. What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don’t worry, abide in the heart. Surrender all your acts to the divine.

Remember that in the New Testament Jesus liked to withdraw to mountains by himself, so perhaps a remote mountain Kingdom still has something to teach the rest of civilisation.

While we pursue Gross National Product by focusing on the material value of goods and services and output and ignoring environmental damage and human discontent, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan’s official policy is to measure Gross National Happiness, which includes spiritual cultural and environmental well-being.

True bread transforms the pattern of this world, it is not conformed to it.

“Bread": is one of many "I am" sayings of Jesus.
I am the vine, the light, resurrection,
way, shepherd, truth, door, life.



These are about guidance, protection, sustenance, renewal, and perspective.

The letter to the Ephesians speaks of ‘Learning Christ’.
Christianity, on the other hand, that is a word that doesn’t even appear in the New Testament.