JOHN 6:48-51
ADVENT 2
DECEMBER 7, 2014
“I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they
died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat
and not die. 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.”
WE PREPARE FOR CHRISTMAS … WITH COOKIES
With both of my parents being Christian elementary school teachers, they
decided somewhere early in their marriage that their Christmas gifts each year to
the children in their classrooms would be hosting the classroom Christmas party on
the last day before the Christmas break. While the students drew names to
exchange gifts, mom and dad provided all the cookies and drinks and other goodies.
And no store-bought ones either. No way! And to give you a little idea of how many
cookies mom had to bake, my dad often had 50 or more kids in his 6th to 8th grade
classroom, and mom’s classroom had probably around 30 or so.
Let me tell you, the Saturdays before Christmas were often the best Saturdays
of the year. The Hadler house was filled with the aroma of baking cookies –
chocolate chip cookies, monster cookies, gingerbread cookies, and of course, cutout
cookies. (I’m salivating just thinking about it). And my five siblings and I often had
the job of frosting the cutout cookies – reindeer (with a little red hot for the nose),
wreaths, bells, Christmas trees, snowmen, stars, stockings, and the hardest one of
all, Santa himself. That one was hardest because it had to be done in both red and
white, and we had to ever-so-gently press coconut into Santa’s white beard.
Once the frosting dried, the cookies were put into containers and placed in the
freezer, and mom declared them “off limits” until after the party at school. But that
didn’t stop us from intentionally breaking off a star’s arm or a reindeer’s neck along
the way. “Oh, no, this one broke! I guess I’ll have to eat it.” That didn’t stop my
brothers and me from sneaking into the freezer and helping ourselves to a few
frozen treats. (I know; shame on us). But I think mom was on to us because she
always made more than enough – way more than enough!
If Christmas cookies are a part of your Happy Holiday preparations, then you
probably have a few Christmas cookie stories of your own. But as we continue our
Advent services under the theme, “We Prepare for Christmas,” even our cookie
preparations can help to point us to the true meaning of Christmas – the celebration
of Jesus’ birth. Yes, WE PREPARE FOR CHRISTMAS … WITH COOKIES.
Without going into a long, drawn out history of how cookies became a
Christmas tradition, let me just say that we have mostly the Swiss, the Germans, and
the Dutch to thank for making cookies a huge part of the Christmas season. In the
14th century the Swiss began molding cookies to represent Bible characters.
Because most of the people were illiterate, the cookies served as a way to tell
important Bible stories. Very clever! The Germans then followed by decorating
Lebkucken – gingerbread. In fact, this practice became so popular that a special
group of artisans was formed called the Lebkucken Guild, and they made a law that
only members of their guild could bake gingerbread. Eventually that law was lifted,
and at the time of Martin Luther in the early 1500s church bake sales became a
popular thing at Christmastime. But it was predominantly the Dutch in the 1600s
who introduced America to the idea of cookie cutters and decorative molds.
Interest in cookie cutters, cookie molds, and gingerbread really grew in the
1800s when the Grimm Brothers published their story, Hansel and Gretel, the story
of two children who encountered a witch who lived in a decorative gingerbread
house. And there are numerous other stories about Christmas cookies.
I know for myself I have a weakness when it comes to cookies. I love cookies!
If it were possible to remain healthy and strong by just eating Christmas cookies
throughout the month of December, I’d be one of the first ones in line to do it. But
it’s not a good diet to have. We know enough about food and nutrition to know that
cookies are a treat and are not to be a main staple of our diets. Man cannot live on
cookies alone.
In fact, God said way back in the Old Testament through his servant Moses:
“Man does not live on bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3). And Jesus repeated these
words in Matthew chapter 4 when the devil tempted him to turn a stone into bread
so that he could satisfy his hunger. But neither Moses nor Jesus stopped there. They
continued, “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the
mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4).
But look at what can so easily happen to us during this Advent season. We
spend most of our time during Advent, in these weeks leading up to Christmas,
making preparations for our secular celebrations of Christmas. And not just time
spent baking cookies and making special meals for parties and family get-togethers,
but also time spent putting up Christmas trees and lights and other decorations, as
well as time spent buying presents and laboriously wrapping them. And I’m not
going to tell anyone, “Don’t do these things,” but as you do them, don’t let them
become sinful things that become your “gods” because they are taking you away
from Christ. But let them serve a spiritual purpose to remind you to focus your
heart on Jesus’ birth and what it means for us.
As we learned last week, we prepare for Christmas with lights. And all the
special lights of Christmas should remind us that Jesus is the true Light for our sindarkened souls. And the one who said, “I am the Light of the world,” gives us yet
another great “I am” statement today: “I am the bread of life. … I am the living bread.”
Now, Jesus never said, “I am a cookie.” But think about it: the main ingredient in
most bread is flour; and the main ingredient in most cookies is also flour. A cookie
is a kind of bread. In fact, as a cookie lover myself, I’d argue that it’s a really special
bread. The point is this: we need earthly food to sustain our earthly lives; we need
physical food to strengthen our physical bodies. How much more, then, don’t we
need spiritual food to sustain and strengthen our spiritual lives? The body dies
unless it is fed; and just the same, the soul dies unless it is fed.
But Jesus makes an even greater point here in our text that we’d better not
overlook. Eating food – even the healthiest of foods – will NEVER make a person to
live forever. Even though you eat every day to sustain your life, yet you will still die
physically. During their wandering in the wilderness for forty years, the Israelites
had food given to them directly from God – manna, they called it. God gave them
that food for their bodies. But take note: that food was physical and that food was
temporal. The people ate it and it sustained them for a day. But they needed to eat
some more the next day … and the next … and so on. And yet, even then, they still
died.
Jesus says that we need to eat an even more special food so that we will never
die. And with these words, he takes us away from the mere physical to the spiritual
– to think about our immortal, eternal souls. “But here is the bread that comes down
from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 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.” Do you get it? The body needs to be fed
with edible food. But our souls, even greater still, need to be fed with the special,
soul “food” of God that gives us eternal life. And that “food” for our souls is Jesus.
Let me tell you something about my yellow lab dog, Honey. She loves to eat.
I’m convinced she’s the greatest beggar-dog in the world. Offer he a dog cookie and
it’s down within seconds and she’s back to begging again. But offer her a candy
wrapper and she won’t eat it. It smells like candy; it probably even tastes like candy.
But she won’t eat it because she knows it’s not edible. She eats what she
instinctively knows to be edible. And we do the same: we eat what we trust to be
edible.
There is only one edible “food for our souls.” Jesus! Through Word and
sacrament, Jesus is talking about our souls taking him by faith and making him a
part of us – the greatest part of us – because he is the only “food” that gives life to
our sin-dead souls; he is the only “food” that sustains and strengthens our souls, he
is the only “food” that gives us eternal life. And without this spiritual “eating” of him
through Word and sacrament, our souls die. It’s that plain and simple.
So in your Christmas preparations, bake all the cookies you want. Fill the
house with those salivating scents. Enjoy it! But let them serve a soul-purpose as
well, to remind you that the one who said, “I am the bread of life,” is the only one
who can feed your soul through his Word with eternal life. Feed on him every day in
this most special way, and you will be fed in him with life forever. Amen.