To most people, Chorleywood is just a leafy suburb of outer London, a stop on the Metropolitan Line into Baker Street. But it is also an extremely important place in the history of bread-making. For, exactly 60 years ago, three scientists working for the British Baking Industries Research Association there invented a process which revolutionised the baking industry. Now, I can’t pretend to understand how it works. But it apparently allows bakers to use lower-protein wheat and speeds up the time required to make bread, which now takes about three-and-a-half hours from the basic flour to a sliced and packaged loaf. This is a highly-mechanised process which can only be used in large factories.

Well, the bread made in this way isn’t what you’d call exciting; in fact it’s been called the ‘nemesis of bread-making’. It also has quite a high salt content. But it does have some virtues: it contains a good dose of Vitamin C, it can use the types of wheat that are grown in Britain rather than ones that have to be imported, and it is cheap – which is really important for some people. This kind of bread still accounts for about three-quarters of the bread we eat in Britain, but premium craft bread is definitely on the rise – in fact I’m awaiting the opening of a new artisanal bakery in the Heath which I pass every time I go swimming!

When I was a child, there were basically two kinds of bread: white or brown – if you were lucky you got Hovis! But, as you travel around the world, you find there are lots of other types. In France you have brioche, croissant, baguette and (in Alsace) kugelhopf, which is nearly cake. In Morocco you have pancakes and delicious flatbread. In Central Europe you have rolls and pumpernickel. The Swedes have crispbread. And the so-called “ethnic” communities have brought a huge variety of breads to Britain, such as pitta, chapatti, tortilla or naan. However we can’t include Welsh laverbread as that isn’t bread at all!

Now bread, of course, is what’s known as a ‘staple’ food – it’s often eaten every day and it has been called the ‘staff of life’ (but don’t ask me why!) And bread goes with almost everything: you can have it with butter and jam, or you can use it to mop your plate after a stew. It’s now nearly universal – even in countries where it was unknown it is now common; for example, you can get fresh baguettes right across French-speaking West Africa. So Jesus knew that, when he said he was “the Bread of Life” or “Bread from heaven” (especially after the feeding of the 5000), he was using an analogy that his listeners all knew well.

He actually began by referring to something else that, being Jewish, they also knew well: the manna which had been given to the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert, the miraculous food which had to be collected and eaten each day before it went bad. It’s a central story in Jewish identity. However Jesus did want to clear up one small but important point: his hearers seemed to think that it was Moses who had provided the manna, but of course it wasn’t: it was God. Yes, Moses had told God about the Hebrews grumbling on their journey (not that he needed telling!); but it wasn’t he who had sent the quails flying over their camp or the mysterious dew which they found on the ground – that was God’s doing alone. I’ll come back to this thought later.

It was then that Jesus said he was heavenly bread which could be eaten by those who believe in him, to sustain them for ever. Not surprisingly, the people gathered around him didn’t understand what he meant. Was he talking about the bread that he’d just multiplied to feed 5000 people (or even the twelve baskets of leftovers)? If he was, that would soon be finished. Did he mean that he would be repeating the miracle again and again so they would never need to buy bread again? That wouldn’t have made him popular with bakers! Or – to take things more literally – did Jesus mean that disciples should start slicing chunks off him and start gnawing them? That would be pretty gory, to say the least!

Of course Jesus doesn’t mean that! In fact he doesn’t mean anything physical – he’s using a metaphor for spiritual food, sustenance offered from God himself. And this idea isn’t new, there’s a history of it in the Old Testament. In Isaiah 55, as we heard earlier, God exhorts his people to “eat what is good, and delight themselves in rich food” by “inclining their ears” and “listening, so that they may live” – it’s clear that the ‘food’ here is God’s spoken, or perhaps written, Word. In Proverbs 9 we have Wisdom (or is it really God? It’s hard to tell the difference in Jewish literature) saying, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight”. Finally, in the Wisdom of Solomon (yes, I know that’s in the Apocrypha rather than the Old Testament itself) we have “the Word spoken by the Most High” saying, “Eat me, and you will hunger for more; drink me, and you will thirst for more” – which Jesus turns on their head by adding the word “not”: I wonder how many of us remember that chorus, “I’m feeding on the living bread, I’m drinking at the fountain-head” with the refrain: “What: never thirst again? No! Never thirst again!” That dates us!

One little point to notice here is the tense of the verbs that Jesus uses – that doesn’t sound interesting but bear with me! For, back in the time of Moses, God gave “bread” to the Israelites wandering in the desert. That’s clearly something that had happened in the past, approximately 15 centuries before Jesus. Even in his day it was ancient history. But Jesus then says that God’s new bread “comes down” from heaven and “gives life to the world”. These verbs are written in a tense which doesn’t just imply that God, in the person of Jesus, has come to earth to give us divine life: a one-off event two thousand years ago. No; while Jesus did only live on earth for a specified time, the whole thrust of the passage is that God is continually sending his Bread to the world and constantly giving it his life. His giving is ongoing process; we can still be fed today – and not just us, for he gives sufficient food for every person in the world. Since Jesus is no longer with us in person, this must have something to do with the action of the Holy Spirit, not that Jesus mentions it here.

You’ll remember that I mentioned Jesus correcting his listeners and telling them that, while Moses had been the leader of the Israelites on their journey in the desert, it was actually God who had provided the manna. This is important because, in Jesus’ day, many Jews were awaiting the arrival of a second Moses, the Messiah; while the first Moses had led the people out of slavery and into the Promised Land, the second would lead them in an armed struggle which would expel the Roman occupying forces from Palestine. This new Moses would be identified by him doing three actions: providing manna, giving water, and riding on a donkey. John’s Gospel shows Jesus performing all three – but in ways which were very different to what people were expecting.

For although Jesus did ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, it wasn’t as a military leader. Although he did provide water, it was simply by drawing it from a well (although he went on to talk about “living water” which would quench peoples’ thirst permanently). And it wasn’t actually manna which he gave the people in that barren place, but bread (although we mustn’t forget the fish!) In any case, and in contrast to Moses, Jesus never said that he had given the people God’s bread: he said that he was that bread. And the bread offered in Jesus is better than what was being expected, as Moses’ manna did not give eternal life, whereas Jesus does. The Israelites of old were blessed by God when they were in a life-and-death situation; but their provision, though vital, was only temporary. Christians, declared Jesus and then John in his Gospel, have the real bread or manna, which gives eternal life to all who eat it.

I’ve found it difficult to offer you a practical application of Jesus’ words this morning. Last week I talked about the need for people in wealthy countries and communities to share their food with the hungry rather than conserving it for themselves, both through foreign aid and food banks. That still applies. I also talked about evangelism, in terms of beggars who have discovered spiritual nourishment telling others where they can find it. That still applies, too. But today I’d like to be personal and think how we ourselves may receive Jesus, the living Bread. One answer that’s often given, especially in Anglican and Catholic circles, is “in the Eucharist” or Holy Communion; in fact I asked our Deacons to move our own Communion service to next Sunday as I want to return to this theme then.

So the answer I’d like to give you today takes us back to that passage in Isaiah (and to a well-established Jewish tradition) where the ‘food’ is clearly God’s spoken, or perhaps written, Word; and also to those well-known words of Jesus: “People don’t just live on bread but also on the word of God”. We have Jesus’ words, specifically in the Gospels and more generally in the entire Bible – yet few of us read them outside of church services, let alone spend time inwardly digesting them. In other words we have a rich store-cupboard of spiritual food – but we (and I include myself in that word “we”) rarely bother to open that cupboard and take anything out of it. Yet, just as we need daily nutrition for our bodies, so we need it for our spirit. Perhaps our challenge today ought to be, “Let’s make sure we eat more of the good bread that God provides. For we want to be the strongest and healthiest Christians we can be”.