Vicar Karla Leitzman
A few weeks ago, I found myself to be in rural Kansas for work. I had a particularly long day with an early flight out of Minneapolis, meeting with Global Refuge donors, driving for about 7 hours total including some driving through cornfields- seriously at one point I was legitimately in a field, on a dirt road and I was fully expecting the farmer to come and shoo me away. I needed to find dinner, and I wasn’t really interested in the Courtyard Marriott restaurant options, though it’s fine and serves a purpose, but it just wasn’t what I wanted that night. I was not interested in traveling particularly far and I was also prioritizing an early bed time. So, I looked out the window of my hotel room to survey the view of exotic rural Kansas to see chain restaurant after chain restaurant. And I saw an Applebees. And I instantly decided Applebee’s it would be.
I really can’t tell you the last time I went to an Applebee’s. Honestly it might have been back during college when my friends and I loved to take advantage of their half priced appetizers after 9pm. But as I was sitting there that evening in Kansas, reading my book as I waited for my Asian Chicken Salad to come to the table, I found myself noticing a comfort in the expected. The inside of that Applebee’s could have been picked up and dropped anywhere in the country and looked the same. The Asian Chicken Salad when it arrived tasted exactly like it always has. I felt myself feeling comfortable, like I had been exactly there many times before. And I had, even though it had been a little while since I had experienced it. It still felt exactly the same. There is a comfort in sitting down, looking at a menu that it is the same in rural Kansas as it is anywhere else, and ordering something I knew exactly how it would taste. I had a prescribed idea of the experience I was going to have that evening, and it unfolded in that exact way, from the interior decor to the menu to my dinner. I knew exactly what to expect, exactly what I was going to get. And that expectation was fulfilled.
Today’s gospel reading is from the end of what is referred to as the Bread of Life Discourse in the book of John. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue after he has fed the five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish, where Jesus showcased and embodied God’s radical abundance out of perceived scarcity. Jesus has physically fed those gathered and now he is teaching and preaching to feed them in a different way, in a mind and soul kind of feeding now that they have been fed in body.
Jesus makes the apt connection to the manna from heaven that God provided for the Israelites during their wilderness wandering. Those gathered would have known that story, they would have been well versed in this narrative of their ancestors, and Jesus knows this as he makes this connection to resonate with them.
The disciples and the crowd that are described in today’s gospel reading are, in many ways, looking for the expected. They want Jesus as the son of God to follow the role they have decided he should play. They want someone mighty and bold, a military leader who will overthrow Rome. They are looking for a re-creation of God killing the first borns in Egypt, for a boldness and a violence akin to the parting of the Red Sea and being delivered from this violent and oppressive empire. Like their ancestors who were delivered from the oppression of Egypt all those years ago, they were yearning to be delivered from the oppression of Rome they were experiencing. And instead what they got in Jesus was an outsider who surrounded himself with a pretty rag tag group of friends and followers- those pushed to the margins of society. Not the kings, or the rich or the powerful, but the sinners and the oppressed.
These words from Jesus proclaiming that he is the bread of life are pretty central to us today. Sharing in the Lord’s table of grace and love are pivotal to our spiritual practices as Christians, especially those of us in mainline denominations. Even though the specifics of how different groups of Christians view and practice partaking of the Lord’s Supper, the centrality of the practice remains. It might be easy to take these words for granted, hearing this is the body of Christ given for you and this is the blood of Christ shed for you because it feels so commonplace for us. For us in 2026, these words are routine but when Jesus shares them here in John, it is anything but normal or even understandable.
It would have been downright offensive to a largely Jewish audience which is why Jesus exclaims, “does this offend you?” By Jewish purity laws, eating another person’s blood or body, when taken at literal and face value, would have been so completely outlandish, so completely not what they expected or who they wanted or expected Jesus to be. It would have been anything but familiar or rational or conceivable.
Initially, those gathered were really on board with Jesus as one like Moses who could miraculously produce bread and sustenance, but where they draw the line is where Jesus is describing himself to be that manna, or that life giving bread. They watched him provide food out of little through God’s intervention, just as God intervened in the wilderness with Moses to provide manna. They think here is another Moses, another who God will use in the same way. But, Jesus is not just providing it like he did with the fish and the bread, he is it, the sustenance. They initially see this Moses-like figure as someone who could work miracles, produce signs of divinity, and provide political victories. But what is so difficult for them and where they seemingly tap out so to speak, is when they realize that Jesus is not offering the expected, he’s not offering a fast, easy victory. No, he is offering an invitation to a long, rugged road of discipleship. Of a path devoid of easy answers and quick fixes, without a clear pathway or exhibition of what they have looked for or expected to be true. And all of that is downright uncomfortable and awkward and outlandish.
I find it particularly interesting that there is a parallel here to the original manna story from Exodus. The Israelites do not trust God to take care of them. They grumble and worry and fret. So it is therefore a fascinating parallel that we receive today, of God’s people once again doubting God’s provision and abundance. As she writes in her commentary for today’s passage, Emory University Professor of New Testament, Susan Hylen writes,
“The response of the disciples to Jesus is an example of the irony for which the gospel of John is well known: the disciples reject the idea that Jesus is manna, but in doing so they display that Jesus is manna by responding to him just as the Israelites responded to manna. As in the Exodus story, the issue is not simply the grumbling of the people but the lack of trust in God that it represents: John 6:64 reads,“some of you do not believe. “The Greek word pisteuo is a common word in John that is usually translated “believe.” However, its more common meaning is to trust or rely upon someone. Although John certainly also cares what readers believe to be true about Jesus, this more primary dictionary meaning also sheds light on how this word functions in John. The difficulty in John 6 is not simply the cognitive content of believing something about Jesus, but also the lack of trust that the disciples display. Like the Israelites, they have experienced God’s miraculous provision, but they do not trust that God will continue to provide for them in the wilderness. To partake of Jesus as manna involves a reliance on God.”
Dear friends in Christ, we hold much in common with our ancient ancestors- those who wandered in the wilderness with Moses and those who struggled to grasp at what Jesus is describing and offering in today’s story from John. It can be easy for us to have an expectation of who we want God to be, and therefore who we want God enfleshed as human form in Jesus to be. We create a role or a box we want to keep him contained in. We want what is familiar and expected.
We feel that in all sorts of places, notably in our churches as we together navigate the continually rugged road to discipleship that Jesus invites us to journey on. As the three of our congregations look to a potential and hopeful shared future, we can acknowledge that moving forward in the unexpected and unknown can feel really uncomfortable and downright weird to many in our faith communities. And yet it is a perfect reminder that God has never promised God’s people their expectations. What God does promise is a love and a grace beyond our wildest dreams or comprehension enfleshed here on Earth as Christ. What God does promise us is that this road of long and rugged discipleship might not be easy or simple, but it is worth it, it is imperative for the good of a world that is hurting so desperately, for a world that, just like during the ancient Roman and Egyptian Empires, prioritized violence and power and might and not care for neighbor. We can simultaneously find exasperation in remembering that things seemingly don’t change in that regard and comfort in remembering that God has always been here and will always be here.
Where the world values the expected, of following carefully prescribed roles and expectations, Jesus brings something far better. Jesus brings a radically loving community to journey alongside on this rugged and long road of discipleship, to an ending we can not see. A journey that like those who came before us, is dependent on a reliance on God one that is beyond expectations that don’t get fulfilled and tied up in the neat little bows we so often long for. And honestly, thanks be to God for that. Thanks be to God for the ways that God defies all of our expectations, that God rejects these binaries and strict boundaries of the world, that there is both a steadfastness and solid ground and also a constant vortex of swirling change. The road is rugged and unknown, filled with change whether we might like it or not, but the road is also filled with so much love, so much shared community and opportunities for growth, of places for God’s expansive and radical love and grace to be lived out and enacted. And God’s people say thanks be to God for all of that and so much more beyond our expectations. Amen.