Banana Slugs and the Bread of Life

Scripture John 6:35, 41-51    

In 1986, students at the University of California at Santa Cruz staged a fascinating revolt. The school was relatively new, having opened its doors in 1965. It had no history or tradition associated with a nickname or mascot for its athletic teams. In recent years the administration rather arbitrarily imposed the name Sea Lions on them.

The student body would have none of that. Over the opposition of the administration, they succeeded in putting the issue to a vote. The students’ choice for school mascot trounced the Sea Lions by a whopping 15 to 1 margin. What made this election noteworthy was not so much the revolt as the choice of mascot. In a nation in which virtually every sports team chooses the symbol of a fierce or aggressive beast, a grim and deadly warrior, or imposing force of nature, the UC-Santa Cruz teams became known as the Banana Slugs.

Most people around the country assumed this was a prank or a joke. Why would anyone want to take on the image of a slow, slimy, defenseless, and in many people’s minds, disgusting, 8-inch long mollusk?

But, 20 years later, the UC-Santa Cruz sports teams are still known as the Banana Slugs, and they take pride in that fact. The banana slug happens to be a key link in the ecosystem that produces the breathtaking Redwood forest near the campus. Despite appearances, it is a valuable little critter. But even more importantly, the banana slug symbol makes a statement. It gives the school an identity that distinguishes it from all other higher academic institutions. Its selection stands as a symbol of the creative, independent, and adventurous spirit that has helped the university rise quickly to be the a highly respected academic institution.

The Santa Cruz Banana Slug gives us some insight into the nature and importance of symbols. As Christians, we had better understand symbols because Jesus used them frequently. Symbols were at the heart of his ministry. The symbols he used were sometimes difficult for people to grasp at first, but eventually enough of them got it so that they could understand what his ministry was all about. I think it is safe to say they never would have gotten it without the symbols. And it follows that we would never understand what Jesus was all about without the symbols.

This is an important point because there is a large element of the faith community today that downplays and even rejects the importance of symbolism in the Bible. Biblical literalism is basically a rejection of symbolism. Those who insist that the Bible must be taken literally at all points, measure the strength of a person’s faith by whether or not they accept symbols. In this view, symbols are bad. A true Bible-believing Christian, a person of strong faith, is the one who accepts everything in the Bible as straight, unvarnished, clinical dictionary expression of the truth. Those who talk about symbols are weak, wavering in the faith.

When you hear people say that the mainline churches are watering down the true intent of God’s word, using clever tricks to twist and ignore God’s holy truth to suit their own purposes, and rejecting the authority of the Bible, what they often are criticizing is the claim that the Bible relies heavily on symbols.

That is dangerous because I submit that unless you recognize that Jesus is using symbols, and understand what those symbols mean, there’s no way you can understand his ministry.

As evidence of that we need go no further than the Gospel reading for today. In three different verses, Jesus declares himself to be bread. 6:35 "I am the bread of life."

6:48 "I am the bread of life." 6:51 "I am the living bread that came down from heaven."

Under the viewpoint that the most literal interpretation is the most faithful, then, here is what Jesus just said, "I am a baked mixture of flour, water, and yeast with a rather high starch content but containing enough usable protein to be a nutritive value."

Is there anyone who believes that? I don’t think so, in which case we’re left with one of two options: 1) Jesus really was a baked mixture of flour, water, and yeast, and only our shameful lack of faith keeps us from accepting that, or 2) Jesus is using the image of bread, not literally, but as a symbol.

A symbol is not a rhetorical trick meant to obscure or dilute reality. A symbol is nothing more or less than a way to put an abstract thought or idea into a picture, a visual image that we can see and remember. Humans cannot communicate without symbols. Thoughts and ideas are slippery things. We are capable of holding only so much abstraction in our heads before it falls away like mist through our fingers. We need images to hold ideas in place.

Are Santa Cruz sports teams composed of actual banana slugs? Are yellow ribbons magical magnetic charms that draw missing people back to their homes? Is that peculiar red, white, and blue design of stars and stripes an idol—do we pledge loyalty to a piece of cloth? No, these are symbols that stand for something—they cement into place ideas that are difficult to remember in any other way.

Why do you see crosses all over the place in a Christian church? Is it because we have a particular fondness for the letter ‘t’? Is it because we think that instruments of torture are appropriate decorative accessories? No, the cross stands for something—it cements into place the elusive idea that God could actually love us so much that God would be willing to come to earth in human form and die for us so that we could have life.

Symbols work, which is why, despite strange notions of the value of literalism, Jesus seldom spoke in anything but symbols. I am the Bread of Life, the True Vine, the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God. You must be born from above. None of this is literal. They are all symbols; symbols we need in order to understand the ministry of Jesus and to hold it in place in our heads.

What crucial idea was Jesus bringing to us in these comments about being the Bread of Life?

To get at this we first need to see to whom Jesus was talking. 6:23 gives us a clue. My seminary advisor, who is an expert on Biblical Greek, informs us that this verse is more accurately translated, "Then some boats came from Tiberius, which was near the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks."

In other words, this crowd, which had been present during the feeing of the 5000, got in their boats and followed Jesus across the lake. These people were from Tiberius.

Tiberius was a major city on the northern side of the Sea of Galilee; it was a brand spanking new city built by King Herod as his shining capital, and had been in existence for only about 10 years when this story takes place. Herod patterned the city after the major cultural powers in the world, the Greeks and Romans. It was named, in fact, after the Roman emperor. This city would be Herod’s way of showing off his kingdom as modern and as up-to-date as any place in the world.

He made a mistake, however. He placed the city at the site of an ancient burial ground. In Hebrew culture, any contact with the dead made you unclean and so the people wanted nothing to do with the place. No one would move there. In danger of having his showcase city end up as a ghost town, Herod ended up bribing people by offering free land and houses to those who would move there.

The population of Tiberius, therefore, was largely made up of those who cared more about their own personal bottom line than they did any community or religious traditions. They were apparently typical of urban masses in the Roman Empire, who could be easily bought off with freebies. Roman rulers often headed off political unrest with a free distribution of grain, which led to the famous remark by Cicero that all the people were interested in was "bread and circuses." The Tiberius crowd is in this camp.

So when Jesus comes in with a major bread giveaway in the feeding of the 5000, what is their reaction? "Here’s the guy with the free bread. Go Jesus. Let’s make him king and keep the gravy train coming."

The crowd’s interest was plainly revealed in last week’s Gospel reading. They indicated to Jesus that they were ready to let him take charge and they would gladly follow him, provided he kept up his end of the deal.

"Show us a sign," they said. "Something like, say, all the free bread in the wilderness in the old Moses stories?" Hint, hint, wink, wink. "Keep the free bread coming, keep us well fed, and we’re on your side."

Now one of the aims of the kingdom of God that Jesus ushered in is to feed the hungry. But to Jesus that is a justice issue; what is happening with this crowd isn’t the same thing at all. What he is running into here is just cynical scheming and selfishness. This crowd does not have a clue what Jesus is really all about. How does Jesus get the point across?

He does it with a symbol and a play on words. He did not wake up saying, "You know I feel kind of like a loaf of bread today." The symbol of bread comes out of the conversation with the people of Tiberius. Jesus uses their own words and the image that they are obsessed with, the image of bread, to show them who he is and what he is about.

Bread at that time was what kept people physically alive, especially the masses. About 2/3 of the average diet at that time consisted of cereal grains, usually in the form of bread. Jesus is not discounting the importance of bread in keeping people alive. In fact, he uses that understanding of the life-giving nature of bread to explain what his ministry is all about.

"I have come to bring you life," he says, "real life. And the path you are on is not going to get you there. While bread is important, there’s a lot more to life than just eating to stay alive. That’s basically what bacteria do; human life is meant to be so much more than that. The bread you are obsessed with will feed your body but it will not feed your soul.

And he tells them, "I have something for you that can feed your soul in the same way that bread feeds your cells. Call it bread for the soul. What I am offering is the life that God wants you to have. A life lived in the presence of a loving and righteous God, a life of peace and understanding, a life that reaps the joy of shared community with God and with fellow humans, and with all of creation.

"Wow," says the crowd in verse 34. "This sounds fantastic! Forget this other bread. If you’ve got some magic bread that will do all that, hey bring it on. Let’s eat that stuff."

They’re taking it literally. In order to get them to understand that this is symbolic, Jesus has to get a little more blunt, a little more graphic.

"I am the bread," he says. "The bread of life from heaven come to bring you real life. Eternal life. As bread is what gives your physical body life, I am here to give life to your mind and your spirit."

Of course, the crowd still doesn’t get it. Stuck in their literal minds now they get hung up on the words from heaven. "What do you mean you came from heaven? You’re from Galilee. Your parents live in Nazareth and that’s where you grew up. What’s this heaven stuff?"

Jesus makes a last attempt to get through to them. First, a warning. "Remember the Israelites in the wilderness? They got all the bread they needed to keep themselves physically alive, but they died in the wilderness.

The reason for this was that they rejected the way of God that offered them life at its fullest. They refused to accept what could have kept them spiritually alive. They starved themselves spiritually. By focusing strictly on what keeps you physically alive, you are in danger of the same thing.

But this is all extremely complicated to explain and so he takes the image of bread and turns it into a symbol. He uses a symbol something like the banana slug—so utterly shocking and outlandish that you cannot mistake it for a symbol. A symbol that conveys in a graphic image that what Jesus presents is as important to sustaining the true spirit of life as bread is to sustaining basic life:

"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have this life."

In the rest of chapter 6, those who take this statement literally turn away from Jesus. Spiritually, they are going to starve in the wilderness. Those who understand his statement as a symbol clarifying how completely God offers himself to us for our benefit, follow Jesus and in so doing get what they need to live life as God intends.

Most of us sense that there is more to life than simply existing. We sense that we were created to be more than just a more complex form of bacteria who exist just for the sake of existing. Humans are created for something more. Bread and water can keep our bodies alive, but what is it that keeps our spirits alive? How do we find meaning?

What is it that ushers us into that higher plane of life shared with God Almighty? The self-giving love of God, brought to us in the person of Jesus is what brings life. It is not a magic pill that brings instant happiness. It is bread for the journey, and through the grace of God, we serve it up here every Sunday in the Word, and every other Sunday in the sacrament.

We can stay away and wither in the wilderness. Or we can accept the invitation: Come and be fed.