[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters!
It is an ancient, devout Hungarian custom that the Hungarian man, whose life has grown together with the land, lays the first piece of the daily bread of the new harvest on the Lord's table as a sacrifice of thanksgiving. The deepest roots of this beautiful custom may go back to the pagan harvest festivals, but we should guard this tradition all the more carefully, because it shows that this beautiful old Hungarian folk custom has not been eradicated by Christianity, but on the contrary, it has been sanctified.
Now that the new bread is here before us on the table of the Lord Jesus, let our hearts be filled with joyful thanksgiving to the gracious God, that even on the threshold of the fifth year of war He has provided us with the most important thing, the daily bread. It is true that many thousands of Hungarian peasants have worked with their barky hands until now, here in the church and at home in our houses, we can break the new bread, but the Lord has given us the fruitfulness of the earth, the rain, the sunshine, the harvest, the result, the blessing for work, and by His grace the grace we have eaten becomes work, will, thought, strength, life!
Behold, the way of bread, the life of bread! The believer can do no more than come to church with a piece of bread in his hand and praise the gracious goodness of the bread-giver! And Jesus takes the opportunity to tell us his great teaching on the Bread of Life by the example of the life of bread. He points to the piece of bread in our hands and says: Look at this bread and understand what I am saying, that I am the Bread of Life! Jesus is not offering us medicine here, but food. Jesus does not only want to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, make the lame walk, raise the dead, but He wants us to understand that He is the only provider for the peaceful, calm, balanced, happy continuation of everyday life.
Most people get it wrong when they see Jesus as the last resort, when they turn to Him for help when they are in deep trouble. Doctors also complain that patients come to them with chronic and neglected problems, when the symptoms have become so severe that they are in crisis and it is too late to find a cure. It is much better to prevent the disease with a regular lifestyle and a proper diet than to cure the disease when it is already there. Is it any wonder that, in the absence of sufficient vitamin nutrition, an organism becomes weak and a breeding ground for all germs? It is just as natural for a soul not regularly nourished with the Bread of Life to be multiplied by the germs of all sorts of sins, and to go about the world like a veritable germ-keeper, spreading the plague everywhere. It is because the spiritual nourishment of the masses of men lacks the Bread of Life that great sins such as concupiscence, fornication, hatred, greed, can become great universal social, national, and even world-wide common sins, and the spiritual organism thus weakened has no resistance to the flood of temptations. The many suicides, marital divorces, family tragedies, unhappiness, the present hateful rivalry of nations against each other, and the cruel destruction of each other's lives and values, are but sad proofs of the spiritual vitamin deficiency of mankind.
There is a statement in our Heidelberg Catechism which has already caused many people to stumble. It reads, "I am naturally disposed to hate God and my neighbour." Well, has not mankind shown what he is willing and able to do by nature, by his own power?! When Jesus says that I am the Bread of Life, He is also saying that all spiritual food other than Him is the Bread of Death. Is not this world, and our lives in it, as sick as the people who a few years ago ate bread made with arsenic flour?! At that time, many people died of that poisoning and could no longer be helped. Can the world still be helped, will it not all die from the poison that has been absorbed into the blood? Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, it would be a serious beginning of healing if we could truly recognize the true cause of our individual and common human tragedy: the lack of the Bread of Life!
Bread: a collective term for the daily necessities of life. It is the word we use to describe the job we have, the money we earn, the money we make, the clothes we wear, the shelter we keep, the home we live in, the peace, the prosperity, the culture, the health - in short, the whole normal, peaceful course of life. Now imagine if Jesus were the head of the family at home in your house, if He were the manager in the bank, if He were the clerk in the office, if He were the day labourer or the farmer in the Hungarian fields, if He were the sitting in the House of Representatives or the velvet chairs of the ministers and the thrones of kings, if He were the pupil and the teacher in the school, if He were the master and the butler in the workshop: would there be social misery, family unrest, class struggle, exploitation or war?! Yet, when Jesus calls Himself the Bread of Life, He is trying to show that it is possible for His divine life-force to flow into huts and palaces, offices and workshops, culture and politics, to permeate and sanctify every aspect of everyday life.
Jesus also said, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him." (Jn 6,56) And Christ once said of himself, "I am the way, the truth and the life. So He is the life, i.e. the life that is worth calling life - because this life, polluted with sin, is not actually life, but death, as we can see from the world's image, especially today! So where Christ is left out, there is no life, there all well-intentioned striving after the higher human life is but a slow dying. It also follows that this expression of Jesus, I am the Bread of Life, expresses His indispensability, His necessity of life for all of us. Now we see how much bread is a necessity for life, now that we have so little of it. But now that it is rationed out for us, we know very well how precious every crumb of that bread is! If once we were forbidden Christ, if once all Bibles were burned, if once we could only have access to a short prayer in black: then we should be shocked to realize how precious a food the Bread of Life was, and what a sinful waste we have committed in not living on it while we could!
It is difficult for a man to come to the realization that Christ is indeed a necessary thing. For a long time he thinks that power and riches will more surely give him the bread of life than Christ. Spurgeon, the great English preacher, tells a little story of a wanderer who once lost his way in the desert, and when death by starvation was near, his weary, heavy-drawn feet caught in a little lost packet. With the last flicker of hope, he reached for the parcel to see if he could find something to satisfy his hunger, and opening the parcel, he threw the box aside in disappointment, for it contained precious pearls. How much more a piece of bread would have been worth to him then! I think so would any dying man! It would have been in vain to give him a purse full of pearls, in vain to fill his hands with pearls, but he would have gladly cradled all the riches of the world in a word of Christ! But why should we wait and starve to death? Christ is not only the only necessity of life for the dying man, He is not only the Bread of eternal life, but of daily life - the Bread of Life He is for you here and now! Without Him you are already the bride of death, and with Him and through Him you already have the kingdom of heaven!
Christ broke the bread and said, "This is my body, which shall be broken for you. He was referring to His death, from which life comes for us. We all understand, don't we, that the death of heroes who have fallen in war is for the survival of those who remain at home, of the nation, of the country. It is even more real with the death of Jesus. He died on the cross not just for us, but for us, earning for us forgiveness of sins and eternal life. When Jesus compares Himself to bread, He gives the assurance and certainty of forgiveness of sins and eternal life as food for those who believe in Him. This bread miraculously nourishes and strengthens the human soul. You don't know how the bread you eat becomes a power, a vision, a sense of smell, a vital function in you, but you can undoubtedly feel its effect. Well, the assurance of forgiveness of sins and eternal life is such spiritual bread. I could not tell you how it becomes movement, action, power, goodness, love, but there is no doubt that in the lives of those who feed on it, this food becomes miraculously effective, their lives are permeated, transformed and sanctified by the power of this food. But that is why Jesus compares Himself to bread, so that we may understand even better how much it is not enough to contemplate Him, how much it is not enough to speak of Him, to delight in Him, to expound His principles, but to make Him our own, just as we chew and swallow a piece of bread. Even if every table and every shelf in the home were full of bread, it would be worthless if we could not eat it. The great trouble with this so-called Christian world is that, although the name of Christ is in almost every piece of furniture, it remains on the shelf like an uncut loaf of bread.
"I am the Bread of Life" - this saying also means that no one else can eat it for you, because it is of little use to you, and you may starve to death. Everyone must accept Christ personally, each one of you. Many people today see that the world situation is so messed up that no man can help it, only God can. Well, that is true, but don't hang on to others, don't expect others to eat of the Bread of Life, but start with yourself! You eat of the Bread of Life day after day, because bread is not a festive food, it is not Sunday food - if it were, Jesus would have said loaf. He wants to be the daily food of your life.
So how does it become that? By reading the Bible every day. You accept for yourself that the passage you read is for you, that it is a message for you, that it is forbidden or commanded by the Lord, and you respond in prayer to the message you receive. This permanent, personal, intimate communion with the Lord is expressed solemnly and symbolically in the Lord's Supper. Here the Lord is at His table, and at home He is with you every day in silent solitude, calling you, offering you the Bread of Life, Himself.
Receive Him and live through Him here and now and for ever!
Amen.
Date: 5 September 1943.