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A Different Kind of Bread

Children's sermon
John 6:35, 41-51
Proper 14 | Ordinary Time 19 - B
John Jamison
Object: 
Bread, but ideally find some kind of bread that doesn’t look like the ‘normal’ bread your children would be familiar with. If you bake, you might bake a ‘unique’ loaf to use. The goal is to stress the idea that there are different kinds of bread.
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (v. 35)

Hi, everyone! (Let them respond.) I have another story about Jesus today, are you ready? (Let them respond.) And this is another story about what happened after Jesus did the miracle of feeding thousands of people with two fish and five loaves of bread. As more people heard about that miracle, they all came to see Jesus, and the crowds were getting bigger and bigger every day. And they all wanted Jesus to give them more food to eat. They all wanted more bread.

Jesus looked at all of the people and he said, “I am the bread of life!” He said, “God sent me to you and if you come to me, you will never go hungry.”

What do you think the people did? (Let them respond.) They got confused. “What did he say? He said that he is bread? That’s just weird. Jesus isn’t bread, he’s a guy. And he said God sent him from heaven? Who does he think he is? He says God sent him, but we know his mom and dad and where he was born. He must be crazy or something.” And they all started arguing. With all those people there, I’ll bet it got kind of loud, don’t you? (Let them respond.)

Jesus finally told them to stop their grumbling, and he told them that he was the living bread of life that came down from heaven and that God had sent him to them.

It really is kind of confusing, isn’t it? Does Jesus look like bread? (Let them respond.) Not to me. We know Jesus wasn’t actually made out of bread, right? (Let them respond.) So what was he talking about? Does anyone have any idea why was Jesus talking to them about bread? (Let them respond.)

There are a lot of stories about bread in the Bible. One day old Abraham was sitting in his tent when he saw two strangers walking by. Most people ignored the strangers, but Abraham invited them to his tent and gave them bread to eat. The two strangers turned out to be God’s angels, and they blessed Abraham for caring for them and giving them the bread.

And when Moses helped the people get out of Egypt, the night before they left they all baked a special kind of bread to remind them that God was blessing them and setting them free from being slaves.

And when they left Egypt and spent a long time wandering in the wilderness, every morning when they got up they found bread on the ground that God had given them so they had something to eat.

And one day, Jesus taught people how to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Does anyone remember what he said in that prayer about bread? (Let them respond.) The Lord’s Prayer says, “Give us this day, our daily bread,” asking God to please take care of us every day.

So, bread was very important to the people in Jesus’ day, and they remembered all of the times God had used bread to help them.

[You will change this next paragraph based on the responses you get from your children. Have fun!]

Now, there are all different kinds of bread, aren’t there? (Let them respond.) What are some of the different kinds of bread we might eat? (Let them respond.) We have loaves of white bread, and wheat bread, and banana bread, and rye bread, and what else? (Let them respond.) Yes, we have pita bread, and cinnamon bread, and flatbread, and breadsticks, and…well, there are a lot of different kinds of bread for sure.

So, Jesus told them he was just a different kind of bread from God. A living bread. He said that if we followed him, we would be satisfied, and God would take care of us forever.

The people all knew about bread…how important it was, so some of them understood what Jesus was saying how important it was to follow him, and be like him, and do the things God wanted them to do.

Maybe the next time we eat bread, we might remember how important it is to follow Jesus. And if we are going to be like Jesus, our job is to help take care of other people around us the way Jesus takes care of us.

I hope you will remember how much God loves you, and how much God wants us to show everyone around us how much we love them, too.

Let’s have our prayer and ask God to help us remember to do the things God wants us to do to take care of each other.

Prayer:
Dear God, thank you for reminding us how much you love us. Please help us remember that you love all of the people you have created and help us let the people around us know that we love them just like Jesus loves us. Amen.
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