The Bread of Life (Remix)
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
This morning’s Gospel reading is a continuation of last week’s Gospel reading, which presents some complications since, due to the threat of the storm, we did not have services last Sunday. However, I did preach on the readings from last Sunday on Wednesday when I filled in for the healing mass, so what I’m going to do this morning is take a bit from that sermon and remix it with some thoughts on this morning’s Gospel reading, and hopefully create something coherent.
Both last Sunday’s Gospel reading and today’s are focused on the same topic: Jesus as the bread of life. And as you will no doubt realize next week, so are next Sunday’s readings, so we’re going to camp here for a little bit, and you probably want to have your Bible open to John 6 so you can follow along, or you can follow along on the screen.
The context of this entire scene is the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus miraculously fed the large crowd, and then, again miraculously, he cross to the other side of the lake. The people who had been fed realize that he’s gone and they go looking for him. When they find him, Jesus says the strangest thing.
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
As creatures, we are biologically predisposed to prioritize our physical, creaturely needs. We see this in animals. We see this in human being. No one has to be taught to selfish, and most people spend the entirety of their lives either struggling to meet their physical, creaturely needs or to make enough money to ensure all their needs are met and then some.
The crowd had had their needs met by Jesus, and then, he was gone. They go out seeking Jesus, which you would think is a good thing, but Jesus knows why they really came. They came for more provision, more food. They came to have their physical needs met.
Jesus says that they are seek not because they saw signs but because they ate their fill of the loaves. He doesn’t mean that they didn’t physically see the sign. Of course they saw it. They all got to eat it. They say it, but they didn’t really “see” it. They didn’t perceive what the sign was pointing towards. It’s like seeing a sign telling you to exit for Disney World and they driving right past it. Sure, you saw the sign, but you didn’t understand it or you wouldn’t have kept driving.
They did all this work to come find Jesus because he could create food for them and provide for their physical needs, but they should have been working for something else.
Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”
There is food that perishes, and food that doesn’t. The food that perishes can be acquired by any number of means, but the food that endures to eternal life, that food comes from the one on whom God the Father has set his seal, namely, Jesus Christ. The crowd wants to know what they must do to acquire this food.
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
This is the Gospel in a nutshell. What work must we be doing? Only one: believe. Believe that Jesus is who he said he is, that he has done what he said he was going to accomplish, and that he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
This is incredibly freeing. All that’s asked of us is belief. But not cognitive belief, although that is important too. But real belief, in the depth of our soul, that affects how we live our lives. Jesus is talking about the kind of belief that allows us to see the sign, like the Disney World sign, and then respond accordingly. He is talking about the kind of belief that makes us go out from this place on a mission to make disciples of all nations, starting in the places where we spend the most time, namely our homes, our jobs, and our church.
The crowd asks for a sign, which, I like to imagine, made Jesus roll his eyes. They reference the manna in the wilderness because apparently making food miraculously appear was not enough. Again, they are only thinking about their physical provisions. Jesus says,
Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
The people ask for this bread always. Jesus says:
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
What follows from this verse is our reading this morning, except for one verse, which for some reason is skipped by the lectionary. That verse is this:
But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.
I don’t know why this verse is skipped because it really reinforces the point: seeing Jesus but either (a) coming to him with the wrong motivation or (b) not responding appropriately to who he is is not in fact belief.
There’s a lot we could say about this morning’s reading, but what I want you to notice is that verse 35 from last week’s reading begins this extended discourse. The topic sentence, as it were is: “I am the bread of life.”
The ones who come to Jesus for this true bread are those given to Jesus by the Father, and they will never be cast out.
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
Jesus says he came not to do his own will, but the will of the one who sent him...
For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.
… namely, that he lose none of those the Father has given to him and that he raise them up on the last day.
And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
We spend a lot of time as Christians talking about the will of God. Well, here it is:
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
A life spent wholly in pursuit of our physical, creaturely needs, doing out own will rather than God, is a life that ends in death. But a life spent in pursuit of our spiritual needs, not in pursuit of food that perished but of the bread of life that endures to eternal life, that is a life that leads to resurrection.
The people grumble, and for the sake of time, I’m going to skip over Jesus’ response to their grumbling and pick back up at vs. 47.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
And then we have our theme again:
I am the bread of life.
Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
Think about that for a second. Even manna was merely food that perishes. But there is something more that we need, a food that meets more than our physical, creaturely needs.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
There is eucharistic theology jumping off the page here, but that will be next week’s sermon.
Jesus said earlier:
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Jesus does not mean that we will never hunger nor thirst again. Plenty of Christians have gone hungry and thirsty. What he means, rather, is that he offers us in himself meets our needs at an even more significant level than our physical, creaturely needs. He offers us more than a meal that keeps us from feeling hunger for a few hours. Instead, he offers us a feast of his body (and as we’ll see next week, his blood) that will keep us satisfied now and into eternity.
So, do not spend your life so singularly focused on your physical, creaturely needs that you forget to come to Jesus to meet your spiritual needs as well. To put that another way:
John 6:27 (ESV)
Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.
What strikes me though as I think about this idea is that most of us know when we need our physical, creaturely needs met. We feel it. We know when we feel hungry, so we go eat. But how many of us feel hungry for prayer? How many of us feel hungry for the word of God? How many of us feel hungry for the fellowship of other Christians? How many of us feel hungry for the bread of life?
I suspect, for a variety of reasons, that most of us have so tuned out the spiritual reality of our existence that we feel that hunger any more. I suspect that many people today are spiritually starving to death, and they don’t even know it. Or if they do, that have tried to satisfy those needs with anything and everything except the bread of life.
Our deepest needs are satisfied only in Jesus Christ, the bread of life, but so many, even Christians, maybe especially Christians, have so tuned out those needs that we don’t even feel them anymore, and so we are spiritually wasting away.
Spend your life pursuing those things that endure to eternal life; not what perishes. It is God’s will for you that you look on Jesus and believe that he is who he says he is and that he has accomplished what he said he has accomplished. But if that belief doesn’t affect who you are and how you spend your life, then it’s like you saw the sign and kept on driving. Belief leads to change. It has to, or it isn’t genuine belief.
If there is a hunger inside you for something more, for a deeper connection to Jesus, that is what he is offering you today. He is the bread of life. Spend your life feasting on that bread in the sacrament, in the Word of God, in the community of the church, and in the faces of the poor, hungry, and lost, and you will never hunger, and you will never thirst, and he will raise you up on the last day.
Amen.