John 6:35-51 Dragged

John 6:35-51 (Evangelical Heritage Version)

35“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36But I said to you that you have also seen me, and you do not believe. 37Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. 38For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day. 40For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.”

41So the Jews started grumbling about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They asked, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? So how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

43Jesus answered them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the Last Day. 45It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46I am not saying that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He is the one who has seen the Father. 47Amen, Amen, I tell you: The one who believes in me has eternal life.

48“I am the Bread of Life. 49Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat it and not die. 51I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Dragged

I.

Every fiber of their being screamed in protest. This was not what they wanted to hear. They had witnessed—even participated in by receiving the food—the miracle of the Feeding of the 5,000. They had chased after Jesus, finally finding him again on the other side of the lake. They had chased after him because they desperately wanted something from him—they wanted more stuff. They wanted to be fed, or maybe healed, or maybe given free housing.

It seemed that what the crowd wanted was for everything to be handed to them—free of charge, and without any effort on their part. That’s where the crowd’s attitude was last week at the beginning of Jesus’ sermon on the Bread of Life.

Then Jesus hinted that they should Come and Get It! But he quickly explained that what he was offering was not all the stuff people are often looking for—a comfortable life filled with houses and cars and everything we might want. Instead he offered what he called “food that endures.” That was the kind of stuff people were willing to work for, so they were willing to do whatever it takes to get some.

But Jesus left an important nugget of truth in the middle of last week’s Gospel: “This is the work of God: that you believe in the one he sent” (John 6:29, EHV). He was trying to tell them that they couldn’t really “Come and Get It!” The “food that endures” is something they couldn’t obtain by themselves.

The crowd reverted to their former mode of wanting a free lunch: “Sir...give us this bread all the time!” (John 6:34, EHV). Only then did Jesus announce the theme for his sermon: “I am the Bread of Life.”

Immediately he follows the theme with “But I said to you that you have also seen me, and you do not believe” (John 6:36, EHV). The people have been chasing Jesus from here to there, across the lake and around the lake and back again. They always wanted food and health and other tangible things to be showered on them.

Jesus constantly saw them as sheep without a shepherd and taught them spiritual truths. They had seen him, but they hadn’t believed him.

Then Jesus said: For I have come down from heaven...” (John 6:38, EHV). Now it got even more difficult to believe Jesus.

“So the Jews started grumbling about him, because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ 42They asked, ‘Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? So how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?’” (John 6:41-42, EHV). Everyone had been acknowledging that Jesus was a great teacher. That, to be sure, is something that can be learned. They accepted that Jesus was a very wise man. But there were plenty of people in the crowd who had known Jesus as he was growing up. They knew Mary and Joseph. They knew where he was from; they knew some of the things he had done. He was completely ordinary.

Of course it was more difficult to believe Jesus now. His claim to be from heaven would completely upend their whole religious system. Generations had been worshiping the same way, waiting for the same Messiah to come, having the same preconceived notions of what the Messiah would do.

II.

When the Jews had reached a fevered pitch with their objections it was time to get to the heart of the matter. “Jesus answered them, ‘Stop grumbling among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’” (John 6:43-44, EHV).

“The Father...draws him.” I looked at 18 translations to see if any said something different. Only one did, but it was softer, “bring.” The Greek word is the same word used later in John’s Gospel when Peter dragged the net full of fish ashore (John 21:11).

“Draws” sounds perhaps too nice. Jesus was saying something stronger than some idea that the Father beckons to people, politely inviting them to come. That’s why today’s sermon theme is “dragged,” not “drawn.”

Paul says in today’s Second Reading: “An unspiritual person does not accept the truths taught by God’s Spirit, because they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them” (1 Corinthians 2:14, EHV). An unspiritual person is an unbeliever. An unbeliever simply cannot make a decision for Christ, because everything about Jesus is foolishness to the natural self.

In today’s Gospel Jesus is calling attention to that natural, unspiritual self. Without God literally dragging us, we couldn’t have our “come to Jesus” moment.

That concept doesn’t sit well with people. We like to think we can at least participate. In Jesus’ introduction last week, the people were willing to do some work for his promised “food that endures.” They didn’t like it very much when he called it “the work of God.” The natural self in all of us doesn’t like it much, either.

“Dragged” fits well. The Bible describes the natural spiritual condition of every person using three broad terms: dead, blind, and enemies of God. Dead people can’t do anything for themselves. The blind need special assistance to find their way around. Enemies don’t really want to be reconciled. God drags us to Jesus.

You can’t do it. Every fiber of your being protests when told you can’t do it. You can’t even help in doing it. It doesn’t even make sense to human logic. The Bible says two things that simply don’t fit together: the only way to believe in Jesus is God working that faith in your heart, but whoever does not believe in Jesus has pushed God away.

III.

Most in that crowd listening to Jesus’ Bread of Life sermon were actively pushing him away. They didn’t want what he was giving away, free of charge. They wanted the spiritual junk food of their past. As for us, Jesus mixed in there lots of things we want to take note of.

“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38, EHV). The crowd thought that perhaps Jesus would set himself up as an earthly king and supply their every want and need, but Jesus had no desire to put himself on a pedestal. He came to do the Father’s will.

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51, EHV). God gave bread for a nation for 40 years in the wilderness. That was pretty spectacular. Jesus fed more than 5,000 people on a grassy hillside, multiplying a boy’s picnic lunch many times over. That was spectacular, too. But to do the Father’s will was to finalize God’s plan of salvation—to say “It is finished” from the cross when the work of salvation was completed.

“Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat it and not die” (John 6:49-50, EHV). “It is finished” brought to a conclusion a miracle of a grander scope than anything our minds can grasp. Everyone who ate manna in the wilderness died. Everyone who ate the food multiplied from the picnic lunch died, too.

The miracle of salvation was that Jesus’ flesh was crucified on the cross for every instance that we foolishly crave earthly things rather than the food that endures. His flesh was crucified for all the times we tried to push God and the faith he was giving to us out of our hearts. His flesh was crucified, as he says, for the life of the whole world—for every person from every time and place throughout the history of the world.

IV.

“Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out... 39And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day” (John 6:37, 39, EHV).

Do you ever wonder how secure you are with Jesus? Remember Jesus said that believers are dragged to him by the Father, without any merit or worthiness or cooperation on their part. That means that you don’t have to wonder whether you have believed truly enough or strongly enough. You don’t have to wonder if your decision for Christ was sincere enough; after all, dead in your sins, you couldn’t make that decision, but you were dragged by God himself closer to Jesus.

Now that you are there, take comfort also in the fact that Jesus will never cast you out. He will not misplace you, or lose you through his own neglect. He guards you and protects you. He will raise you up on the Last Day to bring you to himself in heaven. Amen.