Seeking after Jesus

Sermon Notes. Proper 13, Aug. 1, 2021 27 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." Our Collect for this Sunday paints a grim picture of struggling humanity. It is a timely image given the screen play of the Olympics on TV these days. The Collect asks God to grant that we may not stumble in our running to receive his heavenly promises. Stumble and you lose your place. Stumble and you might get hurt. Simone Biles stumbles on the vault and the world stops turning if you listen to the sports commentators. Stumble in pursuit of God's promises and they may not come your way. Is that really what the Collect says? Are God's promises, including his promise of eternal life, dependent upon us not stumbling along the way? If that's so, we are indeed needful because we will and do stumble, horribly and often. Yet God's promises are eternal and God is intimately familiar with our stumbles. In fact it is because of our stumbles that Jesus entered the world, sacrificed his life for us, and atoned for our stumbling nature. So what is it we ask of him? A different reading of the Collect suggests that our stumbles are not the issue, but what we run after is. We do not want to stumble in pursuit of God. We want that race to be the long obedience in a single direction that Eugene Pedersen said summed up his life. The Collect prays that we may seek Jesus and him only. To chase after any other goal is to stumble in pursuit of Him. In our Gospel reading from John we find the crowd who witnessed the feeding of the 5000 seeking Jesus. They come to the place where the miracle occurred, but he's not there. This in itself is a wonder because there is only one way to leave that place, by boat. They witnessed the disciples leaving in a boat the night before, but not Jesus. He retreated from the shore to pray. Now they come to find he's no longer there. So where is he now and how did he get there? They strike off, by boat, for Capernaum seeking Jesus. This is more than just narrative background. These seekers after Jesus are doing more than looking for his whereabouts. Their search is a metaphor for the spiritual search that either finds Jesus or ends in stumbling. They start by going to where he had been. They go to that place where they experienced Jesus and expect him to still be there. The return to the mountaintop is always going to be a let down. Our Lord is dynamic. He moves and he expects us to move also. I often wish I could go back to the time and place where I met Jesus for the first time because it was such a wonderful experience. It lives in my memory and always will. But I can't encounter him there again because he's moved on, leading me to move on with him. Where he will take me I can only guess. But I have his heavenly promise that it will be grander, greater, and more blessed than any place we have yet been to. So they sail across the sea of Galilee and find Jesus on the other side of the lake. Lake and sea here are interchangeable words for the same body of water, the Sea of Tiberius. Which is also the Sea of Galilee. Which is also a salt water lake. Finding Jesus there, they ask him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" It is a question of time and place. How is it that Jesus always seems to be out ahead of us, waiting for us to arrive? It is a question we sympathize with because we have asked it ourselves. But it is not an answerable question is it? To answer would be to open the purposes and ways of God to our understanding and we don't have either the knowledge or the privilege to receive such truth. Jesus' answer is to peer into their seeking hearts and open them to his inspection. 26 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. Here is a stumble of Olympic proportions. St. Augustine paraphrased Jesus' response as "Ye seek me for the sake of the flesh not for the sake of the spirit."1 We do this all the time, don't we? We have a need and we pray to Jesus to answer that need. Jesus tells us it is good and proper to do this. "Give us this day our daily bread." The stumble happens when we come to expect that Jesus is there as our provider. He is there to provide for our real world needs and our relationship with him gets truncated, cropped, to that of our provider. NT Wright says, "What matters is not just what Jesus can do for you; what matters is who Jesus is." 2. Yes Jesus can and does provide for us and he wants us to come to him with our needs. But he is also the Son of God. He is the Spirit who breathes life into us and we should never come before him unless we remember that and acknowledge that. Meeting our physical needs is the absolute least of what he does for us. It is but a glimpse into the relationship he desires to have with us. If we stumble over who it is that we approach, we will most certainly stumble over what he asks us to do. If we see Jesus as just our provider, then our role is to thank him for his provision and be on our merry way. But if approach him as the Son of God everything changes. As God's Son he has every right to lay upon us a weight of obligations such that we may never hope to bear. What he actually lays on us is surprisingly little. Maybe not so surprising because he told us that his burden is light and his yoke is easy. He asks us to strive for the things that matter and not for those that do not. 27 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." He asks us to seek Him. Plain and simple. He alone is the food that endures. He alone is the food that leads to eternal life. And to make our task even easier, we don't and can't strive to find him as though it is by our efforts that he will be found. . He gives himself to us. "Seek and you will find." He says. There is no doubt or mystery or chance involved. "Knock and the door will be opened." On this truth, on this assurance, God the Father has set his seal. There is yet one more stumble to avoid. The stumble that all we have to do is open our arms and receive. The stumble that our seeking isn't work. What is Jesus, the Son of God, asking us to do when we seek his face? The King James version translates Jesus' words as "labour for the meat that endureth." Bishop J.C. Ryles wrote, "I think He teaches very plainly that it is the duty of every one to use every means, and endeavour in every way to promote the welfare of his soul." 3. This is serious, steady, and unrelenting work. I really like Bishop Ryles' phrase: to promote the welfare of his soul. We do not achieve the assurance of salvation by our works, but we do have a large part to play in maintaining the welfare of our souls. To keep our souls from getting sick. To keep our souls strong enough and eager enough to keep seeking Jesus when they might otherwise stumble. Use every means possible. Prayer. Christian fellowship. Confession. Regular Bible study. Spiritual counsel. Holy Communion. The Church. The good people of Galilee sought after Jesus. A few of them may have sought him for the right reason, because of who he is. Most sought after him for some other reason; because he was unique and mysterious. Because he might do something for them. At the end of our reading today Jesus has something to offer everyone, the good seekers as well as the questionable one. 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." So rejoice in that. Rejoice that all we need do to find him is to seek him. Rejoice that he promises to be found. And rejoice that finding him means we will have him forever. Amen. 1. Augustine of Hippo. (1888). Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John. In P. Schaff (Ed.), J. Gibb & J. Innes (Trans.), St. Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies (Vol. 7, p. 163). New York: Christian Literature Company. 2. Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (p. 79). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 3. .Ryle, J. C. (1879). Expository Thoughts on John (Vol. 1, p. 352). New York: Robert Carter & Brothers.