Bread of Life – Sunday 11th August – Pastor Adrian Kitson
35 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.
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.
47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
I wonder if we all know we need this Bread of Life and live like God is with us, and yet, somehow reduce him to a single job. God’s job is to provide us with whatever it is that we need on any given day, in any given circumstance. If things go well, then God is doing well. If things are not going well, God is not doing so well because he is unaware, asleep to our need, indifferent to what is going on or withholding his good bread of life because we have done something to displease him. It is easy to live like this in a world that operates on these terms – performance, achievement, punishment and reward …
Sometimes I wonder if all I am really interested in is getting what I trust the Lord has for me and us, more than being satisfied with and enlivened by simply having him; him with me and me with him and him with us? As a result, do I often miss him – not understand him and his work, his calling, his love…?
In this pivotal chapter 6 of John’s gospel, we have heard questions and responses from protagonists and puzzled friends about who Jesus is saying he really is. There are big numbers of people on the scene. Jesus has seen through their real motivations for being around him. They liked the free bread and fish. They want their fill again. They want bread. They want hope. They want help. They want lots….
We now hear about a particular group within the crowd for the first time. John just calls them “the Jews”.
Other gospel writers name them members of the Jewish religious establishments – two religious/political parties. We know their names: Pharisees and Sadducees. Of course, just like has often been the case in our own Lutheran Church story, we might be generally of the same story but that doesn’t mean everyone agrees! We are finding that out again in these times!
They did not agree on many things. Their biggest bone of contention was about resurrection from the dead.
The Pharisees were more ‘the people’s party’. They maintained that there is an after-life existence. God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous in the world to come. They also believed in a Messiah who would herald an era of world peace here and later on.
The Sadducees were a more elite kind of party. They wanted to maintain the priestly family – the Levites of the Old Testament, and their priesthood. At the same time, they were generally more open to the surrounding Greek culture and practice. They even incorporating aspects of Greek art, gods, and Greek language in their synagogues, writing and daily living. Of course, to the Pharisees, this was ‘selling out’.
The Sadducees rejected the notion that the Word of God is interpreted and passed on by word of mouth. They insisted on a more literal interpretation of the written word. As a result, they did not believe in resurrection to an after-life, since it is not literally mentioned in the Old Testament Law. Their focus was firmly set on the here and now. Their main focus was on the worship and ritual associated with the Jerusalem Temple and maintaining the right priesthood.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/sadducees_pharisees_essenes.html
So, you guessed it. In this conversation Jesus goes for the heart of the matter. He raises the issue of being raised from the dead!
43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.
This sets ‘the cat among the pigeons.
Raising the conflicted issue exposes the heart of the people.
In this case, the people around Jesus are not seeking him because they see who he is but because they can see that he can give them. They want what the Saviour can give not the Saviour himself, or they think his version of salvation is only to do with food, water, clothes … physical needs.
On the other, the religious elites are not seeking Jesus for who he is, but to challenge who he says he is to maintain who they see themselves to be – the saviour of the people by maintaining the law, the rules, the rituals and rites …
We begin to get the hints that Jesus’ version of true ‘living the dream’ is not based on only meeting physical needs of human beings and planet or maintaining priests and ceremony and morals – even good morals.
We shall not be fully free and fully alive with all the emergency food parcels, social justice causes, political activism, high church ceremony, low church ‘no ceremony’, priestly vestments, healthy foods, educational systems and etc. Jesus’ version of what makes us new and free must be something else.
So, we have two groups of people here. We have those who just want Jesus to fix all their problems and make life easy so they can go on living in whatever way they want making their own choices as they see fit.
And we have those who are convinced that salvation from all the world’s troubles lies in people keeping the rules and being very good so that God’s blessing and favour is earned by hard work and moral living and rite ritual and system.
Both the freedom fixers and the system keepers miss Jesus, it seems.
Where are you today? Freedom fixer or system keeper? What do you hear when you hear Jesus saying to you:
48 I am the bread of life. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Tim Keller, in his book, ‘Prayer: Experiencing awe and intimacy with God’, sums it up well. To know God for who he is and not just as some moral policemen or magistrate out to punish us or impersonal being whose main goal is fulfil our every whim and need to make us happy, is where life lives.
“In our natural (human) state we pray to God to get things…… We therefore pray mainly when our career or finances are in trouble, or when some relationship or social status is in jeopardy. When life is going smoothly, and our truest heart-treasures seem safe, it does not occur to us to pray. Also ordinarily, our prayers are not varied – they consist usually of petitions, occasionally some confession (of sin) (if we have done something wrong). …
Why? We know God is there, but we tend to see him as a means through which we get things to make us happy”. (p 77)
Jesus names our wayward heart today by showing us his
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Jesus not only gives bread and water; the essential for human life. He is BREAD AND WATER itself – for my whole life itself.
This bread, this man, this God in the flesh is life sustaining, joy giving, love inspiring life itself. Partaking of him is more essential and life-giving that a million food parcels given out, a thousand causes won, a million ceremonial rites and lofty songs sung or played.
Now I sense I am shifting. His word penetrates my soul and everything changes. Now I don’t just want what he can give me or what I can do, or that God’s job is to give me a life that is safe and right and happy and clean and being good. Now I just want the Bread. I want this Bread of life that brings life no matter how much bread I have or don’t have, how many causes I win or lose, how moral or immoral I am … This Bread is pure grace.
Keller goes on …
“When we grasp his astonishing, costly sacrifice for us, transfer our trust and hope” from needing a magic man to fix our problems or a law man to make everyone else good like us and simple turn to Jesus the Christ as my Saviour, My Friend, My Lord, My King, My Life – THE Bread of my life and the life for the whole world, then we begin to simply want to know him better and be with him more often and more fully.
When we seek him and not just what he can do for us, we will count the cost easily. We will gladly strive to refrain from things that lead us into going against his Word. Then we will pray for more than just things when we are desperate. We will linger a while and converse with him about everything the whole day long. Then we, as John Calvin says in his Institutes of the Christian Life, “Even if there were no hell, it (a ‘gospelised’ heart) would still shudder at offending him”. (Tim Keller, Prayer: Experiencing awe and intimacy with God, p 78)
Are you shuddering at offending him because he is just so good to you? I hope so.
Friend, you don’t need a Jeannie in a bottle to fix all your problems and make you happy.
You have healing peace and forgiveness and love of the Bread of Life in your day every day.
You don’t need to be squeaky clean and to try and control everyone else to make them the same. You have his perfect forgiveness given by his Spirit filled Word.
You don’t need to try and pray more or harder or be more spiritual or be more holy or upright or prayerful.
You are free to ‘linger longer with him and see where he leads and what he says.
Freedom fixer or system keeper – Jesus is THE BREAD of this life and the new one coming.
Amen.
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