11 Pentecost B/Ordinary 19/Proper 14 August 9, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
1 Kings 19: 4-8 + Psalm 34: 1-8 + Ephesians 4: 25-5:2 + John 6: 35, 41-51
Bread of life, you who are both host and meal….open our minds and hearts that the words we speak and hear may give grace. Help us live in love as Christ loved us. Amen.
The Snickers Candy Bar folks have a series of commercials with the tag line “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” Have you seen them? In these commercials, cranky, high maintenance celebrities are behaving badly with the people in their midst. As it turns out, they are actually not really celebrities at all, but ordinary people who are hungry, and, when they eat a Snickers bar, they become themselves again.
As our Gospel readings have us firmly fixed in the Bread of Life theme of John 6 for five weeks, there’s also a common thread besides the bread. It is the less than stellar behavior of the people who are with Jesus. Two weeks ago it was the disciples, demanding to know how they were to feed all of the people following Jesus. Last week it was the crowd following Jesus and the disciples, demanding a sign to prove that Jesus was worth following. And today, it is Jesus’ friends and neighbors – the people from his temple, who knew his parents and siblings…complaining because this upstart they’d watched grow up was now calling himself the bread from heaven. Wouldn’t it be safe to expect that if you were in the presence of Jesus, no matter how physically hungry you were, you wouldn’t be, well, so whiny and full of complaints? Even Jesus says to the people in today’s Gospel reading “Do not complain among yourselves.” If it were a Snickers Commercial he might just as well have said “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
Last week, though, we talked about this complaining – specifically as it had to do with the Israelites complaining to God. And I said then and I still say that God is big enough to handle our complaints. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus, though, was tired of hearing them.
What the Israelites from last week’s Old Testament reading, and the disciples on the hillside with at least 5000 hungry people, and the crowds who followed him demanding signs and his neighbors from church all have in common in these stories is that they are all in a time of some transition. They are all trying to figure out what God is up to in their lives. The Israelites are wandering in the wilderness and the crowd on the hillside is anticipating Passover. The crowds demanding a sign are trying to figure out if he is the Messiah they’ve been waiting for and the people in his faith community just can’t get past the idea that Mary and Joseph’s kid could possibly be the promised One.
What they all wanted was a clear idea from God….a well formulated plan, maybe etched onto some stone tablets again. But that didn’t work before and the people didn’t listen much to the prophets either, so now all they have is this Jesus, who hasn’t performed any Moses shaped miracles that they can tell.
But before I go shaking my finger at any of these folks, isn’t it true that all of us would like to know, in some concrete way, what God is up to in the world, or at least in our corner of it? And what we learn from Scripture and from our own lives is that it always seems that God is not revealing the plan, at least not in ways that are easily seen and touched and heard. And when we find ourselves in hard places, in liminal spots between one thing and another, well meaning people often say things like “When God closes a door, God opens a window.” Of course, we were very comfortable with that door and often wish God would just leave the window alone thank you very much.
When we are hungry for fulfillment and meaning and purpose in our lives, we have many options….we can turn to our jobs or our hobbies and interests….we can look to other people for fulfillment: those we love or those public figures we admire. We can be easily entertained at sporting events or at the theatre or by turning on our computer or television. We can even set out to change the world for the better. But when we are hungry and thirsty for that which will always fill us, it is Jesus we reach for, who is the bread that came down from heaven.
It would be too easy and we would be disappointed, I fear, if we were to take this promise of being eternally satisfied in Jesus as bread of life to mean that we would never struggle or never question or never doubt or never again find ourselves discouraged and in times of transition. Jesus is not some magic bullet or a guarantee of smooth sailing ahead. But life in Jesus does remind us that we have not been left alone and without any idea of how to move forward through difficulty, through life, toward the plan and purpose that God has for us, a plan, Paul writes in Philippians, to give us a hope filled life both now and in the future.
Erin Wathen in Patheos distills Jesus’ teachings down to seven concise points. Love your neighbor as yourself. Feed my sheep. Go and make disciples. Follow me. Pray for your enemies. Give to the poor. Take, eat, and remember. Wathen has determined that these seven teachings from Jesus are transformative in her life and are what bring her to worship and service within a community of faith. I was thinking about her seven key points and decided that for me, I’d have to add at least one more, straight from Jesus’ teaching: Don’t judge.
Because the truth is…the Truth is….that God has given us a plan, a clear model for those times when we are stuck in the wilderness or when we aren’t sure what we’re looking for or when we can’t imagine that the son of Mary and Joseph could actually be the Messiah. That plan is God’s own self, come to us in Jesus. Jesus said that he came as fulfillment of the law…none of the commandments, not the rock hard ten or the hundreds of others found in the Old Testament had turned the people’s hearts toward God. The warning of the prophets wore off quickly. Prompting God to send Jesus….flesh and blood….Immanuel God-with-us….to teach and preach and model the love we are called to live. Jesus said there are only 2 commandments: That we love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength and that we love our neighbors as ourselves. And then because folks who followed him couldn’t figure out what that love looked like day-to-day, Jesus got specific….Feed my sheep. Care for the poor. Don’t judge. Go and make disciples. Pray for your enemies. Take, eat, and remember.
Jesus said “I am the living bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
For those who wondered if he was the Messiah, he was being pretty clear. And as we noted last week, Jesus wasn’t sent so that we could feel personally good about ourselves. Jesus wasn’t sent so that I could feel warm and fuzzy inside, although there’s nothing wrong with a little warm and fuzzy. Jesus was sent for the life of the world. I said it last week because Jesus said it last week and I say it again this week, because Jesus keeps repeating this point, leading us to conclude that it is important to understanding who he is and why he lived and died among us.
In Jesus we Lutheran Christians believe we have God. Fully divine and also fully human. It boggles the mind and heart. It’s a mystery we will not ever fully understand no matter how much we try and that’s the beauty of it.
But it is not all mystery. Jesus’ call to us to love God with ALL that we are and all that we have is very clear. Jesus’ call to us to love ourselves is also clear and one we must not shy away from. We must believe and carry in our hearts that if we are worthy of the love of God so much so that God would live and die on this earth for us than we are certainly worth loving too. And the call of Christ that we love our neighbor is clear. And that we don’t get to choose our neighbor is also clear.
Jesus is bread of life, given for us and given for the life of the world. And he is present with us at this table in bread and wine. It is Jesus, God with us, who invites us, to take….eat….and remember. Hungry people of God….let the feasting begin.
Amen.