Pent 11 – B – 9 August 2015
Grace
to you and peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
The
text for our meditation is written in the 6th Chapter of the Gospel
according to St John; Verses 41 – 51:
41At this the
Jews began to grumble about him because he said, "I am the bread that came
down from heaven." 42They 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 him, and I will raise him up at 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. 46No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Let us pray: Father, guide the words of my mouth
and the meditation of our hearts, that through your means of grace, your spirit
may grow in us and we may be fed by your living word. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen
The extremely talented and famous author T E
Lawrence was a very good friend of the equally talented and famous poet Thomas
Hardy. Lawrence did a stint in the Royal Air Force and not being a very
pretentious person, was quite content to serve his time at the bottom of the
ladder, as an Aircraftsman. Quite often Lawrence used to visit Hardy and his
wife at their home whilst in uniform. On one occasion his visit coincided with
a visit of the ‘Mayoress’ of Dorchester. Now the Mayoress was bitterly
affronted that she had to submit to meeting a common Aircraftsman, she had no
idea who he was. When they all sat down to tea, the Mayoress told Mrs Hardy in
French that never in all her born days had she had to sit down to tea with a
private soldier. After some extended silence in the room, Lawrence said in
perfect French “I beg your pardon, Madame, but can I be of any use as an
interpreter? Mrs Hardy knows no French.” – A snobbish and discourteous woman
had made a devastating mistake because she judged by externals.
This was exactly the plight of the Jews in our
text; they were so busy judging Jesus and arguing with each other they could
not see God in their presence; they were so full of criticism and resentment in
their listening, they learnt nothing from Jesus words. So cynical were they in
their own opinions they resisted the ‘drawing of God’. The word John uses
for ‘draw’ was ‘helkuein’ – this is the Greek translation of the Hebrew when
Jeremiah hears God say in Jeremiah 31:3 “With
loving kindness have I drawn thee”. This is an interesting word as whenever
it is used it almost always implies resistance of some kind. It is the word
used in John 21:6, 11 for drawing heavily laden nets to shore; and again in
Acts 16:19 when Paul and Silas were dragged before the magistrates in Philippi.
Our Triune God is continually drawing mankind to himself, but so often our
judgement, our preconceived ideas, our ego-centred plans can place a lot of
resistance on God’s pull.
The flesh and blood of Jesus so frequently
mentioned in John 6 are not just metaphors or images. They are references to
the literal flesh of Jesus crucified and the literal blood of Jesus shed on
Calvary. What is metaphor, though, in John 6, is that this literal flesh and
blood constitutes bread or food and that we eat this bread. So graphically does
Jesus push this metaphor in describing our reception of him that some people
have been repelled by its cannibalistic overtones. We read of the angry,
disgusted reaction of the people in Jn 6:52: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
But to describe our reception of Jesus in this
fashion should not surprise us too much. How often we hear a parent say of a
child, “I love him so much that I could eat him up.” We don’t react to these
words by protectively snatching the child away from the parent. We understand the
everyday ‘slang’ language, if you like, for what it means. We see in the words
strong evidence of affection and intimacy. So, too, we might describe our faith
relationship with Jesus: “We love him so much that we could eat him up.”
Throughout our text, Jesus calls the salvation he
has provided us “bread.” In fact, he uses the word bread six times. Why does
Jesus use this metaphor? What does it signify? What does it tell us? How does
it help us?
Jesus enlightens and enlivens us with the metaphor
of bread to describe the salvation He has provided to us, and He does this in
three distinctive ways.
I. The bread metaphor clarifies God’s
intention for us to enjoy two kinds of life.
We’re fully aware of one kind of life God has given
us, namely, bodily life. - God
gave us the gift of bodily life through our parents. We were born. This bodily
life is characterised by such activities as breathing, thinking, and muscular
movement. It manifests itself in our individual gifts and talents through which
the love of Christ lives in us and in those around us whom we serve.
This bodily life is nourished by daily bread which
is emphasised in V49 of our text “Your forefathers
ate manna in the desert” – and in the same way we are provided with ‘our daily bread’, everything we need to
sustain our physical existence, and like the forefathers, even though we are
sustained daily, we are destined for the same physical fate as them, again
written in V49 “yet they died” – it
is only thing in life about which we have certainty.
This is not such a depressing thought though,
because the Scriptures inform us of another kind of life God means to give us,
namely, spiritual life; as written in Mt 4:4;
“Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on
every word that comes from the mouth of God.'
God gives us spiritual life through the mystery and
miracle of Holy Baptism - We are, as described by Jesus in John 3:3 “born again” not through any effort of
our own, but by the Holy Spirit - God the sanctifier; God the revealer of all
truth – as written in John 16: V 13-14 “13But
when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will
not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you
what is yet to come. 14He will bring glory to me by taking from what
is mine and making it known to you.”
This spiritual life is
characterised by godlike holiness and love. This spiritual life is nourished by
what is described in V41 as “the bread
that came down from heaven.” – This is the living bread in the Word and Sacraments
that our text tells us ‘will raise us up
at the last day’ – ‘gives us everlasting life’ – and ‘is the bread that comes
down from heaven, which we may eat and not die’
II. The
bread metaphor clarifies the nature of the means of grace.
Friends, the means of grace do more than inform
us—they feed us. – Without doubt, the means of grace provide information, understanding,
belief, principles, advice, instruction, as Jesus tells us in V 45 “They will all be taught by God. Everyone who
listens to the Father and learns from Him comes to me” - But there is more,
the means of grace impart life; John 1:1 aptly describes Jesus as the “Word”
–and Jesus is the word and from our text it is clear that the Word is more than
just a library of words in the Bible –The Word is more like bread than a book V
41: “I am the bread that came down from
heaven” – V48 “I am the bread of life” – V51 “I am the living bread that came
down from heaven” Being
nourished in the Word is more like going to the table than going to the
library.
You see, each means of grace specifically
illustrates its nourishing qualities. - In Baptism John 3 tells us we are “born again” and 1 Cor 12:13 tells us we
are “given the one Spirit to drink”. - In the Lord’s Supper we have the
ingredients of food and drink (bread/body and wine/blood) and the actual
activities of eating and drinking, which we associate with the procurement and
sustenance of life. - Even in the spoken Word, the most verbal, intellectual of
the means of grace, that Word is often described in images of food and/or life
- Jer 15:16; “When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart's delight,
for I bear your name, O LORD God Almighty.” Amos 8:11; "The days are coming," declares
the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land— not a
famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the
LORD” - 1 Pet 2:2; “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual
milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”
Rev 10:10: “
I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet
as honey in my mouth.”
III. The
bread metaphor clarifies the nature of faith.
To be sure, Christian faith involves teaching and
learning information and knowledge, understanding and agreement, as written in
V45 - But Christian faith is more: it is a living force. Listen again to the
power of Verses 47–51; “I tell you the
truth, he who believes has everlasting life. 48I am the bread of
life. 49Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died.
50But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may
eat and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh,
which I will give for the life of the world." – Friends our Christian
faith implanted in us by our Triune God at our baptism is a throbbing,
pulsating faith. It is alive, dynamic, intimate, involving us emotionally as
well as intellectually, permeating not just our head but also our whole being.
It can be clearly noted in our text that
“believing” and “eating” are treated synonymously. V 47 says, “He who believes has everlasting life,”
and v 51 says, “If anyone eats of this
bread, he will live forever.”
Jesus shows us the way to the life giving means of
grace, the foundation of our faith in John 6:53 -only two verses beyond our
text- “Unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
In other words, come – come to the baptismal font
of life, and I will grace you with the means of faith – the Holy Spirit – Come
devour my life giving inerrant word of life with your eyes and ears, that my
living Word may grow within you and lead you through the challenges and
temptations of life – come to the table of my ultimate grace and eat of my true
body and drink of my true blood, given and shed for you, that your guilt is
forgiven and you will be one with the Father and the whole fellowship of heaven
forever.
Friends, enlightened by the Holy Spirit through Jesus’
use of the bread metaphor in today’s text, we are enlivened by that same Spirit
to say in the words of Is 55:2–3, “Why
spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the
richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”
Amen.
The grace and peace of our great Triune God that is
beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen
Merv James
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