Sermon: 11 August 2024 Anglican Parish of Christ Church St Lucia | 12th Sunday after Pentecost
Text: John 6.35, 41-51
Theme: I am the Bread of Life
Prayer: O God, take my lips and speak through them, take our minds and think through them; yet take our hearts and set them on fire for your kingdom’s sake. Amen..
and Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”
On the first day, God created the dog and said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s a long time to be barking. How about only ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten?” So God agreed. On the second day, God created the monkey and said, “Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years! That’s a pretty long time to perform. How about I give you ten like the dog did?” And God agreed. On the third day, God created the cow and said, “You must go into the field with the farmer all day long, and suffer under the Sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer’s family. For this, I will give you a life span of sixty years.” The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. How about twenty and I’ll give back the other forty?” And God agreed. On the fourth day, God created humans and said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. For this I’ll give you twenty years.” But the human said, “Only twenty years? Could you possibly give me my twenty, the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back; that makes eighty, okay?” “Okay,” said God. “You asked for it.” So that is why for our first twenty years, we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves. For the next forty years, we slave in the Sun to support our family. For the next ten years, we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren. And for the last ten years, we sit on the front deck and bark at everybody.
This is a joke perhaps but also a sad indictment on lives that are lived without purpose; without true depth; without compassion; and without joy.
and Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”
In Acts 17 Paul says that people are inherently religious. St Augustine said that every person is created by God and for God, and so we remain restless until we find our rest in God. Too many people endeavour to satisfy the deepest desires of human nature with many substitutes – work, wealth, family, fame, sex and power but, as Pascal, the famous French mathematician reminds us, our insatiable desires are really a God-shaped vacuum in our souls which only one thing can truly fill – God.
and Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”
Our Scriptures and our lives would be the poorer if there was never written the Gospel of John. In it Jesus is clear about who he is – comparing himself to the ‘living water’ that quenches our thirst – he identifies himself as the one who satisfies our deepest hunger. There are seven ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus – referring us back to God who declared to Moses, “I am” Jesus is bread of life, light in darkness, a gate to safe pasture, a good shepherd who sacrifices himself for his sheep, the Way, the truth and the life, the true vine and the Resurrection.
Isn’t it any wonder that people started complaining – it’s one thing to find a miracle worker who feeds our physical hunger – it’s altogether another thing to be confronted with Almighty God! To be confronted with Jesus claiming he is the bread of life. Hold on, we know you, you’re Joseph’s son, we know your father and mother – how can this be? And we know that many of Jesus’ disciples turned back and no longer followed him. We know that many people in our day and age can understand Jesus as a good man – a prophet even, but can’t make that step to seeing in him the very nature of and personification of God on earth.
Yet by God’s grace and mercy – it is we who have found Jesus to be more than a miracle worker – we who have found in him the very Son of God, we who are being fed by Jesus own presence and it is in that feeding that we are participants in Divine life. But let us not be smug about this in any way. Let us who eat this bread – eat at our own peril for we cannot eat this bread and then forget; we cannot eat this bread and walk away. We cannot eat of this bread and go on with life as usual. And this Gospel is terrifying in that we know that God has called us to go beyond ourselves and care for others.
If God could leave glory in order to reach out to us, then could we too can leave the comforts of life, could we too can leave our pews, our comfortable place of worship, we too could walk out those doors ready to align ourselves with true life – eternal life: the kingdom life.
Do we gather week after week like those that day who came looking for another sign, who missed the point entirely? Do we gather week after week around the Altar looking for the ‘magic,’ for that ‘spiritual fix and pick-me-up,’ ignoring the subversive and life transforming power of Jesus’ own presence in this bread that is God’s very own body, not just for us BUT for the world?
Do we gather week after week and pew sit and say ‘yes’ and eat of the meal and go on with life as usual or ignore it all together as something that has nothing to do with us, as something that we might think about later at another time, ignoring the plight of those around us, continuing to refuse to be open to true transformation.
Part of the challenge of life in our day is our recognition that there are many around us that go each day, every day, without the sustenance needed. That as we gather day after day, week after week, there are many that have no such sustenance. That as we go about our political posturing and hold to our ideologies, left, right or whatever, there are many that do not have that luxury.
As our nation, and so many nations in the developed world fight about who has worked enough, who has enough initiative, who is truly successful, as we battle to draw the lines on who is in and who is out, we miss the point and we miss the invitation. We, like those who came back on that day, are still unsure of whom it is that we have encountered.
and Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”
May we open our eyes and see the light. Maybe we will be able to recognise that we, too, you and I, have been beneficiaries of an amazing life. We have found our sustenance and instead of using it to propel us into the neediness and hunger of the world, instead of finding that sustenance and having that energise us into speaking on behalf of those who have no voice, instead of having that sustenance call us to task again and again into the ways that our own lives are part of the problem, we have continued to eat our fill, acting as if we have earned it, ignoring the plight of those who need this sustenance the most.
The community called the church is at its core a community of people who hunger; a community of people called around a table, whose own identity is grounded in what it means to be sustained by the presence of Christ’s self – each and every time we gather together.
From the very beginning of the story of faith, God has given us of God’s self and is ALWAYS inviting us to take this sustenance and use it as a source of being the light of the world on behalf of God’s kingdom. So part of the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving in this Eucharist is our recognition that when we leave the doors of our prayer and praise, we are to walk out and work for the sustenance and feeding of a hungry, hungry world. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who died a martyr tells us that the Eucharist makes us look back to Calvary twenty centuries ago but it also looks ahead to the future, to the eternal and definitive horizon that presents itself as a demanding ideal to all political systems, to all social struggles, to all those concerned for the future of the planet.
There are many who are looking, many who are hungry, there are many who are searching. So regardless of whether we are at the eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves stage; or the slaving in the sun stage; or doing monkey tricks for the grandchildren stage, or even sitting on the front deck barking at everyone stage, may we be that body that is truly feed week-by-week; that feeds others and may we be that body that proclaims the identity of the bread of life to this broken and hungry world.
and Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”
The Lord be with you