Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ,
We learn a
lot from Jesus’ meetings with various people during his earthly ministry. These conversations focus on common human problems
– illness, want, what to believe. They
show the solutions that we frail humans think up and then the solution that God
brings to us. Folks don’t always accept
his answers, and so conflict arises between mankind and heaven. Jesus solved that problem, too, when he died
for the sins of all and rose again from the grave. We can always be sure of his friendship for
us.
We need him
because earthly life is full of troubles and challenges. This morning’s gospel text deals with one of
them – different forms of hunger: physical hunger, hunger for life, and hunger
for God. The point of the passage from
John is that God satisfies all these needs for people who look in faith to his
Son.
I’m sure you
remember the time when Jesus turned a small quantity of bread and fish into
enough food to feed a crowd of thousands of people. Then he walked across the Sea of Galilee to
catch up with his disciples who were traveling ahead of him in a boat. Now he’s in another town. Some of the people who’d seen the miracle the
day before followed Jesus to Capernaum.
We know that people don’t all think alike, but when folks gather into
crowds they form a collective personality, and the crowd that sought the Lord
did not have worship on their minds.
Jesus suggests they were looking for more food.
Food is a
necessity. We won’t stop needing it till
we die. The search for food takes up a
lot of our time. We know that some
people don’t have enough, a problem that Our Savior’s food bank helps to
resolve. It’s not God’s intention that
anyone go hungry, and so he enables the fortunate to help out the ones in
need. This is part of good stewardship,
not to hoard, but to share, in imitation of our Lord.
But
Scripture doesn’t tell us that the folks who went to Capernaum were starving or
in great need. They were ordinary people
looking for a way to solve the problem of food supply. Perhaps they could get more out of the Lord
than he had already given – a week’s worth of food or a month’s. What if he had the secret of everlasting
abundance, so they wouldn’t have to work again?
This is a normal human question, especially for people who consider the
duties of life to be impositions on their free time. They didn’t mind going to a wonder-worker in
search of a favor.
Jesus
understood their need for food and other material things, as he understands
ours and provides for us out of his abundance.
Because he promises to provide, he didn’t want them and he doesn’t want
us to focus exclusively on earthly things, which are useful for a time, but
they perish. Who wants to spend their
lives in a search for stuff that fades away?
Jesus invited the folks in the crowd to put their need for material
goods in second place and work instead for God’s kingdom, which will last
forever. He brought them a wonderful
opportunity. The search for our daily
bread can be monotonous and uninspiring.
It can reduce our horizons and shrivel our souls. Jesus lifted the crowd’s spirits and invited
them to focus on something worthy of people made in God’s image, to think about
their souls more than their bodies, and not their own souls only but also their
neighbors and families. Jesus worked a
great miracle the day before, not so that people would come looking for more but
so that they would recognize him as God, who solves the problem of hunger for
food and other challenges as well, for those who trust him.
Once the
need for food is met, another hunger can swoop in and take its place – a desire
for more and more life. Generally
speaking, there are two kinds of life, the eternal life that God gives us that
includes mercy, forgiveness, love, and faith in Christ, and then ordinary daily
life that is never certain and always changing.
This morning’s texts don’t give a favorable picture of every day earthly
ways. The Israelites in the desert
grumbled when they discovered that life in the wilderness was less luxurious
than the slavery they’d left behind. In
later chapters in Ephesians, Paul wrote that pagans give themselves over to
every kind of impurity and constantly lust for more. When the crowd that followed Jesus heard
about eternal life, they responded in an earthly way and asked what they
themselves must do to acquire it.
Knowing
ourselves, we may wonder if the hunger for earthly life will get the best of
us, too, so that we forfeit the eternal life that Jesus brought to earth. Paul warned his readers not to live like
pagans, for the lure of pagan life is very strong. We’d be lost on our own, but Paul said that
God’s Spirit works on us so that we put off the old self that deceitful desires
corrupt, while God makes us new in our minds so that we put on new selves. God works on his children to rebuild and
renew us. He creates in us a hunger for
this kind of life rather than for the perishing fascinations of the world.
More than
this, he pardons us through our faith in his Son, he washes away our sins, he
restores us to favor. The world and the
devil do work on us so that we come to desire earthly finery more and more. Gods’ people are constantly tempted. We waver.
Sometimes we give way. His mercy
picks us up. His forgiveness saves us. His compassion for us, which he showed most
sublimely in his death on the cross, works against the influence of the world
so that we ache for the world less and less and desire him more and more.
There is, we
don’t forget, an ineffective kind of hunger for God, the sort the crowd
expressed when they asked what they needed to do to do the works of God. Human nature loves to assert itself before
God. Look what I have done. See my
wonderful life and my exceptional abilities.
Surely you must be pleased with me.
Such pride in ourselves succeeds only in turning the Lord away from us. It’s to add sin to sin. What God wants from us is that we believe in
Jesus – that he lived and died for us and rose again. He asks us to be sorry for our sins and to
take hold of his forgiveness in faith.
Repentance isn’t easy for proud human flesh, but it’s a joy for those
who seek God in a way that pleases him, not with the ravenous appetites of
those who assert themselves, but with humble and grateful hearts that his love
doesn’t fail, that his mercies are new every day, and that he has included us
in his embrace.
Now, the
Lord knows we are people of strong appetites, so he spoke to the people of
Capernaum in language that they and we would understand. He used an intentionally vivid, maybe even
unrefined picture, to make people think.
He said that he is the bread of life.
If people want to live, they should come to him.
Martin Luther
said in an old sermon that Jesus is referring to a hunger and a thirst of the
soul. The soul longs to live
forever. It doesn’t want to stand
condemned. It desires a gracious God and
wants to stand victoriously before the judgment seat on the last day. The soul doesn’t want to be accused by sin or
the law and go to hell. To satisfy this
spiritual hunger and thirst, spiritual food and drink are offered to us, when
the Holy Spirit draws near and says, “If you do not want to die and be
condemned, come to Christ, believe in him, cling to him, eat this spiritual
food.”
This offer
is intended for our comfort and the strengthening of our faith. Luther said that Christ’s promise that
everyone who comes to him shall not hunger and thirst should be inscribed in
every heart with golden letters. Then
everyone will know where to entrust his soul and where he will go after this
life is over. Anyone on earth may
acquire this knowledge and be able to say at night when retiring or early in
the morning or when engaged in the day’s activities: “My soul remains with
Christ. I will never hunger or
thirst. Jesus will not lie to me.” We should go on to say that whether we sleep,
wake, work, or go out walking, our soul remains with Jesus. Even if everyone around us goes to pieces –
father, mother, friend, enemy, employer, neighbor, we run to Jesus and find
help from him, for his words are true.
He says: “Hold on to me! Come to
me and you shall live.” But isn’t it
true that we’ll die, we might ask. Jesus
answers this way: “Though you die, yet shall you live. Come to me.”
Luther said
that the sixth chapter of John is precious.
We should not only hear it, but believe it and accept it and impress it
on our consciences. We regard his
promises as true, come what may, believing that he is trustworthy and that he
never lies. Like the people of
Capernaum, we should say to Jesus, “Give us this bread always,” and he will
reply, “Yes, I will give it with all my heart, for that is why I came from
heaven. Accept only me. Let me be your food. Do not pin your hope on another food. Beware of that, for I am the bread, not
prince or ruler or any other person on earth.
No one expect me will help you.
And if you cling to me, no person or devil will do you any harm, for
here is the bread that won’t let you go hungry.”
Our Lord
chose a vivid image to deal with a serious problem – spiritual hunger. When we eat bread, we take it into
ourselves. When we draw near to the
Lord in faith, we take him into ourselves.
In reality, he is already there, knocking on the doors of our hearts,
waiting to fill our empty spaces with the fullness of his love. The important thing is that we trust him and
welcome him. It’s so easy to let our
faith turn into an automatic thing, a question of words and customs, and this
apathy is what Jesus wants to prevent.
He uses startling language to wake us up and get us turning to him, not
top grumble or to think that we can do everything on our own, but to accept him
and receive him always as our true bread.
He can satisfy any hunger; he can fill any need. Our part is to believe in him, to trust him,
to be grateful that he is part of us, like
our breathing. May he continually come
to us. May he never let us go. We ask the Heavenly Father to keep the bread
of life as our one true sustenance. In
our Savior’s name, we rejoice. AMEN.
The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your
hearts and minds in the knowledge of Jesus.
AMEN.
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