Pentecost XI (Proper 13 B) [John 6:24-35] (5-Aug-2018)

This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 10.30am.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Over the next four weeks, our Gospel readings are taken from John chapter 6, where Jesus gives a sermon in Capernaum. This sermon of Jesus has a particular theme about “bread”—he calls himself the bread of life, and the living bread that came down from heaven. Last week, we read about how Jesus fed the 5000, and so this discussion that Jesus has with the people comes about in light of this event.

And so we read: So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”

These people are quite confused, because after Jesus had fed the 5000, the disciples headed off across the lake without Jesus. But then, as we read last week, Jesus walked out on the lake on the water to come and join them. So when they realised that the disciples weren’t there, and Jesus also wasn’t there, they went across to the other side of the lake. When they found Jesus on the other side, they were confused. How did Jesus get here? So they ask Jesus: Rabbi, when did you come here?

Jesus however doesn’t pay much attention to their question, and he says to them: Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

Jesus first of all says here: Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you at your fill of the loaves.

This is a saying of Jesus which really penetrates very deeply into our sinful condition. We know that Jesus is the creator of the world together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And Jesus teaches us to pray: Give us today our daily bread. Every single thing we need for our bodies and for our lives comes from God. All the food in the world, the drink in the world, the clothes, the shoes, the houses, the homes, all the land in the world, all the animals, all the money, all the stuff, all the things in the world – every single thing that we think of belongs to God. And so rarely do we ever think of asking him for these things, and we think that if we want them, it has to come only from our own achievement. But then, there are those of us who ask God constantly for these things, for each little thing that we need, even for a parking space when we go to the shops. And then when Jesus gives us these things, we so often don’t thank him. But then there is another temptation: we start to look to Jesus as the giver of stuff, but we’re not really interested in him. For example, when we go to Woolworths or Coles, or wherever, we’re not going there so that we can meet the manager, we’re going there to buy the stuff we need. And so Jesus says to us: Do you want me, because I am your God, your Saviour? Do you want to hear what I have to say to you? Do you want to learn about what it means to believe in me and follow me? Or, on the other hand, do you just want me to give you stuff?

And so, Jesus says: You are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. It was a wonderful miracle that Jesus fed these people, but then they come to Jesus, only because they think they might be able to get another free meal out of him. And so here’s a question for us: are we only happy to talk with Jesus and learn from him when he gives us what we want him to give us? It’s easy to come to church and to listen to Jesus when our piggy banks and our pantries and our stomachs are full, but what about when they’re not? What about when we have a drought, when we hit hard times, when we have to count our pennies, when we’re hungry? Do we still thank Jesus for the abundance that he has given us? Do we love Jesus because he is Jesus, or do we just love him because he gives us stuff? Do we just want the gifts, or do we want the Giver?

And so Jesus says: Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that remains to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

Jesus says here: Do not work for food that spoils. Now, let’s be clear here. It is a good thing to work, and it is a gift of God to have a job or an occupation and to make a living and an income. It is our duty to work, just as Jesus says: You shall love the Lord your God with all your strength. We should work hard out of thankfulness to him for all that he has given us.

However, God is the one who gives success to our labour, who provides us our daily bread, who gives us what we need. There are so many things that could have gone wrong in our work that God does put right, so that we end up with food on our table. Psalm 127: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. We can build and work all we like, but God is against us, every piece of bread between our teeth is nothing but a curse.

We read in Matthew where Jesus says: He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. So if things are going well for us, and we are enjoying a good life, we need to remember than anyone, whether they are Christian or not, could have a nice life. When Jesus fed the 5000, he spoke his blessing over that food—and yet even that food Jesus calls “food that spoils”. Having a good life could be a blessing, if we thank God for it. But if we think that having a good life is all there is, then all of our good life is a curse.

So Jesus says: Do not work for food that spoils. He doesn’t say: Do not work. Work is good. Just don’t work for food that spoils. Work because Jesus is your Saviour who has given you this gift of work, and he is your master. Don’t let money, food, even family be your master. You are allowed to have a home, and money and food, but you must be master over them. You cannot let them be master over you. They are not your master: Jesus is.

 And so, Jesus says: Do not work for food that spoils, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. Jesus is the wonderful food which endures to eternal life. He is the only one who can satisfy our hunger, and so we commend ourselves and all our weakness and all our work to him. He is the one who feeds us with heavenly food – with his Word, with his forgiveness, with his gospel, with eternal life, with Baptism, with the Lord’s Supper, with all kinds of Christian encouragement – and he will continue to feed us as he promises us: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb. The whole of eternity will be a wonderful heavenly banquet.

Jesus speaks about himself as the Son of Man, who will give this eternal food to us and he says: For on him God the Father has set his seal. If God the Father has set his seal on Jesus then we can be absolutely confident in every word that he says. He will never let us down, he is completely reliable: his words are more powerful than heaven and earth, his words are completely true, and they are perfect love, love that we could never have imagined we even possible. On Jesus, God the Father has set his seal.

But also it is a wonderful thing that Jesus is actually the exact imprint of his Father. Jesus says: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Hebrews says: He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. We read at the beginning of the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus Christ is true God together with the Father, the exact imprint of his Father, and on Jesus God has set his seal.

And so, we read in our reading that the people ask Jesus a question. Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

It’s strange. When the people heard Jesus say: Work for the food that endures to eternal life, they thought that they had to earn it. They thought that they would have to so some work, and that God would then pay them at the end of the day for doing it. And so they ask: What must we do, to be doing the works of God? In other words: what do we have to do to please God and to earn his blessings? But they completely misunderstood it all. And so Jesus says: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

To believe in God is the work that pleases him. But in actual fact, believing in God isn’t actually our work at all. The work that pleases him isn’t our work! Believing in Jesus, believing in him whom God has sent, is actually God’s work. If you believe in Jesus, that faith didn’t come from you in any way shape of form whatsoever. That faith was created in you and was given to you by God the Father himself. It didn’t come about because of your choice, or your free-will, or your achievement, or your work, or your pious behaviour, or whatever. It was a free gift – it was God’s work, just as St Paul says in Ephesians: By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. And so if this grace and this faith was not your own doing, whose doing was it? If it was not a result of works, then where did it come from? It was God’s doing, it was his work, as Jesus says: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

Then the people say to Jesus: Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Here the people ask Jesus to prove himself. They say: What sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ The people are talking about that event in the time of Moses where the people of Israel were in the wilderness, after they had been led out of Egypt through the sea, and they found themselves in the wilderness. During that time, God had fed them with manna, a kind of heavenly bread.

And so Jesus says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” The people come to Jesus and say, “This is what Moses did for the people, so what are you going to do?” Are you going to feed us? But there’s a great difference between what happened at the time of Moses and the people who were with Jesus on that day. The people were fed with manna because they were wandering through the wilderness, and were completely lost. If God hadn’t fed them in this heavenly, supernatural way, they would have starved to death. However, when Jesus fed the 5000 people, there was no famine on, they were not in the middle of a wilderness. It was just that on that day, the people had found themselves a long way from home, and it was the end of the day. If Jesus had sent them away, some people might have fainted on their way home. So Jesus has compassion on them, and feeds them. They all did have homes to go to, though, and they would have been able to go back home and be fed eventually. And so these people weren’t quite in the desperate situation that the Israelites were when they were wandering through the desert. It’s a bit strange to ask of Jesus to provide for them something like manna in the wilderness, when they weren’t really in the same situation.

But actually, they were in a worse situation. In fact, we are all in a worse situation. Jesus acknowledges full well that they are in a wilderness, not physically, like the children of Israel in the days of Moses. When Jesus enters the world, we see that the whole world is convicted of sin, and that Jesus is the only Saviour of the world. The whole world is a wilderness, and Jesus is the only manna, the only bread from heaven.

St Paul writes in Romans 3: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He also quotes from the Psalms earlier where it says: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. We read also in Ephesians: You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lives in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Do we really believe this judgment that God has spoken over us? Do we really believe that we have all sinned and completely fallen short of God’s glory? Do we really believe that all our good works are completely worthless in earning anything from God? Do we really believe that because of sin, we are completely dead, and are children of wrath? Do we believe the conclusions of our own reason, our own sinful flesh, and think that deep down we’re OK, rather than the truth of God’s word, which says: Every intention of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually?

Yes, we are living in a complete and total spiritual wilderness. We are completely useless to save ourselves, and even our so-called “good works” are tainted and corrupted by sin. And so Jesus says: Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Jesus says to them, My father was the one who fed the people in the wilderness. But you are in a greater wilderness, and you will be walking in this wilderness not just for 40 years until the people reached the river Jordan. You are walking in a wilderness that will last your entire lifetime, and the lifetimes of your children right up until the very last day of this sinful world. From now until that day, God the Father will feed the world with bread. But what bread? Jesus says: My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Jesus is the true bread from heaven. The manna in the wilderness was only a little shadow by comparison. Jesus himself has come down from heaven, and he gives life to the world. And so, the people say: Sir, give us this bread always.

Jesus says: I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. And so we receive Jesus as our Saviour, purely by faith alone, without anything that we have done or contributed. And when we believe in him, and the Holy Spirit works this living faith in us, we feed on Jesus, the bread of life. He is our life, our salvation—he gives us right now the complete and total forgiveness of everyone of our sins, he gives us the wonderful promise of eternal life, and all the way through this troubled life, through this sinful, deathly wilderness of a world, he will never let us down, and he will safely lead us through it. He is our Good Shepherd, and his sheep will never be in want.

Next week, we will continue to read through this chapter, but for now, we’ll leave it there. Today, of course, we will come to receive the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus will feed us with his own body and blood, this wonderful food which he supplies for us from heaven, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. He enters into our church and speaks his words of forgiveness to us and shows himself to us as our wonderful Saviour. Let’s thank him for these wonderful gifts, but let’s also thank him simply for who he is. He is the food that never spoils, he is the bread that has come down from heaven and gives life to the world, he is the bread of life. Amen.

Dear Jesus, give us this bread always. Let us always feed on you each day of our earthly pilgrimage through this wilderness. Create in us a living faith, that we may believe in you, our Saviour, whom God the Father has sent. Amen.