19 January 2014 Steinbach
Mennonite Church
Text
Jesus the Bread of Life
25 When they found him on the other side
of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” 26 Jesus
answered, “Very
truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I
performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do
not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which
the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of
approval.”
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do
to do the works God requires?” 29 Jesus
answered, “The
work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then
will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our
ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them
bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus
said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses
who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the
true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread
that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 “Sir,”
they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes
to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But
as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All
those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never
drive away. 38 For
I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who
sent me. 39 And
this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has
given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my
Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall
have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Introduction
Yesterday I went to Chuck’s funeral, held at the E Free
church. Chuck was my colleague and friend, and we carpooled to school and back
for many years. Thirty-three years ago I went to another funeral—for the fiancé
of Rose, one of my classmates in seminary at AMBS. He died at about age 30 from
a disease of the blood. As we grieved together, we sang #472: “I am the Bread
of Life. He who believes in me shall never die.” So I always associate this
passage with the death of close friends.
I don’t think you ever get used to death, whether you’re 30,
or 60, or older. But Jesus turns our thoughts in a radical direction: Even
while our bodies die, we live forever! Physical bread, such as Lois baked in
our house yesterday, sustains physical life; but for real life, eternal life,
you need the “bread of Heaven”. Let’s talk about that together.
The Whole Series
Last week Randy started our series
with John 8: Jesus said, “
Your father Abraham rejoiced at the
thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” “You
are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!” “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At
this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away
from the temple grounds.”
Jesus is intentionally echoing
God’s words to Moses in Exodus 3. Moses asked, “Who should I say sent me? God
replied: “I am who I am.
This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me
to you.’” So when Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am!” the people hear him
say, “Before Abraham, God!
Randy reinforced the point with the
way that John 1 echoes Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created …”, which
becomes in John, “In the beginning was the Word…. And the Word became flesh and
dwelled among us.” Jesus is the Word of God, who is one with God. In chapter 8
Jesus makes this same point about himself.
John then uses this formulation, “I
am”, repeatedly through his gospel in order to tell us who God is, as revealed
by Jesus. Others will explore these attributes of God
as we move through the coming Sundays of Winter. This morning, we explore what
it means to be “the Bread that came down from heaven”, “the Bread of Life”.
John 6
John 6 begins with the feeding of
the 5,000. This miracle appears in all four gospels. In Matthew Jesus healed
the people, then fed them. In Mark Jesus taught the people. Then fed them. In
Luke Jesus healed and taught the people, then fed them. But here in John we
don’t know what Jesus did when the people came to hear and see him. They came
because of the miracles of healing they had heard about, but John’s account
moves directly to the problem of a crowd without food.
In verse 5 Jesus asks Phillip to
consider the problem of finding enough bread to feed the crowd (5,000—just
counting the men). This question focusses the theme of the chapter on bread. The
question that runs underneath the narrative is: What is your bread? What do you
live on? You remember the way that the disciples wrestle (unsuccessfully) with
the issue of feeding the people, and how Jesus multiplies the loaves and the
fish to feed everyone.
One lesson from the event is that
Jesus can meet our physical needs, but that is not the primary lesson that
Jesus wants us to learn, so he keeps going. Between the feeding of the 5,000
and our passage, the disciples try to sail across the lake in their fishing
boat. Jesus comes to them through a storm, walking across the water. A basic
point in this event is the way that Jesus reinforces his nature as being more
than simply human.
So we come to our passage this
morning. The crowd has been looking for Jesus and they find him and the
following conversation ensues.
25-29: The crowd wonder what Jesus is doing. He tells them that
they are looking for his physical blessings (healings and the bread and fish);
instead they should look for God’s food: eternal life. The people ask, “What is
God’s food?” Jesus tells them that it is to believe on the one God has sent
(namely, himself).
30-34: They ask
for a sign, remembering the sign of manna in the dessert, which showed that
Moses was truly God’s leader in the Exodus. Jesus says that Moses only brought
manna; but the Father gives “the bread of Heaven”. They ask for this
bread—setting the scene for Jesus to reveal himself more fully.
35-40: Jesus replies, “
I
am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever
believes in me will never be thirsty… For my Father’s will is
that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life,
and I will raise them up at the last day.”
There is more here for us to look at. In the rest of the
chapter the Jews wonder how Joseph’s son could be this divine ambassador, and
Jesus repeats his identity (51, 53-58). The identification of the bread from
Heaven with his own flesh makes it clear that he sees himself as a divine
sacrifice for the sins of the people. Many desert him, because they recognize his
claim to be one with God. Jesus asks the 12 if they will leave him also, and
Peter makes his bold response: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You
have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you
are the Holy One of God.”
Comment
But we leave the rest aside and come back to this basic
assertion, “I am the Bread of Life.” Jesus tells us that in him there is life,
and without him there is only death. There are two basic thoughts that this
leads me to.
1) Sometimes you may hear people say, “Jesus was a wonderful
teacher, but since his time Christians have turned what he said about himself
into the claim that he is God. He was really just a good man and a good
teacher. This passage is one of the basic responses to that claim.
C.S. Lewis has observed that Jesus made such outrageous
claims about himself that there are only three real possibilities. One: He was
a lunatic, on the level of someone who claims to be a poached egg. Two: he was
a liar and therefore a terrible scoundrel, a really bad man. Three: he was
telling the truth.
Consider: If he was a lunatic, then the
crowds would not have followed him. All of his teaching and all of his miracles
made a powerful impression on people. They knew that whatever else was true
about him, here was a man in possession of his senses. He was no lunatic.
Further, if he was a liar, how could he
teach the way that he did? The man who taught in the Sermon on the Mount (see
Matthew 5 to 7) was no liar. Non-Christians also recognize the power of his
teaching, so that Gandhi could model aspects of his own life on the teachings
of Jesus. There is depth and wisdom and divinity itself in his teachings. He
was no liar.
The only remaining possibility is that he
was telling the truth. He was sent from God, one with the Father, the “Bread of
Heaven.” I saw a quotation from Aristotle in a series of detective books that I
enjoy (by Dorothy Sayers): “The probable impossible is always preferable
to the improbable possible.” Now this is not a proof of the impossible, but
shows how we might think of these three options.
That Jesus was a liar is possible, but it is improbable. It
doesn’t fit the facts
That Jesus was a lunatic is possible, but it is improbable.
It doesn’t fit the facts.
That Jesus was who he said he was—the One sent from God whom
John calls “the Only Begotten Son of God—this is impossible, but it is
probable. It fits all the facts.
To put it another way, we balk at admitting that Jesus
brings God directly into our lives because we can’t see how that it possible.
But the more that we get to know him, the more we walk with him and listen to
him and see what he does in our lives, the more we begin to realize, he is
exactly who he says he is.
2) So much for our first thought; the second thought is
this: Jesus risks everything that he has gained with the crowds to help them
meet God by “feeding on him”. What does that mean? It means that he wants them
to follow him in everything. In the synoptic gospels, whenever someone asked
Jesus how to get to heaven, he said, “Follow me.” This is the same thing in
John’s gospel.
Jesus wants the same thing for you and for me. It is not
enough to admit that Jesus is the unique Son of God, “the Bread of Heaven”, the
one who can call himself “I am”. Jesus wants you and me to meet him, and give
ourselves completely to him, and follow him in every part of our lives.
Over the Christmas break I read a collection of biographies
by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom. It was called Clouds of Witnesses, about great Christians from Africa and Asia. A
common theme in their life stories was that they encountered God so powerfully
that they could do nothing else than follow Jesus in every area of their lives.
That is what Jesus wants for you and for me today, here in
Steinbach. We used to get at such things by encouraging people to come down to
the altar and, as we put it, “Pray through.” I don’t think we necessarily need
those old forms for our encounters with God today. I do know that we must meet
him. Today and every day. In the morning and in the evening. Always and
forever.
In the passage we read, the Jews were ready to be satisfied
with the wonders Jesus showed them—some healings and the multiplied bread and
fish. Jesus wants them to go deeper. Just as in John 4, the Samaritan woman is
ready to be satisfied with especially good water, and Jesus leads her deeper,
to find the “water of life”.
Jesus wants us not to be satisfied with the physical
blessings he gives us. They are good—a hot bath on a cold morning, toast and
marmalade, good coffee. These are wonderful things, but God has something
greater and more wonderful waiting for us. He wants us to be ready to live with
him forever, to share “eternal life”, to become filled with his Spirit and joy
and power. And we’re satisfied with so little!
C.S. Lewis again has said it: “It would seem that Our Lord
finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures,
fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us,
like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he
cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far
too easily pleased.” (From “The Weight of Glory”.) In the sermon that these
words come from, Lewis is considering the imagery that the New Testament uses
about heaven, but his words apply here as well. We are indeed “far too easily
pleased.”
Concluding
Thoughts
Bring this all back round to where we
started. We are surprised and frightened by death. I wept because my friend
Chuck died. I grieved when my classmate’s fiancé died. Jesus does not turn us
away from death, even with words that promise life.
Rather Jesus allows us to meet and embrace
our physical death, because it is the door to the fuller life of eternity spent
with him. Chuck was 74. During the last week of his life, as he lay in the
hospital bed in palliative care, a friend told me that Chuck would wake up,
look round and say: “There’s the hospital. There you (Sue, his wife) are.
Shoot, I’m still here!” Death was hard, but his last words were, “Thank you,
God.” Now we are not promised a peaceful death; but I can tell you where
Chuck’s peace at the end came from. He followed Christ all his life, and
so he was already living the life that God gives.
Everyone is searching for something. Some people pour
themselves into the search for fun—they party hard and look for the latest
greatest pleasure. But the only thing that can satisfy what they are looking
for is Christ. Some people pour themselves into their job—they work hard, make
good money, and retire early. But the only thing that can give meaning to their
life of hard work is Christ. Some people accumulate power—they want to
influence people and events. But in the end their search fails; only Christ can
meet what they need.
I am reading the biography of Cecil John Rhodes, a man who
accumulated millions in the diamond and gold fields of South Africa in the late
1800s. He pursued wealth so as to pursue his dream of expanding the reach of
the British Empire throughout Africa. I grew up thinking that Rhodes was a
wonderful man, whose heroic work led to the founding of the countries I grew up
in (Northern and Southern Rhodesia). In fact, I discover that he was a
thoroughly bad man, a villain and a scoundrel.
The problem was that he replaced God with the dream of
Empire. His father was a vicar in England, and he thought of following his
father into pastoral ministry, but the pursuit of power seduced him, and his
actions have led to great problems and pain in modern South Africa and
Zimbabwe. Curiously, the people who opposed him the most were the missionaries—those
people who were following the dream of preaching the gospel to every person in
the world. While Rhodes was acting on his racism and devaluation of Black
People, they did all in their power to bring the gospel to the people of
Africa. This is always the choice we face: We serve either our own dreams—which
lead in the end to despair, or we follow Jesus.
“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus said. Look for him
everywhere you go. I have met Jesus in a special ways at several times in my
life: When I was a 12-year old in a Baptist Church in Zimbabwe; when I was an
18-year old praying over a water cooler with a friend in college; when I was a
24-year old teaching with the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe; when I was
a 58-year old teaching at Providence. Each encounter was unique. Each encounter
was just what I needed for the years that followed.
Search for Jesus. Keep your ears and mind and your heart
open as you read the Bible, and pray, and go to work, and do whatever goes on
in your life. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Bread sustains life—not just physical
bread, which gives physical life—but real life, deeper life, life that lasts
forever, life that continues even when you die. Feed on Jesus. He is the Bread
of Life.
Of course, as a White Rhodesian I learned a different story.
I (with all my White friends) revered Rhodes. His statue stood in the middle of
Bulawayo. He was a colossus! A true hero of the British Empire!
