August 8: The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick. This sermon was preached as a response to John 6.35,41-41. The sermon was based on the manuscript below, only half of which made it into the pulpit.

Jesus said,
“I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me
will never be hungry,
and whoever believes in me
will never be thirsty.”
[Please be seated]
Bread.
Week three.
Jesus has
multiplied loaves and fishes
, he’s walked on water,
and he’s been questioned by the crowd.
Remember last week
Sam sharing with us
that Jesus is the food and drink
that never end.
No more fast food.
No more big gulp.

The crowds last week
compared Jesus to Moses,
since he’s teaching around the time of Pentecost.
“Moses gave us manna
when we were stuck in the desert.
What will you do
so that we can believe?”
Jesus had told them
that what they needed
for eternal life
was to believe in him.
He said that it wasn’t Moses
who gave their forebears the manna,
but God.
Manna was temporary,
but Jesus says he is the bread of life.

Here Jesus is alluding
to passages in Hebrew scriptures
and contemporary commentary
where manna not only was bread in an historical sense,
bread to actually eat
bread that sustained the wandering Israelits.
Here Jesus is alluding, as well,
to manna being God’s wisdom,
teachings from God
that are eaten with the mind
and draw one closer to God.
In saying here that he is the Bread of Life,
while quoting the prophets saying,
“and they shall all be taught by God”
Jesus is saying that his teachings
following him
believing in him
bring eternal life.
Like in Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
the people who’ve known him all his life
can’t believe it.
“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?
How can he say he came down from heaven?
He came from the carpentry shop.”
Nevertheless,
Jesus continues teaching.
“I am the bread of life.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven,
that humanity may eat it
and never die.”

As we read the gospels,
with Jesus as the main character,
we easily lose sight
of the world surrounding him.
No, not the specific details
of sunset in Jerusalem
at a certain time of year,
but what the crowds faced.
Who would save them?
What would they be saved from?
Why does it matter to us?
For most of Jesus’ audience,
they are a religious minority
living under one of the toughest
largest military empires
humanity has ever known.
Most of Jesus’ hearers are poor,
but not all.
Being completely satisfied at a meal
like when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes
was the exception to the rule.
Every few weeks
or every few years
another Messiah showed up.
Someone who would free them,
someone who would fix it all
and fix it quickly.
They didn’t know who to believe,
and that’s where many of us
find ourselves now.

While not every presidential candidate
says, “I alone can fix it,”
that energy is often there.
When not from candidates themselves,
often from their supporters
we get similar messaging.
Does anyone else remember in 2008,
the comparison between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin,
“Pontius Pilate was a governor.
Jesus was a community organizer.”

For decades faith in institutions
has been crumbling.
Whether finding out about
cheating scandals for schools
abuse scandals in churches
pay to play media
and bad faith actors
sewing discord under the guise of
“Just asking questions”
we’re often left wondering
where we turn.
Those decades don’t even being
to scratch the surface of
conflicting contemporaneous information
about this pandemic
particularly coupled with
the way the virus and our information about it
both evolve.
In this concern,
in this confusion,
in this anxiety,
Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.
No one who comes to me
shall ever be hungry
and no one who believes in me
shall ever be thirsty again.

The way this part
of Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse is structure,
Jesus is not revealing anything
about his essence.
Here, Jesus is telling the crowds,
that his presence itself,
being with them and teaching them
is nourishment.
This is his relationship with humanity,
that as God incarnate
being around them and teaching them
they are being given the opportunity to
never die.
“Whoever believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,
and they died.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven,
so that one may eat of it and not die.”

As with John 3.16,
and throughout the gospel of John
this belief isn’t simply saying
“Ah, yes, Jesus is the Son of God.”
That’s part of it,
but Jesus knows the fears and anxieties of
those who are listening to them.
He knows that
they can and will be persecuted
for becoming an even more marginalized
religious sect
within the Roman empire.
As John writes,
the Jewish people who follow Jesus
are already on the outs with those who do not.

Before the crucifixion and resurrection,
Jesus is giving hope
that life will be eternal,
that even if death is faced
life itself will not end.
Life itself will not end,
by eating the bread that comes down from heaven,
by in this section of the chapter
believing in Jesus.
As with John 3.16,
and throughout the gospel of John
this belief isn’t simply saying
“Ah, yes, Jesus is the Son of God.”
Belief for Jesus in John
is having a changed life
that hears Jesus’ teachings
and conforms one’s wholeness of life to them.

Many of the fears and anxieties
that Jesus’ original hearers faced
are ones we face too.
Who is saving us?
When will this be over,
and that applies to so many things,
not just this pandemic?
How long, O Lord, how long?
“Whoever believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,
and they died.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven,
so that one may eat of it and not die.”

Through God’s grace,
we’re here.
Through God’s grace,
we hear Jesus’ teaching
teaching that he is the Son of God
that he is the bread
that has come down from heaven.
Through God’s grace
when we acknowledge with our heads
the Church’s beliefs about Jesus
in just a few moments in the Nicene Creed
our hearts continue to be transformed.

Faith in institutions —
through their own fault,
through exposure of their faults
by new voices willing to say something is wrong
through bad actors
seeking to crumple such faith —
is low, that’s true.
It can be hard to know
who to believe
and where to put
our faith and trust.
I’m an institutionalist —
it’s just how I’m wired —
but Jesus has told us from the beginning
that our faith doesn’t belong
to presidents or governors
to churches or media organizations.

Those things,
like manna of days gone by
and the bread that Jesus multiplied
are temporary and temporal.
“Whoever believes has eternal life.”
Whoever puts their hearts,
trusts, faith, and hopes in Jesus
has eternal life,
life that does not pass away
like bread made of flour
or buildings subject to decay.
“I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,
and they died.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven,
so that one may eat of it and not die.”
May we puts our hearts,
trusts, faith, and hopes in Jesus.
By eating of him
we never die. Amen.

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