12th
Sunday after Pentecost - John 6:51-69 - August 15th and 16th,
2015
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
"I
am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of
this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for
the life of the world is My flesh."
What a fantastic statement! I mean, you cannot get any more
Good-Newsy than that. Jesus here points to the Cross - your fathers
ate manna in the wilderness, ate a bread of death, and they died -
but I am the true bread from heaven, the true bread of life - and in
fact, I myself came down from heaven, became Man, took on flesh - and
why? So that I might go to the cross and die so that you can live.
What a fantastic statement! This is one of those wondrous statements
of God's great love for us - It's John 3:16 good - for God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believeth
in Him should not perish but have eternal life! Great stuff.
And
yet - what happens? "The Jews disputed
among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to
eat?'"
They miss the point. Now, it would be understandable if we today
missed the point - we aren't Jews waiting for the Messiah to appear.
Sadly, we aren't as grounded and familiar with the Old Testament as
they were. Jesus is using Messianic language all over the place - He
is using the Old Testament imagery of salvation - and instead, they
are hung up, still, after three Sunday's worth of Gospel readings, on
their bellies. If you are focused on acquiring the things of this
world, then Spiritual things, the wondrous things of God will pass
you by. They weren't asking the right question - rather than
pondering salvation, they were pondering eating. But Jesus takes
their question and runs with it. "Truly,
truly, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on My flesh
and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the
last day. For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink."
Do you see what He does? Now, we have the benefit of hindsight - we
can see the connections here to the Lord's Supper. O.K. grumblers,
in fact, I will give you My Body and Blood - take and eat, take and
drink for the forgiveness of your sins. What is the benefit of such
eating and drinking - forgiveness, life, and salvation, for wherever
there is forgiveness, there is life and salvation. "Whoever
feeds on this bread will live forever."
Well fantastic, Pastor - so why don't you just stop the sermon now,
we'll go have the supper, and we call it good and all get out of
church early!
Well,
not quite. Because in our text, they didn't think this was
fantastic. "When
many of His disciples heard it, they said, 'This is a hard saying;
who can listen to it?'"
Did you catch it? This isn't the crowd that grumbles. This isn't
the Pharisees or the Scribes who typically didn't like Jesus. This
is "many of His disciples." These are the pro-Jesus folks.
And we don't quite get their complaint. To say something is a "Hard
Saying" would probably be akin to saying, "He's full of it"
today. "Who can listen to it" is basically saying, "Who
cares?" Jesus, you're full of it - why should we even bother
listening to another Word You say? And these are many, a lot,of His
disciples! These are folks who have seen Him cast out demons, they
may even be some who cast out demons in His name! And yet now - eh,
sounds wonky to me Jesus, I think You're full of it.
Jesus
gives reply. "Do
you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of
Man ascending to where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives
life; the flesh is of no avail."
If you are freaking out over simple things, like death and
resurrection, or Holy Communion, what would be your reaction if you
saw the clouds part and the Son of Man ascend? Are you so stuck
thinking about your everyday fleshy, bodily lives here and now that
you can't even ponder or think about the places and times where the
Divine comes and interacts with this world? There is a Spiritual
truth here - "The
Words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life."
This is creation language - this is God working upon the world to
create by His Word - you will be recreated, forgiven, restored!
That's the point of why I'm here. And God has to be the One who does
this - "This
is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him
by the Father."
Of course not - the Father is the One who creates everything. You
can't be created unless the Father creates you - likewise, you can't
have faith unless the Father gives you faith by the working of the
Word and Spirit. This is the small catechism on the Apostles' Creed
stuff right here - basics of the faith.
And
yet we hear: "After
this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with
Him."
Oh. Think on that. Many of the disciples turned back. Many good
folks who were attending church said "forget this, I'm outta
here." They decided they had no use for what Jesus was giving.
Here is Jesus offering life and salvation, Jesus promising
resurrection, Jesus saying that the Divine takes on human flesh and
blood and comes to be with you. Jesus saying that since the blood is
the life, He will give you His own blood to give you life. And yet -
nah, that's not how we want it. That's not what we are interested
in. See ya, Jesus, we're outta here.
To
the eyes of the world, this is a crushing defeat for Jesus. That
word "many" in Greek means "the masses", it means
most. People up and leave. This would be the point where if, God
forbid, it happened here we'd be in full panic mode. Call the
district, call the reconcilers, run after them and by hook or by
crook get them back - if they want a dog and pony show we've got
members with horses, round 'em up! If they want flesh instead of
Spirit and life, well, let's break out the flesh! But that's not
what Jesus does. Instead, Jesus turns to the 12 disciples, and He
says, "Do
you want to go away as well?"
Are you going to leave too? Think on how sad a question that is,
how heart-wrenching. Is everyone going to leave, now? Because, even
if they did - you know what Jesus would do? Be the bread of heaven
who comes down to give His flesh for the life of the world. He'd do
exactly what He does on the Mount of Olives come Maundy Thursday
night when even the remaining 11 flee in terror and do in fact go
away. Jesus goes to the cross. He's determined to go there. That's
the will of His Father, and that's what He's going to do.
Then
Simon Peter gives an answer, an answer so beautiful that we'll
sometimes sing them in Church. Alleluia, Lord, to whom shall we go -
You have the Words of eternal life. Alleluia, alleluia. Well,
Jesus, You have eternal life, You bring eternal life. It would be
drastically stupid for us to go anywhere else - so we will listen to
You. Jesus, when You say, "I forgive you," we will be
forgiven. Jesus, when You say, "Peace be with you" we will
receive peace. Jesus, when You say, "take and eat, take and
drink" we will for the remission of our sin. Because we can't
get that anywhere else than where You come to give it to us. If we
want eternal life, we need to be where Your Word is, and there alone.
You are the Holy One of God.
It's
sad to say that today, in America, we are playing out John 6. John 6
begins with the feeding of the 5000 - and our country has received
almost miraculous blessings. The wealth we have is astonishing.
Food, medicine, technology - utterly amazing. And yet, what's been
the trend for the past 50, 60 years? Numbers at churches across the
board are declining. Even as God gives us an abundance of stuff,
people run around after more and more of it, ignoring Christ and His
Word. And even entire church bodies panic, and they falter. My dad
was raised ALC - 50 years ago they weren't too bad - but today I
can't go to the old family church back in Toledo, they've swallowed
the liberal kool-aid, and instead of being focused on Christ, it's
pleasing people and telling them what they want to hear in the vain
hopes that they won't run away. Whole demonimations fall into utter
tomfoolery that their grandfathers would have been ashamed of. And
even in our LCMS, even in our own congregations - families fall away,
there's too many other things going on, too busy, too tired, too this
or too that. And what is to be our reaction, us here remaining?
Shall we panic? Freak out?
No - Lord, to whom shall we go, You have the Words of
Eternal life. Even as the world around us forgets Christ Jesus -
here is eternal life. I mean, think on this, think on the wonder.
God Himself is present in this place - we all know it. That's why we
are here. Think on it - Jesus Christ Himself will come down to us
and give us His own Body and Blood to eat and drink, right here,
right now. We don't have to guess when and where - it's scheduled!
It's so utterly easy. For our worship, we don't need rare perfumes
and incense, we don't need saffron. Just the Word. Water. Bread
and Wine - things that would have been household staples. Because
Jesus, the Bread of Life, comes to us where we are, here in this
world full of sin that surrounds us and tempts, and in this midst of
this world of death, He gives us forgiveness and life.
My dear friends in Christ - do not be surprised when
the world around you falls away, even when friends and family fall
away. It's not about you or what you've done - the folks in the text
fell away and walked away even from Jesus Himself. Rather this - in
spite of this, in the face of this, remember the great and wondrous
truth that Jesus Christ Himself is present for you here, and He gives
you Eternal Life through His Word - be that His Word read from the
lectern, the Word sung back and forth at each other in our liturgy
and hymns, the Word tied to water in Holy Baptism, or yes, even the
Word tied to Bread and Wine so that in this Supper Jesus gives us His
true Body and Blood. The Bread of Life comes down from heaven and
gives us life. Amen. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit +
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