1 Kings 19:4-8;
Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51
My
best friend and I are what you might call “eating friends”. She lives in
Pennsylvania, but when we know we are going to get together- we immediately
start making a list of restaurants in the area in which we will be. We make
choices about which days to eat the big breakfast, lunch, OR dinner. We also
have foods we both buy or bring, only on trips, because they are our vacation
foods and because we enjoy eating them together. For us, the experience of
eating together is a fun part of our relationship and our memories of things we
have done together. (For the record, we do things other than eat. I think.)
What
are some of the reasons we eat? We eat for pleasure. We eat because it’s time.
We eat because we’re hungry. Anyone who has worked at losing weight knows that
it’s easy to fall into the trap of eating because you’re lonely, bored, or sad.
We eat when we’re celebrating and when we’re grieving. But when it comes down
to it, we eat to stay alive. We eat because without eating, we cannot function.
So,
we understand that while we often have many, sometimes overlapping reasons for
eating, there is one basic reason why we eat- to stay alive. So here’s my
follow-up question to that: why do we trust in Jesus? What are some of the
reasons why we put our faith in Jesus, a Jewish man of two centuries ago, who
some say was the Messiah of God?
We
may have faith in Jesus the Christ because of some experience- internal or
external. We may trust in our tradition and the tradition of our families, a
part of which is belief in Jesus. We may still be questioning in our hearts,
but feel that Jesus is the best bet for an anchor in a rocky sea. We may be
seeking our best life now and a great return for bread cast out upon the
waters. Of all these reasons, when it comes down to it, why do we believe in
Jesus?
We
want eternal life.
We want eternal life. We want to stay alive. We want
heaven. We want the reunion with those who have gone before us. In a way that
is beyond our imagination, we want the banquet and the rejoicing and the tree
of life and city beyond imagination and the parade of nations and the drying of
all tears and abounding joy. We eat to stay alive and, often, (more often than
not) we look to Jesus as our ticket to doing the exact same thing. We treat the
bread of life like a ticket to heaven. We look at the table as a foretaste of
the feast to come and, when it doesn’t turn to ashes in our mouths, we see it
as insurance and assurance that we will be at that feast.
But
the life of faith is so much more than that. More importantly, Jesus is so much
more than a ticket to ride or insurance toward immortality. In today’s readings,
God’s story unfolds to help us understand that bread of heaven (and bread from
heaven) is for the life of the world, eternally. Which is wholly different than
being for eternal life.
When
Elijah is fleeing from Jezebel (the actions preceding today’s excerpt), he
travels to the end of the known world and then goes one more day- just to be on
the safe side. He’s ready to die. He wants to die. God sends a messenger to
Elijah, bringing him food and telling him to eat. Why does Elijah need to eat? Because his work is not
done. He has to eat for life- his own life and for the life of God’s word in
the world. As a prophet, his work of speaking truth, of revealing God’s power,
of bringing hope to God’s people is not yet over. Thus he receives bread for
the journey because it is not time for him to die. Elijah receives bread from
heaven, the bread of life, for his life here on earth (and for the other lives
whom he encounters as well).
When
the crowds gather around Jesus, they grumble about what he has to say- even
though he’s fed them, healed them, and generally amazed them. Still, they know
his people, they’ve seen his followers, they know he sleeps and has physical
needs. What’s this about heaven? Yet, he tells them the One who has come from
God is the bread of life. The bread of life comes for the life of the world. Jesus
explains that the bread of life feeds us for eternal life and for life right
now.
Like
the crowds, we do not always like that “life right now” part. What does that
look like? The writer of Ephesians says it is a life of uplifting speech (no
slander, no backbiting), a life of kindness and gentleness, a life of
forgiveness and imitation of Christ. Would this be the same Christ who gave up
his life for the sake of the world? Are we supposed to imitate that Christ?
That’s
where our experience of Jesus gets tough- where we’d rather think about eternal
life, than what’s happening right here and now. When the imitation of Christ
means loving our enemies, not the ones far way, but the ones next to us, the
ones who we see in the grocery store, at the family reunion, at the communion
rail… When the imitation of Christ means trying something new and uncertain…
When the imitation of Christ means admitting that you’re not, that we’re not in
control… When the imitation of Christ means living by faith, and faith alone…
all of that makes the bread of life seem a little dry and to catch in our
throats.
Eternal
life, whatever it is like, will be fantastic. But we are here now. The bread of
life… the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we experience in
communion, in Word, and in community… this bread of life is food for this
journey, nourishment so that we can live, sustenance so that we can live right
now, provisions so that we can live right now for the sake of the world. Fuel for the imitation of Christ.
Our
faith is not a retirement plan. It is not a moral system that we use for
guidance on occasion. We have been given the gift of faith, so that the world
might know the joy of salvation, the salvation that has come through Jesus the
Christ. We have been baptized into God’s history for the life of the world, the
life of the world right now. We are fed- as a community and as individuals- in
communion and in prayer- through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are fed so
that we can stay alive. Alive in faith. Alive in Christ. Alive to do the work
to which we have been called and to which we are being led.
We
are eating friends, food friends, bread sharers. Being fed from heaven right
now- for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the world.
Amen.
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