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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus said to the crowd of Galileans that had searched for Him. “Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger,” Jesus continued, “and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.” At that point our Gospel Reading last Sunday ended, and our Third Reading today picked up. Jesus’s conversation with the crowd last Sunday prompted us to reflect on “Bread from heaven”, as the people in the crowd searched for Him, not because they believed in Him, but because they had eaten their fill of the bread He multiplied and wanted a sign like the Old Testament manna and for Him always to feed them such physical food. As the people in the crowd continued to reject Jesus, His continued conversation with them today prompts us to reflect on being “Drawn and Coming to the Bread of Life”.
The people in the crowd saw Jesus and the miraculous signs He did in order for them to believe in Him, and yet they did not believe in Him. Apparently they thought they could believe in God the Father but ignore Jesus, God’s only Son. So, Jesus spent the first half or so of today’s Third Reading trying to teach them: that He came down from heaven to do the will of the Father Who sent Him, that the Father sent Jesus to save people, and that the Father wanted people to look to Jesus and believe in Him so that Jesus could raise them up on the last day. At Jesus’s claim that He came down from heaven, the crowd, who thought they knew His parents, grumbled about Him, so Jesus next spoke about being “Drawn and Coming to the Bread of Life”.
When Jesus tells the crowd that a person cannot come to Him unless the Father Who sent Him draws the person, at first Jesus seems to be giving them an excuse, as if Jesus is saying, “Do not worry, you are not being drawn, which is why you are not coming.” As Jesus continues, however, that He is again emphasizing His connection to God the Father becomes clear. Jesus tells the crowd that even the Old Testament prophets said people would be taught by God, but, since only Jesus Who is from God had really seen God, then people implicitly would have to hear and learn from Him. The crowd had asked for a sign like the manna given their Jewish ancestors who died in the wilderness. And so Jesus identifies Himself as the bread of life that came down from heaven that one may eat of and not die but live forever. You would think that they would be “drawn and coming” to Him, “the Bread of Life”!
What draws you and me? The church up the street Friday and Saturday was having a yard sale; did its signs or pennants draw you? I know Friday’s being the last regular-season Pump Jacks home baseball game and its fireworks show were not enough to draw you to our congregation’s once-a-month social outing. What draws you and me? How about the red flashing light outside of a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop, which indicates they are making hot, fresh doughnuts and will give you one free? How about the smell of fresh bread when you walk into a bakery or grocery store? Hundreds of years before Jesus spoke the words of our Third Reading, the Greek poet Eubulos wrote in one of his comedies how bread drew the hungry like a magnet, and Jesus uses the same word for the Father pulling us to Him. But, we may not like what the Father’s needing to draw us means. There is no place for our free will in our conversion. We do not decide to believe in Jesus. Our human reason, senses, and understanding make no contribution to our salvation. Instead, God draws us—He teaches us, and everyone who hears and learns from Him comes to Jesus. Of course, the Christian life is no picnic, and the Rev. Dr. Luther suggests that when difficulties torture our souls, we might rightly ask whether we are really coming to Jesus at all, whether Christ is at home in our hearts by our meditating on His Word (AE 16:30-31).
In the Third Reading, Jesus’s questions of the crowd and His statements to them are intended to lead them to repent, to lead them to turn in sorrow from their sin and to lead them to believe in Him for the forgiveness of that sin. Apart from such repentance and faith, there is no eternal life for them only eternal death. By nature, we deserve that same eternal death. Through Jesus’s words in the Third Reading God likewise calls us to repent, to turn in sorrow from all our sin and to believe in Him for the forgiveness of that sin. So, we repent of our sin—those sins against the first table of the commandments, such as refusing to believe and not coming to Jesus as we should, and those sins against the second table of the commandments, like those mentioned in today’s Second Reading: anger, sensuality, greediness, falsehood, deceitful desires—we repent of all our sin. When we so repent, then God forgives all our sin. He forgives all our sin for the sake of His Son.
For us and for our salvation that Son of God came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man. That incarnation is precisely what made the Galilean crowd grumble. They thought Jesus’s father was Joseph, whom they knew. They rejected Jesus’s claim to be God and man, but that is Who He is: God in the flesh. The Man Jesus has all the attributes of God. Motivated by God’s great love, Jesus revealed the will of God the Father Almighty: for Him to lose nothing of all that the Father had given Him but to raise it up at the last day, and for us to look on the Son and believe in Him for us to have eternal life and be raised up on the last day. To accomplish that will, Jesus on the cross gave His flesh and blood for the life of the world. From there, lifted up on the cross, He draws all people to Himself. On the cross He died the death you and I deserved. The Father accepted His sacrifice on behalf of the world and us, and so the Father raised Him from the dead, just as Jesus will raise up us on the last day. Just as the Father revealed His will through Jesus, so what Jesus accomplished through His death and resurrection He now gives to us through the means He has appointed for us to receive those benefits of His death and resurrection. We are “Drawn and Coming to the Bread of Life”.
In fact, those means He has appointed for us to receive the benefits of His death and resurrection—His Word and Sacraments—are the very means by which He draws us to Himself. In His words of Holy Scripture, we hear and learn from the Father. In His words connected with the water of Holy Baptism, we find the anointing that, as St. John writes elsewhere, teaches us about all things, what St. Paul in the Second Reading referred to as the seal for the day of redemption. In His words of Holy Absolution, we are individually forgiven by those whom Christ sent just as He was sent. In His words connected with the bread and wine of Holy Communion, we receive the true body and blood given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins, life, and salvation. Truly, truly we receive from this altar the bread and flesh that Jesus gives for the life of the world. We do not have to wonder whether God intends to draw us to Him, for in these ways—Holy Scripture, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion—He makes clear His will in our regard. We are comforted as we come to receive forgiveness, grace, and righteousness and so worship Him in the greatest way known to all of Holy Scripture.
The manager of a Scottish marine insurance company, William Chatterton Dix had been ill for many weeks. He felt weary and faint, and was, by his own admission, depressed when, as if to idle away time, he wrote the words of our opening hymn. Jesus’s invitation to come to Him, recorded in St. Matthew’s account, as well as the similar one in today’s Third Reading, inspired Dix’s reflection on Jesus’s blessed, loving, and cheering voice. Soon after Dix completed the hymn, he recovered, and he said he always looked back to the hymn as a turning point in his illness. You and I may not always experience positive physical and emotional results here and now, but, as we live each day with repentance and faith, as we are “Drawn and Coming to the Bread of Life”, in the words of today’s Psalm, we taste, and we will see, certainly on the last day, that the Lord is good. As with Elijah in today’s First Reading, so with us, in the strength of the Bread of Life we will then come to the mount of God.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +