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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. (Amen.)
These days, as always, I suppose, people are looking for a lot of things: things such as career, fame, family, fitness, health, home, success—any of those, all of those, and still others! Some people are even seeking God! Some congregations even have special “seeker services” for those who are seeking God. And, does not Jesus say, “seek, and you‑all will find” for everyone “who seeks finds” (Matthew 7:7‑8)? So, “Seeking Jesus” must be a good thing. Yet, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus makes clear that some people seek Him for a wrong reason.
In the last two Sundays’ Gospel Readings, we heard both how Jesus miraculously used five loaves and two fish in order to feed more than five‑thousand men (Mark 6:30-44), not to mention women and children (Matthew 14:21), and how, when the people were about to come and take him by force to make him king (John 6:15), Jesus dismissed the crowd and then overnight miraculously walked on the sea in order to “pass by”, or “reveal” Himself as God, to His disciples, who were struggling against a storm (John 6:30-44). Then, in today’s Gospel Reading, we heard how, on the next day, at least some of the crowd reassembled near where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks, and, after figuring out that neither Jesus nor His disciples were there, then got into boats and went to Capernaum, the Divinely‑inspired St. John says, seeking Jesus. When they found Him, they asked Him when He got there, perhaps trying to figure out how He crossed the sea, maybe even wondering if another miracle was involved in His crossing the sea, as, indeed, it was!
As we heard, Jesus did not exactly answer their question about when He got there, but, rather, Jesus confronted them over their seeking Him not because they saw, or “perceived”, signs that produced faith but for a wrong reason. They ate their fill of the loaves, but, like Jesus’s disciples, they did not understand about the loaves (Mark 6:52). In a sense explaining about the loaves, in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus begins what is usually called “The Bread of Life Discourse”, which we will continue to hear in the Gospel Readings the next two Sundays (John 6:35-51, 51‑69). In the portion of “The Bread of Life Discourse” that we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus tells them that they should not be seeking Him, or working, for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life, which, Jesus said, the Son of Man would give them. But, despite Jesus’s mentioning eternal life as a gift, they fixated on their doing the works of God, so Jesus told them that God’s work was for them to believe in Him Whom God has sent. So then, showing their resistance to hearing His message, they asked Jesus to do a sign in order for them to see and believe in Him, a sign like the miraculous manna we heard about in today’s Old Testament Reading (Exodus 16:2-15). So, then Jesus spoke about the true bread from heaven, and, when they asked Jesus for it, He identified Himself as it.
As Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading confronted the people in the crowd that day over their seeking Him for a wrong reason, so Jesus also confronts us over our seeking Him for wrong reasons and over all of our other sin. Too often, we seek Jesus, or work, for the food that perishes instead of for the food that endures to eternal life. More than career, fame, family, fitness, health, home, success, or any other thing, we need eternal life. For, on account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve both to perish here and now and be tormented in hell for eternity. But, out of His great love and mercy, God the Father calls and by the power of His Holy Spirit enables us to repent and be forgiven and so to receive eternal life, not because of anything that we have done but as a free gift for His Son Jesus’s sake (confer Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:26).
Born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus is the Son of Man, as He described Himself in today’s Gospel Reading, upon Whom God the Father has set His seal, perhaps at as Jesus’s Baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove and the Father’s voice came from heaven identifying Jesus as His beloved Son with Whom He is well‑pleased (for example, Mark 1:11). Yet, though the people in the crowd that day did not seem to understand, Jesus is also the Son of God, sent by the Father and come down from heaven and giving needed life to the sinful world. Earlier, John the Baptizer had identified Jesus as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36), and on the cross Jesus did just that: He died for the sin of the world, including your sin and my sin. He died in our place, the death that we deserved, and then He rose from the dead. When we are sorry for our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us: our sinful nature, our sin of seeking Jesus for wrong reasons, and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us through faith in Jesus, faith that God Himself works in us, through His Word and the miraculous signs of His Sacraments (confer John 2:11).
In Holy Baptism, God brings us into Christ and puts His Triune Name and His seal on us (2 Corinthians 1:22), and thus, baptismal water becomes for us the water of eternal life (John 4:10‑14; 7:37-48). We who are baptized who know and feel sins in our hearts privately confess those sins to our pastors for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, an exercise of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (for example, Matthew 16:19). And, as Jesus miraculously fed the crowd, so Jesus more‑miraculously feeds us in the Holy Supper, with bread that is His Body given for us and with wine that is His Blood shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins and so also for eternal life. Unlike the manna in the wilderness, and unlike the multiplied loaves and fish, this food and drink endures to eternal life. Whoever comes to Jesus here shall not hunger for eternal life and whoever believes in Him here shall never thirst for eternal life. Let those who seek Jesus for eternal life so find Him where He promises to be found, namely, in His Word and Sacraments!
God’s Word is read and preached, and His Sacraments are handed out, by the one Office of the Holy Ministry, which we heard St. Paul discuss in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 4:1‑16). God gave the Office and those who serve in it to equip the saints, for the work of ministry, and for building up the Body of Christ (confer KJV and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope ¶67) until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him Who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole Body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the Body grow so that it builds itself up in love. We do not do these things or anything else perfectly in this lifetime, so, with daily contrition and faith, we live both in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and in the forgiveness of sins that we in turn extend to one another, until we fully experience eternal life.
People are looking for a lot of things, and in some ways there is nothing wrong with our doing so, so long as we are above all else “Seeking Jesus” for eternal life. Jesus Himself said that if we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then what we will eat and drink and wear will be added to us, so we do not need to be anxious about anything (Matthew 6:25-34). Rather, we answer the call of the psalmist in today’s Psalm (Psalm 145:10-21; antiphon: v.15), for all flesh to bless the Lord’s Holy Name forever and ever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +