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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.)
If someone, whom you and I had known from childhood, suddenly were to say to us that he or she was the bread of life, or the living bread, that came down from heaven, no doubt we would be more than skeptical and do more than murmur against the person! (Confer Sermons.com.) So, in some sense we can relate to the Galilean Jews in today’s Gospel Reading, who heard Jesus claim to be the bread of life, or the living bread, that came down from heaven and who grumbled to the point of disbelief. Today’s Gospel Reading is the second in a series of three overlapping portions of what is usually called “The Bread of Life Discourse”, the first part of which we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel Reading (John 6:22-35) and the third part of which we will hear in next Sunday’s Gospel Reading (John 6:51‑69). You may remember that earlier Jesus had miraculously used five loaves and two fish in order to feed five‑thousand men (Mark 6:30-44), not to mention women and children (Matthew 14:21), and at least some of those people were seeking Jesus but for the wrong reason. As Jesus confronted them about their seeking Him for the wrong reason, they came to realize that they were supposed to believe in Jesus, but, seemingly ignoring the miraculous sign that Jesus had already done in feeding them, they asked to see a sign and, after Jesus responded to that request, they eventually asked for the bread of God Who comes down from heaven. When Jesus identified Himself as the bread of life, or the living bread, that came down from heaven, they, as we heard today, were grumbling instead of believing.
You and I may believe that Jesus is the bread of life, or the living bread, that came down from heaven, but that believing may not mean that we are not grumbling about other things. As we heard repeatedly in last week’s Old Testament Reading (Exodus 16:2-15), the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron and so against the Lord about being hungry, essentially prompting the Lord to feed them with the manna, and, as we will hear in next week’s Gospel Reading, even some of Jesus’s followers grumbled about what Jesus was teaching in this “Bread of Life Discourse”. Likewise, you and I may grumble about what the Lord provides us, or maybe we grumble about God’s not answering our prayers in the time and way that we want our prayers answered. Or, we may grumble against the Lord’s servants and so against the Lord about what we are taught or maybe how we are taught. About what else do we grumble against the Lord?
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus essentially told the Galilean Jews to “stop” grumbling, and thereby Jesus also tells us to “stop” grumbling. Jesus points out their and our guilt so that they and we repent and believe. Whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he or she has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God (John 3:18). Our sinful nature is opposed to God and to His will that we believe and be resurrected to eternal life, and our sin separates us further from God. On our own, we see Jesus and do not believe, and we do not come to Him, and so we deserve to be cast out, to be lost, or destroyed. We might like to think that we are independent, that we can come to Jesus if we want to come, but, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus makes clear that no one can come to Jesus unless the Father Who sent Jesus “draws” him or her (confer John 6:65)—with the sense of “dragging” or “pulling”. As even the Old Testament Scriptures say, all people must be taught by God (Isaiah 54:13); then, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Jesus. Whether we think of it as by the Father, by the Son (John 12:32), or by the Holy Spirit (confer 1 Corinthians 2:13), God calls and so enables us to repent and believe. When we so repent and believe, then God forgives us, for Jesus’s sake.
To the Galilean Jews, Jesus may have appeared to be an ordinary man, but He is much more than that. Jesus was thought to be the son of Joseph (confer Luke 3:23), but He is the Son of God. Jesus is the Son of God Who came down from heaven and became flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary (John 1:14). Jesus is the Son of God Who came down from heaven in order to do the will of the Father, namely, that He should lose nothing of all that the Father has given Him, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life. As Jesus said, He gave His flesh for the life of the world (confer John 6:33), a world lost in sin, ruined, depraved, wholly at odds with anything Divine, but still the object of God’s love (BAGD, 445‑447; confer John 3:16-17). Jesus died on the cross for the sin of the world, including your sin and my sin. Jesus died in our place, the death that we deserved, and then He rose from the dead. Jesus is a greater redeemer than Moses ever was; Jesus, Who came from God, has seen God and makes God known (John 1:16-18). So, we can come to Him, believe in Him, be present with Him. And so, we are saved as we believe: as we believe that Jesus is true God in human flesh, that He gave His flesh for the life of the world, and that He now gives that life to us through His Word in all of its forms.
As Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading used words of the Old Testament to draw the Galilean Jews resistibly, so God uses words of Holy Scripture to draw us resistibly. God’s Words with water in Holy Baptism make that water living water, or the water of life, or the water that gives life (John 4:10-14; 7:37-48), whereby, as today’s Epistle Reading described, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:17-5:2), and are taught by God (1 John 2:27). As Jesus was given authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom the Father has given Him (John 17:2), so Jesus gives pastors authority to speak His Word either to forgive sins and so give people life in Holy Absolution or to retain sins and so cast them out from His fellowship in excommunication (John 20:21-23). And, God’s Words with bread and wine in the Holy Supper make them the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us and so give us eternal life. We partake of Him, including His Divine nature. We remember Who Jesus is and what He says, and our fallen reason’s objections we submit to Him and His Word. In all these ways, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we know that God the Father has given us to His Son, Jesus Christ, and He does not lose us but raises us up on the Last Day.
In today’s Old Testament Reading (1 Kings 19:1-8), the Lord miraculously fed the prophet Elijah when he had had enough and wanted the Lord to end his life. So miraculously fed, Elijah went, in the strength of that food, forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. As we are miraculously fed, we do the will of the Father, continuing to repent and believe, and at least trying to do the good works of His Commandments in keeping with our various callings in life. When we hear lists of what we should do, such as that list in today’s Epistle Reading, we are reminded of how we continue to fail to do what we should and so need to continue daily to repent and believe and to receive God’s forgiveness through His Means of Grace! As we do so receive God’s forgiveness, eternal life remains our present possession even if we do not fully experience that eternal life until the Last Day. Whether we die in this world as a consequence of our sin before that Last Day or not, death has lost its sting (1 Corinthians 15:55, with reference to Hosea 13:14). Jesus will raise us up on the Last Day. As Jesus says elsewhere, whoever believes in Him, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who believes, and is alive then, will never die (John 11:25-26).
When Jesus tells us that He is the bread of life, or the living bread, that came down from heaven, we do not grumble but believe. By God’s grace, we recognize Who Jesus is (the Son of God in human flesh); we recognize what He has done for us (died on the cross for our sins); and we recognize how He gives us the benefits of what He has done for us (through His Word and Sacraments). Already now He offers us a foretaste of the feast to come. As the Divinely‑inspired David said in today’s Psalm (Psalm 34:1-8; antiphon: v.3), “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +