Sermon Text: John 6:35–51
Date: August 19, 2024
Event: Proper 15, Year B
John 6:35–51 (EHV)
“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36But I said to you that you have also seen me, and you do not believe. 37Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. 38For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day. 40For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.”
41So the Jews started grumbling about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They asked, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? So how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
43Jesus answered them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the Last Day. 45It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46I am not saying that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He is the one who has seen the Father. 47Amen, Amen, I tell you: The one who believes in me has eternal life.
48“I am the Bread of Life. 49Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat it and not die. 51I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Learn from God’s “Culinary” Wisdom
“Empty calories.” Perhaps you’re familiar with that term. Whether you’ve heard it or not, you’ve undoubtedly experienced the concept. Some foods provide a significant source of energy—calories—but that energy is very short-lived. You can eat 100 calories of candy and 100 calories of carrots, but which will be more food and which will keep you full and energized for longer? As I typed this introduction in my office, I was munching on a couple of little chocolate candies, the very epitome of empty calories!
Not all fuel is the same. Things will go poorly if you put lighter fluid in your car’s gas tank—or coal. All are fuels, all burn, but only one will actually power an internal combustion engine in an automobile. If you have an electric car, what outlet you plug it into will make a huge difference, not in what type of electricity gets into it, but how much gets into it. Certain chargers may fill a car’s large battery in under an hour; others may take all night just to put a few percent back into the battery.
So whether it’s our bodies, our cars, our phones, or our grills, we want to use the right kind of fuel—fuel that will endure, get the job done, and get us where we need to go. And we know that using the wrong fuel, even if it’s close, can be disastrous. A goof at the gas pump to put diesel in an unleaded car will not go well.
So it is for our spiritual “fuel” that we put in us. Not everything claiming to be spiritual, or Christian, or even Lutheran is of the same quality and has the same benefit. In fact, some things in those spheres will be downright dangerous to your eternal well-being. So, how do we know what to do, what to trust, what food will be good for us? When it comes to nourishing our souls, how do we distinguish between a wholesome meal and junk, between safe food and poison? Jesus has direction for us, “Learn from God.”
Earlier this week, I came across an online video account posting supposed messages the person was receiving straight from God. The person used a lot of spiritual and even Christian language, stressing (at times) that we need to be connected to “the Christ,” but when you listened to what was being said, the message was just gobbledygook. It didn’t track with any internal logic. It just felt like a blast of words, almost in a random order, and notably (when the message was making sense), it was really focused on the here and now rather than the eternal. The messages would talk about hurts and harms that you’ve experienced now, a concept that the “One” would help you with them and that you were strong enough to endure.
What was notably missing from any of this was, well, Jesus. The word “Christ” that was thrown around a bunch didn’t seem to be talking about our Savior so much as an abstract concept of a force of nature or something. (It was really difficult to follow.) But it struck me that this is not so different from some of the crowds’ thoughts about Jesus after the feeding of the 5,000.
In our Gospel last week, we heard Jesus urging people to receive the true bread from heaven, to look not to just the here and now, not just to fill their bellies for a day, but to seek after “bread” that endures to eternal life. We closed that reading with the same words from Jesus that we began our Gospel for this morning: “I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus is clear that this is not some arbitrary, subjective thing. This is not an invitation to cram your spirit full of junk food or other garbage that may even hurt you. No, this is a call to come to him and to him alone, to eat the bread that he provides—that he is!—because he is the only solution to spiritual hunger and thirst.
But this is not so easy or so automatic. We know the crowds were not on board with everything Jesus said and taught. Jesus himself comments, “You have also seen me, and you do not believe.” They were not trusting in Jesus for forgiveness and eternal security; as we saw last week, they were only looking to Jesus to satisfy their physical hunger. And so Jesus continues, trying to get them to rework their thinking, seeing their need for what he provides and what God the Father does through him: Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day. For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.”
There’s a tremendous amount of comfort and security in these words. The Father gives people to Jesus, and Jesus will not lose any of them. Jesus and the Father are united in this goal: “everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.” Three times in this brief reading, Jesus says that he will raise up the believers on the Last Day. This is in keeping with Jesus’ focus, not on physical food and drink, but on that which prepares for eternal life—himself, the Bread of Life.
We are all too aware that physical death will come. Each ache, pain, sickness, and sorrow is a reminder of what lies ahead for all of us. That is what happens to all who live in this sin-corrupted world and have inherited sinful natures like ours—death comes as the wages of sin. But, when you are not just looking for the temporal and the physical but for the spiritual and the eternal, physical death is not the end. Jesus was blunt: Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. Despite eating miracle food, the Israelites all eventually died while wandering in the wilderness for 40 years or after they entered the Promised Land. Those who ate the miracle food that Jesus provided for the 5,000+ people would grow hungry again (clearly, because that’s why they sought Jesus out), and they, too, would eventually die. Proximity to and even ingesting a miracle does nothing to rescue from the results of sin. Death is coming to all because all sinned.
But the Bread of Life is different. The one who feasts on this meal will endure to eternal life, for Jesus himself will raise him up on the last day. We will spend more time with these illustrations next week, but for now, it will suffice to say that eating the bread of life is to do exactly what Jesus described as his Father’s will: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life.
How do we see and believe in Jesus? How do we feast on this eternal-life-giving Bread from heaven? Jesus describes this: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the Last Day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. See what agency you and I do not have! No one can come to Jesus unless God the Father draws him. That word translated as “draws” might even have a stronger hint of meaning—no one can come to Jesus unless the Father drags him. This is not our will cooperating with God; this is not us doing a little part to connect ourselves to God. It can only be God’s work—and his alone—to connect us to the Bread of Life.
God himself must teach us this “culinary” wisdom of eating the Bread of Life. On our own, this is foolishness. Paul said in our Second Reading this morning, “An unspiritual person does not accept the truths taught by God’s Spirit, because they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually evaluated” (1 Corinthians 2:14). God must drag us to his truth against our natural will, against our natural inclination. On our own, if we see any good in God at all, we can only see him as the giver of a free lunch. But with God's wisdom, we know Jesus as he is, the Bread of Life, the Savior of the world.
The Father gave people to Jesus to save them. His mission of rescue and grace was to save all people from all sin. And so, the Bread of Life was crucified; the one who came to save the world was rejected by the world he came to save. But in that rejection, God worked the greatest good. Because on that cross, Jesus took all of our failings on himself: every time we’ve misunderstood him, misappropriated him, felt confident in our own selves, or felt that we didn’t need him. All of those ignorant and willful sins were laid on Jesus; there on the cross, he suffered the eternal death—hell—that our sins truly deserved and made a full payment for them all. The Bread of Life died that we might feast—believe—and live.
We are rescued in Jesus’ body, in his flesh, nailed to the cross. He gave his life to rescue us from death, and by his death, we live forever. God’s wisdom allows us to see Jesus not as a pitiful, crucified victim but as a triumphant Savior. God’s wisdom allows us to see Jesus’ empty tomb and know what that means: he is victorious. And because he is victorious, my brother and sisters, so are we!
God teaches us to see Jesus as he is, not as a miracle worker or bread provider, but as the Sin-Destroyer. “I am the Bread of Life... This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Thank you, Lord Jesus! Amen.
