Sermon on John 6:35, 41-51

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, 8/8/21 | Sermon on John 6:35, 41-51 | by The Rev. Dr. Ryan Mills |

³⁵Jesus said to [the crowd,] “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ⁴¹Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴²They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. ⁴⁴No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (NRSV).

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well several years ago a friend and I drove down to New York City together, and our time in the car on the Merritt Parkway quickly turned into a time to talk and share.  On the outside this friend had everything going for him, it seems like he was succeeding at life– but soon he began to share the self-doubt and failure he was experiencing, the relationships broken, the bills unpaid, his good future uncertain and seeming to disappear right in front of him, leaving only despair behind.  And who among us can’t relate to that struggle?  Who among us hasn’t wondered if we’d make it through, hasn’t wondered if we could keep body and soul together one more week, who hasn’t despaired of ourselves, of our future, and even of God?  Who among us hasn’t ever wanted to just give up, and lay down, and die?

I wish that I could say that I was a great pastor for my friend, and had the right word for him, I wish that I would have prayed out loud for him there, or that I knew what to say or how to best comfort him.  Instead I looked at the exit and said, “Let’s stop and get something to eat.”  Score one for emotional eating!  And so we found one of those old New York pizza places, tucked away, oven blazing, that smell of the crust baking and crisping and even charring underneath, the cheese bubbling, a slice hot and on your paper plate, ready to go, “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, let these gifts to us be blessed.” Today, here, to those who are ready to give up comes the Word, “have something to eat.”

Today the Prophet Elijah is in the wilderness, on the run, and comes to rest under a broom tree.  He’s taken on the royal false prophets of Baal, that ancient false god of power and fertility that people gladly sacrificed their children to. He’s beaten the false prophets, he’s shown he’s faithful to the one True God, but now he’s a wanted man, a dead man, so he sits under the tree in the desert and asks that he might die: “O Lord, take away my life, I’m no better than my long-gone ancestors now.”  Sometimes we pay for our faith.  Sometimes life just seems to catch up with us.  Sometimes, even when everything should be going great, it seems we’ve completely failed and cannot see a way into tomorrow.  And so Elijah fell asleep, the sleep of the grieving, of the exhausted, hoping to never wake up again.

But into his sleep, an angel appeared to him, touched him, roused him awake. “Elijah, get up and eat!”    And there in this desert of sorrows is all of a sudden a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of cool water.  Elijah ate and drank and lay down again to die, this time with a full belly.  So again the angel of the Lord came a second time, “Elijah, Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you!”  So he got up and ate and drank, and on the strength of that food, we’re told, he went for 40 days and 40 nights.

Have something to eat, have something to drink, otherwise the journey will be too much for you!  God knows what we go through, God knows we can’t get to where we need to be on our own, God knows sometimes we just want to lay down and die, so “Get up, have something to eat, drink something,” he says.  There in the desert, under a tree, God provides, God lays a feast, God not only revives but also strengthens us, because in the desert of our failure and despair is where God does his best work. Right when we’re done, he begins; right where we’ve failed, he brings his victory; right when we’re empty, he fills; right where we cannot see a way through, God makes a way through; for he is the way, and he promises that he’ll give you what you need so that you too can go 40 days and 40 nights in the strength that he will give!

Today Jesus is promising the crowds, “I AM the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  But the people complain, “Who does he think he is? How can he be bread come down from heaven?”  They don’t believe him, and why should they?  Like them, like Elijah, our default setting is also unbelief.  We resist him, we object to him, we reject him.  “Well,” Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws them.”  None of us can come to Christ, unless drawn by the Father, none of us can come unless he brings us, none of us can come until all of Jesus’ good and gracious promises overwhelm us, and bring us out of ourselves and into his arms.  One of our members who came to faith as an adult once told me, “It was like I was running away from God all those years, but at the same time God was pulling me towards him like a powerful magnet, and finally against my objections he just drew me straight into his arms.”

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus promises you and me this morning, “whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

Jesus is that living bread for us, the bread that supplies everything we need for body and soul, for this life and for the life to come. Everything else is just stale, day-old, moldy Wonder Bread compared to him! For he is the good stuff, the real deal, and whoever eats of this bread will live forever!  Jesus knows that our basic problem, beneath the grumbling, beneath the unbelief, beneath our despair, is the problem of death.  We’re gonna die, and we know it! Our time is short, and then it’s gone.  So Jesus promises you this morning, “whoever eats of this bread will live forever, you will live forever–in fact whoever believes, you who believe, have eternal life!”  Eternal life that goes on forever with him, Eternal life that begins already and never stops, it’s for you, you have it, here!  Yesterday we had the funeral here at church for Joe Fox, one of our oldest members.  Two weeks before he died I was visiting him and his wife, and Joe’s body was getting weaker, he was fading away.  But when it came time for Communion, he focused with total clarity and ate the host right up!  And what a promise to hold onto as we let go of this life, what a thing to be filled with as our bodies empty away, “Whoever eats this bread will live forever!”  You will live forever!  Whoever believes, whoever trusts in me, already has eternal life!  You have eternal life!  Life with a capital L that lasts forever, for he loves you, he loves me, he loves Joe with a love that cannot die, with a love that broke open the grave, and so you and I will live forever!

“The bread that I will give,” Jesus says, “is my flesh for the life of the world!”  He gave his flesh, once upon the Cross, for you!  There in his flesh on the tree of the Cross he died for you, which means he bore and carried your sins, your failures, your despair, your death, he died your death there, trampling over death by death, but on the 3^rd day he rose again and now lives and reigns eternal, he is your Lord, and because he lives you will live also!

But he also still gives, keeps on giving his flesh for the life of the world.  He gives his flesh, for you, to eat and to drink, “This is my body, given for you, this is my blood, shed for you, Do this!” he says!  So that in your sorrow, in your despair, in your death, Jesus has prepared something for you to fill to fill you up– the bread that comes down from heaven so that you will not die!  “Get up,” he says to you this morning, “have something to eat.  Get up, have something to drink.”

“I am the living Bread that comes down from Heaven,” Jesus promises us this morning.  We gather now, with angels and archangels, with apostles and saints, with our brothers and sisters here, with all our loved ones gone one before us who because they believed have eternal life.  We gather to be fed with the bread that He gives, his flesh for the life of the world.  Get up, have something to eat.  Get up, have something to drink.

And the Peace of God which passes understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Ryan Mills

New Haven, Connecticut

Pastor@TrinityLutheranNH.org