Wisdom invites, cajoles, and persuades. It never commands.

Sermon, by Pastor Ronald Nelson

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

August 18th, 2024

Proverbs 9:1-6

Psalm 34:1-14

Ephesians 5:15-20

John 6:51-58

(Twentieth Sunday in ordinary time,

Turtle island)

We are dealing with a decidedly and unmistakable Eucharist IC motif these Sundays, and not offering communion makes it a tough call at best and just plain hard for me as the preacher.

I looked back at our last red hymnal [service book and hymnal] published in 1958. The way they handled this situation then was to have one set of lessons used year after year and to almost completely ignore the Gospel of John.  Before I was an ordained pastor, I could lead worship and preach  sermons without worrying over the lack of communion services. In fact in the summer of 1963, two years before I was ordained, I did just that for three months. As I have said before, if we had continued in that mode of ignoring much of scripture and having communion often only four times a year, I doubt I would be preaching today.  It is also interesting that Dr. Karoline Lewis in her writings on the gospel of John said, “my commentary on chapter 6 has deliberately postponed a discussion on communion. Why? Because it does not include in its writings, the words of institution, etc.”  So with Dr. Lewis’s blessing I will struggle with these texts as we do not again have communion today?

Having gotten that off my chest, let us move on then with the lessons.   As a prelude to the Gospel today, the first reading from proverbs sets the tone.  David f. Ford said, “wisdom has on the whole not had an easy time in the recent centuries in the west, yet it may be making a comeback.”  The wisdom texts of Hebrew scriptures address the practices of ordinary life more than the great events of history.  Why?  Because they attend to those who suffer.

Therefore, in our times of great suffering and the superpowers’ indifference to ordinary life, it may be a good time to think again about wisdom.  L’Arche, in spite of its leader’s transgressions, is an example of wisdom listening to the needs of god’s people. Wisdom, in our text today, is personified as a gracious hostess,  who prepares a feast and offers it freely to all who have  sense enough to accept her invitation.  But the most striking characteristic of this account is the importance it gives to women.  [just think of the two leaders of the republican party and what they say about women and yet most of their supporters profess to being Christian.  Go figure!]  Wisdom invites, cajoles, and persuades - it never commands.

No one can survive without wisdom, the way of wisdom is the way to the understanding of life.  In John’s gospel we find Jesus as the wisdom incarnate.  Then Ephesians continues to talk about how believers should conduct themselves at the communities’ gatherings.  What these readings then are doing is giving us some guidelines as to how we conduct ourselves not only at worship but in the world.  Now what we have in today’s scripture lessons and in fact on any given Sunday is contradictory characteristics of the writers’ various theologies.  So, for instance, the old SBH I just mentioned, was not honest in almost totally ignoring the gospel of John, and neither are non-liturgical pastors who keep riding their same “hobby horses” Sunday after Sunday.  So if we were to follow proverbs and never use the book of Job, we would be doing the same thing.  Biblical wisdom is often portrayed as predicting what God would do.  In that mode, we can always predict that God will always give me everything “I” need, “especially a long and meaningful life.”  But if I ignore god’s specific rules and regulations I and my descendants will live miserably and die young. If that is true, what about the book of Job? No matter how well Job “a just man” adhered to God’s laws, he always got the dirty end of the stick.  Everything went against him.  He and his family were constantly punished.  I am sure we have all known people like that, in fact it might be us.  We have done everything right and yet we have suffered. Thus in Job we find there is no predictability in God’s actions.  Even when Yahweh eventually appears to Job, Job’s questions are never answered. Basically God says, “I am divine and you are not.  You will never understand why I do what I do, so stop worrying about it.”  Is it any wonder that Rabbi Kushner made big dollars in 1981 with his book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”  But today our readings all come down on the side of proverbs.  The author of proverbs pictures a great banquet, providing food and drink that takes care of our thirst and hunger for a lifetime. 

The writer of John puts some of the same wisdom in the mouth of Jesus, when Jesus speaks about, what some of us would say, is “the Eucharist.”

And then John’s Jesus takes the effects of food and drink beyond his life into eternity.  Even the writer of Ephesians seems to assure his readers that if they revolve their lives around doing the will of God, things are guaranteed to go well with them for the rest of their lives. Now I am sure that is what you would like me to say, right?  But what I am about to say is, our faith is not, or at least should not be, simply a matter of black and white.  I think the Lutheran church finally began to get our theology on the Eucharist right in the 1970’s when we began to understand what Paul and his students were saying about the Eucharist rather than when we just tried to ignore the gospel of John and hoped people would not ask about communion. [“Visible Words” by Robert w. Jenson is a good example, of how we began to get it right.]  For me as I look at these lessons there comes forward a subtle but meaningful practice at communion.  The way I, as a pastor, and the assisting minister do it, and I think Pastor Joel does the same, we eat and drink after everyone else has eaten. In other words in the Eucharist we, like those feeding the 5000, symbolically, only eat when everyone else in the community has eaten.  To be a disciple is to be a servant like Jesus was. Jesus put the needs of others ahead of his own. Discipleship means to offer one’s time, talent and treasure as food for the many hungers of god’s people.  Yes, if we are to be disciples we must have a capacity for compassion that overcomes conceit and self-centeredness with concerns for others.    

We Lutherans used to argue that we had to have some kind of scholarship understanding of the Eucharist before we could partake of it.  Finally, as I mentioned above, we began to understand that first Corinthians 11 was not talking about knowledge, but about our failing to share the food [bread and wine] with everyone at the table.  The basic idea is that the hungry should be fed by you and me.  Without that as part of our mandate then the liturgy of word and sacrament is incomplete.  Paul understood and hopefully we do as well.  Only when the poor are well fed by the generosity of the assembled community is the Eucharist  complete.  Raymond E. Brown’s “The Gospel According to John,” suggests that the whole of John 6 reflects the liturgical setting of a Christian Passover-Paschal feast which remembered; the gifts of the manna in the wilderness, the loaves and the fish in Galilee, and Jesus’ death on the cross.  All within the context of a Eucharist IC celebration.

Sadly, we Christians have missed the mark on carrying out most of what Jesus tried to teach. We had crusades to kill the infidels, we killed witches, and we privatized our faith to the point that “saving our soul” was all that counted and worst of all, we justified the above and much more by wrongly  citing scripture.  The writer of Ephesians said, “watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons, but as wise… do not continue in ignorance.” So we as Lutherans especially continue to struggle with the meaning of the Eucharist.  All is a matter of faith, not logical or scientific fact. We can only grasp it through the wisdom of faith.  We do this by witnessing in awe and wonder before god, speaking and doing no evil, dedicating ourselves to good works, and pursing peace in our lives.  We as Christ-bearers must offer our whole selves to others, and to God’s wise plan for justice and peace in the world.  For me the bottom line of all of this is that God comes to us because we do not know how to go to her.  We are connected to one another.  We are all family.  The human family is one flesh, and whatever happens to anyone of us happens to all of us.  Any attempt to divide the human family is an attack on all of us. The war in the Ukraine is a “good/bad” example.  Oppression and exploitation of many will always eventually afflict everyone.

Justice and the common good are the only antidote to global suffering and sickness. It is rather simple and easy to go to church and to receive the bread and the wine. But it is another thing to actually be the church and experience life around us. Each week I want to do what the Rev. Marbury Anderson did for me as my pastor in the 1960’s.  I was 25 and about to be ordained when Pastor Anderson wrote the following for 8th graders in 1965: “during this course, when you are probing the significance of Christ in your life, remember that your church is not interested in giving you a lot of trite answers to your questions about being good, about life, death, and eternity.  Instead, your church wants you to read, study, and think for yourselves, to let the Holy Spirit so increase your faith in Christ that you find those answers that are meaningful to your life.”   I understand proverbs as being like a mother who always wants to first comfort her child.  My mother was like that, but then she would talk to me about some of her “Job” like trials.  One trial she had was, she had multiple sclerosis and yet she lived to be 92.  I will be honest, every time I have a pain, I wonder if I have not inherited MS from my mother. 

As I share the above two experiences with you, I say to me and I say to you.

Come and seek the ways of wisdom,

She who danced when earth was new.

Follow closely what she teaches,

For her words are right and true.

Wisdom clears the path to justice,

Showing us what love must do.

Listen to the voice of wisdom,

Crying in the market place.

Hear the word made flesh among us,

Full of glory, truth, and grace.

When the word takes root and ripens,

Peace and righteousness embrace.

Sister wisdom, come, assist us,

Nurture all who seek rebirth.

Spirit guide and close companion,

Bring to light our sacred worth.

Free us to become your people,

Holy friends of god and earth.

[ACS 971]

Listening to this wisdom,

We will begin to understand

Build a longer table, not a higher wall,

Feeding those who hunger, making room for all,

Feasting together, stranger turns to friend,

Christ breaks walls to pieces,

False divisions end.

Build a broader doorway, not a longer fence.

Love protects all people, sparing no expense.

When we embrace compassion more than fear,

Christ tears down our fences:

 all are welcome here.

[ACS 1062 v. 1& 3]

Amen.

Your Journey Never Ends ... Your Will Be Done

Sermon, by Pastor Ronald Nelson

Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

August 11th, 2024

I kings 19:4-8

Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:30-5:2

John 6:41-51

(Nineteenth Sunday in ordinary time,

Turtle island)

Look at any prayer book that is gathering dust in your library, search Google etc. I do not think you will find a suggestion that you should pray like Elijah does in today’s first reading. He was basically telling God, “enough! I have had it! Just let me lie down and die! Here and now!” I doubt us “good” Lutherans ever heard that prayer in our confirmation classes. But the fact that the prayer is not given to us to memorize or create hymns from, does not diminish the quality of its honesty, or the witness it bears to the profound relationship Elijah maintained with the God who had called him into a life of prophecy.

I do not think I ever asked God to just let me die but I certainly do remember being down by the falls, a couple of times, in the early morning yelling, “why am I doing this?” ~ Yes, those were nine interesting years in NFO. When we find the “your will be done” in the lord’s prayer too hard to pray, perhaps we can echo Elijah’s cry and trust that God hears our prayers with compassion.

After praying, Elijah lay down, perhaps hoping to never awaken again.

But lovers of God do not get off that easily. An “angel” woke Elijah up and told him to eat. When Elijah laid down again, he was told to get up and finish eating the food because he would need energy for his journey. The long journey first took him to Mount Horeb, and then to where Elijah would anoint Elisha as his successor and finally to where he would be “carried off in a chariot of fire.” [II kings 2:11] Was this story a myth, a fairy tale or what? Who knows? But the one thing it tells us is, God did not allow Elijah to die until Elijah finished his work for God. Elijah’s story seems to teach us that God listens to our prayers and answers our prayers by showing us all that life can offer. But there are times when it seems God is just asking too much of us.

We have laboured on behalf of others, but we do not see the fruits of our labour, and it just does not seem to be appreciated. Our families take us for granted, and we are exploited at work. All we have wanted to do was to serve and help others. Doing something for others is hard enough but even when we meet opposition, what is a person to do, other than give up? Yes, we are often like Elijah. There are times when we are challenged to our way of thinking and we are asked to accept a new perspective.

We are called to be open to cultural diversity and to help those we are not enamored with. And then to top it all off “new” biblical insights are shared by an 84 year “old” preacher and, we just might be like Elijah and or the Jews murmuring against Jesus. This then was the message that Jesus was trying to convey to his companions as he described himself as the bread that comes from heaven. According to the Jesus in the gospel of John, the bread from heaven was God’s offer of a life more abundant than they could ever imagine.

The people murmured, just like we do now, “this Jesus was just one of our neighbours,” “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Yes, they were just prisoners of their own measly expectations. They would not, they could not, fathom the idea that God could work through one of them, much less that their small lives could ever be worth anything. Their refusal to accept that Jesus was special betrayed their lack of faith in the value and potential of their own lives and consequently their lack of faith in the God who formed them as a people in God’s image. Jesus was telling them then and us now; “Elijah,” “Ron,” “you” and “you” and “you” get in touch with your inner feelings, with your deepest human longings, the part of yourselves which yearns for and leads to God. Augustine prayed in gratitude for this capacity to be open to God with the words, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

Jesus’ call to those who would hear him was the most open invitation he could make. In effect Jesus was saying, “allow yourselves to be in touch with God’s spirit within you and you will realize that I am offering you living bread, my very life which brings eternal life to the world.” The scriptures we heard this week try to awaken us, to what God is offering us.

Elijah is here to lead us in the kind of sincere prayer that makes us vulnerable to God’s unlimited offers. The memory of the people who murmured against Jesus in the synagogue warns us against mortally diminished hopes and dreams that often drive people to block streets, honk horns, and storm capitals for no apparent reason, other than that in their minds, their hopes and dreams have died. Yes, just like the stories of Jesus and his fellow Israelites; we allow ourselves to be caught in mires of our own making. On the one hand we are asking for answers, on the other hand we resist probing and mining for answers and even refuse to hear the answers. It is as if we demand messages from Heaven, but we want to dictate how the answers will come, and what they will convey.

Together these scripture lessons today urge us to allow our heart’s longing for God to lead us to receive the life that God desires to share with us. We are so fortunate to have these stories in scripture not simply because they are great adventures, but because they provide clues that help us to recognize God’s acting in history. These stories indicate the kind of things God is known to do. Jesus knew these stories and he wanted his fellow jews to ponder them as they questioned whether or not he had any connection with God. Yes, today’s scriptures invite us to search our hearts and minds and to act from our deepest hopes and desires. Elijah cautions us that God will never settle for less than all we can become. The letter to Ephesians, reminds us that God’s spirit is active among us and that we have the power to collaborate with the spirit and to keep the spirit alive in our communities.

The gospel of John today adds to Elijah’s story, calling us to abandon our minimized hopes and minimal expectations so that we can be open to God’s unlimited offer of life. Quite simply, when given seemingly impossible tasks, or if we carry burdens of fear and doubt ~ God does not abandon us.

When we question the presence of the lord in the midst of our very human struggles, God reminds us that God is the living bread. If we taste and see the goodness of the Lord, if we eat the bread and fervently ask to become what we receive, then anger will dissipate in our lives. Then the marks of faith; kindness, forgiveness, and compassion will define our lives. Jesus’ invitation to hear and learn, to come to him, to eat and to believe so as to live is, as timely now as it was 2000 years ago. All we need is to hunger for the bread of life. Sounds so easy, eh? Well, I hope by now you know ~ it is not easy. I say it in almost every sermon, “we have to go back to our Galilee”, it is where we work and play that we need to live out the bread of life.

Elijah was fearing for his life when he said the above prayer. Queen Jezebel had a contract out on Elijah’s life. Elijah had executed prophets of Ba’al. [not something I would recommend doing but there are some “prophets” today I would???] Elijah was “running” all over trying to get away from Queen Jezebel’s gang. When Elijah finally got to Mt. Sinai, God said, go back to Damascus, to “your Galilee” and carry on your ministry there. Now we find out why Elijah just wanted to die.

Just like Elijah, we are called to follow a God who is compassionate and forgiving, that is the easy part. But sometimes it seems like God is leading us in the wrong direction, eh? Well, just think about it. Think about the wrong psychological directions we have taken in our lifetime. Think about the wrong relationships we have formed. Think about the times we did not even think we had gone astray, but we did, we presumed “it” was what God wanted us to do, but we were wrong? Yes, we may have to go through several “metanoias” in our lives. Yes, we may have to “change our mind”, or “change our heart.” We may have to even change our basic value systems. We may have to change directions in our lives. Think about it. It took Jesus thirty years to figure out what he was to do, and even then, on the cross he said, “God, if there is another way to do this, count me in.” Do we understand why “metanoia” is at the heart of Christianity? God/Jesus is not asking us to do anything that God has not already done.

In next week’s gospel, the murmuring of the hungry crowd will intensify as the Jesus in John’s gospel will be challenging the people to look beyond the bread and fish which filled their stomachs, and even beyond the bread of his teaching which filled their hearts and minds, in order to accept the bread of his very self. The bread that God has blessed, broken and shared with all for the life of the world. For most of us, our lives are not very dramatic, but we are all on a journey. The arc of every life involves change, leave-taking, risks, and challenges. Each of us is inevitably confronted with times of struggle and pain, perhaps even to the point where we just feel like giving up.

In our gospel for today, Jesus offers himself as the food for our journey, the bread of life. By not having the Eucharist these Sundays, we find the meaning of the “bread of life” is so much more than a piece of bread and a sip of wine. How do we experience the “bread of life?” Could it be a phone call to or from a friend when we or they are feeling alone? Could it be a casserole delivered to a family dealing with illness or grief? Could it just be simply a word of encouragement when it is most needed?

I have found people, like medical staff or wait-staff, actually enjoy being asked something about themselves rather than just being treated like servants. As God’s disciples, we are called to be bread for others. By giving of ourselves – gifts of time, resources, emotional or physical support – we too become bread, broken and shared with and for others in this suffering world.

The spirit sends us forth to serve,

We go in Jesus’ name

To bring glad tidings to the poor,

God’s favour to proclaim.

We go to comfort those who mourn

And set the burdened free,

Where hope is dim,

To share a dream and help the blind to see.

We go to be the hands of christ,

To scatter joy like seed

And, all our days, to cherish life,

To do the loving deed.

Then let us go to serve in peace,

The gospel to proclaim.

God’s spirit has empowered us,

We go in Jesus’ name.

[ELW 551]

Amen.

Manna - What is that?

Sermon, by Pastor Ronald Nelson

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

August 4th, 2024

Exodus 16:2-15,

Psalm 78:23-24,

Ephesians 4:17-24,

John 6:24-35

(Eighteenth Sunday in ordinary time,

Turtle island)

What we heard in our first lesson from Exodus today is, “people grumbling against God.” They were annoyed at the harsh conditions they encountered in the wilderness. The fact that their long years of slavery had been ended and the hope that they would soon enjoy their freedom in a new land, did not seem to satisfy them.

Yearning to go back to Egypt, to slavery but having “full” stomachs again, they confronted Moses and Aaron. Even when God had provided for their needs with water, manna, and quail, they wanted more and railed against God. Moses’ frightened and hungry people told him they wished he had left them to die in Egypt. The journey towards freedom was too hard.

It is amazing how we humans can varnish memories of the past, gilding it while we whine about the present!

Our text today recounts a scene immediately after the people had crossed the Red Sea, after being delivered from Egypt. Manna seemed to be like a version of an instant breakfast. Something that was left by insects after eating a certain fruit. People could gather it and eat the flakes and even bake it into some kind of bread.

The name manna means, “what is this?”  Sounds like what I say about liver.

So, when they asked the question, it was not like they were asking of a person who had just given them a diamond ring. They had been complaining that Moses had freed them so that they now could die in the desert with manna for “dessert in the desert.”

As strange as this story of manna is, it is a classic story of God taking care of the world. But also what happens when we try to hoard an item for ourselves. (Remember toilet paper of a couple of years ago? How about the masks that saved lives so that a few could complain, protest, riot, and block streets like they did here in Ottawa and then recently had the audacity to complain that the police would not let them leave?)

In this story, the people came to realize that the manna and the quail were not just food, but a sign, what we might call sacraments. Signs that God cared for them, that God cares for us. Acknowledging that there is a God and that She cares for us can lead to good things, or it can lead to bad things like requiring the Ten Commandments to being placed on the walls of schools, but then not stopping guns from being used to kill the children in those schools.

Georges Bernanos’s priest in  “The Diary of a Country Priest,” says, “his parish is bored stiff.” Could that be why the church in general is in decay? We have forgotten the wonder of the Exodus and grumble while the world starves for bread. Have we forgotten what someone once said, “humans plan, God laughs, and stuff happens.”

Maybe we need to borrow from that horrible person in the states, “make the church great again.” Yes, it is always easier to appreciate miracles and Grace in hindsight. Yes, the people of Jesus’ day loved their thousand-year-old memory of manna that had turned into, dare I say, “a folk tale.”

Now, in Jesus’ day, the people thought Jesus/the Messiah would do the same for them. So Jesus tried to help them delve deeper into their religious imaginations. Jesus wanted to help them understand the truly human meaning of what he called the “bread of life.” If the people of Jesus’ day desired to participate in the experience of their ancestors, they would have to learn not only to look at the past or hope for the future, but to see what was right in front of them.

The fox said to “the little prince,” “it is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Jesus said, “very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, but it is God who gives you the true bread.” You see, just like us, the people thought the bread/manna had appeared miraculously for their ancestors. They had forgotten what a small boy with a few fish or a person with some barley loaves could do. They had shared what they had and other people pitched in and the people were fed.

One of the key challenges that John’s Gospel gives us, is the call to recognize the gifts of God in our midst. The people who meet Jesus in this Gospel, according to John, are always looking for great things and seem unable to realize that the marvels they seek are right in front of them.  

As a preacher, I believe if I help you think for yourselves, I have done a good job. I hope you take today’s readings as an invitation to look at the “stuff” of our daily lives, the ordinary, the surprising, and even that which originally appears less attractive, and ask “manna?”/”what is this?”

Following the lead of our ancestors in the faith, we may slowly learn to see beyond what the letter to the Ephesians calls the “futility” of their/our minds. Doing that, we will begin to perceive what God is doing here and now. Yes, the scriptures we are using were written at least a couple of thousand years ago. God has given all of us, minds to think with, “although there will always be doubts about how some people use their minds.”

The Gospel tells us that God is constantly in the process of giving life to the world. Like the Israelites, we are invited to keep moving on our journeys of faith. We are called to go along together, seeking and praying, looking at the reality of our world and asking, “what is this?”

Sincerely asking that question in our communities will lead us to re-discover the “manna” God keeps sending. When we truly share this “manna,” we will discover that it is the only bread that satisfies the hungers of our world. Today’s selection from the letter to the Ephesians compliments Jesus’ call in the Gospels to go beyond the superficial and grasp the deepest possibilities of human life. Ephesians weaves doctrine and ethics together. The author assumes that the audience [we?] once lived “as the gentiles do.”

They/we are caught up in “the futility of our minds and deceitful desires,” as I referred to earlier, but they had/have also experienced a more satisfying alternative. While this writing to Ephesians is a fairly typical style of moral preaching for the first century, it is more applicable to our day than we might think. The author contrasts futile intellectualism to having “learned Christ.”

The first part of this reading is a warning against getting caught up in the trivial concerns that society promotes or the pseudo-sophistication of those who denigrate faith as a refuge of the intellectually or emotionally weak.

Now I know this is some “heavy stuff” but as a church living in these times, I find it interesting that 2000 years ago the church was facing the same troubles. Our consumer and/or fundamental ideas today can make a dogma out of atheism and we find we have not learned anything in 2000 years.

Pope Francis said in his “Joy of the Gospel,” “at times our media culture and some intellectual circles convey a marked skepticism with regard to the church’s message, along with a certain cynicism.”

He went on to say, “that can make us have an inferiority complex which leads us to conceal our Christian identity and convictions.” In other words, I as a preacher in the church must try to help us understand that the simplicity and directness of the Christian message can mask its truth and intensity.

Like the people in today’s Gospel, those who believe only in science cannot comprehend the transformative power of the gift of a few loaves and fishes. The letter to the Ephesians, as most if not all of the other letters in our New Testament, try to remind the communities of the early church what they had learned. The bottom line is as Ephesians says, “you learned Christ.” It is just an “odd” enough statement that it should make us think twice.

The phrase has nothing to do with intellectual knowledge or dogmatic assertions. “Learning Christ” appears to be a way of living in relationship to God. A way of orientating our entire lives to the process of coming to know God and allowing God to gradually become the meaning and central motivating factor of/and in our lives.

The author of Ephesians would like the community to be acutely aware of the difference between what God [Christ] does or could bring about in their or our lives. Using ideas that we also find in Galatians, the author speaks about the old and new orientations to life as, like a self that one puts on, or we might say, the person one decides to be. Ephesians is a call to become conscious of whether it is God or contemporary culture that orientates our daily life.

In other words, the writer of Ephesians is “hammering” away at “metanoia,” the changing of our minds, necessary for all of the followers of God.

Believers and non-believers live in the same world. We basically experience the same things. The difference revolves around how we interpret those experiences. Having a different value system, we should be able to see, hear, and touch things others miss. We should sense things through our faith in God.

God does not normally step in and change reality for our benefit. God does not work miracles for our benefit on a daily basis. God simply helps us to see, hear and touch the miraculous that is already here.

We will look at the letter of James in a few weeks. James will talk about how faith without works is dead. Something we Lutherans have had a hard time grasping. The growth and flourishing of the body of Christ, the church, always must be measured by love. A few weeks ago I made the point, “body and blood of Christ,” trying to connect it with all of life.

This is what we as a faith community need to understand.

The writer of John helps us to understand the difference between a group of people eating lunch and people participating in the Eucharist. Yes, we need to feed our bodily hunger and thirst. But in order to live a truly fulfilled life we need the bread and wine which morphs into the “bread of life.” 

Our ancestors in the desert longed for a sign of God’s faithfulness. The crowds around Jesus were asking for the same thing. I am sorry, because I am not there today, you do not have the sign of God’s faithfulness, namely the Eucharist.

But I hope you have come today to encourage and deepen your faith so you/we can be a sign of God’s presence in the world. We can be mesmerized by outright lies or manipulative promises. Things that offer superficial purpose and a shallow sense of security disconnect us from the deep need for meaning and the mystery of life, the needs that are unique to us as humans.

Today’s lessons invite us to have the courage to ask Christ, “what are you doing here?”  “What are you offering us?” If we really delve into these questions, if we really live these questions, we will learn that the bread of life is here for us in many varieties, even though it seems invisible to our eyes. That Jesus would speak of bread when describing himself should not be a surprise. Everything about Jesus’ ministry was about people experiencing the nourishment of love and the transformation that can happen when we take love into our beings and then extend that love to others. To systems  and people of authority, that love and its fruit can be a threat. To people who hunger for acceptance and love, that love is an endless banquet with enough seating for all.

Today’s Gospel returns us to the time when Jesus fed the crowds in the wilderness, then met his disciples struggling in the boat during the storm at sea as he walked on the water back to Capernaum. This story again evokes the risen Jesus, who tells the crowds that hungering for bread is only a sign of a deeper hunger that only faith can satisfy. Believing in him begins the work of God in our lives. We are part of this post-resurrection community, invited to find Jesus’ presence in the world, active along the threshold of time as we seek to imitate him, coming out of our locked rooms and fearful hesitation to trust the graces that pour into every situation where compassion is needed, in every act of loving service and selfless giving.

“Where are you?” we ask, and God answers, “come and see.”

If we move toward God’s voice, we move from darkness into light, from blindness into sight, from doubt into faith. 

Amen