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
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