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.
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