Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me any my household, we will serve the LORD.” Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”
Psalm 34:15-22
The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and God’s ears are open to their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to erase the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry, and the LORD hears them and delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those whose spirits are crushed. Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the LORD delivers them from every one. God will keep safe all their bones; not one of them shall be broken. Evil will bring death to the wicked and those who hate the righteous will be punished. O LORD, you redeem the life of your servants, and those who put their trust in you will not be punished.
Ephesians 6:10-20
Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.
John 5:56-69
Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread what came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
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This is our last week in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel. We’ve been reading through this chapter for over a month! It started in July when we met with our Reformed and Methodist neighbors for worship in the park, and we heard the story about the feeding of the five (or six) thousand. Then every week after Jesus has been going on and on about being the bread of life, telling us to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and now he’s gotten all mystical again, telling the disciples that “it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.” I thought he just spent a month telling us to eat his flesh, and now flesh is useless?
As the disciples were saying, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?”
With his talk of blood and bodies, Jesus probably made a lot of people uncomfortable. But remember what crowds he’s talking to. These people gathered to hear him speak yesterday and were fed this miraculously filling meal of bread and fish. Overnight, the disciples got into a boat and went back to the other side of the sea of Galilee, where Jesus joined them a bit later, walking on water, and in the morning, the crowds couldn’t find him. So they made their way to the other side of the sea, looking for Jesus, who tells them not to work for the food that perishes, but to work for the food that endures for eternal life. And off they go for the next few weeks on this topic of Jesus being the bread of life. The crowds ask him for a sign. He sort of waves at them and goes, “Hello, I’m right here in front of you!” Then they tell him to remember the manna in the wilderness, and of course he knows all about that, since it was his Father who gave it to them. Not to mention that, by the way, it’s been Jesus all along, the bread that came down from heaven! Then some of the locals get all huffy that Jesus is making himself so important when they saw him pick his nose when he was a kid growing up in their village. So Jesus has to go over it all again, that he is the bread that came down from heaven, that they have to drink his blood to have life, that God the Father is the one who sent him to them so that they might have life. And they start to grumble and get uncomfortable, and some of them leave.
Which brings us up to date with how we got to where we are today. So I wonder, are we in it for the show? The feeding of the five (or six) thousand was pretty impressive. Are we in it for the miracles? Or are we following Jesus for the relationship with God that draws us to him? Does it really matter, as long as it gets us to Jesus?
I think this is where Jesus’ talk about the spirit giving life and the flesh counting for nothing really comes from. He’s spent too much time on the importance of eating and drinking for life to just dismiss it out of hand as a zinger for his argument. The crowds kept bringing up the manna in the wilderness, but what did they say about the exodus from Egypt or the journey to the promised land? Did they get too wrapped up in the manna to think about what they were being freed from and fed for?
Sometimes we get this way, too. At summer camp we tend to schedule our daily activities around how to get to the cafeteria for the next meal. While working at Target I can tell when it’s time for a break because I get hungry after about two hours. We scheduled a funeral here two weeks ago around the awareness that folks would be wanting lunch around noon, so if we begin at 11AM, guests don’t get uncomfortable and distracted by their hunger. We have real bodily needs, after all. Being mortal means hunger comes with the territory.
But that’s not all there is to us. That’s not all there is to living the life Jesus came for us to have. We are on the wilderness road to the promised land. Jesus told the disciples that the words he spoke to them are spirit and life, that no one can come to him without the Father’s initiative. It’s the same statement of faith we make now in the creed, when we confess reliance on the Holy Spirit for our faith. Luther reads that portion of our confession to mean that “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Christ or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with gifts, and made me holy and kept me in true faith” just as the Spirit does for the whole church.
The same God who has created us, who provides more than enough for life through the whole of creation, created us for more than just existing. Jesus in the flesh lived and died with us for life that is eternal, in the here and now just as much as in the hereafter. We in the self-centeredness of sin have made a world where life has to be earned, or fought for, rather than received as a gift, but Jesus has said over and over again that receiving the gift of life is as basic and simple as eating bread, as uncomplicated and wide open as just believing in him as the one who comes to give us life.
Too many others promise that they will serve us if only we serve them first, that our lives will be so much better if only we buy their product or try their new program, but, as Peter said in today’s reading, where else can we go for the words of eternal life? No one else but Jesus is the Word made flesh, the bread of life. And we don’t need to do anything for that bread, for that welcome, for that gift of eternal life to be given to us. Now that we have spent so much of our summer in this bread of life chapter, we finally get to the heart of it, that Jesus is himself the Word of eternal life, the Holy One of God, the one who came down from heaven to give life to the world.
This teaching is difficult, but it is so simple. We don’t need to meet any special requirements to be part of God’s eternity. We don’t need to prove our right to be part of the family of of faith. We don’t need to think a certain way or vote a certain way or eat a certain way to belong to the community of Christ. We cannot prove by our behavior or our reasoning that Jesus loves us, because Jesus has already shown that to be true in giving his body and blood for our lives, fully and completely without reservation. Now we get to live with the consequences of life, together with all of creation on this wilderness road to the promised land.
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