How times have changed!
Time was when you knew your sewing machine would last a life-time - when the family car (if you could afford one) was a long-term investment - when the grocery man brought your basket of groceries to the house and, if you were out, came in through the unlocked back door and left them on the table - when couples maintained sexual purity before marriage and life-long faithfulness afterwards - when the tax office trusted most people to be honest and audited only the few who seemed to be abusing the system - when the qualities of politeness, courtesy and chivalry were valued…
Do you remember? How times have changed!
Of course, not all the change has been bad! The new sewing machine and family car, for example, both have commendable features not present in their predecessors. But there has been a shift in values and a break-down of trust in the community as a whole. Who can you trust these days? - not nearly as many as you could once!
The notion that faith in God is merely optional has been destructive in its effect. The view that the moral law is a matter of personal choice or interpretation is not liberating but shackling in its effect on our life and society.
The central issue for the human race is faith in God - the God who has revealed himself and acted for our rescue in his Son, Jesus Christ.
Today's reading began with the verses we ended with last week. The question of the crowd, "What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do?" (Jn 6.28) The response of Jesus, "What God wants you to do is to believe in the one he sent" (v. 29).
But we protest - surely our top priority should be to house the homeless, feed the hungry… all that sort of thing. And there is plenty of biblical evidence that this is important to God. After all, Jesus himself had just fed five-thousand-plus people. Yet that wasn't his main ministry. Or again, we reflect on the picture of the last judgment (Mt. 25.31-46) - aren't the peoples of the world divided on the basis of whether or not they fed the hungry and thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the prisoner? More specifically in how they have responded to him - as evidenced in their actions.
The central issue is faith. When we have resolved that central issue, there are certainly a number of other things that will follow in our lives - that are God's will for us to do.
What do we mean by "faith"? The word is used in many senses. Sometimes we simply mean our "set of beliefs" -our basic convictions, what we are intellectually persuaded about. But faith, in the Christian sense, goes beyond that to speak of trust and dependence.
John Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, was translating the Bible. He discovered that they had no word for trust or faith. One day a native who had been running hard came into the missionary's house, flopped himself down in a large chair and said, "It's good to rest my whole weight on this chair." "That's it," said Paton. "I'll translate faith as 'resting one's whole weight on God'."
Faith is trust, dependence - "resting one's whole weight on God." Those who have come to this kind of faith in Jesus will go on to be active in God's service in other ways. We listen again to John Paton -
Amongst the many who sought to deter me was one dear old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument always was, "The cannibals! You will be eaten by cannibals!" At last I replied, "Mr Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honouring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms."
The issue for Jesus' first hearers (and for us) wasn't whether they were curious or fascinated by Jesus, nor even whether his presence and work filled them with awe. The issue for them (and for us) was whether they were trusting him and depending on him to fulfil a need far deeper than the need for bread - the need to know God, and therefore the need of the lost soul and broken spirit for forgiveness, restoration and life.
Manna was the food provided in the wilderness by their caring Lord to his needy but grumbling people (Ex. 16). Various natural explanations of the manna have been sought - such as the honeydew excretions of various scaly insects in Sinai in early June on the twigs of the tamarisk tree. How these might have fed the large multitude for an extended period of time is a major puzzle. We find ourselves brought back to the Hebrew name they gave it - manna, "what is it?" It was the what-is-it food of the Lord's generous provision for their need.
The manna was specially given to meet a particular local need. It was a memorable provision - a jar of manna was placed in the ark of the covenant. In Deuteronomy 8.3 we read that the Lord God "made you go hungry, and then he gave you manna to eat, food that you and your ancestors had never eaten before. He did this to teach you that human beings must not depend on bread alone to sustain them, but on everything that the Lord says" - significant words quoted by Jesus during his own temptation, significant words for the present conversation.
"I am telling you the truth," Jesus said. "What Moses gave you was not the bread from heaven; it is my Father who gives you the real bread from heaven. For the bread that God gives is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world… I am the bread of life… Those who come to me will never be hungry; those who believe in me will never be thirsty." (Jn 6.32-33, 35).
Our most basic human needs are only met in Jesus himself. He is the bread of life, the true bread from heaven.
One of our locally baked breads lists these ingredients: bakers' flour, yeast, vegetable oils, gluten, salt, soya flour, emulsifiers (481, 471), preservative (282), vitamin (thiamin), water added. You eat all those things without realising it! Preservatives seem to be important these days, giving the food a long life. But the preservatives we eat with our food can't guarantee eternal life!
Jesus is the bread of life, the true bread from heaven. He is the only one able to meet us at our deepest needs - here and now, and forever.
Those words are not to be taken in an exclusive sense, as if only a few can receive the gift of eternal life. We need to understand that the grace of God is freely offered to any who will come to receive it - "I will never turn away anyone who comes to me". Later Jesus will say, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me" (12.32). Jesus is not saying that all will believe, but that the possibility of believing and receiving is genuinely laid before each person - even before the unbelieving crowd. God hasn't finished with them yet!
Jesus offers the Bread of Life - himself - to us. God draws us to Jesus. He brings about a dissatisfaction with life, a discontent with our own status quo, a hunger and thirst for spiritual reality…
In some families, the prepared meal is announced with "Come and get it!" Jesus, the Bread of Life, invites us to come and receive him. Receive the forgiveness and new life that he died to make possible - all the benefits of his grace flowing from his death on the cross. Receive him by the Holy Spirit - risen, alive, with us - that he may live within us and express his life and grace through us.
Come! Come today and receive him!
© Peter J. Blackburn, Buderim Uniting
Church, 21 March 1999
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Except where otherwise noted,
Scripture quotations are from the Good News Bible, ©
American Bible Society, 1992.