During summer in Year B of the Liturgical Calendar
we get five Sundays in a row (starting last Sunday)
with the Gospel reading from John, chapter 6, the Bread of Life Chapter.
So this will be an extended period of time
for us to feast on Jesus, the Bread of Life.
But before I begin to explore with you this incredibly significant Gospel passage
this Sunday and in the weeks to come,
I want to call your attention to the Epistle reading,
because, as you may have noticed, we have been reading our way through
the Letter to the Church in Ephesus, Ephesians.
We have a six weeks series of Epistle readings from Ephesians.
This letter is also one of significance in the canon of the epistles,
and paired with John, chapter 6,
provides for those who believe in, who put their faith in Jesus
deep nourishment for our inmost being
where we hunger and thirst for what is life giving and holy.
With all that we have been experiencing in the world around us
and in our own community – wildfires, climate changes, pandemic, politics –
both Ephesians and John’s Bread of Life chapter can help us focus on
what will get us through all these current stressors in our lives
and bring us to remembrance about what brings grace into our lives.
Looking at today’s reading from Ephesians, we hear some familiar words.
There is one Body and one Spirit;
There is one hope in God’s call to us’
One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism;
One God and Father of all.
Who can tell me where we find these words? Where have you heard them before?
In the Baptism liturgy, our opening responses.
Note the repetition of the word ONE
and what the implications are for us in terms of baptism.
Our rite of baptism is the outward and visible sign through water
that we are submerged into Christ, we are one with Jesus,
and, as the Apostle Paul puts it in other epistles,
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
That is a truth, a reality of being,
which we may or may not be aware of at any particular moment,
but that does not make it any less real.
We can spend a lifetime before we are fully aware and cognizant
of this incredible life-giving and life-sustaining truth of our being.
That is why we make it a priority and a habit in our lives to come here
in order to be reminded week by week
through the words of scripture
and the words of the liturgy
and the sacraments
that everything is connected, one in being: us to God
and us to each other
and us to the larger community
and us to the environment and every living creature.
We simply cannot exist separate from the world we live in OR separate from God.
So because everything is connected,
none of us has to carry the impossible task of being totally self sufficient.
The passage tells us that God has provided to each
something that is necessary for all
so that we have to come together in order to be complete.
Christ, the logos, the Word of God, who brought all things into being,
also fills all things (verse 10) and gifts us each with what we need
in order to be equipped for the work of ministry,
not for ourselves but for the building up of the whole body of Christ.
…until all of us come to the unity of the faith…to maturity…
to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (verse 13)
I could go on and on about this hugely significant statement
that is at the center of this passage about oneness in Christ
and how everything and everyone is connected
and how this is our life’s work: to realize this and to live into this,
but the epistle writer puts it best:
I…beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness,
with patience, bearing with one another in love,
making every effort to maintain the unity of Spirit in the bond of peace.…
…speaking the truth in love, we must grow up – group up! – in every way
…into Christ, from whom the whole body … is equipped,
as each part is working properly…
building itself up in love.
So how are we with this? Have we arrived, accomplished that sense of unity?
Speaking only for myself, I have a long ways to go
to measure up to the full stature of Christ,
so daily this must be in my attention upon waking
in the back of my mind all day long
and in what I surrender to God at the end of the day.
Are we working at this, holding this intention
in everything we do here at Nativity?
Or are we letting other concerns, worries, hurts, confusion and disagreements
stand between us unaddressed blocking the very things we seek in faith?
I ask these questions for each of us to ponder in self examination
in reflecting on this passage from Ephesians.
Sometimes, when it has seemed apropos, I have suggested to the congregation
that you rip out a lesson or prayer from your Sunday bulletin
and tape it to your bathroom mirror or refrigerator for the coming week
as a way to support your own spiritual practice each day. Ephesians?
Do you need support in your daily prayers and living out the Gospel? I do!
I must prayerfully attend to what supports me spiritually day by day.
We all do.
So this now leads us into the Gospel for today.
Jesus fed the 5,000 because he loved them. He saw their need,
and his compassion and love were put into practical action.
So he touched the food and enlivened it,
causing an expansion that resulted in an abundance,
more than what was needed!
And his touch began to enliven the people
as they sought him the next day,
and as he engaged them in life giving dialog.
“You were looking for me,” Jesus said to them,
“because you ate your fill of the bread
that you didn’t have to work for yourselves, free bread.”
You know what it is like to work hard day after day
to put groceries on the table at home.
But I’m going to say something different to you, Jesus said,
Do not work for the food that perishes,
food that gets eaten up and then it’s back to work again.
Work for the food that endures for eternal life
- well, obviously, a different kind of food.
So they ask how they are to work for this kind of food,
what works are they to work to be doing the works of God.
And here is the crux of all that is too follow in this chapter,
indeed, the central point of this whole Gospel.
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God,
that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Does this strike you as odd?
that the work of God that we are to do is to believe?
not work to keep all the Commandments
nothing that requires muscles and sweat
or that make a product, accomplishes a task
but to believe the One God sent.
Let’s look at this word believe.
You may have heard me say concerning the challenge of translation,
how a word in one language usually has a constellation of meanings about it
and when we translate it to another language,
we have to pick a word that inevitably cannot include
the whole scope of meaning of the original word.
That’s how it is with the verb that is translated here as believe.
In English to believe has the connotation of giving mental assent,
to accept as a doctrine, like when we say in the Nicene Creed,
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty…”
But the Greek word is much richer.
We could begin the creed just as well with
“We have faith in one God… We have faith in one Lord, Jesus Christ…”
To have faith in someone means that we have a history with that person.
We have experienced that person as trustworthy in particular areas,
such as keeping their word, or arriving on time,
or doing a good job at fixing your car, etc.
What we have faith in is the truth of that person as we have experienced it.
So this is the work we are invited to do:
to trust Jesus, to have faith in him,
to trust him, especially as we have experienced him in our lives,
how we have experienced him in our prayers and meditation,
how we have experienced his Resurrection Spirit guiding us,
how we have experienced his voice, his presence
through others who reflect his life in their own,
how we experience him in bread and wine week by week,
how all of creation points us to him,
and in all the hundreds of ways we can come to experience and know him.
And to trust that, to rely utterly on Jesus who would feed us with himself.
Jesus gives himself fully, so that when you receive him,
you are nourished to fullness of Life.
He will feed us with what he is.
He will feed us with what he is.
And then we become him,
for, as they say, “You are what you eat.”
Jesus is the bread of God who comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.
We may want to make a link between this Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel
and the sacrament of the Eucharist
The essential Bread of Life is there for us
to sink our teeth into spiritually,
living bread that conveys life to the eater.
What are you hungry for? What does your soul crave?
Work for what will satisfy that hunger like nothing else can.
So come to the Table today with all your hunger,
and you may want to say a little prayer prior to eating,
such as the grace we say at home before a meal,
something like this:
For what we are about to receive,
may the Lord make us truly grateful.
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