11th Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon: 11th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/4/2024

Text: John 6: 24-35

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The great American writer John Steinbeck, in his book Travels with Charley, reflects on the American tendency to move away, a characteristic restlessness and lack of satisfaction that prompts him or her to follow an illusive something. Not to probe too deep into the American cultural psyche at this moment, but I have had a similar observation in my own experience of living in the United States, so much that I marked this passage from Steinbeck when I read it. Here in the United States, we are being peddled with many things that might satisfy us, from more money, to career positions, to nice cars, and big houses, top schools and universities, the next innovation or business idea; the lack of satisfaction is an incentive for being a bigger doer or having something better. For those that have watched the series Mad Men, we might remember that first episode where Don Draper says that love and happiness in the US was a concept invented by advertisers to sell their products. And thus we are made to chase for all those many things that are supposed to make us happy and fulfilled. But as many know, the accumulation of all these things does not equate to happiness, the hunger and the thirst linger. We know that if this spiritual restlessness does not find its place of rest, if we do not find the quiet stream that calms the existential hunger that is unsatisfied with all the different solutions in the market, if we are not rooted in the universal reality of the need for God, we may fall into an inhumane torture of the human spirit, a person that cannot even see the hope of wholeness in their life. How strange might the words of Jesus in this Gospel sound to our ears in the American context, where Jesus points towards the one eternal assurance of spiritual satisfaction, even more so, asserting that there is only the One thing that satisfies, versus all the other things hovering in our minds. Jesus points to the one thing that satisfies, the hidden treasure now revealed in Himself, for if we are satisfied in the Spirit by the same

One who created it, if we receive the bread of life that is Jesus, then perhaps we can actually quench our true hunger and thirst, and make the move into total loving surrender for our neighbors. We can dispel the smokescreen that seeks to disorient us from our true purpose and satisfaction as human beings lovingly created.

Jesus says to the curious, restless and yearning crowd, bellies filled with a miracle: “Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal… I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Downplaying His own miracle of feeding the 5,000 with physical bread, Jesus proclaims that there is only one thing worth focusing on: the incoming Reign of God, ushered in by His life. Yet, because we are finite sinners, before we can appreciate this “food that endures for eternal life”, we are pestered with the “food that perishes”. That is not something that Jesus denies us, but He wants us to look deeper than that need, He wants us to recognize our true need, the spiritual and existential need and what can fulfill it. We may have all the bread in the world, but without the bread of life, the bread that feeds our wholeness, even the bread that fills our bellies might begin to lose its appeal. We are often constrained by what is perishable. How much is our attention unfocused towards what is most important. we like the crowd can be distracted by the signs that fill our bellies but not the one that can cultivate in us a life abundant that will carry us towards the life of the reign of God.

We can think about this in terms of our common life as church. Why do we gather together, if not to receive the bread of life that presents Himself throughout the whole liturgy, energizing us not to fill our bellies only, but to empower us forever to go out and live out the gospel in the world? We do not come here expecting superficiality, we do not come here as consumers getting a product for temporary quenching, we come here for our lives to receive the fullness of their meaning, to go beyond appearance. It often happens in the modern western church, where our attention is not focused on

what matters. We tend to focus precisely on the appearance of things, the flairs emitted from great signs and wonders, the competitive edge in the religious market, but what happens when we have these signs but none of the authentic Jesus-passion that fires up the community? What makes this space life-giving, if not due to the Jesus we preach and try to follow? Beloved, the beating heart of this gathering is the glory of God through Jesus Himself, incarnated in our lives. His Way, present in us, His love, exuding from our lives, His mercy, touching upon those that need it. The rest is a wonderful extra, but if this faith in the God that liberates us from death remain at the center, then we are working towards the unperishable. Focused on Jesus, we can begin to exercise in ourselves the values that grow in us through our faith as described by Paul: “humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace… speaking the truth in love, we growing up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” Indeed, by eating this bread of life, “we grow in every way into Christ”. So here we are gathered, to be given the necessary elements to inhabit the life of Christ in all the small ways that we can. By holding on to the only essential thing, God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, and praising Him with a life reflective of His love, can the restlessness find the quiet stream. The great theologian St. Augustine, penned one of the most beautiful lines in western literature when he wrote: “You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Indeed, may our restlessness lead us to the sole giver of the whole love that we seek, that it may lead us to the altar where the bread of life is given, and then we may be surprised, that our restless, yearning and hungry heart has found its true home, where the table is always ready.

Let us pray:

Thank you God, for in Jesus Christ you give us the bread and drink that nourishes us for eternal life. You provide us with the way that satisfies our innermost yearning, you help us to have clarity of mind on the one thing that truly matters, Your Love for Us that runneth over, a love that cannot keep to itself and feeds the world with what it needs. Give us this bread always. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.