12th Sunday After Pentecost

Sermon: 12th Sunday After Pentecost, 08/11/2024

Text: John 6: 35, 41-51, Ephesians 4:25-5:2, 1 Kings 19: 4-8

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

How should a Christian act? This is probably one of the main ethical questions we face on a daily basis. As a follower of Christ, how should I behave? How should I vote? How should I react to insult or controversy? How should I respond to x y or z? We are filled with these ethical quandaries, for we know that out there in the world, we reflect Jesus to others, at least one hopes to do so. In this election year, many of us are probably asking ourselves these questions, since public discourse has become so divisive. What should we say in a time like this? The Pauline writer in Ephesians has an amazing blueprint as to how Christians ought to act in any given situation: always speak the truth; you can be angry, but don’t let the anger fester; do good and honest work, and share what you earn with those that need it; may the words that come out of your mouth be life-giving and constructive, that those who hear them may benefit from them; don’t let bitterness ruin your mood, but let your mood be uplifted by hope; and practice kindness and gentleness, forgiving each other since Christ forgives us. And here comes the defining phrase for this kind of life that is described: “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” That’s quite the high bar. We are not asked to imitate our earthly parents, which are our closest models, or celebrities or anyone else; as Christians, imitate God as revealed in Jesus, loving others in the spirit of the highest

love to ever enter into existence, the love of God in Christ, the One who gives Himself up for you. Our lives should pleasingly smell of God. That when others take a sniff of you, they might say, where did you get that? I wish I was just as pleasantly fragrant.

But of course, one thing is to have this ethical blueprint, it is quite another how we actually feel and act from a human point of view. If I was my own judge, and I knew I had this ideal set up for myself, I don’t think I could pass that fragrance test. How often we can fall short of the ideal, and when we do it, the struggle is very real. We struggle, or stumble, towards a love that glorifies God as Ephesians describes. So how can we be Christians? How can we call ourselves followers of Christ, when we often fall short of our own ideals? But in this limit lies the difference, it is in this great weakness of ours, our insufficiency, our grappling with being bad imitators of God, that we find the power of God. For we are Christians, not simply because of what we are able to do. We are Christians because we have placed our faith, our trust, in the power of God to deliver His promises of goodness and love, we have placed our trust in that He will soften and mold our hearts so that we can actually be fruitful in our struggle to live out these commandments of God, and so our lives gravitate around this reality. We are Christians because yes, we love, but we point to the One of which love is their very essence. Our lives point to the One that despite our weakness, a whole richness of goodness can come out of us because His grace abounds more.

How can we internalize this blueprint of Christian life? How does it become a part of us, like a second nature? The answer continues to be, as we have been listening these

past few Sundays: to eat the bread of life that is Jesus. As many of you have heard the saying, you are what you eat. The body processes foods and its nutrients nourish the functions of our whole bodies. In the same way, we eat the bread from Heaven, Jesus Christ, His body and blood given for our sake, so that our bodies may be nourished with every good thing that filled Jesus’ life. The truth telling, the kindness and gentleness, the hunger for justice, the love and mercy that overabounds, the radical spirit of Jesus becomes part of us, it feeds and nourishes our bodies with His grace. We eat and drink Jesus, so that we might physically and spiritually know from whom our help comes from, from whom our lives derive their ultimate meaning. And so as we continue to eat of that bread and drink from that cup, we expect to become what we eat and drink, the life of Christ in us.

And so it is only through that heavenly nourishment, that we receive the strength and the vitality that we need so that we might be signposts to God in this world. We read today that wonderful text from 1 Kings about the Prophet Elijah, one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament. And here we find a weakened Elijah, at the lowest point of his story, finding himself persecuted. This man by which God acted powerfully, was mired in depression over his current condition. “ He asked that he might die, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Elijah had no more strength left in him, he considered himself a failure. But then an angel from the Lord visited him and brought bread and water, and commanded him to “Get up and eat”. And then a second time the angel visited him, and likewise, like a good

nurse, told him to “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.” And then on the strength of that food, he got up and went his way. It is no coincidence that we parallel this text with today’s Gospel, in it we have a perfect allusion to what Jesus means by bread from Heaven. He is like and more than this heavenly bread that Elijah received, this is the bread that leads to eternal life, it is the bread that keeps in us the strength to persist in the atmosphere of the reign of God, the one without which we could not finish the journey of godly life. During Communion you always hear the invitation: Take and eat, for the Lord is Good. Take and Eat for this Jesus is the sustenance you need to face the challenges of life. Take and eat for you will need His overabounding grace to withstand the pressure from the world to be reduced to hard-heartedness and lovelessness. Take and eat all of you, for there is enough Jesus to feed everyone here and beyond. This is the power of God at play here. I remember one experience of Communion, when I received the bread and the wine, I realized that this moment is the most beautiful, I realized, so this is what God wants, this givenness of His life that leads to fellowship and love, this radical inclusion, to be brought to the table and eat. This is God’s desire, God’s blueprint for the Kingdom we preach, something that looks like this heavenly meal that Elijah received, and that Jesus instituted.

If we want to embody in ourselves the life that the writer from Ephesians described, let us come to the table of God, let us feast with Him with the food he has offered, His own life for us; this life of Christ that grows in us. And as we continue to feast together,

then we might start to acquire the fragrance that is proper to those that belong to God in Christ, a fragrance that hints of the truth, of kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, hope and love everlasting. What a difference does the life of those that imitate God in Christ make in this world! It is a love that takes everybody by surprise, it is the treasure of this church. So as we head to the difficult upcoming months, gather your strength from this table, and be the loving and compassionate difference that Christ provokes in this world.

Let us pray:

Lord God, you feed us with the bread from Heaven, Jesus Christ. You invite us continually to take and eat, for You are Eternal Goodness. Grow in us the life of Christ, so that we may be empowered to live out a life pleasing to you, a life fragrant with your Love. In the Name of Jesus we pray, Amen.