Sermon for the Tenth Sunday
after Pentecost, RCL Year B, Proper 13
August 5, 2012
at Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Trussville, Alabama
Beloved sisters and brothers, let us
look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
So, Jesus and
the disciples have crossed the lake, and then the crowds hop in their boats to
come looking for him when they realize that he’s gone. Of course, crossing the
lake is a passage of faith, a passage of faith that we all have to make. It
takes place between that glorious picnic where Jesus is present, and the
revelation in Capernaum of Jesus as vulnerable friend who will feed them with
his presence.
Jesus is
calling his disciples, calling the 5,000, calling us to move from a faith based
on a very visible miracle that fulfills merely physical needs; to a faith that
is total trust in him and in his words, words that can appear foolish, absurd,
impossible, even scandalous.
This crossing
of the lake can be a difficult passage for us all. It can represent the passage
from childhood, where we feel secure with our parents; to adulthood, where we
become responsible for our own lives. Jesus leads these men and women from the
excitement and enthusiasm of budding discipleship to a mutuality of love and
friendship that is more hidden and humble.
We might remember
from last week how the disciples were confused and upset in the boat as they
made their crossing, which perhaps also tells us something about ourselves. How
easily they had seemed to have forgotten the blessedness of the picnic with
Jesus! How easily we forget!
We can live
blessed moments of the presence of God, in prayer or through an encounter with
someone, where we sense God’s presence. Then something happens and we slip into
sadness or even despair. We forget the moment of blessedness. Doubt, anger, and
anguish rises up within us. We have short memories!
I have
heard this from couples: they can live moments of incredible blessedness, and
then a conflict arises and all the blessedness seems to evaporate and become a
sort of illusion. I don’t know if that’s happened to you, but I know it’s
happened to me. What we don’t seem to realize when that feeling of blessedness
goes poof in the midst of a conflict, is that the blessedness was to give us
strength, in order to deepen our faith and trust in each other, to help us go
through the more difficult passages of trust that inevitably come.
So crossing
the lake was a physical reality, but it also symbolizes our growth in faith,
our passages of faith. We all have to go through those rough parts of our
journey; it is all part of the journey of faith. It is not an easy journey
since we have to die to ourselves; die to the desire to control situations, to
control the Spirit of God, to control Jesus; we have to die to ourselves in
order that we can abandon ourselves to be led by the Spirit of Jesus.
So, now, along
with those who were present for the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 at that
glorious picnic, we have crossed the lake to Capernaum to be with Jesus again and
to learn from him.
They asked
him,
“Rabbi, when did you arrive here?”
Jesus
answered,
“Very truly, I tell you, you are
looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the
loaves. 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.”
Remember,
the crowds of people who followed Jesus to Capernaum wanted to make him king,
which was the reason he took off in the first place. These were the ones who
saw the feeding miracle as an end unto itself; rather than as the sign that it
was meant to be, something that pointed them to faith in the living God, in the
Son whom God had sent.
This is why
they ask Jesus for another sign. They have had a sign and still do not believe.
Moses, Jesus reminds them, did not give the bread that came from heaven. It was
God who gave the bread that satisfied their hunger, for one day only. The same
God now gives them bread from heaven, that will satisfy forever. In response to
this teaching, they ask him for this bread.
So, what is
this food that they have to work for and which will last forever? What must
they do?
Jesus
answers,
“This is the work of God, that you
believe in him whom he has sent.”
And he
adds,
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes
to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Now, this
was something that the people who followed him across the sea to Capernaum could
understand. For the Jewish people, the word of God, the Torah, was an
incredible from of nourishment. It was bread for their hearts and minds.
In the book
Ezekiel the Lord had said,
“Son of Man, eat what is offered to
you; eat this scroll and go, speak to the house of Israel”… Then I ate it and
in my mouth it was sweet as honey.
The word of
God here is the revelation of the love of God. It is also the revelation of what
humankind is about, what our lives are about, what the whole history of the
universe and of salvation is about. And it is as sweet as honey. Our
intelligence needs and yearns for wisdom. We not only need practical wisdom
that shows us how to live, but also an intelligence that seeks an understanding
of the meaning of the universe. We need to be nourished by the word of God.
Those who
were listening to Jesus could understand that the bread Jesus was talking about
was the nourishing bread of the word of God.
So, now, here
we find ourselves in the midst of another of those interesting times in our
lectionary readings, these readings from the Bible that are appointed for each
week, and in this section of John’s Gospel. For the next three Sundays the
lectionary follows a whole progression of ideas about Jesus as the bread of
life.
This work
of trying to wrestle with, to clarify, what this bread of life means, might begin
with the frank and honest admission that there is a good chance that whatever
we think about it, we just may not get it. It’s an odd thing that as modern
people we can sometimes feel that we have an inalienable right to comprehend
everything. However, unfortunately, comprehension is not a democratic right.
What if we
have a truth here that we are unable to ‘get’? It may be a truth that must be
given. We ‘get it’ as a gift, rather than as a result of our intellectual
achievement. Encounter and comprehension of the Word made flesh takes time,
humility about what we can and cannot know, and a worshipful willingness to be
taught by a Savior who does not always come naturally.
But what we
do know how to do is to break the bread, and drink from the cup, and bless our
work and life together… and take that out into the world!
Thanks be
to God!
Amen.
Alleluia.
