13 Pentecost, Year B

“SPIRITUAL HOLINESS AND WHOLENESS”
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, August 30, 2009
Proper 17 -- Deuteronomy 4: 1 – 9; Psalm 15; Ephesians 6: 10 – 20; Mark 7: 1 – 8, 14 – 15, 21 – 23

(Explanatory note: This sermon was given, using a piece of typing paper as an illustration. On the front side of the paper was written “God’s word, God’s will, God’s love,” and on the back side were written a number of words, including, “holiness”, “righteousness”, “Law (Torah)”, “cleanliness”, “tradition”, etc. These words were divided by lines which were drawn on the paper, and which separated the words. The lines criss-crossed the paper. Everyone in the congregation had a copy of this piece of paper. I began by taking a pair of scissors, and began cutting along the criss-crossed lines to cut out each word, one-by-one, that appeared on the back side of the paper.)

You have before you today a copy of a piece of paper, written on both sides. On the one side of the paper, you’ll find the words, “God’s will, God’s word, God’s love”, and on the other side, a series of words, written among some lines that criss-cross the paper, separating the words.

I have a pair of scissors, and am going to begin cutting along the lines. I’ll cut out each word.

As I go, I want to be very, very careful to cut right along the lines. And, I’ve learned that, if I practice enough, someday I might just be able to cut along the lines with these scissors with such a fine, clean cut, that it will look just like a paper cutter did the work. I know that it will take many, many years of diligent practice to achieve that goal, particularly given my poor small motor skills (which have borne the brunt of many jokes in my family down through the years!).

Excellence in carrying out this task is extremely important. I want to be able to cut each word out so that it is perfect.

Perfection was one of the main goals of the Pharisees and the Scribes, and we can see that in the description that Mark provides us as an aside in our reading today. They were seeking perfection in every area of life.

(I begin to cut one word out.)

So, let’s begin.

I think I’ll begin with the word “Cleanliness”, because that word is at the essence of the interchange that took place between Jesus and His principle adversaries, the Pharisees and the Scribes.

Obviously, the Pharisees and the Scribes were seeking perfection in the cleanliness that was vital to life.

Notice that I’ve deviated a little from the line here and there. Obviously, I haven’t done very well, because my line wavers a little bit. I’m going to need a whole lot more practice cutting the paper to get the lines perfectly straight.

Now that I’m done, if I think I’ve done a good enough job, I might just take a straight pin and pin this piece of paper on my chasuble. I can wear it like a badge of honor, or like some display for others to see, so that they will know that I value “cleanliness” very, very highly.

(In so doing, I would be following in the footsteps of the Pharisees and the Scribes, for we read in today’s gospel that they scrupulously observed various rites which involved cleaning their hands, their food utensils, and so forth. In order to maintain our health, we need to eat with clean hands, and we need to use clean cooking pots, dishes and silverware. So, cleanliness is extremely important. In fact – at this very moment – I can’t think of a better or more important value to proclaim to the world!)

Now, let’s turn to another important value….

Looking at my paper, my eye catches the word “holiness”. That’s an important value, too. So let me cut out that word, too. Maybe I could attach that to my vestments to proclaim to the world that God wants His people to be a holy people. That value was very, very important to the Pharisees and the Scribes, as well.

Now, let’s see if we can find another one to cut out….How about “Law”, or as it’s called in Hebrew, Torah. For these two groups (and for the priestly caste, the Sadducees, as well), this was the source of all that God wanted His people to know about how to live holy, clean lives.

So, we’ll cut that one out, as well. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to put that on as well. It would be sort of like the bumper stickers that you see that say, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”.

Now, if you’ve been following me, turn your papers over, and notice what’s happened to the other side of the paper…I’ve made mincemeat out of the side that says,
God’s will, God’s word, God’s love”, haven’t I?

Perhaps by now, you see the point of this illustration:

The Pharisees and the Scribes were making mincemeat out of the overall picture of God’s will, God’s word, and particularly God’s love. They did so by observing scrupulously the various minute, little details of the Law. But they also added traditions of their own, and it is this point that Jesus makes very forcefully when He says to them, “You abandon the commandment of God, and hold to human tradition.”

What had happened? How could these upright, devout people go so far off the mark?

After all, weren’t their motives the most pure imaginable? Weren’t their extreme measures to comply with all of these wonderful values commendable? (Don’t you wish you had as much discipline as the Pharisees and the Scribes had? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to apply that sort of discipline to some of the more problematic parts of our lives, like, say, our dietary habits?)

Yes, the answer is probably, “Yes, their motives were quite commendable. Yes, their diligence is admirable.”

Well, then, how did they go wrong?

For an answer to that question, let’s return to our piece of paper for an illustration of the answer.

For even though it’s now a cut-up piece of paper, we can grasp the sense of what they were doing.

You see, the Pharisees and the Scribes were looking only at the side of the paper that had all the specific values on it, the values of holiness, cleanliness, righteousness and purity. And, more importantly, they thought that, by their own actions, they could carry out all of those values by themselves.

What they forgot is that, in order to be successful at living the life of God, they were going to need God’s help, and particularly God’s love. They needed to turn the piece of paper over and to focus on God’s will, God’s word and God’s love as the beginning point of their life with God.

They forgot that – given their humanness – there was no way they could cut along the lines of life perfectly. They themselves possessed many, many imperfections that made an intimate relationship with God impossible. They had forgotten that the starting point in any relationship with God is the admission that we fall short of His standards of perfection, and therefore, we are in deep, deep need of His forgiveness and His love.

Only then can we begin to achieve the standards of holiness, cleanliness, purity and righteousness that God demands of His people.

Down through time, God’s people have failed to hold in tension the reality of God’s will, God’s word and God’s love with the values of the spiritual life, values involving holiness, righteousness, purity and Holy Scripture (for Christians, Scripture consists of the Old Testament – the Law of Moses, the prophets, and so forth, and also the New Testament).

We can see the imbalance that results from a failure to hold these two aspects of the Christian life together….

If God’s people think that they possess God’s will, God’s word and God’s love, but forget that God wants His people to be a holy, pure people, then we can slip into licentiousness and wickedness. (Notice that Jesus condemns such behavior in today’s text.) That was the result for an early Christian heresy called Gnosticism. The Gnostics maintained that they alone possessed a secret knowledge of God that allowed them to discount the physical reality of living out the Christian life. In its extreme forms, Gnosticism allowed all sorts of licentious living, including gluttony and sexual orgies. For the Gnostics, since they believed that the physical life was only an illusion, and since they (alone) possessed such a superior, special knowledge of God, then whatever people did in their everyday, physical lives was of no importance.

Jesus – in today’s text – affirms the importance of the interior life of God. See that He says, “All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

But in addressing the interior life of God, our walk with God, Jesus is also condemning the other extreme, the extreme that makes outward, visible, tangible behavior the main – or only - standard by which a holy life can be assessed.

Time and again, we have seen God’s people resort to the sort of legalism that characterized the Pharisees and the Scribes. (In actuality, the portrait that the gospels paint of these two groups isn’t at all flattering!). Some churches have focused so strongly on rigid moral codes, on codified rules of living, that their members have become modern-day Pharisees, people who live cold, heartless lives of religious superiority. In extreme cases, such people wear their righteousness like a badge of honor. In actuality, such displays are really badges of shame and often, hate.

The older I get, the more I believe that the hardest thing to do in walking the walk of God, along with God, is to remember that I am a “sinner saved by grace”. For it is God’s grace and God’s love that has redeemed me from a life of irregular behavior that falls far short of God’s standards of holiness. Only through the presence of the Holy Spirit can I even begin to live out the Christian life of holiness, of righteousness, of purity, that God demands. For, you see, that side of the Christian life is extremely important, too.

As people with whom we associate in our daily lives see God’s love, poured into our hearts and then expressed in our attitudes, actions and words, as they see these attitudes, actions and words mingle with a life which strives for holiness, purity and righteousness, then the power of God to transform and to empower will be manifest in all its ability to change lives.

May God sweep away our self righteousness, our smugness, and our pride, so that we may recall God’s saving acts and God’s love toward us, that people everywhere may see that it is God’s power, working in us, that can do more than we can ask or imagine.

AMEN.

12 Pentecost, Year B

“BELIEVING – KNOWING – KNOWING – BELIEVING”
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, August 23, 2009
Proper 16 -- Joshua 24: 1 – 2a, 14 – 25; Psalm 34: 15 – 22; Ephesians 5: 21 – 33; John 6: 60 – 69

We begin today with a musical joke: “How many sopranos (higher voiced women singers) does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: One to get on a ladder to change the light bulb, and six others to stand there, watching, and whining all the while, ‘But it’s too high!’”

Maybe that’s how the disciples who heard Jesus in our gospel text today responded…maybe they whined, “But it’s too hard!”

Meaning, of course, that the demand that Jesus had made about the necessity of eating His flesh and drinking His blood was too hard for them to accept or to understand.

Or, perhaps their response, “This is a hard saying,” was said to the accompaniment of them stroking their beards, as if to say, “We have to think about what you’ve said – for a long, long time.”

But maybe their response was more of the character of “This is nuts!”

Unfortunately, we can’t know exactly the tone of voice that those who responded by saying “This is a hard saying, who can listen to it,” used.

But we do know that John tells us that, “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.”

Before we analyze some of the implications of Jesus’ teaching with respect to the bread of life, heard throughout the sixth chapter of John’s gospel account, we ought to pause long enough to recall where we’ve been in the past three Sundays, as we’ve spent time in this marvelous chapter:

Three weeks ago, we noted that Jesus was trying to get the crowd of 5,000 people that had been fed by Him in the multiplication of the five loaves to see that doing the will of God was not a matter of doing something, but it was a matter of believing on the one who was sent by God. We summarized this concept by saying that doing the will of God is a matter of the heart, not of the hands.

Then, two weeks ago, we we remarked that, in Jesus Christ, God was calling a new people to Himself, to be His unique possession. God forms a people, and then saves and sustains them, (in this case, by the provision of the bread of life, Jesus) we noticed.

Last week, we considered the matter of truth. With respect to the Eucharist, truth goes far beyond the merely physical, observable aspect of the heavenly bread with which we are fed in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Far more is involved than the mere eating of bread. For in the Sacrament, we receive the Lord Himself into us, that we may abide in Him, and He in us.

And now, today, we encounter the aftermath of Jesus’ saying, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (Verse 56). It is to this statement that some of the larger crowd of disciples (notice that it is not the Twelve, but a larger group) say, “This is a hard saying, who can listen to it?”

In fact, their reaction is not only one of “murmuring” (verse 61), but of “grumbling”, for that is an accurate translation of the Greek. (One gets the impression that the people gathered around Jesus begin to grumble back and forth among themselves until one or more of them work up the nerve to sum up the sense of what the grumbling is all about in the statement, “This is a hard saying.” At least that’s how I picture the development of the reaction to Jesus’ statement.)

Remember that, last week, remarked that we shouldn’t be too hard on the people who had heard Jesus. After all, they were – as we said last week – on the far side of Good Friday, of Easter Sunday, and of Ascension Day. All of these great events had not yet happened. Moreover, the Sacrament of Holy Communion hadn’t happened, either. God’s plan of salvation hadn’t unfolded in its fullness.

But that cannot be said about us. We have seen:

• The reality of death in the events of Good Friday.
  
  
• We have witnessed the fact of life after death by the rising of Jesus Christ from the dead.
  
  
• We know that there is a place prepared for us after death by Jesus’ ascension into heaven 40 days after Easter.

God’s plan makes a whole lot more sense to us than it did to Jesus’ original audience.

But, does God’s plan make total, complete sense, in the way we human beings normally think of things?

The answer has to be “No”.

For, you see, when we are speaking of the things of God, there will always be a part of what God is doing that we cannot understand, for God is God, and we are not.

So, we can understand in part, we know in part. St. Paul summarizes this well in I Corinthians 13: 12, where we read, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.”

You see, involved here is the process of believing – knowing – knowing – believing.

Perhaps I’d better explain what I mean by this phrase: Said another way, it is this: “I believe in order to know, and I know in order to believe.”

We see Peter’s response, which incorporates both words, “believing” and “knowing”. Let’s look at his response to Jesus, “…we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (Verse 69)

The first step toward knowing is believing….we must take this first step, which removes us from the comfort of our current level of understanding, our world of facts as we understand them at this very moment.

We make this step in faith, but it is not a leap of faith, but rather it is a forward step into the demonstrated acts of God. We do not step out into a void, but into the reality of God’s acting on our behalf and for our redemption.

You see, this level of understanding of God’s saving acts in the person and work of Jesus Christ is what separates us from Jesus’ audience, as we said a minute ago. They had not yet witnessed the cross, the empty tomb, and the ascending into heaven. We have.

We can make better sense of God’s work on this side of the cross, the tomb and the ascending into heaven, for we have witnessed God’s power to save. We have seen it in the real lives of real people, people with whom we have associated and with whom we have walked along with the Lord.

Consider the proof of God’s acting among us: Last Wednesday, we heard several people at our Informal Discussion Group relate how God had healed them of various conditions, through the power of prayer and the laying on of hands. Several shared their deliverance. Here, among us at Trinity, is proof of God’s power to save.

So what lessons might we draw from the reaction of the disciples, those who ultimately decided not to follow Jesus anymore. What benefit can we gain from their objections to Jesus’ teaching?

Offered for your consideration and for your benefit are the following:

God’s ways always involve some sense of mystery: This truth is related to our earlier statement that God is God, and we are not, for the simply fact that we are humans. God’s ways are higher, wiser, and deeper than our ways are. We can understand God in part on this side of heaven, but we cannot understand Him fully on this side of death.

God’s plans and saving acts require patience to understand: Here, we come to the major failing of those disciples who said, “This is a hard saying.” In essence, they are saying, “We don’t understand, we don’t ‘get it’, so please explain what you are saying right now.” The reaction of the crowd strikes me as a demand for an immediate, full explanation. But oftentimes, what God is doing in their lives and in ours can’t be understood immediately. Often, it takes time. Quite often, we can understand more fully in retrospect, as we meditate on what God has done, and as we see His plan working itself out in our lives, and in the lives of others.

For the goal of God’s working is summed up in Peter’s response. Hear it again, as he says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

So may it be for us!

AMEN.

Sermon for class at Nashotah House Seminary

“AMAZING GRACE, HOW SWEET THE SOUND”
A sermon written for the Nashotah House class “Exodus & the Liturgy” by the Rev. Gene R. Tucker

“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

This first stanza of what might well be one of the Church’s best-loved hymns, serves to trace the history of God’s creative and redemptive work. For God’s people in every age and in every culture can truthfully say – along with this hymn – that God has shown His power to save the people that He has created.

But, you may ask, “Save us from what, exactly?”

And the answer might be, “From several things, including our bondage to sin, our darkness, our alienation from God and from God’s holiness….these are the things from which we are saved by God’s awesome power.”

God’s people, down through the ages, share these common experiences, for we are all in bondage, and we are unable to free ourselves. Consider the plight of the Hebrew people, in bondage in Egypt. They were aliens – separated from the land of promise in a pagan, polytheistic culture. They lived under the yoke of slavery among a people who lived in darkness, and among a people who practiced the dark arts.

But into this hopeless and helpless situation, God comes. The Lord comes to reclaim His people, the people He had chosen for Himself, the people promised to Abraham so many years before, the people He had created through His relationship with Abraham.

And so, Moses becomes God’s intercessor, God’s agent of change. And God calls Moses from the midst of the bush that is burning but is not consumed, telling Moses that the He is the “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3: 14). For God provides Moses with this additional self-identification, saying, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3: 6).

A central part of Moses’ encounter with God is the announcement of God’s plan that will liberate the Chosen People from their bondage in Egypt.

And so the people of God will go forth out of Egypt. They will experience the power of God to liberate and to save, in the Passover, and in the crossing of the Red Sea. They will be sustained in the desert by God’s provision of water, of manna, and of quail. They will be formed by the covenant which will be given at Mount Sinai.

The story of God’s people, from their departure from Egypt to their arrival in the Promised Land, shines like a beam of light in the pages of Holy Scripture. These experiences enlighten the consciousness of God’s people down through time, and into our own time.

For the experiences of God’s people ages ago are also our experiences. We can say so because God’s nature is unchanging, and the human condition – apart from God’s redemptive acts – is also unchanging. We – like our ancestors in faith from ages ago – stand in need of God’s redeeming.

The task before us in this sermon today involves a consideration of God’s saving and sustaining actions back then in Moses’ day, in order that we might see God’s saving and sustaining actions in our own day.

As we undertake this task, we will divide our analysis of God’s work and our response into three sections. For the purposes of this sermon, I will use verse three of the hymn “Amazing Grace” (one of my most favorite texts, and perhaps as close as I can come to having a motto for my life) to shape the analysis of the steps that God took in Moses’ day, and the steps that He takes with us today. These three steps are:

• “Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come,”
  
  
• “’Tis grace that brought me safe thus far,”
  
  
• “And grace will lead me home.”

So, let’s begin.

“Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!”
God’s saving acts

God’s saving acts in Egypt began with the call of Moses. Uniquely positioned to be God’s emissary (for he had grown up in Pharoah’s house), Moses demonstrates the power of God over the powers of darkness and evil. Acting as God’s spokesman, it is Moses who goes to Pharoah, time after time, demanding that Pharoah the release of God’s people. Each time, the succeeding plagues are inaugurated by Moses’ actions.

The tenth plague and last plague is the plague of death, the killing of the first-born of Egypt, of humans and of animals (Exodus 11: 1 – 6).

But in the midst of death, God grants life….To the people of God, a way of escape from this last, deadly plague is provided, and the way of escape involves an act of faithful obedience: “Select lambs for yourselves according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood which is in the basin; and none of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to slay the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to slay you.” (Exodus 12: 21b – 23)

Let’s put ourselves into this situation, to see the test of faith that is involved: Remember that – for God’s people – this is a new experience, a new command. Never had they been told to do this before. I will admit to you that, if I were standing in Moses’ presence, and if I’d heard these instructions, I might have responded by saying, “Well, how’s that going to save us? We’ve never done anything like that before!”

But those who did obey were saved, we are told.

And with obedience comes faith. It works this way:

• God tells us to do something,
  
  
• We do it, acting in obedience and with faith, and
  
  
• God is faithful to His promise

As we respond in faith to God’s word, and God responds, a covenantal relationship is built: God is faithful to His promises, and we respond in faith and obedience.

In the process of this covenantal relationship, we come to know more and more about the Lord. We come to trust His word and His power. We are claimed as God’s people, a unique possession of the Lord.

Now, back to our story….

The tenth and last plague worked. Pharoah agrees to let God’s people go. And off they go, heading eastward out of Goshen, laden with booty they’d gathered from the Egyptians.

But then, the stage is set for the next chapter in God’s plan of salvation: the experience at the Red Sea:

Sandwiched between the waters of the sea and Pharoah’s pursuing army, the people of Israel begin to grumble and complain, crying out, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14: 11)

But, you see, though the people of Israel didn’t know it, God had a plan, which He had disclosed to Moses. It was a plan to save God’s people. It was a plan which would continue to prove that God had chosen this people to be His people. In so doing, this plan would have a lot in common with the Passover experience, by which God had begun to claim this special people to be His people, setting a hedge of identity and protection around them.

You know this story quite well. It is the stuff of the great movie, “The Ten Commandments”. The waters divide as Moses lifts the staff to separate the waters. The people of God walk through the Red Sea on dry land. The Egyptians pursue, following them into the midst, but the waters close in upon them once God’s people have passed through. Pharoah and his army would never be seen again, and God’s people rejoiced in song, “I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea….” (Exodus 15: 1b)

But we should pause for a moment to consider the test of faith that stepping onto the dry land with the walls of water piled up on either side represented. Remember that this, too, (like the Passover) had never happened before. Putting myself into the situation, I might well have wondered if the waters would come closing in on me! The point seems to be that there was a test involved, just as there had been at the Passover, a test of Israel’s faith, made in response to God’s demonstrated power.

This passage through the waters of the Red Sea would come to have enormous significance, for the waters form a barrier which acts in two ways: it prevents the pursuer from gaining power over God’s people, and it prevents God’s people from returning to their former lives. (We will explore this truth in greater detail in the last part of our sermon today.)

“’Tis grace that brought me safe thus far”
God sustains His people in the wilderness

Finding themselves on the east side of the Red Sea, God’s people’s situation might not have been much different from their predicament on the west side, before they’d crossed the Red Sea. For on the west side, they faced the sea as a barrier to the east, while Pharoah’s army to the west posed a threat. But now the barrier and the threat remains: the sea continues to form a barrier, making return to Egypt impossible, while the desert they are now in is full of threats.

Two of the threats they now face offer God the occasion of further proof of God’s ability to not only save His people, but to sustain them in their journey.

For our purposes here, we will consider three of these occasions: the provision of manna and quail, the provision of water from the rock, and the giving of the Law, the Torah.

Provision of manna and quail: In this wilderness, the people again complain, saying, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (Exodus 16: 3)

These are remarkably similar words to the sentiments we considered just a moment ago, the words uttered on the west side of the Red Sea, aren’t they? The subtext of these words seems to be, “We had it so good back there in Egypt.”

(God’s people have such short – and selective – memories, sometimes, don’t they!)

But the God who calls His people into existence, the God who saves His people, is also the God who does not abandon them. God sustains His people, providing manna from heaven in the mornings, and quail for the people to eat in the evenings.

And here, too, just as we have seen in the account of the Passover, is a test: the people are to gather only enough manna for each person to eat for that day, only! (And a double portion on the sixth day, which was to last through the Sabbath day.) Any excess gathered would spoil. (The point seems to be, “Don’t be greedy, but trust in the Lord to provide!”)

Provision of water from the rock: Another threat is experienced in the lack of water. Life-threatening, this situation prompts yet another session of grumbling and complaining. The people say to Moses, “Give us water to drink….”Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” (Exodus 17: 2, 4) But now, it is the children of Israel who are finding fault, and who are doing the testing, for we read that Moses called the place Massah and Meribah, because they “put the Lord to the test.” (Exodus 17: 7)

The giving of the Law, the Torah: God’s people are being formed into His own unique possession through a series of redemptive and sustaining acts which identify these offspring of Abraham as God’s people. Each experience serves to further demonstrate God’s favor, God’s protection, God’s sustenance of this special people, who are to enter into a covenant with God.

The covenant is given at Mount Sinai, as Moses comes down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of stone upon which have been written the Ten Commandments.

In preparation for the giving of this covenant, the people are to consecrate themselves (Exodus 19: 10).

And so, in the Ten Commandments, we see God’s intention for God’s people, the means by which God’s people will relate to God (commandments one through four), while the way that they will relate to one another is charted in commandments five through ten.

In the ancient world, this covenant stood in marked contrast to the peoples of the earth which would surround the Israelites once they had reached the Promised Land.

For one thing, the concept of this one God, the invisible God, stood in sharp distinction to the polytheism of the Egyptians, and to the pagan deities of the Philistines, the Amorites, and others. For another, the holiness of life that the last six commandments demanded with respect to parents, to sexual behavior, to truthfulness, to respect for property was a calling to radical holiness that none of these surrounding cultures practiced.

God’s people would be formed by this covenant, marked as God’s people. Its precepts would form a barrier of protection with respect to their relationship to God and to each other, and it would mark them as God’s unique possession. Its purpose was to form their identity and to sustain their lives, that an intimate and ongoing relationship might be established between God’s people, in order that they might relate to God and to each other in holiness and truth.

“And grace will lead me home”
On their way to the Promised Land

God’ people wandered in the wilderness for forty years, we are told in Exodus. Along the way, their clothes did not wear out, nor did their feet swell, we are told. (Deuteronomy 8: 4)

But Deuteronomy goes on to reflect on the wilderness experience, calling it a time of testing. Hear these words from chapter eight, “All the commandments which I command you this day you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether your would keep His commandments, or not. And He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8: 1 – 4)

Here, then, is a summary of the time spent in the wilderness. Clearly, God’s intent is to bring His people into the Promised Land. Having saved them, He then sustains them. But He also tests them, giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their faithfulness. Time and again, they would complain and grumble…notice how similar much of that grumbling we’ve chronicled here today sounds! A whole lot of it begins with words we might correctly summarize by paraphrasing, “Why have you brought us out here? We had it so good back in Egypt!”

How else might we characterize this time in the Sinai? Clearly, it was a time in which a longing for a return to Egypt coexisted, side-by-side, with repeated demonstrations of God’s saving and sustaining power. It was a time when the old ways mingled with the new: that is surely one of the lessons in the incident of the making of the golden calf, an event in which the pagan ways of the Egyptians took place just as God was telling Moses that the people were “not to make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall [they] make gods of gold”. (Exodus 20: 23). The giving of the Law coincided with idolatry.

Conclusion: Lessons for God’s people

Earlier on, we reflected a little on God’s nature, His unchanging nature, and we remarked that the human condition – apart from God’s saving and sustaining action – is also unchanging.

It is on this basis that Holy Scripture has its authority.

It is also on this basis that the pages of Holy Scripture come to life. (Notice how they come to life if we allow ourselves to take a place, as human beings, in the accounts we’ve considered.)

For the God who acted in history, continues to act as new chapters of history are being written. God’s saving acts will have lots in common with God’s saving acts in ages past. The same is true for God’s sustaining acts.

Into this great story of God’s saving and sustaining, we are being folded today.
So, what lessons might we draw from what we’ve considered in this sermon?

May I propose the following:

1. We are in bondage, alienated from God: The Hebrew people were enslaved. They were in bondage, unable to free themselves. But God saw their afflictions and their bondage, and it was God who determined to free them from their bondage. Down through history, we can see the bondage that characterizes the unredeemed state of mankind. The pages of history are filled with accounts of human bondage to the lust for power, to idolatry, to passions that enslave and which ultimately destroy us.
   
   But God determines to save us from that bondage. And in the process, He chooses human beings to assist in that redemption. Moses functions just that way, as an intercessor with God, as the deliver of God’s word.
   
   Jesus Christ fills the same role, coming among us as one of us (see Philippians 2: 5 – 11), in order to redeem us from our bondage to sin. He brings God’s word, for He is the eternal Word, come from God (John 1: 1).
   
   Jesus Christ demonstrates God’s power by His suffering and death, by His resurrection from the dead, and by His ascension into heaven. Each one of these acts paves the way for our exodus from bondage: His death and descent to the dead (see I Peter 4: 6) certifies the certainty of death. His resurrection proves that life exists on the other side of that final crossing. His ascension into heaven demonstrates the reality of the Promised Land which completes this pilgrim journey.
   
   Along the way, God has created certain rites of passage which mark us as God’s own forever (see the Baptismal service in the Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 308). One of those involves a water-crossing, Baptism.
   
   St. Paul describes the baptismal relationship as a death, burial and resurrection. Writing in Romans 6: 3 – 5, we read, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”
   
   St. Paul’s argument is essentially a geographical one. In essence, he seems to be saying, “you’ve passed through the waters – waters which had the power to kill you, but didn’t – into a new territory, into new life, and it is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that makes this new life possible” (my paraphrase).
   
   It’s the same process that the ancient Israelites experienced, as they passed from their former existence, in which there was no life, for there was no freedom, into a new life with God, which ensures their freedom. We, like them, pass through the waters.
   
   
2. God’s sustenance, and our resistance, exist, side-by-side: The ancient Israelites waffled and wavered, back and forth. They had seen God’s powerful hand at work among them, preserving their lives while destroying the first-born of the Egyptians, passing on dry land through the walls of water at the Red Sea.
   
   They had experienced the sustaining power of God in the provision of manna and quail. They drank from the water which sprang out of the rock at Horeb.
   
   Yet, they longed for the fleshpots in Egypt. They longed for the waters of the Nile that provided something to drink. In a time when they thought that Moses had abandoned them, they resorted to the sort of idolatry that they had seen in Egypt.
   
   In their existence in the wilderness, the old and the familiar was an ever present temptation which manifested itself along with God’s provision. The uncharted future seemed dangerous and uninviting, while the past – though not perfect – offered safety and familiarity.
   
   The people of Israel remembered these days and these experiences. In Psalm 106, we see the two, side-by-side. Here are some selected verses that illustrate the point:
   7: “In Egypt they did not consider your marvelous works, nor remember the abundance of your love; they defied the Most High at the Red Sea.”
   
   12 – 14: “ They believed his words and sang him songs of praise, but they soon forgot his deeds and did not wait for his counsel.”
   
   19 - 20: “Israel made a bull-calf at Horeb and worshiped a molten image; and so they exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that feeds on grass.”
   
   In similar fashion, Psalm 78 confirms the reality of the intermingling of disobedience and the receipt of God’s favor. Some selected verses will suffice to underscore the point:
   
   9 – 17: “ The people of Ephraim, armed with the bow, turned back in the day of battle; they did not keep the covenant of God; and refused to walk in his law; they forgot what he had done, and the wonders he had shown them. He worked marvels in the sight of their forefathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. He split open the sea and let them pass through; he made the waters stand up like walls. He led them with a cloud by day, and all the night through with a glow of fire. He split the hard rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as from the great deep. He brought streams out of the cliff, and the waters gushed out like rivers. But they went on sinning against him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.”
   
   Verses 18 through 55 go on to chronicle the people’s rebellious ways, alternating with a recitation of God’s might acts.
   
   And so it is with us, isn’t it, oftentimes?
   
   Aren’t we just like them?
   
   Don’t we experience God’s power to save and to sustain, only to wither when danger arises, or when difficulties threaten to overtake us?
   
   Aren’t we a little like those ancient Israelites?
   
   In truth, we are. Our attitude might be summed up in the phrase, “God, what have you done for me lately?”
   
   And isn’t it true that we often treat God like a divine ATM machine? Don’t we want a relationship with God where we can call on God, inserting our “prayer card” to get what we want, when we want it, instantaneously? Aren’t we demanding, just like the Israelites who said, “Give us water to drink.”
   
   In truth, we often act just that way.
   
   As we do, we mirror the culture in which we find ourselves, a culture that is self-absorbed to the extreme, a culture that asks, “What have you done for me lately?”
   
   In so doing, we fail to commend the faith that is in us, as the Prayer Book says (page 268, from the Ash Wednesday liturgy). We fail to bear witness to God’s mighty power, and His mighty acts which have preserved us to this present day.
   
   
3. On our way to the Promised Land: We are on our way, in this life, making our way toward the promise of eternal life, as is promised to us through the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who promised to bring us to that place where He has gone before, a place of His preparation for us (John 14: 2 – 3).
   But, we’re not there yet!
   
   There is still much formative work to be done in us before we cross the final frontier, the frontier of death.
   
   The Scriptures characterize this time prior to our arrival as a time of testing. In the First Letter of Peter, we see indications of this idea. Referring to the reality of testing, we read (verses 6 – 7), “In this [the living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead – verse 3] you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
   
   Going on to affirm the temptations of our old ways and our old selves, we read a little further on, (I Peter 4: 1 – 5) where we see references to Jesus’ trials, to the barrier to sin that we have received, and the reality of the memory of our old existence. The text says, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same thought, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer by human passions but by the will of God. Let the time that is past suffice for doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.”

My own life bears witness to the power of God to redeem and to sustain. My prayer of thanks often is:

Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come.
‘Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.

11 Pentecost, Year B

“REALITY – TOTAL & COMPREHENSIVE ”
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, August 16, 2009
Proper 15 -- Proverbs 9: 1 - 6; Psalm 34: 9 - 14; Ephesians 5: 15 – 20; John 6: 53 – 59

We begin with three questions this morning:

1. Is beauty only skin deep, or is beauty a much more comprehensive thing than the merely observable, physical aspects of it?
2. Is truth more than the physical facts of any situation or problem we might encounter?
3. Is reality comprised of more than the literal aspects of what is real?

Obviously, the answer to all three of these questions is: “yes”!

Beauty, for example, consists of much more than being physically beautiful. In fact, I
can think of a number of people who are beautiful not primarily because they are physically attractive. (Some of these people aren’t especially attractive by society’s standards, but they are possessed of a beautiful spirit, and that is – in part - what makes them beautiful.) Likewise, if we are to testify in court, we swear to “tell the truth, the whole truth,….” For to tell the truth means that we not only are faithful to the facts as best we can understand them, but that we place those facts in a truthful context. And, of course, we know that reality comprises much more than just the literal aspects of reality, for we must contend with the other realities (spiritual, emotional, etc.) of the experience of life, in addition to its literal aspects.

In today’s gospel text, Jesus now brings together all the elements of truth, of reality. He
seeks to get us – and His audience on the shores of the Sea of Galilee 2,000 years ago – to see the totality of truth, the whole picture of what God is doing. The issue at hand is the matter of God’s feeding of His people.

Now, hold onto that thought for a moment. Before we look further at the passage before us today, let’s recall where we’ve been on our walk through the sixth chapter of John’s gospel account….

We began two weeks ago considering this very long chapter.

Two weeks ago, we saw that Jesus was speaking and thinking on a different level from the people who’d been fed by Him in the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish. He tried to get them to see that the work of God involved believing in the one whom God had sent, not in doing the will of God by following the precepts of the Torah, the Law of Moses. We summarized that part of the conversation by saying that being within the will of God is essentially a matter of the heart, not of the hands.

Then, last week, we observed that Jesus now spells out how God calls a people unto Himself. God forms a people for His own possession. And then God saves and sustains His people. We recalled how God had done just that in calling His people together while they were living in Egypt, in bondage. And, having called them together, He led them out through the Red Sea, saving them. And, as the made their way through the desert wilderness, God fed and sustained His people by providing manna for them to eat. (The theme of manna has appeared in the past two Sundays’ passages, and it appears here again in today’s passage, as well.)

Now, with today’s passage, we find Jesus bringing all the threads together….He tries again, as He had done earlier, to bring His audience out of their literalist mindset (so prominent in Judaism 2,000 years ago) into a more comprehensive understanding of God, of how God calls His people into being, and of how God feeds and sustains His people.

As we turn to our text for today, we need to set the stage more accurately and completely than our lectionary allows us to do:

In verse 52, the Jews, having heard Jesus say, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” respond by asking, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Unfortunately, that verse – which sets up the context for the gospel reading for today – is missing from the lectionary.

Taken literally – as those Jews did when they heard these words – the truth of what Jesus said is ugly and repulsive: eating a persons actual flesh and drinking his blood? Indeed, as we will see in next week’s part of John, chapter six, the revulsion that a literal understanding of what Jesus said elicits. (Stay tuned!)

So, if the literal meaning of what Jesus said about “eating His flesh and drinking His blood” isn’t the thrust of what Jesus was getting at, then what is the truth of what He said? Put another way, what is He talking about?

Theologians and Bible scholars have been divided in their answers….

Some (most, actually) understand all of chapter six of John’s gospel account to be concerned with the Eucharist, the Communion. They see in the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves a type, a foreshadowing of the institution of the Communion, which centers around the division and distribution of bread and the giving of wine. (We will consider the matter of the wine in just a minute.) These scholars see in Jesus’ statements about the giving of His flesh a direct connection to the Eucharist.

Others content that there’s no connection to the Eucharist, the Communion, at all.

The two positions seem to center around the theologian or Bible scholar’s ecclesiastical background (in truth, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but not a large one): those scholars and theologians who come from a more sacramental background (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, e/g.) see the connection to the Communion, the Eucharist.

Those who come from a more Free Church background (Baptist, e.g.) do not see the connection, generally speaking.

I will be frank in saying that I see the Eucharistic connection. I see it, in fact, very strongly.

Allow me to explain.

There are two large threads in John’s gospel account, including:

Water/wine/blood: Jesus’ first miracle and His last miracle have to do with these three elements, which are all tied together….Jesus’ first miracle in John’s account is the changing of the water into wine at the wedding in Cana. His last miracle (and His most glorious, in John’s estimation) is His death on the cross, at which time John (and the only gospel writer to do so) tells us that blood and water flowed forth from Jesus’ side as it was pierced by the spear. In between, in chapter four, Jesus tells the woman at the well in Samaria that “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst again.” (John 4: 13) A little earlier, Jesus had told the woman that He was offering her “living water”. (John 4: 10) So, we have a large thread which runs throughout the Fourth Gospel, a thread which ties together water/wine/blood.

Bread: Jesus uses very, very similar language (“the water that I shall give/the bread that I shall give….) to describe the gift He is offering, saying, “The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6: 51). And, just as we saw in chapter four, a little earlier here in chapter six, Jesus says that He is the “living bread.” (John 6: 51)

Now, notice the similarities:

Living water/living bread: In both passages, Jesus uses the term “living”. The use of this word tends to tie the two ideas – water and bread – together.

Future tense in the “giving”: In both instances – as we’ve seen – Jesus says, “And the water/bread which I shall give…”

Eternal life: The gift of “living water” and the provision of “living bread” give life. In fact, the gift of life that each provides is not just physical life, but eternal life. Here, we see the deeper, fuller, more comprehensive truth of what Jesus is saying.

The use of the future tense seems to indicate a reality that has not yet come to pass…if I am correct in my assessment then, it should have indicated a fuller meaning than the literal sense of its meaning, the sense in which the original hearers of these two statements took them.

Recall with me that the woman at the well in Samaria, and the crowd with whom Jesus contended today, both take the meaning of Jesus’ statements literally, and only literally. The woman says to Jesus, “Sir, the well is deep and you have no rope and bucket. Where are you going to get that living water?” (John 4:11). Likewise, the crowd today asks, “How is this man going to give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6: 51)

So, if you are convinced that Jesus is referring, in chapter six, to the Communion, the Eucharist, an event which had not yet come to pass when He spoke these words on the northern shore of the Tiberian Sea, then why is the connection to the Eucharist made so indirectly?

Consider with me the difficulties in making the connection (which may be why many Bible scholars and theologians struggle with any attempt to link the living water/living bread to the institution of the Communion. We look more closely at John’s gospel account to see why the difficulties linger:

The Last Supper: In John, chapter 13, we read the account of the Last Supper. But John relates to us the account of Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet. Nowhere in John’s account is there any mention at all of the institution of the Lord’s Supper itself. (There is one mention of the eating of bread, and there is a mention that this supper took place just before the Passover feast, that is all.)

No account of the words of institution: If there is no description – even obliquely – of the Lord’s Supper, then, too, there are no words of institution (i/e. “This is my body, this is my blood”).

Nowhere in the Fourth Gospel do we find any reference at all, directly, to the Lord’s Supper, the Communion, the Eucharist.

Perhaps it is because there is no direct link that some scholars fail to be convinced that there is a link between chapters four and six of John’s writing to the Communion.

But, I think there’s a reason for making a connection between Jesus’ “living water/living bread” references and the means by which the Lord continues to feed us in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion, and it is in the account of the provision of the manna in the wilderness (which has been a consistent thread throughout our reading of chapter six to date).

Consider with me the sustenance that the manna represented to God’s people as they wandered in the wilderness, and the theological importance of the connection between God and His people:

A direct provision: The manna in the wilderness came directly from God. (See Exodus 16) God told Moses what He was going to do by providing the manna. All that Moses did was to relate God’s instructions to the people. But the manna mysteriously appeared, and the people went out, one-by-one, to gather it up. Moses had nothing to do with providing it at all (contrary to the common belief that Jesus points out in the earlier part of chapter six, when He said, “It was not Moses who provided you the bread from heaven.” (John 6: 32)

An individual provision: Each one received the bread, directly from God’s hand.

What should we make of the implications of these two threads as we investigate the connection between the “living water/living bread” that Jesus will give? I make two suggestions:

It’s a direct provision: No intermediary is necessary. God feeds His people, directly, in the Communion, the Eucharist. The priest who presides at our celebrations of the Holy Eucharist isn’t part of the equation, in John’s estimation. It’s the individual believer and God, as the individual enters into the divine life of God, made possible by Jesus’ abiding and presence within the life of the Father.

It’s an individual provision: Each one is fed, individually, personally.

Both of these aspects of the divine, heavenly food are integral parts of John’s understanding of the relationship we have with the Father, through the Son.

Our relationship is direct…no one need act as a go-between.

Our relationship is personal and individual…..we are one with the Father.

One final comment: As we feed on the heavenly food that our Lord Jesus Christ has given us (by virtue of His death on the cross, at which time blood and water poured forth, and at which time His flesh was given in sacrifice for our sins), we become what we eat! Here, the literal, the metaphorical, the spiritual meanings all converge. No one aspect of this truth can grasp the truth of this reality. All are necessary.

AMEN.

10 Pentecost, Year B

“THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS”
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, August 9, 2009
Proper 14: Deuteronomy 8: 1 – 10; Psalm 34: 1 – 8; Ephesians 4: 25 – 5: 2; John 6: 37 – 51

“I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints…”

Ever think about that line, part of the Apostles’ Creed, “the communion of saints”?

What does the “communion of saints” mean, do you suppose?

Let’s explore the idea of the communion of saints, stretching down through time, to our present day.

For today’s gospel passage, a continuation of the conversation that took place between Jesus and the crowd who’d been fed with the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish, has to do with the links that bind the Christians of today with those first Christians who gathered on the shores of the Sea of Galilee nearly 2,000 years ago.

(By way of reminder, recall with me that we began a four week reading of the lengthy conversation between Jesus and this group of people last week. Our consideration of this entire chapter six of John’s gospel account will continue for another two Sundays.)

So, we begin with a consideration of the meaning of the two main words before us today:

Communion: a group of people who share a common faith or way of life, a fellowship or united group of people. (Derived from the Latin: co = “together" or "with” + munia = “task”.)

Saints: God’s holy people, a true Christian, a child of God. (Derived from the Latin word for “holy”, as in sanctus.)

As we look at today’s reading, we shall see that there are two things that bring God’s people together, forming a union of God’s holy people (a communion of saints). They are:
God’s word The bread of life

Let’s look at our passage more closely to see how each is present in Jesus’ words, heard then, and again today:

God’s word: Jesus speaks the Word of God, for Jesus’ purpose in coming down from heaven is to draw “everyone who has heard and learned from the Father.” (John 6: 45b) Jesus’ words are heard in two ways:

Past: These words were heard in Jesus’ original words, by the original hearers.

Present: Jesus’ words are also heard by all who read them by virtue of the Holy Scriptures., written so that we might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we may have life in His name.” (John 20: 30b)

The bread of life: Here, too, there is a past and a present aspect to the bread of life which sustains God’s people:

Past: Note carefully that Jesus uses the future tense to describe the giving of the bread of life: “And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6: 51b). To the people who heard these words originally, the gift had not yet been given. If that is true, then when was it actually given? The clue lies in Jesus’ final words that we hear today: the “bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Ah, now we can understand that this is a reference to the crucifixion.

Present: At the Last Supper, Jesus institutes a memorial (“Do this in memory of me”) of His death and passion, breaking the bread, which, He said, is His body, broken for us. (We shall see a more clear connection to the Last Supper as we continue our study of John, chapter six, in future Sundays.)

What might we make of this “communion of saints”? What is God’s intent in all of this? Two ideas emerge from a reflection on the Word of God and the Bread of Life:

God forms a people for His own possession: We, as God’s people, past and present, are formed by God’s Word, which calls us into communion with Him, and with one another. Put another way, God’s intent is to form a people for His own possession. We hear this today, as Jesus says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me,” and later on, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” God is at work, God is the one who invites, and we are the invitees.

God saves and sustains those whom He calls: Just as God formed His people in calling them out of Egypt into freedom, and then saved them by a passage through the waters of the Red Sea and the provision of manna in the wilderness, so God saves and sustains the people He has claimed for His own possession. We are saved by our passage through the waters of baptism, by which we are buried with Christ in His death (see Romans 6: 3ff), and we are sustained by the provision of heavenly food in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

Thanks be to God, who forms a people for His own keeping, and who saves and sustains His people, in times past, and even today.

AMEN.

9 Pentecost, Year B

“OPEN OUR EYES, THAT WE MAY SEE”
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, August 2, 2009
Proper 13: Exodus 16: 2 – 4, 9 – 15; Psalm 78: 14 – 20, 23 – 25; Ephesians 4: 17 – 25; John 6: 24 – 35

We used to sing a hymn way back in my youth that went like this:

“Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for me….” (For the record, the words and music to this hymn are by Clara H. Scott.)

How appropriate a title for this sermon, “Open our eyes, that we may see”, as we deal with a text today from John, chapter six, which deals with the interchange that ensued between Jesus and the crowd that had been fed by Jesus, a crowd of 5,000 people. Note (because it will be important later on in this sermon) that this is the same crowd in both events, the miracle and today’s discussion.

Perhaps, as we think about the nature of the interchange between Jesus and this crowd, we might change the title to read, “Open their eyes, that they may see glimpses of truth Thou has for them”, as we consider the manifest spiritual blindness that the crowd exhibited!

Today’s gospel account has, at its root, a classic “failure to comprehend”!

Before we look more closely at the text, let’s remind ourselves of the past two Sundays’ gospel readings, which set the context for today’s passage: Two Sundays ago, we heard Mark’s account of the feeding of the 5,000. Then, last Sunday, we heard Mark’s account of Jesus’ walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee.

John follows the same sequence as Mark does, recounting the feeding of the 5,000 (John 6: 5 – 15), and then John – just as Mark does - follows that event with the walking on the water (6: 16 – 21).

Both Mark and John then recount the crowd’s criss-crossing of the area around the Sea of Galilee, as Jesus is sought out by this large crowd.

That brings us to today’s gospel account, which – as we look at the coming weeks – will form the first of four Sundays in which we consider the interchange between Jesus and this crowd, making our way through John, chapter six, as the importance and the meaning of the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes is unpacked.

That brings us to today’s passage, and to the idea of, “Open their eyes, that they may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for them”.

We begin with a look at the passage itself:

Jesus ferrets out the crowd’s true motive for seeking Him out: (Verse 26) Jesus “cuts to the chase” immediately, naming the real reasons why the crowd had continually tried to find Him, saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” This comment is closely connected to the last mention John makes about the miraculous division of the loaves, where we read (John 6: 15) that “Jesus, knowing that they (the crowd) intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again into the hills by himself.”

You see, the crowd seems to be able to see no further than their bellies! They are truly blind, and need to have their eyes opened!

Looking at the crowd’s motivation from a purely human point-of-view, however, it’s easy to understand why they would want to have such a ruler as this: It would be good for economics! No more worries about the necessities of life, like “what are we going to eat?”

Jesus attempts His first attempt to redirect their thinking: Jesus picks up on the crowd’s motivation, attempting to redirect their thinking and seeing to the greater theme that is at work here: He says, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for on him God the Father set his seal.”

In other words, “Look at the big picture! See the great things that God has in store for you, and work on those things that will last.”

Maybe we’re getting somewhere…. the crowd responds: Now, it seems as though we might be getting somewhere, for the crowd now asks, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”

But the way the crowd puts the question is telling: Did you catch the word “doing” in their response?

In truth, “doing the works of God” was what the Judaism of 2,000 years ago was all about…In order to be doing God’s work, one followed the dictates of the Torah, the law of Moses, applying its precepts to every conceivable facet of everyday life. Consider with me the controversies that Jesus encountered with the Pharisees over such things as healing sick people on the Sabbath day. In Jesus’ day, every possible action was scrutinized, down to the last little detail. As a result, life was rigorously regulated. But the focus then became on a person’s own actions, which earned merit in the sight of God.

Jesus counters the question: Now, Jesus counters the question, saying, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

Notice this response: Jesus nullifies the human efforts that the crowd has just alluded to….No amount of “work” on a person’s part can correctly and completely constitute the “works of God”.

However, what Jesus says constitutes the major thrust of John’s gospel: simply believe and accept the great work of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. That’s it, simply believe!

The crowd begins to see (a little): The crowd, quite correctly, now identifies belief with the person and work of Jesus. For they say, in response, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see, and believe you? What work do you perform?”

If I were writing a commentary on this passage, I’d say, at this point, “What?!!!!!”

Then I’d go on to ask, “Is this crowd suffering from widespread amnesia? Can’t they remember back to the miraculous sign of the division of the loaves and the fishes?”

“Why do they have the audacity to ask for a sign?”

The crowd relies on hindsight: They go on to say, “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread to from heaven to eat.’”

Here again, Jesus has to redirect the crowd’s thinking. Knowing what they are thinking, He has to remind these sight-impaired folk that it wasn’t Moses who gave their forefathers the manna in the wilderness, but God!

(A side comment: Don’t you get the distinct impression that these folk are all wrapped up in what human beings can do to achieve God’s approval, and in the deposit of faith that Moses, the great lawgiver, had given them in the Torah? They don’t seem to remember that God is behind all the great events they remembered so dearly, events that included the call, sending, and empowering of Moses.)

The crowd begins to see a little (again): “Lord, give us this bread always!” These are the words of the crowd, which responds positively to Jesus’ comment about the bread of God, which is that “Which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.”

The entire conversation is drawn into sharp focus: Jesus now draws the entire conversation into sharp focus, saying, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

We will hear the phase, “I am the bread of life,” again in our consideration of chapter six in succeeding weeks.

As for the reference to “never thirsting,” it is a clear reference to the conversation Jesus had had with the woman at the well in Samaria, recorded in John 4: 14.


“Open our eyes, that we may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for us….”

What should we make of this interchange between Jesus and the crowd who’d experienced one of Jesus’ greatest miracles firsthand, but who couldn’t see the truth of God beyond what they had seen, nor beyond the truth of God as they knew it in the law of Moses?

As I ponder that question, I offer the following suggestions to guide and prompt your own reflection, remembering that this crowd is composed of earnest, God-seeking human beings. In that sense, they are just like we are.

Here are my thoughts:

Don’t be too harsh: Frankly, if I’d been one of the crowd that day, sitting on the grass, getting my fill of bread and fish for which I did not have to labor, I’m not sure I would have grasped the bigger issues and the bigger picture of what God was doing in the person of Jesus Christ, His work and the signs that He did.

I think the hymn could easily apply to me: “Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for me!”

So, isn’t it true that we are often blind to God’s truth as we see it in Jesus Christ? And, aren’t we blind to the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ because we think we know enough not to have to learn more? That’s surely the case with me, I confess.

We cannot pull ourselves up by our own “spiritual bootstraps”: The crowd seems stuck in the best revelation of God that they knew. That revelation consisted of the law of Moses, the Torah. Doing the work of Torah, applying its precepts to every facet of life, performing it, was key. For the Torah was seen to be the bread of God, by which God’s chosen people, the Jews, were fed.

But the focus here is entirely on human achievement by human sweat, toil and diligence.

Some early Christians would fall into this same trap: The Pelagians, a fifth century heresy, believed that human beings could improve their standing with God by their own efforts.

Truly, we are so easily fooled, aren’t we?

Don’t we want to think that, if we just kept our spiritual disciplines a little better, we’d gain favor with God somehow?

But doing the works of God involves simply believing. Following acceptance of God’s work in Jesus Christ by faith, we then respond to God’s moving and acting, remembering all the while that God is in control, God is the actor, and we are the responders to God’s action. That’s the key point the crowd missed in today’s interchange.

See the big picture: Essentially, this is the “bottom line” in today’s account: Look at the big picture of God’s acting and working. Time and again, as we’ve examined this conversation in detail, we’ve seen how the crowd seems to be stuck, seems to be blind, to the work that God is doing in Jesus Christ.

But we don’t have that luxury! For we know things that the crowd didn’t, by virtue of the witness of Holy Scripture, by the witness of faithful believers down through the ages, and by the perspective that time can bring.

Lord, open our eyes, that we may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for us!

AMEN.