Scripture: John 6:24-35; Ephesians 4:1-6 Series: After Pentecost
Preached on Communion Sunday, this sermon pairs John 6 with Ephesians 4 to ask ‘What are you hungry for?’ Distinguishing what we crave from what truly satisfies, it presents Jesus as the bread of life who alone satisfies the restless heart against a world that breeds dissatisfaction. Faith means seeing plain communion bread as heavenly manna; received together, the table gives love, community, purpose, and salvation. Echoing Paul, the congregation is called to walk worthily, bearing one another in love.
Illustrations: child-bedtime-thirst, oliver-twist-please-sir, room-for-dessert, chips-and-salsa, weeds-by-the-roots, augustine-restless-heart, bucket-list, bull-fu-man-chu, hawaiian-bread-communion, milo-of-croton-calf
August 4
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:24-35
I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. - Ephesians 4:1-6
So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “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. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us, then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
John 6:24-35
There are different levels of hunger we each have faced. There are different levels of thirst. We have all been hungry before. Some of us have been in situations where we didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. Others may not have been in those specific situations, but you have been hungry. Same with thirst. All of us have been thirsty before. Even if it is just on a plane as you get ready to land and you forgot a water bottle and there is a malfunction at the gate so you have to sit there for an extra hour. You get thirsty. It is not the thirstiest you can be, but it is still thirst. As far as rankings go, the second thirstiest person is someone who’s been in the desert for a day without water. Their body starts shriveling. They can barely open their mouth. This is the second thirstiest person.
The thirstiest person in the history of the world is every child at bedtime. This is one of those things nobody teaches you about children before you become a parent. The desert cannot match the incredible thirst of a child before bedtime. Can I have a little water? Every child becomes Oliver Swift, “Please sir, can I have some more?”
Children also exhibit phenomenal variations in hunger. When snacks or desserts are available, they’re starving. When a sit down dinner is available, oh, there’s, there’s just not much room, until the dessert comes. And then as every child, every parent knows, every child knows there’s always room for pie. No kid is ever too full for ice cream. It doesn’t happen. Many kids are too full for broccoli, but never a cookie.
There are some things in our life that we need that we are hungry for. There are some things that we want that we are hungry for.
Our metabolisms also change throughout life. The metabolism of our twenties is not the metabolism of our forties. We may have the same hunger, but our body processes food differently. There are many other factors which impact our hunger. How much sleep we get? How much exercise we get? How much stress we have in our life? There are also our genetics and our historic relation to food.
Throughout scripture, hunger and thirst are used often both literally and metaphorically.
What are you hungry for? What do you desire? There are two ways of asking the question of hunger: what are you hungry for and what will satisfy you? These are two different questions. A lot of times, what we’re hungry for is not what will satisfy us. I love chips and salsa. I have mentioned this before. When I was in college, I would go out to eat with friends at a Mexican food place and order a water and only eat chips and salsa. I was hungry for it, but it was not satisfying. At the end of the night, my stomach would have words with me about my dietary choices, and since my only dinner was chips and salsa, I would be hungry an hour later and need to eat again.
I think this is how we need to understand what Jesus is doing in John six. The bread of heaven is what will satisfy us. Everything else falls short. This is a radical claim of Jesus’s. It’s radical in a literal sense. The word radical comes from the Latin word for root; it goes to the roots of something, or to pull something up by the roots. A radical transformation is something where the roots have been changed as well. It’s not just on the surface. If you have a bunch of weeds in your yard, if you all pull up the green parts and not the roots, it will look different. The bed will look nice for a little bit but those weeds will come back.
Jesus is trying to radically change our understanding of hunger and thirst. Jesus is trying to pull out the weeds of worldly understanding roots and all.
We live in a world that tells us to be unsatisfied, that tells us to be dissatisfied. That tells us to question ourselves, to doubt ourselves, to doubt where, where we live. To doubt what we do, to doubt our friends. It is a world that that desires us to always want more, seek more, be more. This is the the state we are all in apart from God. It is the place we find ourselves before we consume the bread of life or drink the cup of salvation.
In the words of Saint Augustine, our hearts are restless until they rest in you of Lord. This is the heart of faith. The salvation and deliverance of Jesus Christ brings us to the place where we no longer desire more and thirst for more because we have received what we need.
When Jesus talks about being the bread of heaven, those who eat will not hunger, those who believe in him will not thirst. It doesn’t say drink him. It says believe in Him. Those who have faith in him. We eat the bread of salvation. To drink the cup, we believe that Jesus is God. That the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has kept the promise to save the people, and not leave them behind. The one God is fully revealed, laid bare to us, in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, the one we call the Christ, the anointed, the Messiah.
What do you want? What do you hunger for? What do you long for?
Some people have a bucket list. The first recorded mention of the phrase “bucket list” was in 1977, but it was extremely rare. I used the Google nGrams to find this so it literally could have been a list of buckets for sale and not the idiom we know today. It was 2005 would the phrase ballooned in popularity and by 2008 there was a film starring Morgan Freeman with the same title. Bucket List refers to a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket.
People list out places they want to visit, people they want to see, things they want to do. Not needs, but wants.
What do you hunger for? What do you want to do before you die?
The radical call to faith that Jesus is making here is to realize that if you believe Jesus is alive and that God raised him from the dead, take and eat of this bread and drink of this cup and you will be satisfied. There will be nothing more that you need. This is the bucket list. Here. This is everything. All the good of all the things we do in this life are found here. The beauty of that beach sunrise. The joy of our child’s graduation. Skydiving. Rocky Mountain climbing. 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu. All those experiences and emotions or vestiges and imprints of the love of Christ for you found here.
It is all at this table offered to you freely. That is what Jesus means by never hunger. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”
This is salvation. This is deliverance. This is rescue. It is all a gift offered to you like bread on a table, like juice in a cup.
From one perspective, this table looks plain. It looks like Hawaiian bread with Grape Juice and a few gluten free crackers. It does not look like a meal that is going to fill you up. Very few people could fill themselves up on one trip down the communion line. This is the worldly perspective. This is the perspective that is hard to satisfy.
In another perspective, we can look at this table with the eyes of Jesus and see heavenly bread. See manna given by God. Manna that gives us what we need. Manna that satisfies our souls and not our bellies.
What do we need? We need to be loved. We need community. We need connection. We need purpose. We need to be saved from destruction. We need to be saved from destroying ourselves. We need to saved from the manipulations of this world and the lies that tell us that we are never satisfied.
The lies that tell us that we will be loved if we do these things. If we earn this. If we satisfy others. If we do enough. If we save enough. If we get enough.
It is a leap of faith to see this bread through the eyes of Jesus. It is a leap of faith to see beyond the obvious. It is a leap of faith to see beyond the lies the world tells you about yourself.
The amazing thing is that you don’t need to take the leap alone. You are not alone. We are together. We come to the table together. We seek Jesus here together.
You have been called. For some of you, that may seem strange to hear, but it is true: you have been called here. You have been called by God or else you would not be here.
Throughout the Bible, the term walk is used to describe the journey of faith. Walking around, more directly.
Because we were called to this table, we should walk in the way of the one who called us.
As Paul says,
I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love
Come to the table with humility and gentleness. You have been given everything here. You have been given salvation. You have been given life. What does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your life?
Come to the table with patience. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with the people in your life. Patience is a gift of faith. It takes faith to be patient. It takes thinking beyond what you immediately see. Like coming to this table and seeing bread and realizing it is Jesus.
Come to the table bearing one another in love. It is hard to carry another person. There is a story about an ancient Olympic wrestler, Milo of Croton, who would carry the same calf every day between Olympics that took place every four years, and by the time the next Olympiad came about, he could carry a 4 year old cow on his back. He won wrestling five times in a row starting in 532 BC.
Some of the people we bear in life weigh like a calf. Some weigh like a four year old cow. The call of Jesus is not bear as long as it is comfortable but to bear each other in love. The call is not to bear the heaviest burden in order to show how strong we are, but to bear what God gives because God does not give us too much and God never gives it to us alone. Again, this is an act of faith. It is believing more in God than in your own capabilities.
It is all here, as Paul continues:
there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Because there is one God, we who are many are one with the bread of life. It is all here.
You have done enough. You have worked enough. You are good enough. You are forgiven. You are welcome. Come to the table and share together so we can go forth and walk in a manner worthy of our God who first called us.
All are welcome. All you need is here. Life is here. Purpose is here. Eternity is here. God is here. Come.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.