AUGUST 20, 2006 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
I KINGS 19:4-8; PS 34:1-8; EPH 4:25-5:2; JN 6:35, 41-51
The Real Food
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we believe and in believing we obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I was a little crabby this last week – I know that most of you would be surprised to hear that, since I’m usually so light-hearted and laid-back--why are you smiling? O.K., I admit it – I tend to be more like my favorite “Muppet” Oscar the Grouch than Snow White’s Dwarf named Happy, but this last week I was especially put out – and it had to do with my kids.
We’ve been playing telephone tag with Rachel as she gets ready to head back to school. So she decided to call at a time when she knew we’d be home: 5:00 a.m. last Sunday morning…just two hours after I’d fallen asleep following a restless night! To her chirpy question What are you guys doing? Carolyn simply muttered Well, we were sleeping!
Then on Monday I got a letter from the Scotsdale, AZ, police department. It announced that a car registered in my name had been photographed going over the speed limit. Here’s what happened: I was in a rented van trying to keep up with my son Mark. And though I can be an aggressive driver, I’m usually a stickler for obeying the posted speeds. Well, as we entered some construction, everyone slowed down but us…it was a $157.00 mistake!
So Monday evening I sat down to look at the Bible lessons for today. That way, the conversations I have, the shows I watch, all the things I read throughout the week can help me write my sermon.
Imagine my reaction when I read these words from today’s New Testament lesson. Says the Apostle Paul (Eph. 5:20) Give thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Really?!? at all times and for everything… My complaints were minor and it was a challenge to give thanks…what about those ordeals that drop us to our knees, shake us at the core, cut us to the quick, stab us in the heart? This are the real challenge of faith: when things in life seem to say the opposite, how do we trust that God loves us, that God is for us?
Our Administrative Assistant, Rick Bender, told me this week that he’d seen Alyssa Nagel from Gloria Dei on the news as a recipient of a new vaccine. Did anyone else see that? It’s amazing to think that a young woman now can receive a shot and never have to worry about cervical cancer! How blessed are we to live at this time and in this place…
…If only we could do the same thing for our faith: get a vaccine to protect against doubt or swallow a pill for what ails our souls. For, just like cancer, the cure for our human “sickness unto death” cannot come from within. We are not able, on our own, to defeat many diseases… neither can we just dig deep to haul ourselves out of depression…we cannot summon from within the love that is needed to go-it-alone through life…
We have been created by God to look to our “neighbors” to find food and drink for our bodies AND help for our minds…So we look to God for help with the hunger and thirst, the disquiet that disturbs our souls….
This is why I found Jesus’ words for today so powerful, his understanding of human nature so perceptive. Short and sweet: we need food and drink to survive. From the day we were born to the day we die, our existence depends on our abilities and opportunities to eat and drink.
This last week in the news there was an item about some people who had been lost at sea – I think for a number of months. It reminded me of a similar story I read as a child. Two men who survived a shipwreck wrote of their subsequent fight to search for water and food.
Literally hours away from a watery grave, they were rescued. I’ll never forget their first “meal” after they were tended to by the ship’s doctor: two spoons of warm milk – that’s all their bodies could handle. It took them days and weeks to work their way back up to “real” food.
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus uses the very same words to describe his body and blood – the real food and real drink that we need to feed our souls? Nowhere in Scripture is it spelled our more clearly why we are commanded to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Look at the Gospel lesson in your bulletins or on page ____ of your pew Bibles: verses 53-57 – we’ll read them together slowly and pause after each sentence or verse:
So Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”
The ancient Israelites ate manna in the wilderness. The crowd around Jesus ate bread and fish at the feeding of the 5,000. So how is a bite of bread and sip from the cup at communion so different? It won’t keep us alive for long…can’t build up our bones, make our muscles meaty, embolden our immune system or enlarge our brains.
But this simple meal of Jesus can and does feed the furnace that fuels our faith. It is a menu like no other…it is indeed true food and true drink. And for that reason alone, I can give thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.