Reflection for midweek service 8th May. Acts
8:1-8, Ps 66:1-8. John 6:35-40
We are living in interesting times! It
seems to be a Global time of extremes where many are passionate about their
point of view, and they punctuate their passion with protests and rallies. Those who stand for peace and love and
understanding are sometimes left discouraged and worn out feeling like they are
fighting a losing battle…. Or is that just me speaking personally?
Let me introduce myself briefly. I’m a girl from a devoted Catholic family, who
was brought up in a time and culture where it was expected that I’d leave
school with minimal education, get a low paying job until finding a mate to marry,
and then be a stay at home mum. Somewhere
in the middle of this journey God interrupted and showed me that he was real
and that he loved me. I didn’t fully
understand it at the time, but this interruption shaped my adult life where I
felt called to ministry from the time I was 18…. But I was just a girl… and I
felt powerless and alone.
In retrospect this feeling of
powerlessness is probably the feeling of the apostles after the death and
resurrection of Jesus, prior to the coming of the Holy Spirit. There was hope and faith, but then there was
the fear of the authorities who had put Jesus to death. But we must remember that what made all the
difference was the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
Our Gospel reading comes to us from
the apostle John and the scene is set where those who were questioning Jesus
had witnessed him feeding the 5000 and then the apostles had witnessed him
walking on water. Wow… how much proof do
we need to believe? After all this there
were some who still didn’t believe and wanted a sign. I’m guessing that even Judas, who betrayed
Jesus, witnessed all these things, yet still did not believe. It causes me to ponder, what it is that stops
people from believing when God really does give them every opportunity to
believe.
What stands out for me, though, is
this one sentence found in the Gospel reading: “whoever
comes to me I will never drive away”. We
can sometimes get so caught up in working out what is right and what is wrong
that we forget the central message of the Gospel. Gospel means Good News and here it is…. When
we come to Jesus he will never drive us away.
Jesus declares that he IS the bread of
life. Just as bread broken and consumed
gives life to our mortal bodies, the broken body of Christ – that is, His
sacrifice on the cross and resurrection from the dead brings us life…. And that
life he imparts to us is eternal life.
This is what we read in our Gospel… Jesus says, “……everyone who looks to
the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up
at the last day.”
Today we can choose to accept this
message of Salvation. In fact each time
we come to take communion we are offered the opportunity to accept Jesus and
eternal life. It is an action that calls
us to remember that Jesus is our bread of life and we come to him and accept
him. It is an action we do so that we
remember…. But the reality is much deeper.
Natural bread is nourishment that’s
effect is limited and we need to take it in again and again…. But the reality
of the bread that Jesus is, is once and for all. Jesus died once and for all and it is only
because of our human forgetfulness that we need to be constantly reminded.
While we may forget and even go astray,
Jesus will never drive us away. He has
said “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all
those he has given me”.
I’m sure that in the time before the
coming of the Holy Spirit and even after, in the time of persecution when St.
Paul was still known as Saul, the Pharisee, who was throwing Christians in
prison, that it may have felt exhausting and discouraging as though the battle
was impossible. How did these people
remain so steadfast in the midst of such persecution?
Those early Christians knew they had
the bread of life and nothing could take their eternal life from them. Neither are we fighting a losing battle.
In
a very personal way, we often may feel that we have failed. All humans do. But over and over the scriptures declare the
complete work of Jesus and that nothing can separate us from the love of
God. He will not drive us away and he
will not lose us.
We are no longer alone. Once we’ve accepted the bread of life we are
changed. It isn’t like natural bread
that we consume and then become hungry and need to consume again. The spiritual reality is that we are
spiritually transformed and this transformation is permanent. God is with us and will never drive us away… he
will never leave nor forsake us. We can’t
see this change with our earthly eyes, and in our human flesh we forget this
spiritual reality, and so we need encouragement to remember and celebrate this
deeper truth.
Just like the followers of Jesus, you
may feel afraid and discouraged…. But that is why we need each other and to
gather together and remember and be encouraged…
And just like the story of the apostles, though everything may look
grim, we are not ever alone, but spiritually a transformed people with the same
power within us that changed the course of history.
Be encouraged; We are not fighting a
losing battle because the battle for our eternal life has already been
won. The only battle is the one within
us to remember it.
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