2024 08 04 Proper 13 B Pentecost 11
2 Samuel
11.26-12.13a, Psalm 51.1-12, Ephesians 4.1-16 John 6.24-35
Are you feeling over worked, by working for food that
perishes? We all need to work for physical
food to survive, but there is a better… or bigger way. A way of abundant life. That better way is not about giving up our
daily jobs, but about understanding, that we are not merely physical
beings. In our Gospel reading Jesus says, “Do not work
for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.” Jesus also tells us that we should work at
believing in HIM. In other words, we
need to work at growing our faith and trust in Jesus. Jesus is the Bread of Life – the food that
does not perish.
Back in the days when the Israelites were wondering in
the desert, they grew weary and hungry.
They had food with them as they had brought along their flocks, (but
maybe they were like the man in the prophet Nathan’s story and loathe to
sacrifice their own livestock??). They
actually had ample for the short journey that the trek through the desert was
supposed to have been, but they longed for the foods that they enjoyed in
Egypt. These people had stopped thinking
about the hardships they had endured in Egypt and they had stopped counting
their God given blessings…. they had stopped focusing on the great deliverance
of God – A lesson of warning for us. They
desired the good time s, and things that satisfy the body. Their vison was limited to the moment and not
on the future that God had promised them.
God heard them grumbling and gave them bread from Heaven. A little later he sent quail for meat. God understands our need and even our desires,
but do we remember all that God gives us?
The story about the Manna in the desert was well known
to the Israelites and it formed part of their regular rituals. It is from this background knowledge that
Jesus draws on, to explain that He is the bread from Heaven. The Israelites did not work to produce the manna
from heaven and likewise, Jesus does the work in giving us the bread from
Heaven, the gift of himself. In our
scripture stories there is always an important spiritual teaching.
Our story about King David continues from last week,
and we find that after David has had Uriah killed in battle, he takes Bathsheba
to be his wife…. She becomes one of his
many wives…. Another in the harem. The
prophet Nathan, comes to speak to David and tells him a story of an injustice done
to a poor man. I’ve always thought that
this story was about Uriah as the man and Bathsheba as the sheep, but it is a
parable and can easily be seen the other way around. Bathsheba as the one wife of Uriah and loved
by him, has Uriah taken away from her.
David was the King, and so Bathsheba was hardly in a position to say No
to his advances. Becoming a wife in a
harem, as opposed to living with a man to whom you are their one and only love,
may have been more important than living in the luxury of the palace with the
jealousy of other wives. I don’t know,
we can only guess, but certainly our story only gives us the bare bones, and I’m
sure there was a whole lot more going on.
When David hears the story from Nathan, he is
infuriated. Remember David is a good and
compassionate man…. usually. King David
stands against injustice and has a heart that reflects God’s heart…
usually. So, he demands justice for the
man whose lamb has been taken, but then finds out that the man at fault is himself. Like scales that immediately fall from
David’s eyes, he acknowledges his sin.
I find it noteworthy that David doesn’t blame the
woman and God…. Instead, David
acknowledges and accepts responsibility for his sin. Our Psalm that follows is an outpouring of
David’s heart about the matter. “Have
mercy on me God… Create in me a clean heart..”
David understands that it is the inner most part in us that needs the
transformative touch of God. Like Saint
Paul famously said in Romans 7:18; “For I know that in me (that is, in my
flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform
what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but
the evil I will not to do, that I practice.”
Notice the physical and the spiritual aspects; the
“flesh” rails against the spirit.
I have a baptism story that I use. It touches on this need for transformation
and how it works. It is the story of
Patti the pig, who, as a piglet was the rejected runt. Farmer Joe takes her into his home and treats
her as a pampered pet, keeping her indoors and keeping her very clean. All goes well for awhile and people marvel at
how clean and beautiful this pig is. She
wears little outfits and eats when the family eats and wears a custom-made
nappy. But one day…. Someone leaves the
door open. Patti got a whiff of
something, which to her smelt glorious, and down she trotted to the smelly,
muddy pig pen.
You see you can clean the pig up and keep her clean,
but to really change the pig you need to change her nature… or give her a
different spirit. Inside each of us is
this magical, invisible, wonderful thing called spirit. When we are baptised, God gives us his Holy
Spirit so that we can grow to become more like him.
It is through Christ that we have the Holy Spirit, and
now with the Spirit of God alive and active in us we are transformed into the
likeness of God… but we need to ensure that we nurture the Spirit and not
quench it.
Our Psalm also tells us; “Hide your face from my
sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create
in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” God answered that prayer for David and for all
of us by sending us His Holy Spirit.
David understood that he needed God’s Holy Spirit to
save him from himself. If even such a
good and compassionate man of God like David could fall so monumentally, we
need to think soberly about our own goodness because there, but for the grace
of God go it.
Why did Jesus say, "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 understood for us,
in the light of that other famous scene at the last supper, where Jesus took
the bread and broke it, saying, “This is my body, broken for you.” The life of Jesus was given… broken and given
as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world. But Jesus didn’t say, “this is my body,
broken for the world”… he said, “Broken for YOU”. This is personal.
We, like David, predominantly do good… want to do
good. But we are born of Adam
spiritually and that innate tendency to sin leads to death and separation from
God. Jesus dealt with this. He died for the sins of the world…. But he
especially died for you and for me. It
is personal. God wants us to be in relationship with him and He knows that we
fall, and as soon as the right circumstances present themselves, we fall
again. So, he sent Jesus to take away
the barrier – our sin.
King David turned from his sin, but there were grave
consequences for his sin… grave in every sense of the word, as death followed –
Uriah died… There would be trouble in
David’s household… the baby Bathsheba conceived died also. Sin has consequence and the consequence is
death. Jesus came and died. He took that penalty and paid the price for
us.
They say that those who are abusive are often broken
and lacking in love in their own lives.
Alcoholics are trying to fill a void ….
All in all, our flesh longs for something, but the more we give in to
that flesh, the more it wants. We need
instead, the bread of life. The bread
that satisfies so that we are no longer hungry or needing to fill that void. Jesus is that bread of life.
Coming to church and taking communion – Taking the
bread of life - is our making conscious and public, our commitment and desire
to be in union with Jesus and be nourished by him…. , in taking communion we are saying, “I
accept that sacrifice and thank you that I am now in a personal relationship
with God through that body broken.”
The Holy Spirit is in us and it is the Spirit of
Jesus. There is one body and one Spirit,
we are told in the letter to the Ephesians; One Lord, one faith, one
baptism. These all belong to Jesus. But through our union with Jesus, we are
baptised into Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The death of Jesus is our death because we are united to him… and
through this union the debt for sin has been paid. We are the body of Christ. It is a spiritual reality…. We are part of
the one body – Christ’s body. Through
this body, we are also united with each other and therefore must care for each
other.
Today’s readings are a stark reminder that sin brings
death. But just as bread is broken to
nourish and bring life, Jesus’ body was broken and given to bring us life. THE
GOSPEL is incredibly good news; God has
already, through the broken body of Jesus, dealt with all our sins, both in the
past and in the future. If God paid such
a high price for us, we mustn’t let anything keep us from enjoying a close and
personal relationship with him. God
understands our humanity and our hunger…. Jesus offers us the bread of life…
HIS life. It is up to us to accept it…
to feed on him. We nourish our spirits
by coming to Jesus and receiving his Holy Spirit, and we remember by coming to
communion.
The sacrifice of Jesus, the bread from heaven, must
not get lost in popular philosophy or the cultural diminishing of the Gospel
message. Like in the story of the
feeding of the multitude, where all the left overs were gathered so that
nothing was lost, we focus on the truth of all that Jesus does for us. We read the scriptures and gather to support
each other. This is the work we need to
do. Jesus was asked, “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." Our work is to grow
in our faith. To walk with God… believing in him, and remain connected, being sustained
and nourished by him.
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