Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Rev. Rod Sprange

John 6:24-35

Today’s Gospel reading is an example of Jesus not doing what is expected, not saying what is expected. Surprising everyone - and not necessarily in a way that people liked.

Jesus frequently surprised - even disappointed people rarely doing what his disciples or the crowds or authorities expected - or wanted.

One time in Galilee, Jesus had been healing people, crowds had surrounded the house - many sick people were coming to him expectantly, others were bringing sick friends or relatives. When it became dark and he went inside people waited over night for him to continue in the morning. But surprisingly, in the early hours of the morning he quietly slipped out of the house and went up the hill to be alone and pray. When the disciples found him next day they told him everyone was looking for him. Jesus answer was to say, let’s get out of here - there are many other places I need to visit.

How much disappointment did he leave behind - is this the Jesus you have created in your mind? How would you feel if you had been left? Jesus’ mission to bring the Good News was even more urgent than tending all those sick people. It is critical for us to remember that. It isn’t always where we put our priorities.

Another time, two of the disciples, James and John, known as the Brothers of Thunder, thinking that Jesus was the kind of Messiah who would raise a big army and become a powerful king of Israel, wanted the glory of sitting either side of his throne. They thought they should be the two most important men in his entourage when he came into his glory as king. Jesus told them their thinking was all wrong - that’s not how things worked in the Kingdom of Heaven. In God’s Kingdom if you want to lead you have to become the servant of all.

And when he did come into his glory - his throne was a cross and it was two thieves who were on his right and on his left!

Jesus spent much of his time with sinners and outcasts. - the riffraff. Rabbis didn’t do that, respectable people didn’t do that. The Women’s Auxiliary would have been scandalised by his actions. He touched people who were unclean because they were suffering from leprosy - considered that they had been cursed by God. He allowed prostitutes to touch him. He spent time alone talking with a Samaritan woman at a well - a woman with quite a past and reputation. He even made a Samaritan man the hero of a parable. Who is this man? People were asking “Is this what we should expect from the Messiah?”

What of us today? What expectations do we have of Jesus - and what might he really do? What might he say to us? Many of us question God. Get angry with God even. Why doesn’t God just fix this world - get rid of dangerous, evil people, force the world to share the food and resources we have, make us take care of our environment? Why does God allow these things?

God’s answers to those kinds of questions might surprise us. I think the first response might be “I have given you all you need, I’m doing my part, what are you waiting for?” And maybe he would remind of us like one of the psalms, “Did you make the world, the stars, the cosmos? can you paint the night sky with your fingers? Can you reach across the world with your arms? Can you make the sun rise each day? And yet you question me?

Our human arrogance knows no bounds. It’s ok to admit to God that we don’t understand, but we need to end all our prayers to God giving thanks, knowing that God is good and IS acting and we need to putt all our trust and faith in God through Christ.

Today’s Gospel follows on two other major events in chapter 6 of John’s Gospel; the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’ walking on water. In today’s reading from John’s 6th chapter, the crowds that Jesus had fed on the other side of the lake have taken boats and caught up with him. Jesus had once again slipped away from the crowds to go up the mountain to be alone with God. Then in the night he had walked over the water to meet the disciples on the other side. The crowd knew he had not gotten into the only boat with the disciples so when they caught up him they wanted to know when he had got there and probably were wondering how?

Instead of answering them he pretty much accuses them of not really understanding the signs he had done but just wanting another free meal! This must have been rather startling after you had spent days following this strange teacher around and wanting to take him and make him your king. He tells them not to put all their energy into trying to get food for the body - but to seek the spiritual food - the food that nourishes the soul. When they ask him to give them the food that gives eternal life he told them: I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

Jesus was talking about the deep longing that is in all our hearts. In our world today there is a deep longing for something that is missing - there is a hunger that needs filling a deep thirst that needs quenching. Many don’t know what it is they are hungering and thirsting for. They try to fill the gap with power and money and objects. They try to fill the gap by filling up their time with trivial entertainment. They dull their ache with alcohol and drugs and casual sex. They are hungry for meaning in their lives, they are thirsty for a sense of hope.

We can help fill their hunger and relieve their thirst - we have been given the surprising Good News - the Gospel of Christ. At our baptisms we were made Christ’s brothers and sisters - adopted into the family of God - promised that God, through Christ will dwell in us forever - never to leave us - always to be there.

We have been told the Good News: The Good and Glorious news that in Christ, God has acted, that everything has changed and that God is recreating the world where there is no more decay, no more destruction, no more struggle for power. And we have been invited to share that news and to be part of the recreation and building of God’s Kingdom.

God and Jesus are always surprising us in other ways - by overwhelming love and forgiveness. Even on the Cross, Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of the sins of those who had orchestrated his death and for those carrying out his execution.

We are called to share the Good News - to live lives that demonstrate the Good news and to be part of the building of God’s Kingdom on earth - today. Each week we are renewed in this calling by the offering of two great gifts. I am privileged today to offer you these gifts. Your job today is to accept gracefully what God offers you, remembering all that God and Jesus have done for you.

The two great gifts we are offered today are the gift of the knowledge of God’s forgiveness for our sinful behaviour and thoughts - and the gift of Christ himself - in the bread and the wine. These are the two gifts I am authorised to give you today - not because you deserve or have earned them, but because God loves you - really loves you. Loves you enough to send his Son, and his Son loves you enough to die for you and the whole world, to offer the gift of new life.

I am authorised to proclaim God’s forgiveness for your sins, to help you to know that God has forgiven you, to lift the burden of guilt and sorrow. And to encourage you to turn your life in a new direction; to live the new life of faith in Christ. And I have been commissioned to ask God’s blessing on the bread and wine, asking God to send his Holy spirit on the gifts, that they become for us the body and blood of Christ - and to offer them to you that Christ may continue to dwell in you and grow in you. It’s not for us to worry about just how God does this, it’s for us to receive with faith and thanksgiving.

One time I was there when a friend of mine, a retired priest, said the prayer of consecration for the first time in over a year - and I saw him struggle with the emotion - I saw tears of joy running down his cheeks - and heard his voice catch on the words. I saw him look up and smile at this unexpected sense of joy and awe. He had done this act every Sunday for decades - but that day it was like he was doing it again for the first time. We should approach the table each time as though it is the first time. We need to experience the awesomeness of the gifts we are being offered.

When you hear the words of God’s forgiveness, when you receive the body of Christ into your hands and hear those words - the Body of Christ - given for you - you are hearing the whole Gospel - your are receiving the whole world - it should be overwhelming and our only response can be AMEN.

Thanks be to God.