Brothers and sisters in Christ, here we are, the second Sunday of August. Although still warm summer weather, we are transitioning toward the cultural experience of Fall. School has started for many of our youth. This is the time when whatever has been suspended for family vacations and summer holiday is on the verge of restarting. We often as a society collectively look forward to the Fall.
I remember a few years ago a man I had just met who came to counseling because of depression was excited about the start of the football season, “things are finally back to normal!” That feeling of things back to normal is really a gift. You cannot make things come back to normal in the way he meant by force of will or enough phone calls and signed petitions, it just happens with the turning of the calendar.
Our faith, our relationship with Jesus, the bread of life, also comes to us as a gift that we simply cannot make happen on our own. We heard in our gospel reading: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” We cannot bring Jesus into our lives by the force of our will, and clearly we cannot make Jesus raise us up on the last day- it is his gift and his will for us.
As we are gathered here this morning, I hope you can feel the excitement that the Father brings us to Jesus. God the Father has prepared each one of us to receive and know the Holy Scriptures, the Bible. In the Bible, we have come to know Jesus as the very Word of God, the living bread from heaven.
Think of how different what we experience as believers is as compared to the secular lifestyle. Many people in our world today say they are spiritual and not religious. Perennial Lutheran speaker on the radio and internet Pastor Bryan Wolfmeuller describes this approach of being spiritual as basically meaning: ‘I don’t listen to any particular message from God in church, I come up with my own message of what God means for me- whatever I want it to be.’ Essentially for the self identified spiritual only population, God is silent.
In contrast we as Christians do not live in a spiritual silence or wishful thinking about our own intrinsic goodness. Instead, we have a God who speaks to us in the Bible. Listen to what Jesus says in verse 40 “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” We know what God thinks and what God wants for us, to look to the Son in faith and live.
How amazing it is that we know what Jesus wants for us, that we can hear day in and day out from the scriptures how it is that we live our lives and how we can feed on the living bread from heaven. We know that it involves hearing God’s Word and receiving the Lord’s Supper in faith and repentance.
Although the gospel of John does not describe the Institution of the Lord’s Supper as Matthew Mark and Luke do, Jesus’ words about the living bread from heaven foreshadow what he would later teach on the night before his betrayal. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven, if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Remember what Satan said to Eve, as a lie to entice her that she could eat the forbidden fruit and that it would not make her die. “But the serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die For God know that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Satan was enticing Eve- if you eat this you will be like God. Satan made it seem like this is the best thing in the world to possess. You can’t pass this up.
As it turns out the forbidden fruit was the worst thing in the world to possess. It brought death into the world. How could eating do such an awful thing? But it was not just the eating, it was the disobeying of God’s commands that was the terrible sin. And as result God himself came to us in Jesus to obey where we have rebelled.
Jesus came to obey, even to the point of his death on the cross, his flesh given for the life of the world. And now eating is something we are able to do that connects us with Jesus redeeming what was lost in the world.
This time it is not an eating out of a desire to be like God on our own terms and through Satan’s influence- but now an eating that is a complete acceptance of God’s truth that Jesus came to save us. As we eat his body and drink his blood present in the Lord’s Supper we are obeying what God has commanded us- to look to the Son as the living bread for our souls.
Last Sunday as we looked at the beginning of John chapter 6 we explored what it means for us to take an active role in seeking Jesus as our bread of life. And again today we hear Jesus invite us to come. “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.” “All that the Father gives to me will come to me. Whoever comes to me I will not cast out.” And as we started the sermon, we reflected on how it is a gift that Jesus comes to us, it is the Father who brings us to Jesus.
This gift is given to us because we are loved. As we hold out our hands to receive the Lord’s Supper we come empty, bringing nothing but our repentance and our sincere need for the life and forgiveness that Jesus brings to us in the Lord’s Supper.
When you hold out your hands to receive the Lord’s Supper know that this medicine of immortality is given purely as a gift. CFW Walther reflects that when someone says to a person who is starving, “Come here, sit down and eat!” It is a command in grammar. A command that expects obedience. But to the hungry it is not a command or a statement of law- it is the sweetest sounding phrase imaginable- pure gospel. Come and eat, come and be nourished with the food that brings life.
May the Holy Spirit continue to bring life to our heavy hearts so that the command to come to Jesus as the bread of life never feels like a burden or an expectation- but instead as a jubilant invitation to take hold of the food in our very mouths that gives us salvation, a food that unlike the manna in the wilderness, never goes bad or has limits.
For those who are younger and not yet admitted to the Lord’s Table, may you look forward in hope to this gift of the Lord’s Supper. And may you know that with all of us here, you already are being fed by Jesus as you hear God’s Word and as the Holy Spirit builds faith in you.
The nourishment we have from Jesus is as broad and deep as His love for us. In our Old Testament reading Elijah was so weary from his journeys and the threat to his life that he was ready to give up fighting- praying and asking the Lord to take his life that day. But in response the angel of the LORD touched him and said one phrase, a command that is also a promise of hope, “Arise and eat.”
We know for elsewhere in scripture that when we hear about the angel of the LORD we are know that God is present in a greater way than an unnamed angel or an angel with a name. The angel of the LORD is the LORD present with us. The Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds seems to be the person of the Trinity who plays this role.
Elijah was nourished two times from the Angel of the LORD and he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights. Elijah was ready for death and instead the living breads from heaven fed him and gave him strength for the journey.
Elijah’s meal of bread and water foreshadowed how Jesus would become for us the bread by which we will not hunger and the living water by which we shall drink and never be thirsty again.
The Fall is coming, change is on the way. Jesus alone is the foundation that makes the Fall a good season. Jesus alone, the rock on which we stand, while we see all around us, all other ground is sinking sand.