John 6:35, 41-51
35 Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
41 The Jewish opposition grumbled about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
42 They asked, “Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son, whose mother and father we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
43 Jesus responded, “Don’t grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless they are drawn to me by the Father who sent me, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, And they will all be taught by God. s Everyone who has listened to the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father. 47 I assure you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that whoever eats from it will never die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
14 Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
LORD , my rock and my redeemer.
What I would like to think is that, as the Church matures, she learns to better live into the hope and the promise of Christ. I would like to think that faith matures over generations. I would like to think that we understand the Way of Christ better now than the authors of our first-century texts. I would like to think that Christ has shown us a better way to live than the way of violence that David knew.
Because Jesus never says, Go to war with your neighbor. Jesus says, Who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
That’s the weird thing about reading stories like our passage from 2 Samuel. David is a very warlike king. At the time, it was all people knew. You didn’t send diplomats to a neighboring kingdom; you didn’t negotiate two- or six-way talks with your enemies. You just waged war against them. That’s what Summer was for.
And during the season of war, people died. A lot of people.
Samuel reports that twenty thousand men died in this operation. That’s almost the entire population of Scott County. Imagine.
I like to think we’ve learned to move beyond that. That followers of Christ know better than to think that anything but violence will ever come of violence.
I’d like to think that the Church would grow into Christ’s radical imagination, into God’s sense of relationship with each other and with the world, because it’s not us-against-them. It’s us-for-them, us bringing creation out of the mire that sin holds us in and declaring an end to it.
Paul’s message to the church in Ephesus isn’t just a random list of proverbs or advice. It’s a hint at a way of living in Christ:
26 Be angry without sinning. Don’t let the sun set on your anger. 27 Don’t provide an opportunity for the devil. 28 Thieves should no longer steal. Instead, they should go to work, using their hands to do good so that they will have something to share with whoever is in need.
29 Don’t let any foul words come out of your mouth. Only say what is helpful when it is needed for building up the community so that it benefits those who hear what you say. 30 Don’t make the Holy Spirit of God unhappy—you were sealed by him for the day of redemption. 31 Put aside all bitterness, losing your temper, anger, shouting, and slander, along with every other evil. 32 Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave you in Christ.
I hope that you can take that seriously. I try. I don’t succeed all the time. But I try to let kindness and compassion and forgiveness be a more consistent way of living than bitterness, wrath, anger, shouting, slander, and all the other curses that do more damage to people than we’d ever realize.
I try. And I want to encourage you to try. You won’t get it right every time. You may not get it right most of the time, but if you try, and try, and try, and try, then your trying will become a practice, and your practice will become a habit, and your habit will become such a part of you that you couldn’t possibly be other than kind, compassionate, and forgiving.
It is vital that we do this, friends. Vital. Immediately necessary. Because this is no time for wrath.
The world has enough of wrath. I thank God every day that we cut off our cable, because I don’t have to listen to the political wrangling being shouted at me through commercial television time. I am surrounded by enough angry talk that I don’t need it in my down time.
The world has enough of wrath, coming at us from every angle. Wrath has been the way of humanity throughout history. It is so ingrained that often we imagine that there can be no means of solving conflict except through wrath.
Wrath is poison.
And poison isn’t the diet of someone who claims to follow Christ.
Our diet is living bread. Bread. Something that nourishes. Not something that destroys. Not something that causes death, but something that causes life.
Life is what Jesus offers us, not death. Life is what Jesus calls us to bring. When will we learn that? When will we finally turn our backs, as a Church, on wrath and on the cruel and senseless ways of the world?
I suppose it has to start with each one of us. We must, individually, choose that each of our interactions will bring peace instead of conflict. We must choose to
be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave [us] in Christ.
That means holding the door for the neighbor with her hands full; listening and sitting with the neighbor who may have just had a bad day; not letting it ruin our day when our neighbor’s cat uses the flower bed as a litter box as a matter of practice, because any number of things we do are at least as annoying and troublesome.
Little things. Because God knows that we need to take baby steps. God knows that we can’t just turn around right away. Becoming a disciple is like dieting. Sure, you could go on a water diet and lose fifty pounds in a couple weeks, but you won’t be healthy and you won’t have actually changed anything permanently. Healthy living takes longer to learn and develop. Growing in our faith, growing away from wrath into loving-kindness takes time, just a coupe pounds each week, with reasonable goals that add up to big changes.
God is ridiculously patient with us, because God knows all the stuff that gets in our way and that can keep us from making the big changes that need to happen for us to learn to be disciples. And if God is that patient with us, shouldn’t we be that patient with ourselves and with our neighbors?
Therefore, imitate God like dearly loved children. 2 Live your life with love, following the example of Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. He was a sacrificial offering that smelled sweet to God.
We all are aware that the world in which we’re living is wounded and in need of healing. Let’s not make it worse.
Almost three centuries ago now, John Wesley set forth three simple guidelines for the people the world called “methodist”. In short, they are:
Do good.
Do no harm.
Attend upon the ordinances of God.
That is, make sure all the things you do are blessing, and not curse. Make a point of exercising lovingkindness rather than wrath. And pay attention to the things that make for a holy life.
If we live those three things in our lives, we will leave more and more room for the Holy Spirit to remake us, to reshape us into what God intends for us. And then God will revitalize the Church. And then God’s Kingdom will come into this wretched, wounded world.
Do good. Do no harm. Attend upon the ordinances of God.
Because this is no time - because we have no time - for wrath. We must make time for love.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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