Requiring the Hunger of the Inner Man

11th Sunday after Pentecost

John 6: 51-59

I want to thank J.D. for preaching last week. You have all said that he did a good job, and that he ought to preach again. I told him about the good reports I had received from you all, and he said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” He suggested that I move down my list of church members – that all of you need a turn in the pulpit.

Don’t let that little conversation leave your thoughts this morning – it may actually serve as something of an introduction to our sermon idea for today.

This last week in Prayer Meeting, we looked at the first two verses of the second chapter of Colossians. I camped out on that 2nd verse, which reads, “that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself . . .”

I love that verse. It has become something of a personal “future reality” description of our ministry together – in other words, when I think of what I want Jesus and His followers to say of our ministry together, this verse will do just fine.

I think it couples nicely with the gospel lesson for this morning, and to some degree, the Ephesian epistle as well – especially that 17th verse, where Paul says, “Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

When I think of that Colossians verse, I quickly see two parts to Paul’s thinking. The first part of the verse speaks to the corporate function of the church – that our hearts are encouraged, because they have been knit together in love. I work hard at trying to make this a reality in our fellowship. Over these eight years, you have heard more sermons than one would normally hear in a church like ours on the subject of church unity and purpose. It has been my thinking that in our formative years, we needed to hear a word from God that was encouraging and uniting – calling us together before we are sent out into the world. I do not regret any of this investment of time and energy – our efforts in this vein have served us well. We are a loving church, and we have a disposition that is unique to churches – we applaud our diversity while we move down life’s path together. This has been a good walk – I do not regret it, and you do not regret.

But when I look at the second part of that verse, the part which reads, “attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself . . ,” I see something of a statement that takes us from where we are to where we shall be in the future.

Do you ever think about our future? What God might hold in store for us in future days, months, and years? I do. I think about it probably more than I should. I hope that we will all grow in Christ – in a knowledge of Christ, and Jesus’ purposes for our lives – even as we go through the ups and downs of numeric attendance over time.

You haven’t had an Amy illustration for a couple of weeks. Just last week, I put a couple of pictures of Amy up on the door in my office. They were taken the day I brought her home. She was not quite eight weeks old, and she was as cute as a puppy can be. But that was June 3rd – nearly 10 weeks ago. Amy isn’t a little puppy anymore. She is growing and learning. Even though she is still small, she isn’t as small as she was – she is in process. She is growing. And she is learning. She is responding well to our training, learning new tricks nearly every day. I’m really proud of her.

I think Christ wants the same for us. Jesus desires that we grow and learn. So, in the spirit of a little 8th year evaluation, I don’t think that I’ve neglected our spiritual growth – speaking of depth of Christian character, knowledge of Biblical and theological truths, and the application of what we know in how we live our lives. I don’t think we’ve neglected that part of the work – but we have majored on encouragement and growing together as a Christian community of believers. I sense a transition coming to us – we might be moving to a time where we seek to major a little more on our spiritual growth – that it might be said of us that we were “attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself.”

So, to the gospel for today. Unless you have spent a little time during the course of the last several weeks looking at the big picture, you might have lost sight of what has been going on. Let me review just a little. At the first of the chapter, Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee, only to find a huge, hungry crowd. He fed them. They were duly impressed. Jesus picked up on their impression, realized that their intentions were to take Him by force and make Him king, and so He slipped away by Himself into the mountains. As night fell, the disciples got back in the boats to cross back to Capernaum, and the sea got a little rowdy, as that little lake is prone to do. Jesus walks out on the water to His disciples, and they are rescued from the storm. They were impressed, again.

The next morning, the crowd realizes that Jesus has left them on the Galilee side, and so they trot around the lake to the Capernaum side, and catch up with Jesus, asking Him how he got there. At this point, Jesus enters into this long discussion about bread – how they wanted bread, He had provided it for them, and that they ought to be looking for the Bread of Life. They ask Him some more questions, and everything is getting a little serious.

We’re at verse 41 now. There is a subtle change in who comprises the crowd. Notice that verse 41 begins with the words, “The Jews.” The indication is that as Jesus starts identifying Himself as having been sent from the Father, two things happen – 1. the crowd starts thinning out a little, and 2. the Jewish leaders step forward to start asking some questions of their own. Jesus enters into a short discourse, aimed directly at the Jewish leaders.

And now we arrive at today’s gospel lesson. Verse 51 – Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

Oops. From a religious political standpoint – big mistake. Cannibalism was strictly prohibited in Jewish dietary laws, and Jesus has just given the Jewish leaders a bit of an opening with his “My flesh” comment. They pounce on it.

Do you folks watch Emeril Lagasse, the chef? He’s the one that’s always saying, “Let’s take this up a notch. Well, Jesus does just that. He takes it up a notch. When the religious leaders question Him, He comes right back – verse 53 - “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” He adds the drinking of blood to the scenario – sort of a double insult to their orthodox tastes. And then He does it again in verse 54. You have to dig into the Greek a little to catch this one. Previous to this, Jesus uses the simple word for eat, which simply means to put something in your mouth. But in v. 54, Jesus changes words, and uses the word that is best translated “chew on” or “gnaw” – He says, “He who gnaws my flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Cornerstone, I want to make two points with you this morning. They are simple points, but they just may define who we are for years to come. The first point is this. Jesus wants us to get serious with Him, even to the point that we are willing to leave behind our orthodoxy and our religious peccadilloes. When it comes to our faith, we don’t trust anyone but Jesus. Jesus wants us to follow Him – as though there is no one else to follow. As He puts it elsewhere – we sell all we have to purchase His field of salvation and redemption. We invest everything we have in His pearl of great price. We leave behind father, mother, sisters, brothers, spouses and children – for the sake of His promise of salvation.

The second point is this – Jesus wants us to get serious with Him, to the point that we really chew on aspects of our faith. We gnaw on His words. Kinda like when you eat good pork ribs. That’s a messy meal. You get your hands and your face just as messy as possible as you gnaw down to the bone on those ribs. Jesus wants that kind of aggressive pursuit of our faith. Our faith leaves the banal realms of stagnation and “same-o-same-o” and moves into a glorious place of redemption through relationship. We gnaw on the Savior – we ask our questions, we struggle with what Jesus tells us and shows us to do, we enter into authentic relationship, and we get personal with our faith. Faith stops being just the religious teachings we count on so much, and it becomes something more like the journey of faith Abraham and Sarah took when they followed God toward His promised land.

What Jesus asks of us is just that simple – trust Jesus like there is no other, and really dig into your faith. It’s not hard to understand. It’s tremendously hard to do.

Pardon me for a long closing, but I ran across a story that Fred Craddock tells, and besides – I didn’t get to preach last week. It seems that Fred was “invited to the University of Winnipeg in Canada to give two lectures, one on a Friday evening and one on Saturday morning. I went. I gave the one on Friday evening. As we left the lecture hall, it was beginning to spit a little snow. I was surprised, and my host was surprised because he had written, “It’s too early for the cold weather, but you might bring a little windbreaker, a little light jacket.” The next morning when I got up, two or three feet of snow pressed against the door. The phone rang, and my host said, “We’re all surprised by this. In fact, I can’t come and get you to take you to any breakfast, the lecture this morning has been cancelled, and the airport is closed. If you can make your way down the block and around the corner, there is a little depot, a bus depot, and it has a café. I’m sorry.” I said, “I’ll get around.” I put on that little light jacket; it was nothing. I got my little cap and put it on; it didn’t even help me in the room. I went into the bathroom and unrolled long sheets of toilet paper and made a net in the cap so that it would protect my head against that icy wind.

I went outside, shivering – the wind was cold, the snow was deep. I slid and bumped and finally made it around the corner into the bus station. Every stranded traveler in Western Canada was in there, strangers to each other and to me, pressing and pushing and loud. I finally found a place to sit, and after a lengthy time a man in a greasy apron came over and said, “What’ll you have?” I said, “May I see a menu?” He said, “What do you want a menu for? We have soup.” I said, “What kinds of soup do you have?” And he said, “Soup. You want some soup?” I said, “That was what I was going to order – soup.” He brought the soup, and I put the spoon to it – Yuck! It was the awfulest. It was kind of gray looking; it was so bad I couldn’t eat it, but I sat there and put my hands about it. It was warm, and so I sat there with my head down, my head wrapped in toilet paper, bemoaning and beweeping my outcast state with the horrible soup. But it was warm, so I clutched it and stayed bent over my soup stove.

The door opened again. The wind was icy, and somebody yelled, “Close the door!” In came this woman clutching her little coat. She found a place, not far from me. The greasy apron came, “What do you want?” And she said, “Glass of water.” He brought a glass of water, took out his tablet and said, “Now what will you have?” She said, “Just the water.” He said, “You have to order lady.” “Well, I just want a glass of water.” “Look, I have customers that pay – what do you think this is, a church or something? Now what do you want?” She said, “Just a glass of water and some time to get warm.” “Look, there are people that are paying here. If you’re not going to order, you’ve got to leave!” And he got real loud about it. So she got up to leave and, almost as if rehearsed, everybody in that little café stood up and started toward the door. I got up and said, “I’m voting for something here; I don’t know what it is.” And the man in the greasy apron said, “All right, all right, all right, she can stay.” Everybody sat down, and he brought her a bowl of soup.

I said to the person sitting there by me, “Who is she?” He said, “I never saw her before.” The place grew quiet, but I heard the sipping of that awful soup. I said, “I’m going to try that again.” I put my spoon to the soup – you know, it was not bad soup. Everybody was eating this soup. I started eating the soup, and it was pretty good soup. I have no idea what kind of soup it was. I don’t know what was in it, but I do recall when I was eating it, it tasted a little bit like bread and wine. Just a little like bread and wine.” [1]

We didn’t serve communion today – we will next week. But then, again – we serve the communion of our souls with one another every time these doors are open. Jesus serves our meal. He wants us to really enjoy it.

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.

[1] (Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves & Richard F. Ward, eds., Chalice Press, 2001, pp. 83-84).