Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · August 6, 2006

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Lord, be with us this hour as we seek the grace to know you as you are.  Help us be in a relationship with you that is heartfelt, warm, and personal.  Amen.

Scripture

John 6:34-35;41-51

The people said, “Lord, give us this bread always.”

Then Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life.  The one who comes to me shall never hunger.  The one who believes in me will never thirst.”

At this the people began to grumble (mumble, make complaints) against him because he said, “I am the bread of heaven who comes down from heaven.”  They said, “I mean, isn’t this Joseph’s son?  Don’t we know his parents?  How can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

“Stop it,” replied Jesus.  “No one comes to me unless that One who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up (put them together, set them on their feet, and make them ready for the end) at the last day.  For it is written: ‘They shall all be taught personally by God.’  Everyone who listens to God and learns from God comes to me to be taught personally, to see it with their own eyes, to hear it with their own ears from me, since I have it firsthand from God.  For no one has seen God except the one who is from God.  That one has seen God.  I earnestly tell you the solemn truth.  Everyone who believes has real eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna bread in the desert, and those folks died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a person may eat and not die.  I am the living bread that comes down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.  And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my own flesh and blood, my own life.”

Message

An Encounter with You

Rick Frost

What a strange, mysterious, almost embarrassing text today.  It starts out so good.  It talks about hunger, and thirst, and bread, and believing, and then it sort of gets a little weird and starts talking about eating, and body, and flesh, and need, and to live forever.  Did you get all of that?  John gets a little weird sometimes.  I’d like for us to spend a little time today to see if we can figure out what is going on in this very, very, really strange text.

Every once in a while, I get to ask people why they come to church.  The answers, as you can imagine, are often all over the board.  People say things like, “Well, church is where I come to find out what we’re doing wrong and to get motivated to do what’s right.”

We have other people who say, “Well, I come to church because I want to get more motivated to help those in this world who are in the greatest need.”

We have others, still, who say, “I come to this church because I want my kids to learn about God, and about Jesus, and the Bible.”

Others yet who say, “I come to meet friendly people who will welcome me and greet me, and maybe to hear uplifting music and a message that will help me start the week that I have to face tomorrow.”

On and on it goes.  That is just a smattering, really.  Many people, many reasons, many needs.

In today’s text, we have people in need.  We have hungry people, physically hungry people, following Jesus, and they are looking for physical bread.  It’s hard for most of us in this room to imagine.  Just before the text that I read to you, he had sat about 5,000 of them down in the grass, according to John.  They watched him as he took a boy’s five small barley loaves and two small fish, blessed them, gave thanks for them, and then handed them out to all who were present.  They had as much as they wanted – all they could eat.

It is the one miracle – apart from the resurrection – that is found in all four gospels.  It is an amazing thing.  People had been fed. 

People are amazed.  The crowds grow.  They follow him wherever he goes, because, you know, when you are hungry, you go to where the bread is.  Everybody does.  Now, when they come to him, he says to the crowd, “I’m not simply going to give you physical bread to eat on.”  Rather he tells them, “I am the bread.”  And he says to them, “Feed on me.”

Now, folks, if you have been taught… If you have come to think that Christianity is just an interesting set of ideas, maybe even a set of services that you can seek as some kind of customer…  If you have come to think of Christianity as a set of values that you can build a life on, or even a country on…  If you think that you can come to church and somehow hope to keep Jesus and his demands at a distance from you… I want you to think again.  Today’s text flies in the face of that.  Today’s text gets intimate.  It gets personal.  It gets earthy, carnal, fleshy.  The good news today is that the Christian Church and the Christian faith are about getting personal with Jesus.  Christianity is first and foremost a relationship.  It’s about a connection between you and the Spirit of the Living Christ.  Now, it may be more than that.  But here’s what I want you to hear today:  It is certainly not less than that.

Now when you come and stand before the community of faith as a sign of your desire to become a member of the Body of Christ in this place, we ask you one question.  All of us remember that question: “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and do you accept him, not only as Lord and Savior of this world, but as your personal Lord and Savior?”  Wow!

How many of you know John Wyss?  He’s been part of our church for quite a while.  He is one of our deacons.  His Mom, Veda, has been with us for a little while.  She’s an older lady, bless her heart.  Last week at our eleven o’clock service, Veda was right over there, and during our little “howdy-do” time that we have, she leaned over to me and said in a whisper, “I’d like to transfer my membership to Broadway.”

I said, “Well, that would be great!”

She said, “I wrote it down on the little attendance sheet here just so you would know.  I just don’t want to have to…” 

As she was speaking, John looked at her and said, “Mother.  NO!  We don’t do it that way.  You have to go up front.”

Well, sure enough, at invitation time, Veda comes down the aisle on John’s arm, and I asked her that one question that I ask everybody.  Now, most people can’t wait to say “yes” and move on.  But Veda just sort of hesitated.  And I said, “Well?  Do you?”

And she said, “Oh, my goodness!  I feel like I’m getting married all over again.  Yes, I do!”

Folks, there is more truth in what she said than perhaps she knew.  Christianity is an incarnational faith, which is just a big word that means all of the Creator, all of God, all of the Divine that could possibly be poured in and lived out in a human being’s life, was poured in and lived out in Jesus.  For us, spiritual things are meant to be heeded.  They are meant to be like a marriage.  They’re meant to be intimate, personal, engaging. 

We are big in the Christian Church about bodies, about connections.  It’s all about relationships.

In our text today, Jesus announces, “You want to be fully satisfied?  You want to be satisfied for all eternity?  Feed on me, because I’m the bread.  I am the bread of life.  Feed on me.  Take me.  Receive me, in the same way that you would a good meal.” 

What an amazing, powerful metaphor.  When I am hungry, there’s nothing like a good meal.  I sit down.  I get focused.  I dig in.  If you eat with eat and you talk, you lose.  OK?  A good meal, when you are hungry, is just one of the great joys of this life.  You know what I’m talking about.  I mean… the great tastes of all the wonderful foods that come from around the world, and you know what it’s like.  It’s not just feeding your body.  That’s what you are supposed to do.  But what it really does is it penetrates every fiber of your body.  You enjoy it!  You like it; you love it; you want some more of it.

I think that is the secret of today’s text.  Christianity is not a religion where we meet your immediate need, whatever that need might be, and then we sit you down and give you a lecture on the essential beliefs of the Christian Church, or a list of dos and don’ts, or an itemized index of rights and wrongs.  No!  What we do, in Christianity, is we give you a person.  A person!

John Henry Newman, one of the great preachers and teachers of all time, in a day gone by, had an insight that I think is timeless.  He said, “Most people are persuaded in religious, spiritual, and important matters, not from excessive reasoning, like you would in arguments found in papers, books, debates or systems of thought.  No, but rather with other people.”

Isn’t that interesting?  He went on to say, “People persuade themselves with very little difficulty to scoff at principles and values, to ridicule books and ideas, to make sport of the names of really good people.  But you know what?  They cannot bear to be in the physical presence of those kinds of people.”

See… It’s the holiness.  All that’s good, and right, and loving.  When that gets embodied in a person, folks just can’t stand it.  They can’t stand that steady kind of confrontation.

“Reasons, theories, values are one thing,” he said, “but people are something else.”

We can come up with counter reasons for all reasons.  Let me tell you.  I know.  I have a son that’s a lawyer.  He can take any argument and give you the other side.  That’s what he does.  They pay him to do that.

You can come up with counter systems that nullify competing systems.  We do it all the time.  But what we can’t seem to resist is a person.  You know… The flesh and blood, the face-to-face personal embodiment of all those good thoughts, ideas, and values.  It’s all about people.  It’s all about relationships.

Studies have been done to try to find out what leads people to open, to grow, to open in their attitudes toward people who are, what we call, minorities.  Whatever that might be and wherever that might be.  In our neck of the woods, that might be people of Asian persuasion, or Latinos, or Africans, or gays, or Hindus, or Muslins, or wealthy people, or disabled people, or poor people.  Some day, and it’s not going to be too long, when Anglos are going to be a minority.

It probably will not come as any surprise to anyone here that they found in their research that the main factor that leads to openness and tolerance is actually getting to know a person who is different from you.  It’s not about ideas.  It’s not about values.  It’s not about concepts.  It’s about people.

Newman had a motto: “Hearts are the things that speak to hearts.”

We can talk all we want of the mind, but you can’t fight what goes on in hearts.  “The great instrument of propagating moral truth,” Newman said, “is personal knowledge.”

Folks, you and I live in a media age.  You know that.  We have televisions, videos, prints, film, Power Point, e-mail, web sites.  We can learn all kinds of information, and that’s good.  It’s at our fingertips.  But we are a religion, not of information, but we are a religion of incarnation.  Write that word down in biblical, theological framework.

Most of us believe that the Creator of all that is has come in the flesh among us in ways we can’t describe.  We don’t understand, but we are, in fact, people of bodies.  We are big on bodies.  We don’t believe that there is any communion, any communication, any connection, any community that is worth the name that doesn’t have a body associated with it.  We like bodies.

Today’s text is a powerful text.  It reminds us that Christian faith is more than a set of beliefs, a list of behaviors, even a way of life.  It is that, but it’s so much more.  For us, it is a matter of being encountered by the person of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and being encountered by his people.  That’s why our Sunday School teachers, and our youth workers, and our Stephen Ministers, and our shepherding elders, and our Sunday “Loafers,” and our visitors to nursing homes, and each and every one of you are so important.  Because it is all about the person – the power of the personal.  It’s when heart communicates and speaks to heart.  That’s what matters.  That’s how the connection takes place.  It’s all about connections.  It’s all about relationships.

It is a fascinating text.

She had spent much of her life trying to figure out in her head whether she was a Christian.  She was one of those really bright people.  If it didn’t fit with her mind, she had so many troubles.  She was so bright and very gifted.  She was a brooding type personality, and very caring, and had a tremendous amount of energy.  Lord knows.  But she had some real trouble with various Christian beliefs, principles, teachings, values, and practices.  Then one day she said, “You know, I’ve just decided to stop thinking about Jesus and to start living with Jesus.  There’s a lot I don’t know.  There’s a lot that mystifies me.  But you know what?  There’s also a lot I do know, and so from now on, I’m going to go with… I’m going to live with the Jesus that I encounter.”

Isn’t that great?

“I am the bread of life, the one that comes down from heaven.  Feed on me.  For anyone who eats this bread will live, and live forever.” 

And all the people say… “Amen.”

Benediction

Friend Jesus, thank you for being the dearest friendship we could ever have.  You search us, you know us, and still you love us!  Thank you for coming to us in an up-close and personal way.  Deepen our faith that we might encounter you everywhere.  Amen!