Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
Psalm 34:12-22
Ephesians 5:6-21
John 6:51-69
Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’
One of the neat things we were able to do while we lived in England was to have a company trace our family roots to find our family coats of arms. We bought the plaque with the coats of arms they found for our family names even though I questioned the reality of those hereditary devices because I always thought they were used only by kings, princes, knights. and other major power holders throughout western Europe. Our families were not people of power, but by the mid-13th century, coats of arms had been adopted by priests, cities, town commoners, burghers (privileged citizens of medieval towns in early modern Europe), and even peasants.
One symbol often found on coats of arms is the lion, which symbolizes strength, power, courage and nobility. The lion is called “the king of the jungle” and is found at the top of the food chain in most habitats. It is interesting how a pride works. The male, or males, are the dominant animal, but the females do most of the hunting. A male will protect his pride and their territory, a family of five to ten females and their cubs. Though some prides have more than one male, they tend to be brothers. Outsiders are not welcome. The male eats first and he eats as much as he desires until he is satisfied. Then the females and then the cubs get to eat.
When a male cub reaches the age of three, he is either kicked out of the pride or he leaves on his own. He wanders alone until he is strong and powerful, then he fights for a pride. Lions begin to weaken when they are about eight years old, so a powerful, younger male is able to defeat the dominant male and win the pride. Until that time, however, the young male lion is alone. He lives a nomadic life following the herds, which is a very difficult time. Some young males never grow strong enough, so they suffer hunger and even die.
Lions are an appropriate symbol for people to use because they are strong, powerful, courageous and noble, particularly if you want to compete in this world. Those in positions of authority prefer to have their subjects and their enemies recognize their superiority, so they establish the image of a lion-like existence. This is an image that says, "I'm number one. I'm independent. I do not need anyone." In modern business or politics lion is someone who is in control. They have gained control by taking control, as a lion would take over a pride in the wild.
In verse 10 of today’s Psalm, the psalmist wrote, “The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger.” For too many people, a lion’s life is the way they exist and seek success. They wander in the wilderness of the corporate or political world finding “food” until they can defeat the dominant leader and take over.
But this is not the life we are called to live as Christians. “Oh fear Yahweh, you his saints, for there is no lack with those who fear him.” Will we be hungry? Perhaps. Will we wander? Perhaps. However, there is no want in those that fear God; we are content. As the psalmist wrote, “Those who seek Yahweh shall not lack any good thing.” We trust that God will provide all that we need, both spiritually and physically. The psalmist tells us how to live a good life: Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking lies. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. God will hear and provide for the righteous, but the wicked shall die.
The saints of God are those whose lives are a good example of what it means to be a Christian. They are often people who have sacrificed for the sake of Christ Jesus, even to death. In today’s psalm the saints are not the dead but the living, those living in the kingdom of God in this world. It is for those that the call to seek God is given. Though Christ has found us, it is by His grace that we can find God. A life lived well is the life that seeks God always, in prayer and study, faithful living and giving, in fellowship with other believers and through the sacraments that Christ has given to His Church. The world might think that it is good to be a lion, seeking dominance, pursuing power. But we are called to seek God, and there we will find true life.
This truth causes us to ask the question, “How do we spend our time”? Do we spend our time well, producing good things or do we waste our time with petty grievances and unproductive chatter? I have to admit I spend way too much time grumbling. I am better at complaining about the sins of my neighbor than I am in recognizing my own sin. If someone is lazy at work, I’m quick to point it out to someone else. If someone has wronged me, I am adamant about making sure that someone knows. I can’t even guess how much time I’ve spent complaining about the words and actions of others, especially when I am driving in my car!
Matthew Henry wrote one understanding of Ephesians 5:15, “If you are to reprove others for their sins, and would be faithful to your duty in this particular, you must look well to yourselves, and to your own behavior and conduct.” He also suggested that this passage could provide us with a remedy or preservative from sinful behavior. Paul is encouraging the Ephesians to walk carefully, wisely and circumspectly.
Paul makes a list of actions that are beneficial, not only to the world, but also to individuals. The world will benefit because right living means that we will care for our neighbors and not do them harm. Martin Luther, in his small catechism, always gives both the negative and positive perspectives of the Law. For example, Luther wrote, “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all life’s needs.
This right living, or walking carefully, is also beneficial to the individual. When we waste our time unwisely, acting as fools, drunken and unthankful, we neither accomplish anything for ourselves or for the world. We fall into sin, turning away from the loving embrace of God and suffering the consequences. However, when we walk wisely, taking advantage of the opportunities presented to us, following the will of God and rejoicing in God’s grace, we will find that life that He has promised to those who seek Him.
Sadly, I grumble too much against even my brothers and sisters in Christ. We have a bond that is unknown and misunderstood by unbelievers, but it is a bond that connects people who are often very different because of age, gender, race, cultural upbringing and heritage, geography, educational background or financial circumstances. We see the way others walk, and we don’t like what we see, so we complain. Yet all the while we do not recognize how our own walk causes others to grumble.
This is why we are encouraged to walk wisely, knowing our own faults before we grumble about the faults of others. We are called to live out our faith with our whole hearts, filled with the Spirit of God, which leaves no room for foolish ways. We are called to use our time wisely, speaking words that will edify and inspire our neighbors rather than beat them down. We are not only to live without hurting others, but to also live in a way that will raise them up. This is the life of thanksgiving, the life that takes God’s grace and passes it on.
In the Old Testament passage, God spoke through Joshua, reminding the people that before Abraham they had served other gods, but they were called to a new life with God. They were to put away the old gods, to serve Him only.
Joshua said, “Choose today who you will serve.”
This is a much more difficult command than we realize. Joshua spoke to the people as they were beginning their new life in the Promised Land. It had been a rough trip out of Egypt. They managed to get to Sinai in just a few months, but their unfaithfulness at the foot of the mountain sent them into forty years of wandering. A whole generation died before God allowed them to settle in their new home.
They were unfaithful because they became impatient while Moses was on the mountain with the God of their forefathers. They built a golden calf and worshipped it, just like the Egyptians. In today’s passage, Joshua reached even farther back, back to the gods that Abraham’s ancestors worshipped. These are the gods of Abraham’s childhood and youth, before he met the LORD. Who were those gods? Terah’s family would have worshipped the moon god called Nanna or Sin. They also worshipped Ishtar, the goddess of love, fertility, war and sex. They are represented in the symbols of the ancient lands with the crescent moon and star.
Israel had a long history of living among peoples who worshiped different gods, making it easier to turn away from the LORD. The worship of the gods of Egypt, those of Ur, and the gods in their new home, was much more exciting than the worship of God. Those gods were also easier to understand from a human perspective. Those gods had specific names, character traits, and purposes. They were gods that the people could see and touch. A woman would be much more comfortable praying something as personal as fertility to a goddess who understood the problems of a woman. The farmers sought the blessings of a god that brought rain. Instead of worshipping God who claimed everything as His, those foreign gods gave those who prayed a place to focus. How could God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent really care about my mere human problems?
The people of Israel followed Moses to the Promised Land, but they weren’t completely convinced. They grumbled and complained. I probably would have done the same if I had been wandering in a desert for weeks. They turned away from God while Moses was gone for just forty days. Many of them had carried their household gods with them on this journey, never really letting them go.
That’s why Joshua said, “Put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, in Egypt; and serve Yahweh.” It was time to let go of the moon god and sun goddess. It was time to stop turning to a golden calf. It was time to put their trust completely in the LORD because they would always dwell in the presence of people who worshipped gods that were easier to trust. The Promised Land was theirs, but they would always be near the temptation of those false promises that seem very real.
Joshua said, “Choose today who you will serve.”
God, through Joshua, demanded a commitment from them; he called them to the life that will constantly reject other gods while living in trust, serving the Living God. Joshua answered, “As for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh.” The people willingly answered with bold and confident acceptance. They confessed the good things God had done. They spoke words that have been remembered for generations, even until today. The people in Jesus’ day certainly believed they were true. Yet, Israel did not always remain true to the God who was so faithful to them. They continued to turn to the gods of their neighbors, conforming to the world in which they lived. They forgot the LORD who was their Savior.
We might not worship those ancient gods like Nanna or Ishtar or the Roman and Greek gods, but we need to realize that we face the real danger of worshipping something, or someone, other than the LORD. Many Christians have an imperfect or incomplete understanding of God, even while they have a love for Jesus Christ. But we are tempted by things in this world. We make inanimate objects, even intangible things, the focus of our lives. We may not think we are worshipping our homes, jobs, children, spouses, sports, diets, games, passions, or bodies, but when we set anything above the Lord our God, we make them our gods.
The Gospel lessons for the past few weeks have focused on Jesus as the bread of life. This doesn’t seem too far-fetched, after all, the scriptures often use symbolic language to refer to eating things that would not normally be eaten. Take Ezekiel, for instance. He was commanded to eat a scroll which tasted like honey in the mouth but became sour in the stomach. Did he really eat a scroll? No, the image of the scroll appeared to him in a vision. He was commanded to take God’s Word internally - in his heart - so that it became part of his being. Only then could he preach to the people with passion and integrity.
So, the people might have thought it strange that Jesus was comparing Himself with bread, but even though they did not quite understand what He was saying, they could accept His words as being simply symbolic.
His language became stronger and stranger with each passage. He miraculously fed the five thousand and answered their quest for more with a command to seek food that endures. Then He compared Himself to Moses. Actually, He was offering them something that was greater than anything Moses gave to the people. Though they did not worship Moses in the strict sense of the word, they had made him so great that they refused to see that the Word made flesh, God Himself, stood in their midst. By calling Himself the bread from heaven, He set Himself above even the manna that Moses gave them, forgetting that it wasn’t Moses, but God Himself who gave it to them. As we’ve followed this story, we can see that Jesus drew us deeper and deeper into the heart of what He was trying to tell the crowds, but His words made them more confused and disturbed.
He told them that the work that God requires is that they believe, but then He went a step too far. He told them to eat His flesh and drink His blood. His words were clear. He bluntly told them that His flesh is meat and His blood is drink. It was no longer simply symbolism. It was a stretch for them to believe His earlier statements, but they could get around their doubts and explain away His meaning. However, in today’s text there is no question. Jesus told the people that eternal life was guaranteed through this seemingly cannibalistic practice of eating His flesh and drinking His blood.
What does this mean? How can we believe this? We live in the post-resurrection world, but this is still too difficult to understand. We still ask the question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” We know, of course, that this Gospel passage is foretelling of the gift of the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, Communion. Yet, we still can’t quite grasp the depth of the command. For two thousand years people have argued about the meaning of this sacrament. Is it symbolic? Is it literal? What happens to the bread and wine when God’s Word is spoken over them? The answers to these questions continue to cause division and discord among those who believe in Jesus. And the whole issue causes many without faith to reject Christianity completely.
These passages about the bread of life make us uncomfortable because Jesus has asked us to believe in something that is beyond our understanding. He used a very tangible gift of a few loaves of bread and a few fish that people were able to touch and see (and eat) and made it into something mysterious. The promise in this passage could not be fulfilled until Jesus died and was raised.
We are blessed because we live in that post-resurrection world where we can now receive Jesus in Eucharist that reminds us that we have the promise of eternal life that Jesus Christ won for us on the cross whenever we eat and drink at the throne of grace where we receive His body and blood.
Will we ever really understand? No, but do we need to have a logical explanation for such a gift? The Eucharist is a meal of thanksgiving that needs no explanation. It is taken outside of time and space by the body of Christ as we all kneel before Him and share the bread and the wine He has so graciously given. In that meal Jesus continues to show us that He is greater than the bread they eat, greater than Moses, greater than the manna, greater than any of the false gods we worship, because even after two thousand years, He continues to feed His people with the same bread: His flesh and blood.
This week we get the full picture of what Jesus is trying to teach them about the Bread of Life. His words are shocking, disgusting and against the Law. This man they had followed, to whom they looked for healing and provision, was giving Himself as food to eat. They aren’t cannibals. They couldn’t drink human blood. It must have been frightening for them to hear these words. The man they looked to as their Messiah was turning the world upside down.
He answered their questions with an oath, “Most certainly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have life in yourselves.” To the Jews who heard these words, the eating of human flesh and drinking of human blood was not life-giving. As a matter of fact, it was cause for death! This was too much for them to bear and many stopped following Him. They were afraid, but not of the God who offers eternal life; they were afraid of the consequences of the things they did not understand.
We think of fear in the negative context, and yet we are told constantly that we should fear the Lord. What does this mean, especially for those of us who have grown up in a world that rejects the wrathful, frightening God of the Old Testament? God is love, we are told, and while that is true, we must also remember that God is jealous and demanding. He can, and has, done great things for His people, but He has also given His people over to their sinfulness. When the Israelites turned from Him to worship other gods, He allowed their enemies to destroy their homes and take them into exile. Yet, through all that, He never abandoned them. He forgave them. He saved them. He restored them.
We aren’t much different than those Israelites. We still turn from God and chase after our own gods. While ours do not have names like Nanna or Ishtar, I think it is interesting that the other name for the moon god is Sin. Isn’t that ultimately what keeps us from worshipping fully the God who is our Creator and Redeemer? Isn’t that why Jesus came in the first place?
See, Jesus was not simply telling the people that they should have a feast on His body, which is an image that I suspect was going through their heads. “Does He mean that instead of lamb at Passover, we should roast up a little Jesus?” In the text, Jesus connects this idea of the Bread of Life with the Word of God. “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and are life.”
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” during His own wilderness experience. The people were still thinking with their bellies, and not with their hearts and spirits. They wanted gods they could see and touch, gods that would meet their every need and satisfy their every desire. They wanted to be saved how they wanted to be saved, but Jesus came to save them from more than hunger, disease and Roman oppression.
Human beings have needed to be saved from ourselves from the very beginning. We need to be saved by our natural inclination to follow what feels good, to satisfy our flesh, to search after that which makes our lives as we want them to be. We easily turn from the God who saves us to follow the gods that serve us. No one would choose the life of a disciple, with its demands of sacrifice and suffering! No one would choose to follow a Lord who calls us to see our own failures more than that of our neighbors. We’d much rather have gods of our own making than the God who made us.
The Psalmist and Paul both tell us ways to live out our fear of the Lord. We are to speak rightly and turn from evil. We are to take advantage of the time we have to do what is good. We are to avoid drunkenness. We are called to turn away from our evil lives and our false gods, so that we can trust in the God who fills us with His Spirit. He calls us to worship Him in community with others who believe, encouraging one another in faith and service to the Lord. He calls us to live thankful lives, praising God for all He has done and experiencing the life-giving presence of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Heaven. When Jesus says, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood,” He is telling us to stop grumbling, to dwell continually in Him and His Word so that we will not be led astray.
The crowds walked away from the conversation with Jesus dazed and confused, and then Jesus asked the twelve, “You don’t also want to go away, do you?” In one of his brief and inspired moments, Peter answered, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Peter confessed faith in the One who gives life as no other., the only God worthy of our worship.
Choose today who you will serve. I suspect that we all would answer as the Israelites, “Far be it from us that we should forsake Yahweh, to serve other gods.” or as Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” It is easy to say the words, but it is much more difficult to live the life. The key for us is to continuously nourish ourselves with the Word of God - Jesus - in every way we can: prayer, worship, study and the sacraments. “Eat and drink,” He commanded so that we will remain constantly a part of His own body, so close that we would never want to turn away. By His body and blood, He will help us to live out the truly faithful answer, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” By His grace we no longer have to chase after food that does not give us what we really need: eternal life.
A WORD FOR TODAY
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