If Ya Are What Ya Eat, What Ya Eat Matters

August 12, 2018

In this third slice of John’s 6th chapter, we hear Jesus and some of those who’d followed him across the lake in a conversation where they, too, are talking passed each other.  It’s a bit reminiscent of the conversation Jesus has with Nicodemus, when the whole “born again” issue is hashed out amidst a great deal of misunderstanding.

Here, in a similar conversation about who God is and how God is, these Jewish listeners reveal their unwillingness to respond to a God who speaks and acts in the ways Jesus proposes.

They refuse to hear Jesus’ invitation to keep on coming and keep on believing.  They refuse to hear Jesus’ declaration, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”  They refuse to hear Jesus’ exhortation, “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

At our 9:30 A.M., worship, in prayer, Word, song, sermon and Meal, we’ll look candidly and clearly at the ways we, too, are reluctant to join Jesus.  The places where the Father sends us, as he sent the prophet Elijah and his own Son, Jesus, are places where strong food is needed, food so life-making, so freedom-bringing, so home-giving, it can only come from God.  Christianity is not a tea party.  The food we need to journey through the deserts and mountains of our world – joining God’s work to transform our world – isn’t teacakes.

Pastor Jeff