The bread of life
Sermon, July 31, 1994, St. Andrews, Murray Hill, N.J. (USA)
Arnold Neumaier
Lord, you have the power to transform our ordinary lives into fires of
love so that others warm up and catch fire themselves. Let my words
and my life speak of your glory, and let them be a help to bring
people closer to you. Amen.
Before thy throne, O God, we kneel: Give us a conscience quick to feel,
a ready mind to understand the meaning of thy chastening hand;
whate'er the pain and shame may be, bring us, o Father, nearer thee.
Search out our hearts and make us true; help us to give to all their due.
From love of pleasure, lust of gold, from sins which make the heart grow cold,
wean us and train us with thy rod; teach us to know our faults, o God.
For sins of heedless word and deed, for pride ambitious to succeed,
for crafty trade and subtle snare to catch the simple unaware,
for lives bereft of purpose high, forgive, forgive, o Lord, we cry.
Let the fierce fires which burn and try, our inmost spirits purify:
consume the ill; purge out the shame; o God, be with us in the flame;
a newborn people may we rise, more pure, more true, more nobly wise.
(The Hymnal, No. 574)
Align your heart to the prayer of generations
I hope you all meant what we were just singing; I hope you used the
opportunity to align your heart to the prayer of countless generations
who wanted to be transformed into Christ-like people, genuine, full of
purpose, courage, compassion and love, and to be freed of all desires
which are an obstacle for this.
The primary passion of your life
I hope this is or will become the primary passion of your life:
that you become more and more aware of God as Christ was aware of Him,
that you see God's closeness in times of joy and times of
difficulties, that you appreciate both joys and difficulties as
God's correction tools which allow you to grow into the personality
God designed you to be.
Reading: Exodus 16:2-30; John 6:24-35
The miracle
Sometimes, something special happens in our life, God liberates us or
feeds us in unexpected ways. We are excited, and we want to
make it permanent, crowning Jesus as the king who serves our interests.
Later, when troubles come, we complain about the hardship God placed
before us, and, as the Israelites in the desert, we are inclined to
dismiss Him as our leader. `You are looking for me,' said Jesus,
`not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of loaves.'
Why are we looking for Jesus? Why are we in church?
Know thyself.
The God of our liking
This would be a god of our liking (cf. Micha 2:11):
- he helps us to be successful;
- he adds to our respectability;
- he rescues us from oppression;
- he responds quickly to our complaints;
- he gives us bread without the need to work for it;
- and he is far enough away when we want to do our own thing.
But such a one-sided image is an insult to God; it has nothing to do
with the God pictured in the bible, the Ruler of the Universe (Ps. 46),
the Lord over life and death (Ps. 90), the creator of blessing and
disaster (Is. 45:7).
A miracle of our times
One of the great miracles of God in our time was the the fall of the
wall in Berlin a few years ago. In East Germany, the hope and the
relative freedom of the churches attracted many, and for some time
the prayers in some of their churches were mass attractions making
headlines in the newspapers. But their real God was revealed a little
later: `Let the Mark come and we stay; but if not, we run away'
was the motto on their banners. The miracle happened;
God satisfied their greed, as he did for the Israelites. But if the
motives are wrong, such miracles come coupled with a curse:
You'll get so much that you get sick of it (Num. 11:20).
And now the churches are as empty as before.
Jesus wants friends, not admirers
Jesus is not interested in admirers or big crowds, he doesn't need
them to demonstrate his greatness. He has tender love for those
who need him, for whom he is life itself. And he is interested in
friends, in people who are available to him and with whom he can share
his concerns. But he frightens away people who come for secondary reasons,
who want his company simply to add an extra diamond to their worldly
crown.
Signs are only pointers to a goal
The reply Jesus gives to his `followers' clarifies the basic
misunderstanding. Essentially he says: This is not the way I
intended you to take things. The signs you have seen are just signs
pointing to the goal, they are not the goal itself!
The impact of external signs fades quickly
The striving for external signs of power and happiness leaves us
unsatisfied; the impact of what we have or have seen quickly fades
away and we are always hungry for more. A collector of sign posts
to a goal will never reach the goal!
Signs of power have their place as occasional shocks designed to
cause people to wake up and to reconsider the direction of their life;
but such signs have no life in them which would induce growth.
Real life brightens the day in good and bad times
Signs show the power of God, but not the life which he
gives, which refreshes us and brightens every ordinary day.
The real life persists through good and bad times, even through death;
it does not pass away but grows in us stronger and stronger.
This is why Jesus discourages people from looking for miracles but
emphasizes over and over again the importance of striving for true
life, for life with an innate capacity for renewal and growth.
Life is trusting that God really cares
How can we find this life? We cannot get it by a tour de force; it is
`the work of God', promoted only by `trusting him whom He has sent'
(v.29). Trusting his assurance that God really cares.
Anxieties
To be asked to trust may create anxieties. Especially if we consider
what Jesus asks us to do: Not to give first priority to what everyone
takes as important, not to worry about our future, but to rely on God's
generosity and love. Can we really trust? All our bad experiences with
people surface. We must be cautious!?
The signs of power God had shown the people didn't make them trust;
they made them curious, excited, but that only lasted for a while.
Trust is a matter of growth; only growing familiarity with someone
teaches us the extend to which we can trust him or her. And only
growing familiarity with God teaches us that we can really trust Him.
As a little child helps the father...
God does the real work in preparing our heart to trust Him more
and more; we can only cultivate what He lets grow. It is
like with a little child helping the father in the garden - what seems
like a big effort on the part of the child is probably offset by the
damage the child does by unwittingly trampling on the soil. But the
father appreciates the desire to help and shows his child how to be
careful and considerate. And in this way he prepares patiently and
actively for the day when the grown-up child loves to do the right
thing in the right way. And healthy children can hardly await the time
when they will be grown up!
`I am the bread of life' (v.35)
Why does Jesus compare himself to bread (as earlier in the gospel
to living water)?
Food must be digested to give life
Bread and water are basic necessities of life.
And if we want to get life through them they must be eaten and drunk,
digested, so that they become part of ourselves, naturally integrated
into our body. If we fail to do this because we don't eat, or because
we are too sick to digest what we eat, we'll starve and our life is
miserable. And if we eat and drink the wrong things, our health will
be affected, and our body will show it.
What is our spiritual food?
What is it that we eat and digest? The TV news, with their unhealthy
dosis of disaster and crime we can talk about but not act upon?
Does it reflect in our personality, making us dull in our sensitivity
to what we could do where we actually are, with our family, our friends,
our neighbors, our work fellows?
Get eyes for the most healthy diet
Change to a more healthy diet! Get eyes for the things in life which
empower you to renew yourself. Study the life of people who have
reached something of what you want your life to be like, who radiate
love and compassion, wisdom and courage, patience and strength!
Put yourself into their shoes to find out how it feels to be like
them, what you can make your own. Nourish your desire to grow!
Digest Christ so that He becomes a part of you
Do you admire Jesus and his ability to love and care, to do the right
thing at the right time, to be so close to God that even the
impossible becomes possible for him?
Eat the bread of life, chew it to extract the nourishing value!
Absorb His word, his life, feel yourself into it, think about how to
translate His words and His life into yours, digest Him completely,
until Christ has become a part of you, naturally integrated into your
personality, so that other people notice and give witness to God.
The example of Abraham
Thousands of years ago, King Abimelech said to Abraham:
`The Lord is with you wherever you go' (Gen. 21:22). Isn't this what
we dream of, what sweetens our day when we notice it is true?
Abraham had eaten and made Christ his own. He made Him part of his life,
made Him his life. So the Lord was in him, and others could see it.
Make it your goal in life to achieve the same! Be not just a Sunday
Christian, but become someone who has absorbed enough Christ-like
substance to be a light for others.
Life open to us all
Jesus asserts that real life, intimate closeness to God, is
in reach for all of us: `Whoever comes to me will never again be
hungry, and whoever trusts me will never again be thirsty' (v.35).
When we don't experience this, let us search for it. At communion, let
us take care that we not only eat the symbols of his body and blood,
but that in fact we eat Him, with a desire to make Him part of our
life, so that His life grows in us and we can bear real fruit...
Lord, you know our desire to be close to you, and yet we too often care
more for being successful than for being with you, more for complaining
than for finding ways to show your love. We like going with the crowd
and avoid risking something for you. We prefer to be involved with
things we can show off with than to find satisfaction in the
unspectacular life faithful to you. Renew each day our hearts and give
us a spirit of love, courage, and clarity that allows us to meet the
demands of the day and to be a mirror of your peace. Amen.
Gedanken zum Leben als Christ
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Arnold Neumaier (Arnold.Neumaier@univie.ac.at)