Stop Grumbling
John 6:43-58
Linden Heights Baptist Church
October 6th, 2013
43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’[d] Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
INTRODUCTION
Today we observe the Lord’s Supper. Today is also World Communion Sunday. This reminds us that this practice is observed by Christians around the world. This is a ritual meal. As a part of worship we take and receive these elements to remind us of something central to the message we believe about God. Baptists have tended on the whole to be suspicious of rituals…especially the many traditions that emerged outside of the Bible. Over the course of hundreds of years certain Christian traditions became such an ingrained part of worship the critique emerged that these rituals had become more important than the message. Whenever we have rituals in the church we want to be thoughtful about how we approach them. Rituals can be powerful. Rituals can be powerful for a variety of reasons. Because of their repetitive nature over time people learn. They can become ingrained. When a group of people have a particular ingrained practice it makes one feel like you are a part of the group. So ritual can be powerful in creating a sense of belonging. Such a purpose however can be created by any number of rituals. The singing of a school song or the learning of a particular pledge will have a similar affect. The purpose of this ritual is not just in creating a sense of belonging. The purpose of this ritual is to affirm our devotion to Jesus.
We begin reading today in the middle of a wider narrative section in which Jesus interacts with those present for one of Jesus’ miracles. This miracle is the feeding of the five thousand. Where we begin, Jesus tells the crowd to stop grumbling. Have you experienced grumbling in your place of work? Have you experienced grumbling on family vacations? Have you experienced grumbling in the church? Grumbling reflects a measure of dissatisfaction. There is something people are not at peace about. Now there may be a variety of underlying reasons that people are not at peace about something. It may be that they are not at peace about something because they do not sufficiently understand what is going on. It may be that they understand fully but they do not agree with a course of action and are unhappy. It can be that because grumbling can lead to people being unwilling to continue in voluntary association we can find ourselves seeking to stamp out grumbling by the attempt to by addressing source of the problem people grumble about. Jesus doesn’t seem to be first and foremost concerned with the feelings of those who are grumbling. He tells them to stop grumbling.
OUR NEED FOR NOURISHMENT
We all recognize the consequences of missing a meal. I tend to become somewhat irritable. Sometimes one can get busy and not even think about it. You might get lethargic. Missing a meal or even a couple of meals is not the same thing as when you go without eating for weeks. In our community this usually is limited to significant illness. I watched a movie a few weeks ago entitled the way home. In this story there were these fictional characters who escaped a Soviet work camp. But to survive they had to cross the large Gobi desert in along the north western portion of China. They almost perish in crossing this desert for lack of water. When they do finally find water they have another problem. There is no food. If they stay it will only be a matter of time before they will perish. And what is more each day they put off leaving they are weaker than the previous day. To survive they have to again strike out into the desert.
This meal is not of course about our physical nourishment. It is a symbolic reminder of our need for spiritual nourishment. When we talk about that which falls into the category of the spiritual people can have the suspicion that we are not talking about things that are real. The material can be felt. The material can be tasted. But what about the spiritual needs? We know that our children get hungry. They let us know. It can be less clear to us that our children have spiritual needs. In the same way we can fail to realize that we have real spiritual needs. In the context of today’s passage Jesus had just met the physical needs of the crowd by miraculously providing food. In a day in which food security was among the most pressing concern of people this ability drew a crowd. This is the kind of person you want to be king. They tried to make him king. Jesus responded with this talk which included some statements that turned people away from him. He said you are coming to me because I have given you something you want. I have something you need. But you are not coming to me for what you really need. When the need is something the can relate to they are open to listening. Is it possible that you are unaware in a similar way of that which you most need? Spiritual needs may be approached by thinking of something that is not strictly speaking material…think of our need for relationships. When someone says I love you. This affects us in ways that are difficult to calculate. To think that our need for love is somehow not as basic as food is to not understand who we are. What we are made for. We can understand our need for love. We need a relationship with God. This is what Jesus is telling the crowd.
There are reasons why you might not get the nourishment you need. We might not eat because you have come down with lock jaw. It may be that you don’t get food because there is no food available. Like the story of the travelers in the Gobi desert it may be that there is no food available. It may be some other reason. It may be that your taste buds have been affected by your chemo therapy and so nothing tastes right. It is difficult to make oneself eat when things do not taste good. Desire is important for our seeking nourishment. But our desire can be crippled. Why might we not have spiritual nourishment? It may be that we have not heard the gospel. Now if you are here today you have no doubt at some point been exposed to the gospel. But you may have never really been listening. One can see how this might occur. Any given Sunday there are all sorts of different things that might be on one’s mind. It may be that this is how it is for you every time you have been at church and you have never really listened. I think more often in the Christian life our lack of spiritual nourishment comes not because there is no nourishment to be offered…but rather because like with a distorted sense of taste we have no desire for that which we need.
RECEIVING THE NOURISHMENT WE NEED
As we come to this meal I want to offer some thoughts about how to rightly approach this meal to receive spiritual nourishment. Notice what Jesus says about the importance of partaking in this meal to have life. We want to hear these words directed specifically to us. This meal is a reminder of something that is essential for us. Sometimes the reasons people think they need the church are not at all related to their greatest needs. Early Christians were accused of being cannibals. Jews were very cautious about not eating anything with blood in it. This was an integral part of the Jewish dietary regulations. So why this language of blood? Blood signified the life of something. In this meal we are being reminded of the source of life of the source of our life. We respond to what God is doing. This meal gives an image of this. This is not food that we grew. This is not fruit that we harvested. This is a meal that we receive. Everyone who participates in this meal is served. The elements of the bread and the fruit of the vine are images of the body that was broken and the blood that was shed for the forgiveness of sins.
The fact that the meal is presented to us doesn’t mean that our participation is programmed. Different Christian traditions have sometimes focused on different aspects of the ability of humans to respond to God. There was nothing the people there that day who received the food miraculously multiplied. They simply received the gift of God. We do not earn God’s free gift of forgiveness, but this doesn’t mean we have not agency in God’s plan of redemption. There are many things we can manipulate others to do. But you cannot force someone to respond to God. In a social setting you might pressure someone to make some outward act, but this doesn’t mean that one has chosen to respond to God. You have to make this decision for yourself. In this meal we symbolize our response. We take and eat and swallow.
Dieticians can offer how our body digests food. We do not need to understand exactly how digestion functions to receive nourishment from food. In this meal we do not fully understand the way in which the salvation of God is at work transforming us into children of God. This doesn’t mean we don’t need to understand anything. We realize there are things that are not edible. But we don’t need to know how everything is being worked out. The Psalmist writes come taste and see that the Lord is good. As we come to this table it is not that the bread and juice are especially tasteful. The ritual itself isn’t all that delicious. But there is delight to be found at this table. When the Holy Spirit confirms to us that we are children of God there is delight.
CELEBRATION
There was a song that came out a few years ago that described the fear that one’s Christian faith was just going through the motions. There are times when one might find a crisis in one’s life. Is my outward display of faith truly reflective of a relationship with God? Do I really know the Lord? Is the promise of acceptance before God true? We can find ourselves going through motions that can be a barrier to being confronted by God. When we come to this ritual especially we want to come to this table with the awareness that our hearts can be deceptive. We want our response to God to be anchored in the simple prayer Lord I want to be your servant.
We invite to this table all those who believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that he died for the forgiveness of sins. This is a ritual meal that reminds us of our need for the nourishment that can only come from God. I invite you to come to the table.
Reflections 