The Living Bread from Heaven
The manna God sent to His ancient people was a gift that fed them one day at a time. But the Living Bread feeds us eternally.
[This is the sermon I shared with the people of Saint John Lutheran Church in Greenville, Ohio, this morning. The text is John 6:51-69.]
While there’s a lot of mystery in Jesus’ words to us today, there are two things I htink we absolutely do know about them.
First, these words are part of a long sermon Jesus gives in which He describes Himself as the living bread from heaven. He started giving this sermon to a crowd He had miraculously fed in the wilderness. The crowd had torn after Jesus wanting more of the food He had given them. Instead, Jesus tells them, of a better bread that would never leave the hungry: “I am the bread of life,” He says, “whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)
The second thing we know is that these words about eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking Jesus’ blood are not about Holy Communion. It’s true, of course, that we believe Jesus when He presents Himself to us in, with, and under the bread and the wine, we can trust His promises: “This is My body; this is My blood.” But the words Jesus speaks in today’s lesson are spoken before He instituted the Lord’s Supper.
So, while eating and drinking the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Jesus, does bring us the forgiveness of sins, salvation, and Christ’s eternal presence, doing the eating and the drinking do not save you. As The Small Catechism reminds us: “It is not the eating and drinking [our actions], [that save us] but also the words [of promise] that accompany it, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
When speaking of Himself as the living bread from heaven, He isn’t laying down a new law. Jesus IS NOT saying, “You have to partake of Holy Communion before you can be part of My kingdom or saved from sin and death.” Imagine a child who believes in Jesus but hasn’t yet received Holy Communion instruction or been confirmed and so, hasn’t yet received Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament. Do we think that Jesus would deny a young believer like that from spending eternity with Him? Or think of the thief on the cross. After confessing faith in Jesus as the Messiah King, he died not only before he had received Holy Communion, but also having had no chance of being baptized. Do we think that the Savior Who promised the thief, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise,” would bar the thief from heaven?
When Jesus speaks of eating His flesh and drinking His blood in today’s lesson, He’s speaking of receiving Him, believing in Him, the living bread of heaven Who came down from heaven, just as the manna once came down from heaven, from God. That manna enabled His people to live from day to day in this world. But when Jesus, the living bread from heaven enters our world, He offers us infinitely more than a meal to get us through our days.
Now, having remembered when Jesus speaks the words in today’s lesson and then noting what Jesus isn’t telling us, let’s consider two things He clearly is telling us today.
As Lutheran Christians, you know that there are two ways in which God speaks to us. These are God’s two words.
First, God speaks to us in the Law. The Law is anything that makes a moral demand upon you and shows you your sin.
The Law tells you (and me): “You shall have no other gods;” “You shall not take God’s name in vain;” “Remember the Sabbath;” “Honor your parents;” “You shall not murder;” “You shall not commit adultery;” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not lie;” “You shall not covet.”
The Law tells you (and me) that if we fail to obey any of these commands by thought, word, or deed, we are condemned to hell. And if we try to wriggle out of the Law’s damnation by telling ourselves that we mostly obey God, the Bible reminds us, “...whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” (James 2:10)
Blessedly though, God speaks a second Word to us, the Gospel. The Gospel, the good news or the promise, of God is not about what we must do, but about what God has done (and is still doing) for us, definitively in Jesus Christ.
The Gospel sets us free from the condemnation of the Law to live in the freedom of forgiven sin and the new life Jesus delivers. Of this Gospel, the Bible says, “...it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith…” (Romans 1:16-17)
The Gospel is what the crucified and risen Jesus gives to us so that we can be “justified [declared innocent of our disobedience of God’s Law, justified] by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.”
You can’t earn the Gospel’s gifts, only receive them. Forgiveness, peace with God, and eternal life are God’s gifts to you in Christ, to be received by faith.
And saving faith in Christ that sets you free from the condemnation you (and I) deserve is an undeserved gift God delivers to you through the Word and the Sacraments. The Gospel Word reaches out to us and, as God’s Word once moved over chaos in Genesis 1, eternal life and peace take hold in those who receive it.
Some of you know that for about ten years of my life, I was an atheist. When my wife, a Lutheran, would go to worship on Sunday mornings, I slept in. One day she came home from church and complained that I was still “worshiping” at what I call “Saint Mattress of the Springs.”
To get her off my back, I started going to worship with her. At first, I confess, the liturgy baffled me, the sermons confused me, and the music meant nothing to me. But I was curious about what this Christian business all meant. So, after a while, I signed up for a class the pastor was starting called Life with God. I still have the book we used. It’s covered in the copious notes I was taking as I read and listened. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somewhere in all of this listening to God’s Word, Jesus grabbed me by the lapels and I knew I believed in Jesus. That’s what happens when the Word about and the Word of Jesus, the Bread of Life Who comes down from heaven to feed us the grace and forgiveness of God, opens us to receive Him and all that He graciously offers sinners like me. (And you.)
Today, Jesus delivers the Law to us when He says: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53) Here, Jesus is telling us that if we think we’ll have life with and from God because we’re nice people, go to church, jump through religious hoops, or because we keep our noses to the ground and avoid knowingly hurting people, we are deluded.
We are born in sin. You see this in the tiniest of babies, who are sure that the world does and should revolve around them.
And as surely as plumbers plumb and teachers teach, sinners sin. From our inborn desire to “be like God,” to be masters of the universe and more concerned about what we want than we are about what others want or God wills, we sin.
Unless Jesus, God the Son, feeds and fills us with His righteousness and His life, Jesus is telling us today, we stand naked in our sin and eternally condemned before God. If we refuse to receive the gifts of repentance and faith in Christ, our sins will condemn us eternally.
But Jesus also delivers the Gospel to us today. He says: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…” (John 6:54)
It’s contrary to our sinful nature to want to receive the God we know in Jesus.
But, by His Word, God creates faith within us.
When we listen to this Word, consider it, chew on it, and gladly hear and learn it, God produces a miracle within us: saving faith in Jesus.
The miracle of saving faith may come to a person at Baptism. I remember an old saint, a brilliant scholar, who had been brought to the font as a baby and nurtured in the faith, telling me, “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t believe in Jesus.” Faith in Christ was given to Him when the Gospel Word met the water at the font.
The miracle of saving faith may come to us when parents, friends, family members, or even pastors share the Gospel Word about Jesus with us.
Saving faith may come to us too at Holy Communion. I once read an article about a woman who had been a go-through-the-motions Christian when suddenly, facing a health crisis, she found herself craving Christ’s body and blood. Every time she heard, “Given and shed for you,” she received strength to believe, to trust in Christ’s Gospel promises. No matter how her health crisis turned out, she believed she was forgiven and belonged to Christ forever. She had eternal life in the spirit no matter what happened to her earthly flesh.
The person made alive by Christ’s Gospel has the assurance of which the apostle Paul writes in Romans: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2) And: “[Nothing] in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39)
Friends, Jesus came into this world to die and to rise for you. Not just you as a mass of people, although He did die and rise for the sins of all people. But He died and rose for you, an individual human being, an individual sinner in need of saving.
Jesus gave Himself up body and blood so that you need not rely on yourself or your complete inability to live righteously in order to have eternal salvation.
This is Christ’s gift to you.
And so, I can tell you with complete confidence this morning: Through Jesus, you are forgiven all your sin and you have eternal life with God right now.
You can live trust in this promise.
Amen
[The illustration, showing many of Jesus’ disciples abandoning Him while Peter, who didn’t understand Jesus’ mysterious words any more than the disciples who were leaving says, after Jesus asks him and the other apostles if they want to stop following Him too, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life…” (John 6:68) The illustration is by Cerezo Barredo.]