The text this morning is from the Gospel of John, the sixth chapter:
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” …No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Of the multiple things going on this reading for today, John tells us two major things. First, Jesus is the bread of life, so that when one has Jesus they have life eternal. And second, Jesus claims to be both God and the Messiah. What’s amazing is that it is only because Jesus is God that He can redeem His people, and it’s only through His redemption of the world that He gives eternal life, and it’s only through bread and wine, food and drink, to stop your hunger and slake your thirst, that the redemption that is in Christ Jesus comes to us as often as we would have it.
It is only because Jesus is the God-man, being God from before all time and being man, incarnate by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary, that He can redeem His people. Only one who is both God and man could have won for the world the forgiveness of sins; only one who is both God and man could reconcile the two parties. You see, our God has a holy Law, and the people whom He created are guilty of breaking that Law.
Every day, in every way, each of us breaks the holy commands of God. And before we think ourselves too holy, or think we haven’t broken a particular command, James clearly tells us that if we have broken one law, we have broken them all. Literally. He’s not just fooling around. Each law is so intertwined with the other, surrounding the love of God and the love of neighbor, that to break one command is to break each and every one.
Yet, because our God has loved you with a love that surpasses all knowledge, He took pity upon us poor sinners and sent His Son to die for the forgiveness of your sins. He has had mercy upon you through the gift of His Son, and through His Son’s death in your place, the Lord declares you innocent, even as He poured out His wrath upon His Son.
But it can only be this man, this Jesus, the God-man who can have accomplished this for us. It can only be the one is both like God and like man who can stand between the two parties and reconcile them. And Jesus does this, for He has been sent by the Father to throw out the net of the Gospel, to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins. And as the Father draws the net back to Himself, those caught in the net will always be with the Father, because they are in Christ, they have been captured by Christ. And so we are His. We are His servants. We are His workers.
And His workers believe in Him. His people believe that He is the Christ, and because He is, and because He is in us, and we are in Him, you shall have eternal life, even to the point that though you die, you shall be raised up on the last day. Because He is God, He can promise such an amazing, unbelievable thing. And because He is man, and seeing His death for sinners upon the cross, and yet seeing the man rise from the grave, we may have confidence that our Lord will do for us what He did for Himself. Just as He did not stay rotting in the grave, neither shall He leave you decaying forever, but will join you with all believers in Him upon that last day.
But, how do we know this? How may we trust this? Our Lord chastised those who were gathered around Him, telling them they didn’t even believe His words and He was standing right in front of them. But, we may believe Him. And we believe Him best when we believe the words that He has given us in the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper: given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. These words, if we believe them, show us that we have indeed been counted as sinners who need aJesus, yet invitees who are to come to our Lord’s Supper to receive His true body and His true blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Moreover, to believe these words is to believe Christ Himself.
And this believing is better than if Christ were standing in front of us bodily. For here, in these words, and in this Supper, our Lord brings to us the benefit of the cross. Forgiveness doesn’t come because we feel it in our hearts. Forgiveness doesn’t come because we get all emotional. Forgiveness doesn’t come because we think we’re doing alright in this world. Forgiveness comes because Christ has bound Himself to His Supper.
We look forward to the day where we will see Christ face-to-face and blind faith, blind trust, believing without seeing will no longer be a thing. But, until that day, before Christ comes back, this Supper of which we are about to partake is better for us than for those flocking around Jesus in the story today. For here, our Lord comes to be with us in the bread and the wine, and here, He resides in us. Here, we find all that He has promised to us. We find forgiveness. And where there is forgiveness, there is always life and salvation. All this through a small piece of bread and small sip of wine, those which are His body and blood.
And so, when you believe the words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” you have something better than anything you could imagine. For there is the Bread of Life, which comes to you and makes you whole, preserving you unto the Last Day when you shall be raised from the dead. This bread never goes bad. It will never run out. It’s always available for you.
Jesus contrasts Himself with the manna in the wilderness. Every day the Israelites would go out and have to collect this dewey bread and the next day it would expire. They could only collect as much as they would eat, because it would always go bad. And still, though they received this amazing gift from God, they yet died. But here, Jesus indicates that He, the Bread of Life that is to be eaten by those who believe in Him, is available also every day. But, when you eat of His bread, when you eat life, it never goes bad.
He’s not saying to take your wafer and store it in your pocket for later. What He is saying is that when you eat, this is bread that will fill you forever and ever and you are always invited to come back and eat more, eat your fill, have salvation every time it is given because if you trust your heart to tell you you’re forgiven it’s going to let you down. Instead of trusting yourself, instead of believing in yourself, we are called to something higher, something greater: believing in the body and blood of Christ.
You see, it’s through the Supper that we find strength, for the Supper delivers to us the body broken and the blood shed for the forgiveness of your sins. It’s through the Supper that the cross comes across 2,000 years of history to you today. And there, in that moment, when God breaks the space-time continuum, we receive the righteousness of Christ as He receives the wickedness of our sin. And there, we find an amazing thing: God pouring out His love on you while He pours out His wrath on His Son.
And thank God for that. Thank God for that every day. Thank God for that every time you are at the Altar. For this food given to you is not like the manna in the desert. The food you eat here is the Bread of Life, Jesus for you, so that you would live forever. This is food that, as often as you would receive it, never goes bad, for the sacrifice of Christ made upon the cross for the forgiveness of your sins never goes bad. We receive the sacrifice of Christ, His cross, and it is always good for you, it is always fresh for you, it is always delivered for you.
It’s always for you, for Jesus is always for you. He claims here to be God, the Messiah, the Redeemer. That’s why He quotes Isaiah in the middle of the passage. “And they will all be taught by God.” Jesus is God. And He is teaching us here, through the salvation of His people, what He has always intended to do, offer His cross to you through Himself, the Bread of Life. And because He is that Bread, because He is God and man, you know He has redeemed you, has delivered you, has promised you every good thing through this meal. Believe in Him. He is Jesus, and He shall always do it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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