I. Theme – Nurture and Community
"The Breadline" – Grigori Grigorjewitsch Mjassojedow (1872)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – 1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm – Psalm 34:1-8
Epistle –Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Gospel – John 6:35, 41-51
Today’s readings constellate around the themes of nurture and community.
We learn from David’s story (Tract 1, not in our readings) that violence breeds violence, that injustice must be brought to light. We know this is not easy
In 1 Kings God nourishes Elijah for a journey that takes forty days and forty nights and he is constantly on the brink of not continuing it. Poor Elijah was ready to die as he ran into hiding to escape persecution, violence and injustice. In Psalm 34, the righteous also cry for help, for they are afflicted, broken-hearted and crushed in spirit.
When the author of Ephesians says, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us,” he reminds us of God’s providence. Christ’s extraordinary sacrifice on our behalf manifested God’s love and power once again and gave us safe passage into a new life with God. These acts demand a response from us. We are challenged as much by God’s gifts as we are by the lack of them. Our conduct toward each other must reflect God’s outpouring of love toward us. The author encourages Christians to be as loving as Christ to one another.
The Gospel emphasizes God’s sustenance through Jesus who gives himself for us. Jesus promises that he will save all who come to him. But God will renew our strength, will give us courage and will continue to encourage us. Jesus calls us into this new life, in which we must stand against injustice but in nonviolent ways. We are called to lead by example, to love and forgive, to use our anger at injustice to bring about justice through peaceful means. We are called into this new life.
Jesus points out that the Israelites ate manna in the wilderness and they died. He is reminding the people that people do not live by bread alone—true life comes from the word of God. Jesus identifies himself with God. Those “taught by God” will come to Jesus to be fed the living bread for eternal life in that long-promised land where there will never be scarcity. Anyone who tastes this bread will never die.
We need spiritual soul food not superficial fast food. We need the bread of heaven, embodied in earthly relationships; not spiritual quick fixes and easy answers. We feast on the Spirit when we see God in all things and all things in God. We come to the unsearchable mystery of the eucharist with a joyful hush of thanksgiving in our hearts. Jesus sustains our souls with his life now and forever.
Consider: How can I imitate Jesus example of total, selfless giving?
II. Summary
Old Testament – 1 Kings 19:4-8
Today’s reading is from the Elijah cycle of stories. Elijah was a prophet to Israel, sent to call the unfaithful kings back to the covenant. Elijah confronts King Ahab’s endorsement and even sponsorship of Baal worship. Baal was believed to be the god of fertility, particularly in the forces of rain and harvest. Elijah comes in judgment on this infidelity to the covenant and prophesies a drought, powerfully demonstrating God’s sovereignty (17:1).
The drought ends at God’s command, as demonstrated through Elijah’s defeat of the Baal priests. Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, seeks vengeance on the prophet, who flees for his life in utter despair.
After hearing of his triumph and massacre of the Baal priests, Jezebel boasts that it is payback time for Elijah: she will not stop under he is killed. The narrative describes a war going on between the Yahweh and the pagan fertility gods. Is Jezebel as evil as the scripture suggests or is she merely honoring her religious tradition, exacting punishment for the perpetrator of what she perceives to be an act of violence and apostasy? Fearful for his life and the anticipated pre-mortem torture he is bound to receive if he’s captured, Elijah asks God to be is executor. Once elated over his triumph, he is now utterly discouraged when the going gets rough.
But, God has other plans for the prophet. God encourages Elijah to continue to live, even to survive, when Elijah is ready to give up and die. God doesn’t chide the fearful prophet, nor does God punish him for his cowardice. God provides bread for the journey ahead. When God has a vision, God also provides the resources. God’s care shows up often in our hour of need, when self-confidence and courage have deserted us.
Elijah’s exhaustion and hunger drive him to the brink of collapse, at which point an angel wakes up Elijah twice. The first time was not enough; Elijah needed continued encouragement, and God knew that and provided it, and it was enough to keep Elijah going. The angel feeds him, touches him and encourages him on his journey to Horeb, the mountain of God (also called Mt. Sinai). The story acknowledges the depression and despair that can come on the heels of great successes and points, in the end, to the presence of God as the only source of strength.
Psalm – Psalm 34:1-8
Psalm 34:1-8 is a psalm of praise for deliverance, remembering the blessings of God in difficult times and that God has heard the cries of those in need. “Taste and see”—God is so active in our world that we need to use all of our senses to experience God’s goodness and wonder.
Psalm 34 explores the many ways we relate to God – blessing, boasting, seeking, looking, magnifying, exalting, and finally tasting and seeing. Our relationship with God – our spiritual lives – is intended to be whole person, not just cerebral. We can encounter God with every sense. We can touch, taste, smell, see, and hear the divine. No one is exempt from revelation. Head, heart, and hands alike mediate God to us and enable us to mediate God’s love to the world. Psalm 34 describes the amazing gifts that emerge in a dialogical, call and response, relationship with God.
Epistle – Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Today’s reading continues the ethical exhortation of the previous two weeks. The new life of the baptized is to be lived out in specific ways. Old patterns of behavior must be replaced with new ones.
Ephesians 4:25-5:2 remarks that this new life in Christ calls us to ways of peace and justice. All discourse and behavior should build up the life of the community. Thus all Christians participate in the unifying work of the Spirit in the Church (4:3).
We are allowed to be angry—indeed, we recall Jesus’ own anger in the temple when he overturned the tables—but we are called not to sin in our anger and not to let our anger grow inside us. We are called to live in peace, to work honestly to provide for ourselves and others (and Ephesians indicates that perhaps we ought to give those who have sinned another chance for honest work), to watch what we say that it might build up rather than break down—all of these are part of the way of Christ, to live for others and not for ourselves and to live our lives in ways that help build up the reign of God, by imitating Christ.
Gospel – John 6:35, 41-51
John 6:35, 41-51 overlaps with last week’s passage where Jesus declares that he is the bread of life.
This section of the discourse on the bread of life combines the themes of bread as the revelation of God in word and wisdom and bread as the revelation of God in the Eucharist. Various Old Testament parallels would prepare the hearer for understanding bread as the symbol of God’s word. Amos describes a famine not of bread but of hearing the lord’s words (Amos 8:11); the image of wisdom giving “the bread of understanding” (Proverbs 9:5); the word of the lord giving sustenance like bread (Isaiah 55:10-11).
For Jesus’ hearers, this bread would have meant the Torah. Jesus is that revelation of God. He does the Father’s will, not his own. Those who really see him (6:40–the verb for “see” used here indicates, for John, true spiritual insight in contrast to the verb used in 6:36) will have eternal life in the present and participate in the resurrection “at the last day” (v. 40).
In reaction, “the Jews” (or more specifically for John “the Judeans” in Jerusalem and now in Galilee who oppose Jesus) murmur at Jesus, like the Israelites in the desert (Exodus 16:2, 7). As usual in John’s Gospel, the listeners take Jesus’ words too literally (remember how Nicodemus questioned how one could go back inside one’s mother’s womb to be born again?) The ones hearing Jesus this time have known him and his family, and so they don’t understand how he literally could have come down from heaven. Jesus has spoken of himself as the Living Water in chapter 4, now he is the Bread of Life, and later Jesus will speak of himself as “The Way, The Truth and the Life.”
The skepticism about Jesus’ physical origins (Mark 6:3; Matthew 13:55; Luke 4:22) is answered on a theological level. As in rabbinic writing (Hosea 11:4), God draws people to the Torah and is their teacher (Isaiah 54:13), so here the Father draws all who have learned from God to Jesus (12:32).
Jesus’ identification as the bread of life indicates his relationship to humanity, that of nourishment. In verses 45-50 the same argument is made as in 4:13-14 The Torah is without life-giving power. This leads naturally into the more specifically eucharistic discussion on “eating the bread.” The descriptions of the bread of life also echo the problems of the humans in the garden of Eden: “I will never drive away” (6:37; Genesis 3:24); “one may eat of it and not die” (6:50; Genesis 2:17, 3:3); “Whoever eats of this bread he will live forever” (6:51; Genesis 3:22).
III. Articles for this week in WorkingPreacher:
Old Testament – 1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm – Psalm 34:1-8
Epistle – Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Gospel – John 6:35, 41-51
rsquo; words too literally (remember how Nicodemus questioned how one could go back inside one