Tenth Sunday

It is the tenth Sunday after Pentecost and in the liturgical churches using the common lectionary the Gospel is John 6:35, 41-51
I just love Scripture partly because the people you read about there are so much like the people I meet every day.
Here is a group of people who are so sure of the ability of Jesus to provide food that they have come to make him King. They are a very practical bunch and know just what they want.
Then Jesus tells them he isn’t giving out the kind of bread they make in the oven out of flour. He is giving heavenly bread and He is the bread.
This does not please them. They don’t want heavenly food they want plain old bread and fish or even some manna . Everything else is nonsense.
They are a practical lot.
They then begin to grumble. They decide he couldn’t come down from heaven because he is Joseph’s son. They even know the town he grew up in. Some of them even know Mary and Joseph. So they grumble.
It makes no sense all this heavenly food stuff.
So Jesus makes one more try. He says He is better than the manna they keep talking about. He says He can give them eternal life.
In the end most of them will leave in disgust.
In our age a lot of people come to God with their own expectations. They make their demands. God offers them Himself, his love, life eternal but that’s not what they want.
They want to win the lottery.
They want instant healing.
They want a nicer world.
They want and want and want.
God offers but they don’t want what he offers so they grumble and go away mad.
But here and there somebody accepts what He offers and their life changes , forever.
They become new.
They are fed the heavenly food.
They don’t become better than those who walk away. They just become fed.
They don’t become smarter . They just know they are loved.
They don’t get more of the world’s things. They just get a heaping helping of joy.
They have no right to look down on those who walk away.
But they do have a right to rejoice that they have been fed.
I rejoice.

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And I did rejoice this morning with the congregation at St. Mark's. My stubborn daughter had them push her up to the altar area so she could join the Pastor in a puppet sermon. Pastor Steve preached on the Gospel. A very good sermon. The fellowship afterward was as good as always. Finally we have Pennie home and to some degree doing what the Doctor told her to do. She is as stubborn as her old man and look what it got him.