September 20, 2015 John 6:35-40 “What Shall We Teach Our Children?”

Our passage this morning starts with a great promise. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  It is the promise of eternal life.

The message that Jesus offers is obvious and straight forward.  He will never drive away any who come to him.  He is doing the will of the one who sent him.  He came down from heaven to do this work.  He is giving eternal life to all who believe.  All who believe will rise up with him on the last day.

For the next three sermons, we will be considering this message and the layers that are contained within it.

We are looking at it from a particular point of view; the point of view of how we teach others on their own journeys of faith.  The primary focus will be on our children, especially as we begin our new Sunday School year, but the teaching of God’s Word comes to everyone new to the faith Or returning to the faith.  As we consider the question of how we teach about our faith, my hope is that each of us will gain, better understanding and deeper insight into our own faith journeys.

What is the simple promise of this passage?  In Jesus Christ, you will never have the hunger or the thirst of wondering what happens to us after death.  The reason for this is that God loves us so much, He sent Jesus to be among us, to teach us and to love us, and to assure us of God’s gift of eternal life.

Wrapped up into this message are certain assumptions, that God is in control, that His creation is, essentially, a good and wonderful place, that, while some things go wrong, while bad things happen, they are not in control.

These are the assumptions that we make about the world, The world that we want to raise our children in.  And we make these assumptions although we know it is a complex world, we know how powerful sin truly is.  We know the evil that humans can commit against one another.  We have experienced these evils for ourselves, some of us directly in our lives, others of us through the connection we have with the lives and others.  All of us by the knowledge we gain of the events of the day.  Such as images of Syrian refugees fleeing to the Greek islands, or radio stories from Hungary about these refugees being put on trial as some nations seek to close their borders.  We have only to open our eyes and ears.  How often do we choose not to open our eyes, not to listen to the world around us, hoping that if we close our ears, the pain will simply pass us by.

But, on balance, do we believe that the power of God outweighs the power of evil?  This is the most basic question that Jesus is giving us His answer to.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  It is not a matter of having enough to eat or to drink, What is it that we hunger and thirst for?

• The end of violence,
• The end of poverty,
• The end of disease,
• The end of greed,
• The end of sin, the root of all these evils.

And, having gathered in this place, we believe in Jesus’ power, the power of God, to accomplish that.

This is the message of God’s power that we are teaching to our children.  From a distance, it can appear to be very black and white.  There are a lot of good guys vs. bad guys, winners and losers.  Sometimes, our Sunday school curricula are accused of sanitizing the bible, of removing the bad parts and promoting the good.  I do not accept that charge as an accusation.  I rather praise that as an accomplishment.

Sunday school is not teaching our children a lie.  Jesus IS the bread of life.  Those who hunger or thirst will never do so again.  That is absolutely true.  A good Sunday School curriculum will teach that in a way that is age appropriate, true to the nature of the bible’s message, wonderful in its motivation of our kids, but with the knowledge that it is not teaching everything.

A lot of Christians run into trouble in making their faith real when their knowledge and instruction has never progressed beyond the lessons of their Sunday School days.

The truth of Scripture is no different from the many other truths that we learn about in life.  We can look to historic events, like the Revolutionary War or World War II.  We can pick a sporting event of great local import, like Superbowl 42.  Or we can go with something far more every day, like what time is bedtime in your household?

In each of these events, there is a simple truth that can be stated without fuss, muss, or bother.  The colonies won the Revolutionary War and formed the United States of America.  The Allies beat Hitler and won the Second World War.  In Superbowl 42, The Giants beat the Patriots and spoiled their attempt at a Perfect Season, and the people rejoiced.  Bedtime in your house, is it 7:45, for mommy?  7? 8? 9? 10? You have your own rules for your kids.  About our faith: “Jesus is the bread of life. Whoever comes to him will never be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty.”

Each of those statements are true.  Each of them are accurate, each of them are entirely appropriate, insofar as they go.  Our kids will learn the truth of Jesus, they will learn stories of the Bible, truthfully, accurately appropriately, at least insofar as they go (certain details, that may carry a PG-13 or even an R rating, we may hold back until a better age).

But we have to recognize that this teaching is only the beginning, not the sum total of what they will receive from this church about their faith.  Because we have to recognize that it is not enough.

What happens when we run up against the bigger questions of life?  What happens the first time you are truly hungry for the bread of life?  Truly thirsty for the living waters?  What happens when you are convinced that Jesus could not love you because you do not love yourself?  And you are convinced, in your soul, that you are unlovable?  What happens when you have a blind faith in Jesus to protect your children from terrible things, and a terrible thing happens?  When you tried to protect your child and you could not and it looks like the Jesus you love simply would not?

This is why it is so critical to recognize that what we are teaching our children about Jesus is only the BEGINNING of their walk with Him.  It has to be because a Sunday School faith is not enough.  It is the same as life.  We do not consider an education ending at kindergarden, or elementary school, or middle school, or high school to be enough.  Our nation is focused on the training that comes after high school, whether in college or in the trades or in the military.  Our kids could learn about July 4^th , the Declaration of Independence, and the Revolutionary War in kindergarten or the first grades.  Then, as grownups, they could go on to write a PhD dissertation, adding new knowledge to our understanding of what happened at American Independence.  It is the same thing with our faith.

As we grow in faith, the bible stories do not change (although we may start to include some of the more… mature portions), except that if our children picked up their bibles, we would not edit what they read, would we?  Still, the breadth and depth of what the stories of the bible mean will expand.  How they touch our lives and expand our horizons and fill us with the love of God and help us stand even in the worst disasters of life, held up by His power.  That is what is going to grow inside of us.  And, as our children grow, we are charged with the responsibility of helping them discover the greater and richer breadth and depth of that truth.

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  I have been treating these words on the same level as a historic truth or a sporting victory.  But there is something fundamentally different here.

I speak these words here and now, the bible speaks them to us, I commend them to your memory as an added commitment of faith to the coming week.  But there is something far more powerful at work here.

Behind the face of these words is a grand truth, stretching from this pulpit, back across time and geography to the cross of Jesus Christ, to his tomb found empty, back over and across reality itself, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into each of our lives.  Wrapping us in the knowledge that we will never hunger or thirst again is the sure and certain truth of Jesus’ love for us.  Gathering in this Neighborhood, women and men of faith who are prepared to plumb the depths of this truth, not simply for ourselves, but for our children and for any member of our Neighborhood in need.  What I pray we will remember for our children is that today, on this Rally Sunday, we commend them to a lifetime of learning, growth, and faith in Jesus Christ.  A lifetime that we, in turn, will dedicate our own selves to, once again.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  May our faiths ever grow that these words shall forever be our truth.  Amen.

What Shall We Teach Our Children?

This Sunday is Rally Day, the Kick Off to our Sunday School year.  Our passage in Scripture, John 6:35-40, speaks directly to what it is we have a Sunday School for.  We want to teach our children that Jesus is the Bread of Life.  We want them to know the truth, that in Jesus, they will never hunger or thirst for the ultimate things, the spiritual things of life and what is beyond life.


But do we hit them with the entire truth of the sinfulness of the world?  Of the evil that surrounds us?  Of just what it is that Jesus' death and resurrection do, in fact, overcome?  Or should our teaching be more age appropriate?  More graded to the maturity and the readiness of our children to accept the truth of life?


This Sunday begins a three Sunday series (broken up by the first Sunday of October, when Mjr. Betty Israel will be leading worship), a series that will look at how Jesus develops and deepens his explanation of being the Bread of Life, how it truly impacts and applies to our lives, how it is dependent on how our own knowledge and faith deepen as we act in His name.

"In The Shadow of the Cross"

This week, Dr. Glory Thomas will be preaching from the pulpit at the church.  The title of her sermon is the title of this posting.  Her texts will be Isaiah 50 : 4-9 & Mark 8 : 27-38.  It is a joy to welcome her to our church this Sunday.  Next week, we shall be continuing in our study of the Gospel of John.

Come for the Fun, Stay for the Grace

John 6:22-34                    September 6, 2015

The people were looking for him.  He disappeared.  They saw the disciples take off without him.  They probably saw him head off into the mountains, but now he was gone.  Some boats did arrive from Tiberias, but Jesus wasn’t on those as well.  He was gone.

He wasn’t gone of course, he’d taken a hike across the lake, literally.  He and his disciples were now in Capernaum.  The people walked around the lake and they caught up with him there.  But these people were playing it cool, like, yo, Jesus, my man, when did you get here?

Jesus, not being a dope, saw right through their act.  You are not here for me, you are here for the free meal.  You are expecting me to buy you another, pardon, create for you another round of bread and fish.  ²⁷Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

The people were not born yesterday either.  Jesus is making his pitch, their response, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’  It was a really tough answer that Jesus gave them, believe in me.  Now we come back to the angle that the people are working, believe in Jesus, okay, but… ‘What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? ³¹Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”  If you’ve seen “Little Shoppe of Horrors”, you might remember the line, “Feed me Seymour…”  The people are like, “Feed me, give me something to eat.  Yo, Jesus, feed us a little more and we’ll give the matter some serious consideration.”  Maybe this time, instead of barley loaves and fish, they were cruising for a little surf and turf, you know, lobster and steak…

So Jesus comes to the crux of the matter, …Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³For the bread of God is that which^* comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ They came for the fun, they stayed for the grace.

Isn’t this what we are seeking to create in this church?   We begin with the place and the people, inviting, attractive, dare we even call church…fun?  When people come to us, when the Lord sends people to us, we hope they find a good place to be.  I look forward to Sundays because I know the company that I will keep.  I work for this congregation as your minister, but I have come to receive the support and the blessings of you all as well.  You guys are my friends.  You are very precious to me.

I see this passage standing behind our vision, to be a Neighborhood in God’s Kingdom.  There is an implication that we are creating a place of safety, a place of friendship, a place of caring, a place where we can have fun together.  But that is not the end of the journey, only its beginning.  When someone comes to this church, I have a vision for what I hope will happen.  I hope that the power of the Living God, through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, will bring about a life-transforming experience for them.

I know where the life-changing experience comes from.  It is not a fluffy or light bit of religious ‘feel-good’.  I know the center comes from what our passage speaks to.  I know what wells up inside when I consider this ‘bread of life’, this bread from heaven.  It takes me to the table at which we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper in just a few minutes.  Here is the bread of life broken for us for the forgiveness of our sins.  Here is the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus, bearing our sins and our judgment on his shoulders that we may experience only God’s grace.  Here is the Good Friday event leading to Easter liberation which is the hallmark of our Christian faith.

What this passage shows us is a way for people to reach that grace.  I think a prime example of how we, in the Neighborhood, should be seeking to do the work of God.  Because there is another paradigm, another way of doing this.  That is threatening people with hell.  A lot of churches out there, a lot of messages out there, a lot of Christians out there, the reason they are in it is not to win it, not to go to heaven, but to make sure that their friends don’t end up going to hell because of their actions in this life. 

            Well brothers and sisters, when I consider that, when I think about that, when you’re telling someone they are going to go to hell for what they have done, you have not asked them to change their ways, you have threatened them.  You have laid a consequence upon them without even illustrating the love of God.  You are attempting to scare them, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a part of a religious organization that uses scare tactics.

            There has got to be a better way, there must be a more wonderful way and I think the passage that we have this morning from John is telling us what that right way is.  Now, I know our kids have gone back to school, I know our teachers have gone back to school, I know life has gotten going a little earlier this year, before Labor Day.  The hallmark of an excellent teacher is not that they are going to come before their class and say, “Look here is the textbook, you are going to learn algebra, or you are going to fail the exam.”  I have not met a teacher yet who can get away with that and make their children enthusiastic about the subject, “Oh, I want to learn algebra because I don’t want to fail my test!”

            The best teachers that I have ever seen in operation are the ones who get people learning, who get their kids learning despite themselves.  Yes, there is content, yes, there is material, yes there is core curriculum, yes there are things that those students are responsible for, yes, there are things the teachers are responsible to get into their heads, and sometimes you feel you need a drill to get it into their heads…  Those teachers who are able to make the material lively, maybe even fun, are able to engage with their kids.  They get things from their kids that I result in parents standing around with their jaws dropped, saying, “Is that my child?”

            I have been that father going to back to school nights, when they describe my kids in school, and these are good teachers working with my kids, and I love my kids, but I cannot believe they are the same people who come home from school every night.  Have you had those moments in life, those of you who have kids, those of you who have grandkids?

            The good teachers get things out of them.  Does the material change?  No.  They are still learning their history, they are still learning their math, they are still learning their writing, they are still learning their science, those things are still being formed in their lives, but it is being done without the threat of a textbook over their heads, without the threat of an exam being failed, without this fear-threat response.

            I think church has to work in the same manner.  If you have six friends that would like to invite to church, I would suggest going to three of them and say, “If you don’t want to go to hell, come to church with me this Sunday.”  And maybe to the other three, say, “We’ve got something cool going on at church, would you like to come?”  Now you may not get any of the six to come with you, you may get one, but I bet you, dollars to donuts-especially if you serve donuts-that you get the friends you invited nicely along to come along with you instead of the ones you threatened with hellfire.

            Does it make sense?  It is the same path Jesus is taking with these people.  He fed the five thousand, they want to come back for more, they like it.  They enjoyed the food, free food, who wouldn’t?  We’re Presbyterians, we love food.  But Jesus is taking that bread of life and he is taking it to a place that is deeper for them.  There is more to it than just sitting around and eating.  There is more to it than just coming out and hanging out with your friends.  There is more to it than just showing up on a Sunday morning and enjoying good music, and enjoying one another’s company.

            There is something absolutely life changing about what we are trying to do here.  We don’t build a Neighborhood because we want to be Sesame Street.  We want to be Sesame Street so people will be welcomed and people will enjoy, and they will come and they will see, and they will know we are Christians by our love. 

            We are on the cusp of a whole new program year.  Some things are changing.  We are redoing the pattern of our Sunday school.  We are going into a quarterly basis, we are going to have a fall quarter, break for Christmas-have some great fun at Christmas, do something in the winter, do seomthing in the spring, teams of teaching, bringing all our kids together, one room schoolhouse effect. 

            There are a couple of reasons for that.  One, we are losing kids on the edges.  We gotta try something new.  We gotta give them this thing that we have, that we know about, that Jesus is Lord, but that Jesus isn’t a boring, scary, threatening, fire breathing Lord.  Our Jesus is THAT Jesus, up in the picture there, welcoming the children.  Our jesus is not the one who looks down upon them with his finger out. 

            That does not undermine the absolute life changing seriousness of who we are as people of faith.  We gather together because we believe in a Lord who loved us so much that he let the Romans break his body.  We gather together to worship him because he loved us so much that he let the Romans stick a spear in his side, put nails through his hands, spill his blood. 

            Yes, that is gross.  Yes, that is not politically correct, but you know what, that is the thing of life.  And it was because of his death that we receive new life.  Should we enjoy the bread of life?  Absolutely.  Should we ever forget the cost at which it is laid before us?  Absolutely not.  

            He is our Lord, we are his Children.  May we be blessed and may we take his blessings out into the world.  Amen. 

"Can You Believe Jesus Hiked on Water?”

August 30, 2015                   John 6: 15-21 




So the situation is as follows:


Jesus fed the five thousand.  They now want to make him king.  Jesus does not want to be king so he withdraws, alone, into the mountains.  The disciples hop in a boat, at night, to cross the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum.  This is on the other side of the lake from where the miracle took place. 

It was a dark and stormy night.

So, three to four miles out, the disciples are in a bit of a tempest.  Then they spot Jesus hiking out to meet them.  It was three or four miles.  And Jesus scares the bejeezes out of them.  Still, he identifies himself and they calm down immediately.  They want to take him into the boat, but they discover they’ve just arrived where they wished to go.

Jesus does more than walk on water, he hikes on it.  Now last week, in discussing the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, I spoke of two competing explanations of the miracle.  One, Jesus made all the found divinely.  Two, Jesus inspired all the people to share the bits of food they’d brought along.  The second explanation was from a compelling sermon by a pastoral colleague who has a different view of how God performs miracles in the created order.  But this little story seems to be placed here exactly to disprove any assumption that Jesus does not do miracles in the created order of things.

This passage lends itself to a simply, sappy sermon.  When your life is stormy, and you do not know how you are going to get through the darkness that is overtaking you, there might be a moment when, off in the distance, something ghostly and completely unimagined suddenly shows up.  It’s timing is uncanny, right at the moment of the trouble.  Whatever it is, it is a scary thing.  But give it consideration, and you will see Jesus in that scary thing.

What might be a boiler plate application of this interpretation?  Maybe it is about the job.  Maybe you are in a horrible job, horrible for any number of reasons.  The boss is a real jerk.  You are totally unappreciated.  They treat you like dirt.  The pay is lousy, the hours are long, the environment is dangerous.  Then, at some point, in the storm or wind that is the job, something happens.  You get fired or laid off.  Things tip past the breaking point and you outright quit.  Something in your gut that feels like an ulcer about to explode finally pushes you out the door.  Maybe the tipping point was there for the longest time, just out of reach, but you were too afraid to take the plunge.  Then some moment, a ‘Jesus’ moment occurred and you made the change. 

This story usually ends well with a better and more fulfilling job, or a happy retirement, or something, a benefit because the power of Jesus intervened.

It is not my intention to dump on that idea.  Amazing things happen every day through the power of faith.  The Lord watches out for us.  He intervenes in our lives.   Happily ever after is real, for many people, but maybe not for everyone.

Sometimes, amazing things do not happen.  Sometimes, disaster piles on disaster, and life gets pretty gruesome.  How do we account for that?  There are some TV preachers who would tell you that your faith is inadequate.  If God hasn’t blessed you, the problem isn’t with God, it’s with you.  Because if you believed hard enough, God would bless you.  It’s called prosperity theology.  It defines the goodness of Christian faith with what is considered ‘good’ in capitalism, more stuff, money, possessions, whatever.

I think we should take another look at this story, that there is an entirely different consideration to make.  Let’s return to the details of the story.

Jesus just performed his biggest miracle yet.  The response is apparently mob rule because the people want to force him to be their king.  The result is predictable, the Romans will object and kill everybody.  Not a good idea.  Jesus is not there to get the people killed, but to give up his own life when the time is appropriate.  In order to avoid the trouble, Jesus withdraws “to the mountain by himself.”

Meanwhile, the disciples are down on the beach, watching the sun set.  Maybe they are munching on some left over barley bread from the twelve baskets they gathered up.  It gets dark.  Maybe the disciples got bored.  Maybe they were indignant that Jesus was holding them up.  Maybe they assumed a couple of angels would pop down from heaven and fly Jesus across the Lake.

For whatever reason, they decided they could not wait for Jesus any longer, and they took off in the boat without him.  I wonder how they let Jesus know they were going to Capernaum.  I hope they agreed to do that before they left.  They don’t have cel phones, and it would really be presuming on God’s power that Jesus is just going to like, divinely read their minds or something.

The bottom line is, they left without Jesus.  And they ended up in the dark and in the wind, and Jesus had to come out and save their sorry butts.  They saw him, were scared witless till they figured it out, then, when they tried to get him in the boat, they found they’d arrived where they were headed.

Maybe the moral of this story should be something more like “Don’t get into the freaking boat without Jesus in the first place!”  It is a much more basic and comprehensive message.  If Jesus is part of our life on a daily basis, you won’t get into so much trouble.  The joy is that when we do forget about Him, He will crash the party when we need Him too.

To abuse this metaphor, if we make sure Jesus is in the boat with us, a few things change.  What we call ‘happily ever after’ can change.  Here is one of the hard truths of life.  Everybody dies, period, end of discussion.  But because he died already, and broke death, coming back to life, Jesus changed the game.  “Happily ever after” is not achieved by doing everything we possibly can to try and stay in this life forever.  Happily ever after is dying with dignity and the sure and certain knowledge that there is a life beyond this one.

But the moral of the story is that when we do get into the boat without Jesus,  and when we do start to flounder-because we will, he’s going to hike out into the middle of the lake to rescue us.  Praise his Holy Name.  Amen.