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 4th , 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.
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