On Friday as I was queued in traffic on Port Road my attention was captured by some religious art over the front doorway of the Serbian Orthodox Church. It’s an icon of Jesus holding a bible with his words from John 14: “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” What a great message for the thousands of people that drive up and down Port Road each day—in effect the same message Jesus spoke to the crowds in Israel 2000 years earlier: “I am the bread of life.” When Jesus said this, the Passover Festival was near, at which time thousands would travel to Jerusalem, to commemorate God’s rescue of his ancient people from slavery in Egypt.
After God brought his people through the Red Sea to safety, he led them through the wilderness to test them. It was a route of God’s choosing, trailing all over the place, for 40 years. Such a journey didn’t make any sense to them. But God wanted them to learn to rely on him. He kept putting them in situations to see it was not by their own steps that they could live with God as his people. They had to learn to reset their life to live by God’s wisdom and walk in his ways.
But they were such slow learners! The people grumbled in the desert against Moses and Aaron. They cried out: “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” So God said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.” (Exodus 16:2-4).
Moses passed on the Lord’s instruction: they were to gather enough for each day, and no one was to keep any of it until morning.” Why would God command that? So that no one would trust in their human ingenuity and stockpile a supply, but instead, commit their trust to God each day. But some of them paid no attention and kept some until morning. (Exodus 16:13-20). Hadn’t God said: “I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.”?! So the manna was infested with maggots and began to smell.
On the sixth day, they were to gather twice as much manna because they were not to go out and gather it on the Sabbath day, but rest with God. Yet some of them still went out to gather it, but they found none. Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? So the people rested on the seventh day (Exodus 16:22-30).
Later, when the Israelites camped at Rephidim, there was no water for them to drink. So they quarrelled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” But the people grumbled against Moses: “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”
Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord told Moses to take the staff with which he struck the Nile and strike the rock at Horeb, and water would come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarrelled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:1-7).
Is the Lord among us, or not?
I wondered how many people had asked that at the Queen Elizabeth hospital after I made a visit there last Thursday—the people being wheeled around or hobbling around, or sitting around, waiting, with downcast faces. As I drove home I wondered how many people had asked that who once worked in now derelict warehouses with broken windows, or the businesses now boarded up. I wondered how many people had asked that as they covered walls with graffiti. I wondered how many had asked that who lived in the rundown houses with a car for sale on the front lawn. I wondered how many people had asked that, going from one seedy establishment to the next. I wondered how many people in the rushing traffic each day were like the crowd to whom Jesus first spoke in John 6—those who sought Jesus out for what they wanted: “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.
As I sat queued in traffic on Port Road, I reflected on how, for so many people, life was a dry desert; a bleak wilderness of hopelessness. Then I saw the icon of Jesus on the front of the Orthodox Church with his words: “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” Jesus is the way through the wilderness and the way to life; the food and drink for our hungry and thirsty souls.
In today’s text, Jesus said: “…the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Yet after Jesus says this there is again grumbling against God, like in the wilderness of old. The people grumbled against Jesus because he said he had come down from heaven. “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
Jesus challenged them: “Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.”
That is such Good News for us to hear, the crowd who God has gathered here today. You see, that is the Good News. The Father has gathered us here. The Father has drawn all of you to Jesus. We can’t by our own reason or strength come to Jesus. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws them.” We share the same default human position of unbelief as the crowds in the wilderness, and the crowds who followed Jesus wanting him to meet their material needs. We share the same human nature that, captive to sin, resists God and rejects him.
But God has drawn you to Jesus. Jesus himself says to you: “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). That is the gospel from Jesus to you—as we travel though the wilderness of this earth before reaching our heavenly homeland, Jesus will never drive you away. For the Father has drawn you to Jesus to be embraced by him; embraced by arms stretched out wide on the Cross when he gave his life for you.
And Jesus says: “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of those he has given me…” That is the gospel of Jesus for you—that you will never be lost to the Father because you are held by Jesus and no one shall snatch you out of his hand. You have been found by Jesus and saved for life with him that you might instead be lost to the world and the kingdom of darkness.
Jesus knew what the wilderness was like, when he was driven into it to be tempted by the devil. Although he was hungry, not having eaten for forty days and nights, Jesus overcame the devil’s temptation to provide manna for himself by turning the stones into loaves. Jesus overcame the devil for us, and although he never sinned, Jesus bore our sin and guilt on the Cross, giving his flesh for the life of the world. From there he cried out “I thirst!” before swallowing up death with his own death and rising again to live and reign eternally, to share his resurrection life with his chosen people. So Jesus says: “My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
You will not wander through the wilderness of this life only to die in the desert, because the final enemy, death itself, has been destroyed by Christ and swallowed up by his grave, that you might be raised on the last day to live with him forever in Paradise. That eternal life does not begin on the day Jesus returns. Eternal life for you has already begun; it began from the second that your Father in heaven drew you to Jesus, that by believing you might have life in his name. For Jesus says: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will not be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” The original language says it far more emphatically: Whoever comes to me will not be hungry, and whoever believes in me will certainly not be thirsty—ever.”
They are sweet words to cherish and digest when you wonder: “Is the Lord among us or not?” God knows what we go through, God knows we can’t get to where we need to be on our own. They are words for our personal situations, with all the complexities and troubles this life brings each day, as we find ourselves in different circumstances to those we’d hoped for and planned.
As we travel through the wilderness, the Father has drawn you to Jesus here again today, to be his guests of honour at his banquet where again he miraculously provides plenty for his people. As you come, hear his promise to you: “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” As you come to Jesus, the living bread from heaven, the Son of God and the son of Joseph places in your hands his own body that was pierced and crucified for you, and the cup of salvation he has filled for you with his precious blood that was shed on the Cross for the forgiveness of all your sins. In your sorrow, in your fears, in your burden of guilt and shame, in your dying you are given true life in the wilderness of this world. For here God feeds empty people with his fullness, here he meets our failures with his victory, here he takes our sin and shame and clothes us with his righteousness.
As you come to eat and drink, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. As you eat and drink, the risen Lord proclaims his will for you: that until that day he returns, he will certainly not lose any of those the Father has given to him, and will raise them up at the last day. Amen.
