Proper 13: Gospel, John 6:22-35                                                    

John 6:22-35

We live in a day of searching. So called. And why do I call the search into question? Because the Word of God makes it absolutely clear that no one in their natural state seeks or searches for God. “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:10b-11, citing Psalm 14). So both testaments make it clear that any search that the natural man makes, unaided, is farce. No one seeks the true God without God making the first move. 

In our gospel this week, Jesus chastises those following Him after His feeding the 5,000 because their bellies were filled. Now hungry people need food. There’s no shame in wanting to eat when the pangs of hunger set in. Jesus wouldn’t deny that. But it’s the pretending that gets under the Savior’s skin. And so it is with people’s spiritual searches today: they search with their bellies. “What’s in it for me?” I cringe when I hear people have left a church because “I didn’t get fed.” Well, if the Word of God is offered truly and the Body and Blood of Christ is offered truly and you walk out unfed because you didn’t like the music, or the liturgy bores you, or you didn’t get a chill up your spine from the preaching, the issue is YOU. Not the menu.

Jesus makes clear that a Spirit-birthed search for God is marked by this pursuit: “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life” (6:27a). Look to Jesus. Why? “For on him God the Father has set his seal” (v.27b).

Jesus continues in perhaps his most stunning discourse. It is full of dynamite, spiritually speaking. And the response one has today to the truth of Jesus, will be the same today as it was then: eating … or leaving. It is the only account where people left Jesus because of a doctrinal presentation. And Jesus didn’t go after them. He let them go. “But Jesus, they were hungry!!!” No. No, they were not. 

Jesus is clear in John 6. His body is true food and his blood is true drink. The table is set. The meal is Jesus.