Sermons

Tenth Sunday after Trinity
Sunday 16 August 2009

David Paton-Williams

Readings: Ephesians 4 v15-end, John 6 v51-58

"Whoever eats this bread will live for ever."

Over the last four weeks the gospel readings from the lectionary have all come from John chapter 6.

Beginning with the story of the feeding of the 5000 John takes a lot of time to offer us an extended meditation
on the meaning of that story, in particular, he explores the meaning of Christ's words: "I am the bread of life".

Another of the major themes running through the chapter is the promise of eternal life.

Time and again John brings us back to words that link Christ the bread of life to the gift of eternal life.

And note - it is Christ who is the source of this eternal life not the bread of communion.

I say that because in the history of the church the presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist has sometimes been emphasised so much that it seemed as if receiving eternal life depended on sharing in the communion.

So that if people were excommunicated by the Church they were cut of from Christ and had no hope of salvation.

Certainly, I believe that when we share in the bread of communion the risen Christ really is present and really does feed us.

But it is Christ himself and not the bread that is important.

"I am the bread of life" says the risen Christ to us.

Just as feeding on bread sustains our physical body so feeding on Christ gives life to our spirit, life, John tells, us that is eternal.

What does that mean? What are we to make of this promise of eternal life?

Diane and I were giving communion to the residents of one the nursing homes in the parish this week. Some of the residents were very with it - others were in a world of their own but as we sang the hymns and said the Lord's Prayer there were smiles on their faces and people seemed to come alive with memories of the past.

I went around giving out the bread and I used the words: "The Body of Christ keep you in eternal life."

As we were finishing one of the ladies turned to her neighbour and said: "I don't think we get eternal life."

I wonder what experiences or thoughts had led her to that conclusion. Sadly it wasn't really the time or place to find out.

Of course there are many for whom belief in an after life is just so much a part of their faith that they never question it and they find it a great support to them in the face of death and bereavement.

But that lady's remark reminded me that there are many people who have a faith in God but who struggle to believe in there being any life beyond this one.

And yet all this talk of an after life is rather to put the cart before the horse.

Christian Aid has had a great slogan for several years: "We believe in life before death"

And this reminds us that Jesus came to bring life in all its fullness.

You only have to read a few pages of the gospels to see that Jesus didn't come with a narrowly "spiritual" message about getting people into heaven.

He came to proclaim, in word and deed, that the kingdom of God which was breaking in all around him. Everywhere, as men, women and children put their faith in him, they found themselves in that kingdom, experiencing the life of the kingdom.

They found their lives being touched by God, blessed, forgiven, set free, healed, transformed.

They began to experience a fuller life, a richer quality of life. It may not have been life in all its fullness yet but it was a taste of what the kingdom of God would be like when it came in all its fullness.

In John's gospel that life of the kingdom is spoken of as eternal life.

At one point in the gospel Jesus says "This is eternal life - to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent."

To know God - not in a theoretical, academic kind of way but to have the kind of personal knowledge that good friends have of each other, or lovers.

We are called into a relationship with God a journey into life with God and that relationship, that journey, is one in which we begin to experience the life of the kingdom we get a first taste of a richer, fuller life - just a first taste mind you

But we get a glimpse of what God has promised for us at journey's end.

We begin in a small way to experience the relationship with God which one day he promises to bring to fulfilment

That, Christ says to us, is eternal life - to know God.

To begin to know him now. and to know him more fully in whatever may lie beyond what we call death. We don't know what that life may be like. We haven't got a clue.

Or rather the only clue we do have is our faith in God as a God of life and love, who wills the ultimate well-being of the whole of creation.

When I die I do not know what will happen but I do trust that I will be in the hands of the God of all life and love - and that is enough, that is all we need to know.

Just as when I go under the surgeon's knife I don't know what the medical team are doing (I am not sure I would want to!) - but I trust myself into their hands.

Whatever he wills for us at that moment of our death will be for the best - and it will undoubtedly be beyond anything we have been able to conceive or imagine in this life.

Recently I took the funeral of someone who had loved cricket and the family asked me to include somewhere in the service the first words of a poem that had been used in the trailer for the ashes series. The poem begins: I will be playing cricket in heaven.

I have thought about that a lot. Because you could easily say that it's simply sentimental twaddle

But then I thought about all the joy and fulfilment which cricket had meant for that person.

Could the kingdom of God be less joyful and fulfilling than that? Surely not. Surely it is about all that has been good and true, joyful and life-giving, being brought to perfection in a way beyond our ability to imagine.

So it seems to me truer to say "Yes, he will be playing cricket in heaven" than "no he won't."

Not literally - but then we can't speak literally about lies beyond this world in any case.

All we can say is that we are with God and if we trust in God as the God of life and love then we may find ourselves able to trust in the promise of Christ that the relationship we have begun to have with him now will come to fulfilment in what is yet to come.

"I am the bread of life"

"Whoever eats of this bread - whoever, feeds on me, whoever opens themselves to receive me, whoever allows me to nourish and nurture them - will have eternal life,"

here and hereafter.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay