The Sunday Sermon: To whom else shall we go?

• Introduction
  • Last week of John 6
  • Review of themes:
    • General: Let Jesus tell us who he is,
      • Will we allow Jesus to tell us who he is or not?
    • Feeding the 5,000 –
      • Jesus has compassion on the crowd
      • provider of worldly needs
    • Walking on Water – the divine presence in our midst.
    • Teaching at Capernaum
      • The Bread of that gives eternal life
      • The True Bread from Heaven
      • The bread come down that gives life to the world
      • Real Spiritual Food and Drink
    • At Capernaum they come to him for the wrong reason: they had their fill of the loaves.
    • Tells them to seek not after worldly bread but the bread that gives eternal life.
    • When he tells them – they are skeptical.
      • The question him
      • Finally, today, they leave
    • Jesus turns to his disciples – will you leave me too?
    • “Where are we to go? Your words have eternal life”
    • We said that to have Jesus as the bread of life meant:
      • To follow his teachings and commandments – that is to accept what he says as true, and his teachings on morality and behavior as right.
      • Secondly – getting Jesus in us means – Communing with him in his sacramental presence in the Eucharist.
      • Not one or the other – but BOTH!
    • Truth is – we don’t always do these things – at every moment of every day. We sin and fall short of the glory of God!
      • The world judges us church goers for not being perfect;
      • Spurgeon: The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join.”
    • Our biggest problem is not being imperfect.
    • Our biggest problem is making excuses for our flaws.
      • That is – excuses for why we haven’t followed Jesus’ commandments and teachings in our daily lives.
    • By doing so – we make sin “not” sinful
      • Rather than saying we’re imperfect and in need of God’s grace.
    • By making excuses for our sins, by twisting Jesus’ words to fit our own way of living, we deny his true identity and we walk away from him, because, like those in the crowd that day in Capernaum, Jesus’ true identity doesn’t match our expectations of him.
    • So the crowd walked away because they couldn’t stomach Jesus’ words about who he was – the truth was too hard for them.
    • But I want to point us to another group: the disciples
      • They were terribly flawed – beautifully imperfect. Just like you and me.
      • Peter james and John.
    • What distinguished them from the rest of the crowd that day?
      • They saw in the words of Jesus eternal life – and they knew there was no where else to find it.
      • The were willing to listen to him – to receive him and be with him. – and many ultimately gave up their life for him –
    • That’s what we need to do! Give up our life so that his life can be in us!
    • We need to get our life out of the way so we can have his life in us!
    • That’s what we need – not perfection – but to see in Jesus eternal life and to desire to have him in us – and then we need to ask God for the grace to live in accordance to his will and his teachings.
    • God knows we’ll fail – but if we seek Jesus – and desire his life in us, then God is willing to forgive those failures and to give us a new start – each and every time we mess up.
    • Because as we get back up and move forward by God’s grace, we are nourished and strengthened by the spiritual food and drink that Jesus provides – true bread from heaven – his flesh and his blood – poured out for us – raised from death for us – and dwelling in us – welling up like a fountain to eternal life – that we may be where he is.