Good morning. This morning, I would like to present from our reading four main ideas –

1. We can know what is good for us
2. We can know the good that is available to us
3. We can know how good God is
4. We can become good through God

We finished last week’s reading with same verse we started this week’s reading, John 6:51:

⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

• We can know what is good for us

What gives us life, what is healthy for us, what sustains us, is not subjective, it is provable.

When I was a kid, I remember the first time my Mum bought home skim milk. Mum was excited to buy this healthier milk for the family, but I was confused. Our family had always drunk the blue full cream milk and that day apparently everything was changing… our family would start drinking the yellow low-fat milk!?

To me the idea of milk with less fat in it was ridiculous. To pay more for milk that had less in it, just didn’t make sense. As a young kid of about 10, I explained to my Mum the fact that she was obviously unaware of: she was paying for watered down milk.

Many years later my sister became a doctor, and we started talking about milk. It turns out that according to the medical research she had read, drinking low-fat milk is fundamentally better for you. It turns out that all those years ago, my Mum had known the truth.

Last week Rev. Lee looked at the verses of John 6 where Jesus shares an amazing truth, that he is the bread of life. Lee explained that it is through Jesus that we get to know God, fulfil our deeper needs, receive salvation, new life and a place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The idea that a man could be the source of eternal life can be a very difficult concept to get our minds around, as it was for Jesus’ original audience.

⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.

• We can know the good that is available to us

I don’t know about you, but I get very interested when Jesus talks about eternal life. My mind starts racing with questions, and I inevitably end up asking myself “what will eternal life be like?”. Here we have Jesus drawing a pretty clear picture through metaphor and reference to scriptural prophecy. If we “eat of his flesh and drink of his blood” we will have eternal life and be raised up at the “last day”. Which last day? Raise up where?

Which last day? Jesus explains in Matthew 24:29-30:

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Raised up where? Raised up here, in the world created for us, from our very graves! There are many prophecies of the resurrection, but in Ezekial 37 the image of new life and repaired relationship with God is incredible:

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³ Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. ¹⁴ I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land…”.

Where we were cut off from the source of life, God, through the curse of death, for the penalties of our selfishness, now Jesus is offering himself as the life-giving bread of heaven to save us.

We know as a church what Jesus is meaning in John 6, but let’s not forget the shocking metaphor that Jesus employs to explain his relationship to God and humanity:

⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven.

• We can know how good God is

This concept and the language of flesh and blood continues to be difficult to hear.

As a chaplain to the prisons, I would help run weekly chapel services in both the men’s and women’s prisons. I remember one week when we visited the women’s prison and where we would normally get a small group of 5 or 6 Christian women, this week we had a group of nearly 20, including many who were coming to church for the first time. The service was going well until we got to communion and the Priest, who was new to the prison, went off script and felt the need to explain what communion is. The language of communion which had seemed so familiar and common-sense to me, in this setting suddenly became weird and scary. One woman stood up and interrupted the priest and said, “Are you saying that we are going to eat someone’s flesh?” There was a pause of shock in the room. The priest did their best but found it hard to respond. A few of the women got up and left!

Jesus’ words here in John are shocking and the image is disturbing, but so is the reality he is trying to help people to see. Now we are all, through our own choices, moving towards pain, death and darkness and the only way for us to avoid this fate is to live lives which put God first, to the extent that it is like us literally having Jesus in us. To do this we need to reflect and repent; we need to acknowledge the great cost Jesus paid sacrificing his flesh and blood on the cross, and we need to humble ourselves at his throne with praise and thanksgiving.

Jesus is offering a heavenly solution to an earthly problem because God is good.

Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

• We can become good through God

As the Jews wandered in the desert 40 years because of their unbelief, we too need God to find our way out of our selfishness/lack of trust in him. God knows we are not perfect, but he desires that we can experience his love and life again like a good parent giving food to a hungry child.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matt 7:9-11

When we reach out to our creator, God’s goodness changes us. Having God in your life is an ongoing experience of transformation, something we can’t do through our own effort. Having God in your life is more than reading the bible, going to church and saying prayers… these things are an outpouring, a fruit, of the spiritual presence of God in us.

Have you ever met a mature Christian and they exude joy and humility? This is not an act, this is a result of sustaining themselves on the living bread. These Christians have fed on God in the good and the bad, daily, sometimes minute by minute, until all they can do is praise and thank God in everything.

Sometimes we may feel trapped in our sin, but as my Mum was right about the yellow milk, Jesus is right about the living bread – there is a way to wake up and be full of life. Paul wrote about this in Ephesians when he says:

“Wake up, sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

¹⁵ Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. ¹⁷ Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. ¹⁸ Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹ speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, ²⁰ always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the narrow path that leads to eternal life. Through our choice and with God’s help we can be careful, be wise, be filled with the Spirit. This description of making music from our heart is a picture of what eternal life will be like, and we can experience a foretaste of this now. Jesus, the living bread has come to us and invited us to nourish ourselves on his goodness, and this invitation is to you today and forever.

Let’s pray:

Good Father. We thank you for sending your son Jesus to offer a way to life with you. Let us choose every day to walk with you in thankfulness and praise. We ask that as we share communion together today, we will remember with humility your incredible sacrifice and our need for you. Fill us with your spirit, change and renew us, so that we can know you better, now and forever. In Jesus name, Amen.