“Looking for Jesus”
Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church
Text: John 6: 24 – 35
Christopher H. Edmonston
August 13, 2006
I.
Most of you know me well enough to know that I am not overly political. In our nation, for example, I am convinced that Jesus would neither be a Republican, nor a Democrat. He would cast a watchful eye at both, just as he would any power structure or government official. To be sure one of the things we know about Jesus is that he was equally critical of every political and theological party of his day.
In part, this is why a quotation caught my eye this week. Just after 9/11, nearly 5 years ago now, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “We have two choices, either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or change the way they live.”[1]
That is a
shocking comment. On one hand I am sure
that he was referring to freedom and justice as hallmarks of the American way
of life: I am sure that he was not necessarily
speaking universally about our culture and our nation. On the other hand, to make any
claim that even suggests self-righteousness is to make a dangerous claim
indeed. There is much that needs to be
changed in our society: there is still
far too much injustice for the poor; there are still far too many boys who drop
out of school; far too many teenage girls becoming mothers; far too much binge
drinking and alcoholism on college campuses; far too many people without health
insurance; far too many fathers in prison; far too many murders; far too many
people coming to the doors of our church day in and day out in trouble and in
need of help with rent, power, and water
There is much we should change about our way of life, make no mistake about it.
II.
This week my Sports Illustrated magazine arrived – one of the football preseason preview issues. It’s almost football season – and I can barely contain my excitement.
What struck me most, though, was a story in the back. I cried when I read it and then I broke up again reading it to my wife at dinner the next night.
Earlier
this year in
Well, this championship game came down to the bottom of the final inning – two outs and runner on third base. The PONY league Red Sox are up to bat and their best hitter comes to plate. The other coach, the coach of the PONY league Yankees intentionally walks the star player of the opposing team in order to pitch to a little boy named Romney. Romney is brain-cancer patient. He has a drainage tube, a shunt, still in his head from the surgeries he has had. He wears a batting helmet, even in the outfield. In other words, in a PONY league game, the adults chose to walk the kid who could beat them in order to pitch to the kid who could barely swing the bat.
The little boy struck out and his team lost the game. And the boy sobbed himself to sleep that night. The coaches of the two teams nearly brawled. The fans booed. The local paper lambasted the winners.
To be sure sports is about winning. But picking on the weakest link is best saved for varsity, college, and professional athletics.
What does it say about us that in
The editor of the local paper wrote, “Hopefully these coaches enjoy the trophy on their mantel – [they can put them] right next to their dunce caps.”
Nothing needs to be changed about
I think not.
III.
For the past weeks, Kelly Reese and I have been preaching from John’s gospel. Specifically, we have been preaching from John’s 6th chapter. You have heard themes, if you have been listening, over and over again: feeding, food, filling up.
Kelly reminded us last week that we Jesus we can be “filled up to here” (note: speakers hand goes above head). And today Jesus, at John 6:27, warns us about having our fill with the “food that perishes” – the food that wastes away; the spiritual food that causes spiritual death. This “food that perishes” is the food that the folks in Romney’s story were having their fill of; the food that tells us that the messages of the world – in this case, “just win, baby” – can fill us like manna from heaven, or like the truth about God and His amazing love.
One of the major themes, if not THE major theme of the entire gospel of John, is the theme of life. The Greek word is zoe’ (zwh)/, and the word appears nearly 40 times in John’s gospel. Life. The opposite of death. Life. The call to the kingdom. For John and for Jesus here in John 6, there is life with God and there is death apart from God. And that is, despite popular opinion, not just speaking about eternity, although it is. Jesus is equally concerned with eternal life, and fullness of life here and now.
Think about the great quotes from: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that those who believe would have life eternal.” “The word was life, and the life was the light that shone in the darkness.” And here, in John 6, a chapter in which the word zoe’ (zwh)/, the word “life” appears 11 times Jesus says, “I am the bread of life, those who come to me will never be hungry.”
Want to be full in your living? Seek the Lord, forget about the winner’s circle. Want to know the fullness of all that there is? Get in touch with Jesus Christ, don’t be so worried about standing on top of the mountain, victor over all the earth.
IV.
People out there are hungry. They are looking for something, and generally what do they all want? To be filled.
How are they striving to get filled? For many the answer is victory, performance, and self-celebration. And often they are willing to do anything to get it. Justin Gatlin, the fastest man in the world now embroiled in a doping controversy. Barry Bonds – the home run king – now facing a federal grand jury for perjury, for lying about his relationship with steroids. Floyd Landis – Tour de France champion – stripped of title and fired from his racing team. Politicians with padded resumes. College students who cheat. There is an illness that pervades us that says that the ends, ends like “being the best,” justify the means because “being the best” is life-giving, life-affirming, and life-changing.
And while it is true enough that being the best at something is a very fulfilling experience – one wonders at what cost we are willing to stand at the head of the class?
There is a
legend about Robert Johnson that pervades the American south. Johnson, a young black man from the
V.
I often wonder, in a world full of threats and wars and rumors of wars, what is it that we are looking for?
Take a hard look at John – what is the crowd looking for? Are they looking for fame and immortality? Are they looking to be filled by being the winners of history?
No. They are looking for Jesus. John 6:24 says: “So when
the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves
got into the boats and went to
And therein, I think, lies the key. We are the most medicated, sleep deprived, and depressed people in the world. The malaise around so much of us may not be just because we haven’t taken the right pills. Couldn’t one of the causes of our illnesses be that we are filling our souls with the wrong things?
Shouldn’t we, just once stop our obsession with needing to lead at any cost, and just take our place in the crowd?
When is the last time we went looking for Jesus?
VI.
Today we
send Kelly Reese back to Seminary, back to
One of the things that she knows and that I hope we all will know is that there are a lot of “-ologies” in the Christian faith. There’s eschatology, there is soteriology, there is ontology, there is pneumatology, there is theology, and the list could go on. The concern of this today’s text though, and of all of the gospels themselves, however, is Christology. Christology: what we think about Jesus, what we say about Jesus, what we believe about Jesus.
Kelly, my word to you, and indeed, friends, my word to us all, is that Christology, our talk about Jesus, is the only talk that truly and really matters in the church. We are all of us, whether we know it or not, all of us, looking for Jesus. And the hallmark of every ministry, Kelly, yours and mine, and this church, is our ability to look for and find Him as the resolution of our faith and the consolation of our souls.
The substitutes are many and they are tempting. It is not politically correct – either intellectually or academically – to say such a thing. And yet the gospel says it, and my question would be – shouldn’t we be saying it as well? The hunger, just as Kelly preached last week, that the errors and pains and needs in our lives creates is insatiable without the bread of life, without the grace of Christ. God knows how many times I have wished for a different alternative. For a savior who did what I wanted, when I wanted, and how I wanted: for a Lord that didn’t meet me and ask me to change. For a Jesus who told me that there was nothing wrong with me. And each time I have asked for something different, instead of the bread of life that God has offered me through Him, I have come away hungrier for the asking.
VII.
Thom Currie, the Dean of Union Seminary
in
This word of Jesus from John 6 and the example of the crowds together form a powerful message that we dare not deny.
They went looking for Jesus. They needed him.
What they needed from him was life, and he gave it abundantly. “I am the bread of life – with me you will never hunger.” Never hunger? What an amazing promise.
But the promise comes at a cost – the cost whose price makes us realize that life does not happen between the lines of sports-field, or at a trophy ceremony, or at the top of business tower; the price to be paid cannot be paid in claims that say that all is well and that things are just fine as they are.
VIII.
I read
about a pastor who in the course of a week went to a meeting of big-church
pastors and a meeting of little church pastors.[4] The
big-church pastors were all talking about budgets and buildings and things –
you know new roofs – crowd control and building community in large
organizations. By contrast the small
church pastors were talking about the revival of
Kelly, my final word to you (and through you to our entire church, because it is equally true for them as you) would be this: there is enough death, enough self-righteousness, enough pain, enough ignorance, enough hunger in the world that when life shows up, when people are feasting on the bread of life, then you will know that it is Jesus Christ, and through Him the power of God, who has done it.