Healing for the Nations || Christ Vision 3/5

Year B: Proper 14

Over the next four weeks, I’ll be preaching through series called Christ Vision. We know that Jesus is like God, and we know that God is like Jesus. This is really good news. This series is about how Jesus came to show us how he sees the Father, as the Source of infinite love and compassion. Jesus wants us to know that God loves us just as God loved Jesus from before the beginning.

Once we begin to understand this, we will be transformed in such a way that the Love of Father, Son, and Spirit will overflow from ourselves and churches into the world around us.

This third video is about how God views the people around us. We learned in the first sermon how the Son views the Father and how this realization means salvation has no terms and conditions or fine print. In the second sermon, we talked about Jesus’s invitation to come to him so that we can have rest for our souls. In this sermon, we talk about everyone else. How does God view people of other nations, tribes, languages, and cultures?

For those of you who enjoy the lectionary posts, they are sill here. Just look below the video!

Year B, Proper 14, August 11, 2024

First Reading: 1 Kings 19:4-8

Psalm: Psalm 34:1-8

Second Reading: Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Gospel: John 6:35, 41-51

Sermon - The Bread that Came from Heaven

It’s hard for us to believe that two things can be true, even if they seem opposed to one another. We believe that we are created in God’s image, but we also see how much pain humans cause each other. We see that God created the earth to be good, but we see so much…bad. As Paul said, we see the Spirit working within us, but we also see Sin working within us.

How do we live with this kind of tension.

This is part of the reason why we have a hard time seeing God as God truly is. Just mentioning the Trinity or the Godhead can make the smartest person scratch their head.

In John 6, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).

The response to this claim is predictable:

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” John 6:41–42

How can Jesus be the Eternal Word of God? We saw him grow up. We changed his diapers. We fed him apple sauce pouches.

You get the idea.

How can the Creator and Sustainer of all things enter into our darkness and delusion? This is unfathomable to us.

Or, to use Paul’s word, it’s a mystery.

As Richard Rohr has said in the past, though, mystery is not something that cannot be understood; it is something that can be endlessly understood.

Mysteries like this invite us to dive into them deeper and deeper. The more we sit with the tension and behold the mystery, the more we ourselves are transformed.

As Jesus says, when we eat of the bread of life, we will never hunger and never thirst.

In other words, as we consume the flesh and blood of Jesus, taking him into us, we are transformed to be more and more like him. We partake in his death, but we are resurrected into his life.

Notice Jesus’s warning and encouragement here:

Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. John 6:43–45

When we stop complaining about our inability to crack the code and allow ourselves to be drawn to Jesus by the Father, we have life. Instead of trying to figure out all the answers ourselves, Jesus invites us to sit at the feet of God, hear about Jesus, and learn what God wants us to know.

And when we come to Jesus, we have true rest for our souls: resurrection life.

Second Reading: The Kind of Person Jesus Calls Us to Be

In Ephesians 4:21-23, Paul teaches that we are to put away the old self and clothe ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God. This doesn’t mean abandoning who we are or giving up our individuality; instead, it means returning to what it means to be truly human.

We are first called by Paul to give up falsehood (Ephesians 4:25). This is more than just avoiding lying; instead, it’s a call to live authentically and to walk in love. Paul’s explanation for this way of living is that “we are members of one another.” When we realize that Jesus has broken down the barriers between people and has created a new humanity, then we will live like he lives (Ephesians 2:14-16).

We’ll “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven [us]” (Ephesians 4:31). We’ll also “walk in love, as Christ loved us” (Ephesians 5:2). In doing this, we will be imitators of God and project the Divine image to the world (Ephesians 5:1).

This means we are to control our anger, make a living so we can share with the needy, avoid evil talk, trust in the Holy Spirit, and put away all of our “bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” (Ephesians 4:26-31).

Which of these areas do you need to work on? Do you get angry easily? Do you harbor bitterness? Do you hold grudges and have a hard time forgiving? Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Ask the Spirit for help, and call on your brothers and sisters for prayers and assistance as well. Let’s grow closer together as we allow God’s love to shine through us.

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Thanks so much for keeping up with this blog. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or critiques, you can always comment here or reach out through my website: https://danielr.net.