I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE!
Jesus said, Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth
unto everlasting life.
Today is Thanksgiving, more properly called Harvest Thanksgiving, and the verse which begins the Gospel appointed for today may seem a rather strange choice for such a festival.
Of course, Jesus is not telling us not to work, either to grow our food or to earn the means to acquire it. What He is doing is repeating the sentiment He first expressed in the Sermon on The Mount, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat. That was from Matthew Chapter 6 and you may remember that it was part of the Gospel reading for Trinity 15.
We were reminded then that God loves us so much more than we can ever comprehend and that, because of that Divine Love, He will take care of us. Again, what is being taught by Jesus Christ is not that we should, or can, sit around waiting for everything to be delivered to us. That is not the Christian way and is incompatible with the responsibilities we are given with respect to caring for the poor, for example. Jesus Himself worked very hard, firstly at the carpenters trade taught Him by His stepfather, Joseph and then at His ministry.
But in that ministry, our Lord’s focus was on completing the work given to Him by His Father. Jesus first and foremost conformed His life to the will of God the Father.
That is the direction in which we must follow His words today. Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life. In everything we do we must seek the will of God, the help of God, the love of God and the glory of God.
Then said they unto Him, What shall we do that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe in Him whom He hath sent.
This is the work of God, that ye believe in Him whom He hath sent. That sounds so gloriously simple, doesn’t it? On the surface, it actually is, but we are diving here into a very deep pool indeed. There is no wriggle room in our Lord’s words, especially when we begin to comprehend what lies beneath that word, believe.
At that point, the harvest moves beyond the cow shed and chicken coop, beyond the vegetable patch and the corn field, beyond the fruit trees and the shoals of fish. The harvest takes on elements of the supernatural for it most surely then encompasses our very souls.
Believing in Jesus is not just a question of saying, I believe in Jesus. Talk is cheap and those words often amount to nothing more than an acknowledgement that we have heard the name and accept that there was a person who, long, long ago bore it.
But behind the name of Jesus is a God whose love for His wayward creatures led to the Incarnation of His only begotten Son, in the full humanity of whom He, God the Son, was humiliated and nailed in extraordinary pain to the wood of the Cross.
Believing in Jesus means seeking, through God’s help, an ever keener understanding of the Cross. It means coming to terms with our fallen human nature, accepting our individual responsibility for Christ crucified and bewailing our sins.
It means learning more each and every day about the ministry of Jesus Christ; about the example our Incarnate Lord set for us and about what He requires of us. It means obedience to His teachings and commandments.
Believing in Jesus Christ means loving Him as He loves us, or at least wanting to, because we cannot even come close to such an ideal. It means trusting Him as He trusted God the Father every step of the way to that last victory cry from the Cross, It is finished!
That is where the supernatural element enters in, for in believing in Jesus Christ in this way, the way He requires, we are trusting that our souls will be part of God’s great harvest of souls. Is there anything for which we should give thanks more than that?
We will shortly participate in the feast which Jesus initiated to feed and sustain our souls, the Holy Eucharist. On Thanksgiving Day, it is particularly appropriate to give special thanks for Christ’s Supper and all that it contains. It is in the Eucharistic Feast that our Lord’s words speak most eloquently, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
No one but Jesus Christ could make that promise.
So it is also in the Eucharistic Feast that we see more clearly our utter dependence on God. We come face to face with the fact that we are quite incapable of saving ourselves and if we are honest, we will see that there is nothing we can do without God. He gives us the talent, the abilities, the knowledge, and every other means to accomplish whatever we accomplish.
So it is from the Eucharistic Feast that we can move to give Him our heartfelt thanks for those things which are part of our daily lives. It is only when we stand in the shadow of the Cross with our minds fixed on the once, perfect, perpetual sacrifice of Our Lord, that we can see anything else in its proper perspective.
We will shortly relocate from the knave of our church to our church hall and there we will share in God’s general providence. We will eat, probably more than we need to eat and we will, I sincerely hope, enjoy every morsel of it. In case any of you are now gearing up to beat up on me afterwards, I am not advocating gluttony. I am really saying that this is a special occasion of Christian fellowship and I really do want us all to enjoy it to the utmost. A little over the top on such an occasion is surely forgivable.
Other than being willing consumers of what others have produced, faceless, nameless, unknown to us but yet God’s instruments, we will have contributed little or nothing to the meal we enjoy.
But even as consumers we are part of God’s plan and we
should thank Him for our place in the cycle of life. Even as consumers we can give Him the glory,
especially if we bear in mind that we eat to sustain the
We can thank Him and give Him the glory in thanking those among us who have bought food, set up the hall, fetched and carried, cooked and cleaned, today and in times past. We can thank Him that there will be for each of us, if He so wills it, another occasion to which in His love we can contribute.
But let us thank Him most of all for joining us to the Body of Christ in the first place and for maintaining us in the true life of that body.
I am the bread of life, Jesus said; He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and the that believeth of me shall never thirst.
Thanks be to God!
Peter Jardine+
Thanksgiving Sunday, 2006