I.N.I.

A sermon to be preached on the Sunday after Pentecost, being also 6 August 2006, and based on the RCL Gospel for that day St. John 6:24-35, especially vv. 28-29, and preached at Christ Lutheran Church, Elizabethtown, PA

Grace, mercy and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Dear Friends in Christ,

God doesn’t play by the rules. You’d think he would, but he doesn’t. We do. At least sometimes.

For example, if you’re the major breadwinner in your household, you get up every morning, you go to work, and as long as you don’t do something really stupid you bring home a paycheck so you can go out and buy that bread you want and need. That’s one of the rules we live by: an honest day’s wages for an honest day’s work.

Every human society has rules and expectations by which everyone is expected to live. The details vary from one society to the next, but generally the understanding in every society is that if you follow the rules, then things will work out. You might not end up living a life of ease and riches, but things will be okay.

There are major dislocations in societies when the old rules don’t seem to work any more. It might be because of a drought, or a plague, or when a nation is conquered by another. People, families, the structures of a society, it’s all called into question because the way folks always worked things out don’t seem to offer a solution any longer. That’s not the way we think it should be.

We generally think that people who play by the rules of society should get some benefit from it. We generally agree that people who don’t play by the rules, shouldn’t get the benefits. By our rules, people who flaunt the rules of society should be punished (or, at least, not rewarded). And if it’s the kind of formal rule we call a law, then those breaking it should really pay for their disobeying it.

But God plays differently. God doesn’t play by the rules.

We should already have that notion from what happened in the wilderness with the manna. When the children of Israel were out in the wilderness not too long after being released from Egyptian slavery they woke up one morning and the word on everyone’s tongue was “What’s this?” or “Manna.” God had ignored the whole breadwinner system. Everyone got the manna in the wilderness, no matter how well or poorly they had worked the week before. The folks who had dug the latrines for all those thousands of people got the same bread as the folks who packed up the tents, who got the same as the people who provided daycare for all the children, who got the same as the people who just sat around all day and grumbled about how hot it was. God didn’t care who had worked hard, and who had been lazy.

In the same way, we should have already gotten the notion about God and the rules from the way He provided a good meal for everyone in the crowd of 5,000 people who sat down hungry before Jesus and got up leaving 12 baskets of leftovers after eating their fill. It didn’t matter who had done what to earn any food. It didn’t matter who helped organize the crowd or who tried to be first in line when the disciples came around with the first helping. It didn’t matter who did anything or nothing to help. God didn’t play by the rules. He didn’t give the workers more and the layabouts less. Everyone was satisfied.

He still doesn’t play by the rules … our rules, anyway.

God does not expect, assume or require that people work for the reward he holds out to them. The manna falls on the ground in the wilderness for everyone in Israel, not just for the polite, the nice, the humble, or the pleasant. The bread and fish in the Gospel were distributed to everyone in the crowd, not just to the pious, the attentive, or the helpful. God gave that earthly food to all. He gave the prize to everyone in the race, and to those standing on the sidelines as well.

The primary reward being handed out, though, is more important than, more lasting than, a meal of manna and quail, or of bread and dried fish. The primary reward is what Jesus described in our Gospel today as “the food that endures for eternal life.”

If God played by the rules, that is, played by our rules, then we could naturally expect what the folks in that crowd in the Gospel seemed to expect: that there is something for us to do in order to reap this reward. We all would expect that we could be breadwinners in that sense. We would expect to be able to do something about our sins, to somehow pay back, or make good, or settle accounts with God. That’s how we work with other people, so why wouldn’t it work with the God who created people?

Well, simply because God makes it clear here that we can’t and don’t serve as breadwinners as far as this food that endures for eternal life is concerned. God plays by his own rules, not our human rules. God’s rules spell out a different course of events. God’s rules focus on what He does for us, not what we pretend we can do for Him.

The people in this passage from St. John’s Gospel ask Jesus “what works can we do” to get that food? They wanted, perhaps, to pay for the food he’d given them earlier on when they were a hungry crowd of 5,000 people. They wanted, perhaps, to pay ahead for what they hoped would be a continuing series of free banquets. They wanted at least to make the offer to pick up the check. It was only the polite thing to do, whether they expected Jesus to itemize the tab or not. Or maybe some of them did understand that He was speaking about eternal life. But, either way, He responded with a clear “No.” ‘No,’ he said, ‘That’s not how it goes. Works? Don’t even bring that up. You can’t do enough works. There’s only one ‘work’ that will obtain this food: believe. That’s it. Nothing more. “This is the work [that is ] of God, that you believe in him who he has sent”.’

With these words Jesus takes us outside of ourselves, our own thoughts, our own abilities, and our own sets of rules. Christ calls us away from the food that spoils and goes bad. He calls us to the food that endures for eternal life. Christ calls us out of ourselves to Himself.

All the things that people have done over the centuries in order (they hoped) to placate God were for naught. None of those things were commanded by God. He doesn’t want our animal sacrifices. He doesn’t want our little ‘giving up something for Lent.’ He doesn’t want our ecclesiastical pomp and circumstance. He doesn’t want plain worship as opposed to liturgical worship. He doesn’t want a thundering organ as opposed to delicate guitar chords. He doesn’t want personal denial on a hard mission field as the prelude to opening the kingdom gates for us. He doesn’t want our riches or our poverty. What God wants is our faith.

But God by no means condemns our acts of faithful service, the good works we perform as his godly people. “Such acts are truly the works and service of God, for they are commanded by Him. However, these works are not directly and immediately performed for God but for man. They are an essential service of God, but they are directly related to man only.” (Luther’s Works, vol.23, p.25) What that means is that these good works only manifest good horizontally, or in relation to other people. These works do nothing to enhance our vertical relationship with God.

What does God care for our working on a Habitat for Humanity house? Nothing. He does not live there and building it does not take us any closer to the Heavenly mansions. He does not love us more for having donated time and materials on the project. He does not love anyone less for not becoming involved.

YET, at the same time, working on affordable housing for other people is a good thing. Doing that shows our love for other people. Doing things like this are acts of service to our fellow human beings. These works reveal our caring for and continuity with the rest of humanity. They are works that are directly related to other people, not directly related to God.

The rules we tend to follow come into play here, too. Part of the satisfaction we start to feel after offering acts of charity comes from feeling that, well, now we’ve done something for someone who can’t pay us back. We gave coins to a homeless person in the city, and he can’t pay us back. We put some warm gloves on a mitten tree, and the child who got them can’t pay us back. We helped put up walls at a Habitat house, and the family there can’t pay us back. Then if we feel all wonderful inside, it’s because we’re still playing by our own rules about earning and due reward and so on. Even if we say we’re doing all those things “to serve God” we’re off the mark.

There’s only one thing, according to God’s word here in John 6, that serves God. And it’s not an act of charity and alms-giving to a poor homeless person. It’s not an act of caring for an unknown underprivileged child with cold hands. It’s not an act of sweat and heavy lifting amidst friends on behalf of someone hoping for a home to call their own. Our text is directed against such thoughts. Our text speaks solely of the service to God. The one, single thing that serves God is the act of faith.

If you really do want to serve God, then there is no other work and service than faith in Christ. Accept the Son whom God has sent. Give ear to Him. God does not need your works. Instead, adhere to Christ.

This text is an excellent one to fall back on when others try to make you feel guilty for not performing the works they set before you. God has ordained how we are to act over against him and over against other people. He does not require all these good works to cement our relationship with him. Your concern must be to occupy yourself with Christ the Lord. Give ear to him, hang him on your lips, don’t let his word be sent to you in vain.

You can imagine how cross you would feel if you were in charge of some enterprise and the newest underlings came in and tried to dictate to you how things should be run. That’s not the way things are done. Those new hires risk being thrown out. By the same token, it is plain evil for people to ignore God’s Word and to prescribe to Him how they should serve Him. Doing that invites punishment.

What a proud and arrogant question to ask: “What must we do to earn this eternal bread from heaven?” This text and the rest of Scripture bear out that God does not respect our works. They aren’t of service to him. None of those things benefit God in any way. What God wants from us is faith in Jesus as our Savior from sin. He does also want us to love our neighbor and forgive those around us, to live in peace and harmony with all sorts and stations of people. But he says to us, too, that those sorts of things don’t serve him or pay him homage. If we want to perform some act of service directly to God, we need to present him something much more sublime than those things, namely to believe in the Son whom he has sent.

Only then, only after we are living in a God-given faith in Christ Jesus, can we even begin to think about doing what St Paul urges in today’s epistle lesson, that is “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” And only in this life of faith does such a life worthy of our calling become a joyful possibility. It is only those who are in the life of faith who have a calling and the gifts for building up the body of Christ that Paul writes about.

As a people who have accepted the gift of faith given us by God’s Spirit, we are knit together into a body that operates according to God’s design. We carry out works of charity. We bear with one another. We share their burdens. We work for peace. We aim at restoration and wholeness. And through it all we know that our eternal salvation, our eternal peace, our places in Heaven don’t rely on any of those actions and attitudes.

If we believe in Christ we have already conquered Satan and hell. We do not need to add works of service and charity. We already possess Christ. Even if my faith is feeble I possess all of Christ in the same way that the strongest, most faithful Christian does. There is no difference. Faith in Him is what makes us perfect, these additional works do not.

“The entire service of God is contained in this: Believe in Christ, whom the Father has sent to you. Accept his pronouncements. You can offer God nothing more pleasing to Him in heaven or on earth.” (Luther’s Works, vol. 23, p. 28) Stop trying to make God play by our rules.

Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Savior and our Lord. Amen.

S.D.G.