Eleventh Sunday after Trinity John 6:35; 41-51 1 Kings 19:4-8
One of the most difficult things, it seems, for people to do, is to realise that they need help. Most people like to be self-sufficient, able to cope, and strong enough to weather a storm. Great score is often set on being strong, and although it is good to have strength and to manage with most things, there comes a moment in life when we know that we need help. This happens when we fall ill and have to get medical care, for instance, or when we are stuck on the motorway with a failed engine, or even when we have to perform a task that is too difficult for a person on their own. I have found that it is impossible, for example, to put together a flat-pack wardrobe without somebody else to hold up certain parts in the process!
In today’s reading from 1 Kings, we find the prophet Elijah, on the run from bad Queen Jezebel, who was out for his life. After a day’s journey into the wilderness, he has reached a solitary broom tree and says to God that he has had enough; he is totally exhausted and doesn’t care anymore whether he lives or dies and falls asleep. An angel wakes him up, offers food, and, strengthened by this attention and nourishment, Elijah is able to continue the rest of the journey. Yes, I believe that angels are sometimes sent to drag us out of our misery and help us to move on. As Paul himself testifies in the letter to the Hebrews, ‘Are not all angels […] sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?’ Also in our day, accounts appear from time to time about miraculous rescues that can only be explained by the intervention by angels. But this as an aside. The point is, that Elijah needed help and that God provided for him.
In John’s Gospel account in chapter 6, Jesus also talks about the way God provides to those who are in need. By bread, in the literal sense, as we already learned from what comes before in the Gospel account, but even more and ultimately by God’s Son, Jesus. As with the people of Israel grumbling in the desert during the Exodus, the Jews are complaining now at Jesus. They, like their ancestors, are looking for a leader who gives them what they want. Their idea of the Messiah, the Anointed One, chosen by God, is quite different from what God has intended for them and that is what Jesus addresses here. His statement, ‘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’, is startling, because it changes their human concept of being chosen by God for having special attributes in and of themselves. Again, it is the heart – what goes on in a person – that needs to be ‘drawn’ in the secret silence within. Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 54:13, ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ This reminds the people of one of the greatest prophecies of the renewal through the outpouring of God’s love – bringing the people back to himself. It is the complete helplessness of the people of Israel to be as God has intended them to be, that makes God take the initiative for their salvation. Jesus is the bread of life, as he says in verse 35, and, making further connections with history, he goes on to say, ‘Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ This is what gives us hope. The hope of eternal life, in a new sense, through faith, is the new life as God has always intended it. It begins already in the here and now, and carries on into life after death. Jesus pioneers this in the resurrection, and it is on offer for all who taste the living bread.
The great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, in his autobiography ‘Surprised by Joy’, says this: ‘His compulsion is our liberation’. In other words, God’s salvation of the world and the redemption of his people is his work and his alone. C.S. Lewis said that he had not made a decision to believe but that God had ‘closed in on him and he couldn’t escape’, even though, at the time, he wanted to. The point is, that the bread of life, and the water of life, are free to all, but we need to see our need of it and accept it in faith. Then we can be refreshed and strong enough for the journey ahead. Amen.