“To whom shall we go?” (John 6:56-69)

John 6:56-69

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Pastor Tom Johnson, August 22, 2021

There are several causes of Jesus losing followers in our reading from John 6. Jesus offers his body and blood as bread and drink. He says that our faith is a work of God, that God gives us faith. And he says he is the source of truth and life. Some are offended. Jesus’ teachings are too strange and difficult. So many turn away. To whom do they go? Do they go to a synagogue or community of faith to search the Scriptures to see if what Jesus taught is true? Do they find a teacher who says more palatable things? Or do they stop searching for truth altogether? 

What is a little unsettling to me is that Jesus is not surprised. Nor does he make an effort to compromise his teaching to suit his hearers. He will not change his message. He challenges the remaining twelve disciples by asking them, “Do you also wish to go away?” Well, do we? Have we ever been so turned off by Jesus’ teachings, the Christian faith, or a particular church tradition that we have considered calling it quits?

Apparently, in the United States, along with many western nations, we have. Church attendance continues to fall— rapidly. George Barna’s research shows that in the last ten years alone there has been a drop of women from nearly 50% attending worship weekly to 33%. This study was published pre-pandemic. Since the pandemic, numbers have dropped across the board for obvious reasons. We are not alone in our numbers not coming back as strongly as they were before the pandemic. But now, the delta variant of Covid-19 threatens to keep our numbers low. As you may suspect, there is something bigger happening in our culture and our churches. There are no doubt some who are offended by the teachings of Jesus. But perhaps it is more often the case that people are offended by the followers of Jesus or the preachers of Jesus and not Jesus himself. Have we accurately presented Jesus by our love, our actions, and our words? Are they rejecting Christ or are people rejecting Christians? How accurately have we presented Jesus to those around us? Is it possible that people have rejected our flawed concept of who Jesus is? What kind of Jesus do people in our culture think we believe in—a judgmental, finger-pointing teacher? That is not the Jesus of Scripture. He is the friend of sinners.

Maybe it is the mystery of the bread and the wine and that we confess it to be the Body and Blood of Jesus. Perhaps it is the profound doctrine of God’s foreknowledge and his supreme reign over our hearts and minds. Or is it the hypocrisy of the Church? Is it the lack of love and judgment we find in our communities of faith? This is a call for us to be faithful ambassadors of Christ’s Kingdom—to faithfully teach, preach, and live out our lives so that people who come across our paths have a true encounter with Jesus. We do not boast of the uniqueness of Jesus in arrogance like we invented it or are just smart enough to understand it. We find joy in the uniqueness of Jesus that humbles us, transcends human comprehension, and puts awe and gratitude in our hearts.

Following Jesus is a sacred trust. He gives us room for our individual stories. He gives us freedom to question, explore, and consider the claims of Jesus of Nazareth. That is why it is such a sacred and awesome responsibility that we have as the Church to faithfully communicate the Gospel. As Jesus himself said: “To whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48). And what a privilege and joy we have when we help someone else to encounter God’s amazing grace!

Jesus does not panic in this text even though most of his followers decide to go their separate ways. By turning to the twelve and asking them if they want to go too, he is giving them space and time to make their journey their own. He gives them, and us, freedom to explore and struggle on our own. “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter answers, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

There are plenty of paths out there where we have to work hard to earn God’s attention and love. There are a myriad of paths to self-actualization. There are as many religions as there are people in this world. But there is only one Jesus—one true and living God. There is only one personal relationship that we have with God and God has with us. It is wholly unique and special to God. Peter says, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” Only Jesus’ teaching, life, death, and resurrection gives us a clear understanding of God’s grace and eternal life. Jesus alone conquers death, sin, and evil through the Cross and the empty grave.

To whom shall we go, indeed. Peter will later boldly confess to his persecutors, “There is no other name under heaven given by which we are saved” (Acts 4:12). We go to each other as God’s people to mutually console each other in God’s grace and forgiveness in the name of Jesus. We gather under the reading, singing, and faithful preaching of God’s Word to encounter Jesus. We go to the Altar to receive Jesus’ Body and Blood with the bread and the wine. We go out to tell the world. We go out to live our Christian lives and vocations. We do not preach ourselves but Christ and that there is no other. He alone is the Friend of sinners and Savior of the world. He alone assures us of eternal life.

“Under the influence” (Ephesians 5:15-20)

Ephesians 5:15-20

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Pastor Tom Johnson, August 15, 2021

Perhaps we can all breathe a sigh of relief that our Scripture from Ephesians does not say, “Do not drink wine.” It says, “Do not get drunk with wine.” We can conclude, at the very least, that we can make the case for moderate wine consumption. But then we would miss the larger point which is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul says that to be drunk with wine is a form of debauchery. This means that debauchery is not just drunkenness through wine consumption. It can be any alcoholic substance. It can be any substance we put into our bodies to self-medicate, numb our pain, or use to cope with life’s challenges. Debauchery is excessive indulgence of any sensual pleasure. It is wasted, unproductive living. It is purposeless, recklessness, and abandon. During the last 18 months, substance abuse has spiked presumably to cope with the stress of a pandemic. The average American has gained 29 lbs over the last 18 months.

Where do we turn when the pressure and stress of life is just too much? Paul warns us not to turn to any form of debauchery. The preacher in Ecclesiastes has a similar message: “vanity of vanities,” he says. Otherwise, we live in despair and hopelessness like the ancient saying, “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” Being under the influence of alcohol or any drug is dangerous because we are no longer in control. Our senses are deadened. Our judgment is impaired. We do things that, under normal circumstances, we would never do. But we should not self-righteously focus just on drugs and alcohol. Studies show that people in positions of power have elevated levels of dopamine. When we abuse our power, we can become addicted to this chemical surge to the brain. Studies show this same momentary surge of dopamine and euphoria can also follow aggressive driving or angry emails or social media posts.  Sexual addiction is when we get high on our own body chemistry. Studies suggest that we can have as much of a high as we would on drugs—even if it is a virtual experience like pornography. As we talked about last week, when someone is overcome by anger and enraged, there is a surge of euphoria. Some studies suggest that it may be a factor in why people stay in abusive relationships or cannot escape the cycle of gang violence.

The unsettling truth about drunkenness or any addiction is the power of sin—that we become both victim and perpetrator of sin. You’ll remember the first time sin is spoken about is when God warns Cain to not be overcome by bitterness and anger. God sees the cycle of violence beginning early. He tells Cain, “Why are you angry?” “Sin is crouching behind the door and its desire is for you” (Gen 4:6,7). Sadly, anger overcomes Cain, he gets drunk with rage, and he kills his brother. And so it is for us. Sin threatens to inebriate our good senses. A momentary surge of happiness is crouching behind the door. A fleeting sense of euphoria is lurking around the corner. A temporary escape from the troubles of this world is just a click away.  But, be warned, God says, it won’t last. Its desire is for you. Before you know it, we have lost control or are addicted. We have become slaves of a substance or behavior that has taken control. We are no longer ourselves. We think, say, and do things we later regret. I have a friend who tried crystal meth at a party about ten years ago. He never felt more euphoria in all his life. He spent months chasing that first high again. He lost a very good job, strained many relationships, and spent months in rehab. Thank God he got the help when he needed it, is in a new career, and doing well.

“Do not get drunk with wine,” our Scripture says, “but be filled with the Spirit.” This is the answer to the prayer we pray as Jesus taught us, “Deliver us from evil.” He delivers us from the power of sin by the Holy Spirit. Christ lived, died, and rose again to deliver us from the guilt and condemnation of sin. But he also wants us to be free of its addictive power—and not only free from foreign substances, but also filled with holy and godly power. “Don’t get drunk on wine…but be filled with the Spirit…singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul says we fill ourselves with the Spirit when we sing and pray. This begins with public worship and carries over to our private devotional lives as we let these melodies and words reverberate in our hearts and minds. 

Music, along with God’s Word, rehabilitates the soul. Our musicians and choir are the great dealers of God’s gifts and spiritual power. I hope you get a chance to read the beautiful tribute to James Rogner who was a purveyor of these powerful gifts.  As the Reformer Martin Luther said, “Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given that we should proclaim the Word of God through Music.” Public worship is crucial to our recovery from sin. Our gathering together is intoxicating. We drown our sorrows and sin in Holy Baptism. We imbibe God’s Word as it enters our ears, our hearts, and fills us with peace, wisdom, and strength. We gather around truly mind- and life-altering gifts—the Body and Blood of Jesus with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. God is eager and delighted to fill us with his Holy Spirit to empower us to live healthy and loving lives.

“Anger” (Ephesians 4:25—5:2)

Ephesians 4:25—5:2
John 6:35-51

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Pastor Tom Johnson, August 8, 2021

In our reading from Ephesians, our Scripture says, “Be angry—be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” This is all part of a very practical portion of Paul’s letter where he encourages us to live out our Christian lives with integrity, authenticity, and love. Over and over again, he tells us our motive, example, and strength come from Christ and his love for us. “Be angry,” our Scripture says. This is by no means an endorsement of anger. In fact, just verses later it says, “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger.” One translation says, “in your anger, do not sin.”

Jeffrey Gibbs, professor of New Testament at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis wrote an excellent article called “The Myth of Righteous Anger.” In it he says that Scripture warns us of the dangerous reality of anger.  He points out what many of us can observe on the TV screen, social media, and even out the car window as we drive across town: contemporary American culture is a profoundly angry culture. There is the lie that is perpetuated that if you feel strongly about an issue, you have the right to get angry at the opposing side. We celebrate it when someone goes ballistic and expresses outrage against our perceived enemies. This is sometimes called righteous anger or righteous indignation. 

It is fair to say that anger is not automatically sinful. But that is not the point of our text. The point is that anger can often lead us to sinful and diabolical outcomes. Gibbs says that anger is no where listed as one of the fruit of the Spirit. In fact, in our text it says that can give our Adversary a foothold in our relationships. Just a few chapters later, Paul will say that “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Anger threatens to make us slaves to our negative emotions. If we go to bed mad—if we let the sun go down and rise upon our anger—if we let anger fester and grow, we are allowing anger to rule our hearts and minds. We are spiritually and emotionally held captive to anger. Our hearts will become hardened and calloused just like old Pharaoh when he would not let God’s people go. Anger is dangerous. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that to be angry in our hearts and with our words makes us murderers in the eyes of God. And so we see the chilling truth that sin is not just an unhealthy expression of anger. Sin is also anger’s tyrannical rule over our hearts and lives.

British philosopher Alain de Botton says that anger is often caused by unrealistic optimism. That is to say, we have an idealized but also distorted belief of the way the world ought to be. So we throw a temper tantrum when we lose our keys. We become embittered toward our friends and family when they let us down. We are enraged when we are caught in traffic, upset when we get the wrong food order, or furious when our flight is delayed two hours. The problem, de Botton says, is that we are too optimistic. We expect the world around us to be a place where our keys never go astray, people never let us down, there is no traffic, table servers make no mistakes, and weather or mechanical problems never cause flight delays. That world without disappointments is fantasy not reality. Pessimism, he says, is the great key to unlock a more peaceful soul. One of my seminary professors once asked a class, “How many of you find yourselves deeply disappointed by the people around you?” Many of us raised our hands. He said, “Lower your standards. You’ll be much happier.”

I’d like to encourage us to be biblically pessimistic. We should be skeptical about our own capacity to control our anger. We should see the world as broken, sinful, and where evil is palpable. We should let go of the fantasy of a world that revolves around us and never fails us. But we should also be a hopeful people. God has given us the Bread from Heaven. We believe that God has given us all we need for life and godliness. We have the fruit of the Spirit that dwells within us. This gives us a biblical optimism that he who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion. We can be, as our text encourages us to be “kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God has forgiven us in Christ…and to be imitators of God just as Christ gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering.”

I love the multi-sensory message—and especially the culinary thread through our readings these weeks. Someday, I’d like for us bake bread in our kitchen, and for us all to bring in a loaf of fresh baked bread. When visitors enter our church, they would smell the fragrant offering of the Bread of Life. We are bearers of that sweet and fragrant aroma by our slowness to anger, our kindness, our patience, our humility, our forgiving nature, our tender-heartedness, and our mindfulness to be like Jesus. when will we ever be fully like Jesus? When we see him face to face. But not yet in this life. But we can give people a whiff and a taste of him who will never let us down. In him we have absolute forgiveness and will never die. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Jesus, Sun of Life, my Splendor,
Jesus, Thou my Friend most tender,
Jesus, Joy of my desiring,
Fount of life, my soul inspiring—
At Thy feet I cry, my Maker,
Let me be a fit partaker
Of this blessed food from heaven,
For our good, Thy glory, given.
          "Jesus, Sun of Life, My Splendor," (G.F. Handel)

“What is it?” (Exodus 16:2-15; John 6:24-35)

Exodus 16:2-15
John 6:24-35

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Pastor Tom Johnson, August 1, 2021

Our first reading from Exodus begins with the Israelites at the point of hunger and despair. “If only we had died in Egypt…where we had slowly cooked meat and plenty of bread to eat.” They accuse God of attempted murder: “You have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” They fear that God has only brought them through Red Sea on dry land and drowned Pharaoh’s army in order to end their misery with starvation—to leave them as orphans in the wilderness. God answers this cry of despair, hopelessness, and dread with his grace—he gives them bread from heaven. This is gracious bread of heaven. They do not deserve this bread nor have they earned it. It is a gift of mercy and grace.

It is also mysterious bread. Every morning there was a layer of dew that covered the camp. The fine, flaky substance was gathered as fine as frost on the ground. And only one Hebrew word came to the lips of the Israelites: “Mān?” “What?” “What is it?” For the rest of the Hebrew Bible into the New Testament, this bread from heaven is known by the initial question: “Mān?” or in it’s Greek transliteration “Manna?” It’s a reminder of God’s unexpected and mysterious grace. So God not only fills their stomachs with bread but also fills their souls with wonder. This manna—this bread of heaven helps us more fully understand the gift that we have in Jesus, our Bread from Heaven. He is the one who says, “I am the Bread of Life.” He also mysteriously is sent from heaven to earth. He is the gracious gift from God that we neither deserve nor have earned. He covers the camp of his people with the assurance that the God who created us will sustain us by the Word of his power. He fills our lives with his perfect life and righteousness. Though our sins are as red as scarlet, he makes us as pure as snow and the morning dew. He gives his Body as bread and his Blood as wine. He graciously and mysteriously communes with us, forgives us, and assures us of life everlasting body and soul.

The irony in our reading from John chapter six, is that a crowd followed Jesus looking for more free bread. You’ll remember that Jesus just fed the 5,000. They’re hungry again. But their hunger is merely physical; they are not hungering for truth. They only wonder where they can get their next meal. They are not filled with wonder of who Jesus is. They are not hungering to know Jesus. They have forgotten God’s Word to the Israelites who ate the manna in the wilderness in Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 3: “He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Jesus does not want to be known as a mere miracle worker. He does not want to be only appreciated when he is giving out bread. He wants to be fully known for who he is. He does not want to merely be our supply. He is the Bread of Heaven—the one who feeds us body and soul.

Simone Biles, a gymnast competing in the Tokyo Olympics, is globally known for her excellence. Simone has won more medals than any gymnast in history—25 medals, 19 of which are gold. She is favored to win many more this time around. Last week, she decided to step back from the competition in order to make her mental health a priority. Simone is an abuse survivor. The pandemic delayed the Olympic Games one year. Only Simone and her trusted friends and family know what all she is struggling with in her internal world.  In a public statement on Twitter she said, “the outpouring love & support I’ve received has made me realize I’m more than my accomplishments and gymnastics which I never truly believed before.” She realizes that all the applause for her medals is, as Jesus says, “working for food that perishes.” People are fickle. One moment they may applaud you; the next, they may deride you. Many showed love and support for who she is and not for what she has accomplished. This may have saved her life and career.  It’s okay for us not to know all that has led Simone to this point. It’s between her and God and whomever she invites into that inner world. Simone may save many other lives by her example—mentally and physically. Simone will not exist to be merely the supply of Olympic medals. She alone is of more value than gold and silver to God, to her friends and family, and to herself.

Jesus will not exist to be merely the supply of earthly bread. He is more precious than silver and gold to God the Father and to us. And you, child of God, are so precious to God that he gives his only Son as the Bread of Life for the world—no matter what you have or have not accomplished. His love is unconditional and eternal. It is okay that we live out our lives with perplexity and wonder. I love that reminder in the name of the bread God gave from heaven: “What is it?” It is forever a reminder of the grace and wonder of God.  The manna and Jesus are gifts from heaven that reveal God’s love for his people. Jesus is the Bread of heaven. He is even more than that. He shows us that we too are enough. We are more than supply for others. We are worthy of the Bread of heaven because he loves us unconditionally. He does not answer our sin with judgment but with grace. He does not repay our doubts with punishment but with mercy. And we have the joy of being part of a journey of discovery, wonder, and learning more and more about this Jesus—the bread of heaven—God’s gift to his creation who gives us this bread as his Body and cup as his Blood to strengthen us body and soul unto life everlasting.