ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

8th Sunday after Trinity, 2009 - High Mass
Proper 13 B
Sermon preached by Fr Alan Moses

"I, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called..." Ephesians 4.1

The Authorised Version conveys the sense of the Greek better: "I therefore the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called."

To lead a life" renders the Greek word for "walk", but this could mean much more than a means of getting about. It was about one's form of conduct. The early Christians understood themselves as the people of "The Way"; as people of a journey, as the pilgrim people of God.

These words seemed particularly apt as I came to preach one of my last sermons here before setting out on pilgrimage to Compostela, following in the footsteps of countless Christian pilgrims who have sought to follow our Lord be setting their faces to go to Jerusalem or to some other holy place.

The idea of a pilgrim people has its roots deep in the Old Testament, in the history of the people of Israel, in the desert wanderings of that people as they were led from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. At Mass last Sunday we heard St. John's account of the Feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on the water. John tells us that these events happened around the time of the Jewish Feast of Passover, the annual celebration of liberation from slavery in Egypt, rescue through the waters of the Red Sea and the beginning of the 40 year journey through the wilderness.

One view of this arduous and difficult time, found in the prophets, is that it was a golden era in which Israel enjoyed an intimacy with the Lord, a period in which they had been formed into his people by the giving of the Law through Moses and in which they had been miraculously supplied with manna, bread from heaven, and water from the rock.

Another view, represented by the passage we have just heard from the Book of the Exodus, portrays Israel in a less flattering light. Far from being eager pilgrims, they are a reluctant lot. As soon as things begin to look difficult, they start complaining: "The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness". Experiencing the tough realities of the journey, they begin to feel nostalgic about the "fleshpots" of Egypt. They might have been slaves, but at least their bellies were full.

This complaint is one of repeating pattern in which they complain to Moses, who intercedes with God, who in turn provides for the people; though sometimes with an expression of anger at their lack of trust. It is expressed in Psalm 78 which we sang from this morning.

The children of Israel found freedom more challenging than slavery. Later, in times of compromise with the religions of the world around them, the prophets would call them back to that time when they had been led and fed by God and taught that they were to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

This has continued to be so for the Church on its pilgrimage through history: it has often preferred settled and predictable mediocrity to the adventure and risk of pilgrimage and mission. When things get frightening, the temptation is to retreat into nostalgia. The Church has somehow, often reluctantly, remembered this tendency; so in the great tradition of worship, of which Anglicanism is part, it has for many centuries been the custom to begin our daily worship with the words of Psalm 95, the Venite which includes these words:

"Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works.

You know how things go: the people complain about and to the clergy, the clergy complain to the Area Dean, (as the Area Dean as well as the Vicar, I can even complain about myself to myself!), the Area Dean moans to the Archdeacon, who does the same to the Bishop. He bends the ear of the Archbishop who is left with only God to complain to.

In the Gospel today, we have another group of people who have been the beneficiaries of a miraculous feeding. Jesus has eluded them when they sought to make him king for their own nationalistic ends. Not content to leave things at that, they go in search of him. They find him in Capernaum. Not having witnessed the miracle on the water, they ask how he got there.

Jesus, as often in John's Gospel, does not give them a direct answer. Instead, he says, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."

The people had seen the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, but they had failed to see this as a "sign". For John, the miraculous deeds of Jesus are not simply spectacular acts, they point to the reality of who he is and why we must have faith in him.

In the dialogues which follow the "signs" in John's Gospel, Jesus' hearers do not get the message; they fail to see beneath or beyond the outward sign. Here, they can think only of that which they can control. If they are to look for the food which endures for eternal life; what must they do to get it? They cannot see beyond the gift to the giver as the one in whom they must believe. So they demand a sign from him that they might believe; as if nothing had happened, as if they had not just experienced something extraordinary.

What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, "He gave them bread from heaven to eat".'

Jesus takes up their use of Scripture and uses it to deepen their understanding. "Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

God is the giver of the bread and he gives it now, not just in the remote past. So, they say, "Sir, give us this bread always."

Jesus replies, in one of the great "I am" sayings which identify him as God in St. John's Gospel: "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

Over the coming weeks we will hear Jesus speaking in the Discourse on the Bread of Life. John tells us that many of his followers found what he had to say about eating his flesh and drinking his blood as the way to eternal life a hard saying and that they no longer went about with him.

Tonight at Benediction, as every Sunday evening, as we pray before the consecrated bread of Christ's Eucharistic presence, the priest will sing:

Thou gavest them bread from heaven" and the people will respond: "Containing within itself all sweetness."

This clear connection between the bread of life in John's Gospel, is denied by some Christians who fail to see in this chapter, John's equivalent of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. How are we to respond to their finding this "a hard saying"? One way which Catholic Christians have too often chosen is that of superiority: we have the sacrament, the real presence, and they don't. But that is to make the sacrament our possession not a gift, as the people hoped to do with the bread which Jesus could give them. Like them, we run the risk of failing to see the sign and the one it points us to.

Should we not be asking, as we receive the sacrament this morning and as we kneel before it in prayer this evening, what signs of the eternal life it promises, the life of the risen Christ, are to be seen in us and in our community? What difference does it make to us? How much is the Communion with God and our brothers and sisters effected by Jesus, reflected in humility and patience, bearing with one another in love, in our efforts to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

How are these and the other gifts of ministry bestowed on his Church by the risen and ascended Christ used in "the building up of the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ?" We who are given these gifts "must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love."

So, we pray after Communion: "Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands that have taken holy things; may the ears which have heard thy word be deaf to clamour and dispute; may the tongues which have sung thy praise be free from deceit; may the eyes which have see the tokens of thy love shone with the light of hope; and may the bodies which have been fed with thy body be refreshed with the fullness of this life."

Lord, give us this bread always."