Text:  John 6:24-35, Ephesians 4:17-24                                                         11^th Sunday after Pentecost

Doing the Work of God

            In the name of him who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, dear friends in Christ:  Last week when we met for worship, we spent some time looking at the story of the feeding of the five thousand.  We heard again about how Jesus, somewhere in a remote place on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, had spent the day teaching a huge crowd of people from God’s Word about the coming kingdom.  Then, toward the end of the day, he miraculously multiplied the lunch of a small boy and used it to feed all of them.  Those who ate were amazed, of course.  In a day and age when most folks spent almost all of their time working hard just to be sure they had something to eat – and even then very often went hungry – the ability to put one loaf of bread in a basket and then take out as many as you like would have seemed like all your dreams come true.  No more going hungry.  No more worry about starving in a bad year like when there was a drought, or a plague of locusts, or an occupying enemy army, or disease, fungus, fire, or hail to ruin the crops.  And above all no more hot, sweaty, backbreaking plowing, sowing, harvesting, threshing, gathering, winnowing, grinding, woodcutting, and baking just to be able to stay alive.  It’s small wonder that those who ate wanted to make Jesus their king.  They figured that in his kingdom they wouldn’t have to work at all.

But as we considered the story, we saw that with this miracle Jesus was doing a lot more than just feeding hungry people and showing off his some of his divine power.  Certainly the last thing on his mind was using it as a publicity stunt to attain a political office.  No, he had a greater goal in mind.  He was, in fact, using the miracle as a means to illustrate a spiritual message.  By feeding a multitude with a little, he was showing his disciples and the people that he and his Gospel message were an endless source of nourishment for human souls – that all of their deepest needs in life would be satisfied in and by him.  His goal was to direct people away from their earthly, visible, and immediate concerns to higher, invisible, eternal things.

            But as it turns out, the folks who ate that day were a little too worldly, and too spiritually near-sighted, and thickheaded to pick up the message.  The immediate gratification of having a full tummy was quite enough for them.  But Jesus is determined to get his point across; so during the hours of darkness, he leaves the crowd on the shore and returns to the city of Capernaum.  The next morning, when the people get up and start looking for Jesus to make him their king (oh, and probably to see if he’s serving breakfast), they can’t find him. They head out in all directions searching for him – and in today’s reading we heard how some of them catch up with Jesus in the synagogue in Capernaum.

            And we see that Jesus has regained the initiative. He’s forced them to turn their attention back to the object of his lesson.   Seeking Jesus in the synagogue is the right idea exactly.  That’s where the people are used to being taught God’s Word. That is where they have always sought spiritual nourishment.  And Jesus’ whole point is that he is the substance of God’s Word that they’ve been hearing in the synagogue all these years.  He is the Bread of Life for hungry souls.  He unpacks this for them just as plainly as he can:  “You didn’t understand the sign I gave you yesterday. You’ve only come after me because you hope to have another meal.  Don’t waste your time working for food that will spoil, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”  He’s saying, “I’ve got something better to give you than that bread you ate yesterday.  That’s what I want to give you.  That’s what you should be searching to get.”

            Now, this sounds pretty good to them:  food that lasts forever and that gives eternal life … but unfortunately they’re still thinking with their stomachs.  They’re thinking, “Not only can he give us plenty of guaranteed food for free, he’s got some other stuff that’s like the fountain of youth.  If you eat it, you live forever.  It’s fantastic!”  They demand to know how they can get their hands on it.  They ask Jesus, “What work does God require us to do to get it?” And I imagine they suppose that it must be something very difficult to do.  If normal bread is a major hassle to make, then surely the bread of which Jesus speaks is even harder to get.

And if indeed that’s what they’re thinking, they’re both wrong and right, because Jesus replies, “The work of God to believe in the One he sent.” “Believe.  Believe in me.  Believe that the Father sent me.  That’s it; and you have the Bread of Life.”

This is better than they were hoping for.  “Just believe?  What could be simpler than that?  There’s no work involved at all.”  All they think they need is a little proof:  “Okay, Jesus, give us a miraculous sign and we’ll believe you.  …Tell you what, we’re kind of hungry right now, what with having missed our breakfast and all.  Why don’t you whip up some more of that bread from thin air like we ate yesterday? Then we’ll believe.”

And suddenly we find in their response that the belief they imagine is so easy to create in themselves is really no belief at all.  If all it took were a miraculous sign, they’d already believe because he gave them a fairly spectacular one the day before.  Now, they do believe in a way, but theirs is a short-lived human faith that lasts only as long as they’re satisfied. It evaporates as soon as they’re hungry again.  You can imagine how long it would last in the face of a more demanding trial.  For them Jesus isn’t an object of faith; he’s just a convenience.

But when Jesus says, “Believe in me”, he means, “Trust me.  Trust what I tell you.  Trust what I will do for you.”  It includes God’s whole plan of salvation and how it’s played out in the life of Jesus.  It means to believe that he is the Christ, that he is true God and true man.  It means to believe that he is the Savior: to believe in his suffering and death to save us from our sin, and also his resurrection to give us new life.  It means to trust him through thick and thin, and to believe that in all things he’s working for your good to bring you to eternal life.  It means to trust in that which you cannot see or feel.

And that kind of belief is a lot more difficult to find within ourselves. In fact, it’s impossible.  Not one of us is able to generate it or keep it even if we were to see the most amazing miracles.  The reason for this, Scripture tells us, is that prior to conversion we are dead in sin.  We’re totally unresponsive to spiritual matters – like the people in this story. No matter how many times Jesus explains things to them, they just don’t get it.  They just don’t believe.  To get the Bread of Life all they (or we) have to do is believe – but it’s one work that our dead, sinful flesh cannot do.

The good news is that we are not asked to.  When the crowd asks, “What must we do …?” Jesus replies, “The work of God is to believe …”.  That is, it is God who does the work of faith in you.  He does it through his Word and Spirit. Through the message of the Gospel of Christ, the Holy Spirit creates a new and living human spirit within you. It’s that new person who believes – who eats the Bread of Life – and who lives forever.

Now, especially as Lutheran Christians, we know all this.  We say with Luther in the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason and strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”   And when we say this, we’re only saying the same thing Jesus said in this morning’s Gospel reading: “The work of God is to believe. It’s God who works to give me faith and spiritual life.”

But right after that is where we tend to fall down.  Like the crowd seeking Jesus to provide immediate gratification for their needs – and who really hoped to avoid ever having to work again, we hear:  “Faith is God’s work, not yours”, and we conclude that there’s nothing left to do but sit back and take it easy.   “I do believe.  I’ve got eternal life.  There’s nothing left to do.”

And that’s where we’re wrong.  Just because the sinful, old, dead flesh that we carry around can’t do anything productive doesn’t mean that the new, living, and sanctified person also can’t.  Quite the contrary:  that new person needs to continue to eat the Bread of Life by continuing to hear and learn the Words of Christ.  Without it, he or she will starve.  That’s why we who believe remain in a fellowship like this: to continue to dine together on Christ and his Word.   Likewise, that new person needs to be active and busy, else he or she grows spiritually fat, lazy, and atrophied – which can also lead to death.  Faith must be exercised – and there’s plenty of God’s work for the new person to do.

            This is what St. Paul is talking about in today’s Epistle lesson:  the ongoing work of God in the life of a believer – and the believer’s active part in that work.  And in the interest of bringing you a contemporary illustration that might shed some light on the situation, I’d like you to consider that living the Christian life and doing the work of God is like being the nation of Iraq today.  Imagine that you are Iraq – that all of its people and personalities are subsumed in you.  But first this disclaimer:  I’m not trying to make any political statements here about the relative rightness of the U.S. cause or anything else.  I’m only presenting this as a picture – and like all pictures, it will fall short of reality.

In any case, here we’ve got a country that was formerly controlled by an evil tyrant.  He ruled ruthlessly with an iron first, and would brook no opposition.  Any contrary thought or expression could be punished. And he used every means available to ensure he remained in power:  deceit, spying, illegal trials, torture, murder, what have you.  Those who towed the line and supported him were paid with pleasures and privileges – and yet, they too lived in constant fear of displeasing him.  They knew that one false step, one word taken out of context, could be the end of it all. Despite the perks, they too lived in a prison of fear.  And there was no real change possible from within.  The moment anyone spoke of trying to throw off Saddam Hussein’s bitter yoke, somebody else would turn him in with the hope of pleasing the leader and getting a short-term reward.

Now, this is how it is in the life of sin and unbelief under Satan’s control. On one hand, you hate it.  Sin’s bondage is cruel.  You find yourself unable to do the good things you’d like to do – to have the wholesome thoughts and attitudes you’d like to have.  On the other hand, when you indulge the sinful flesh there are short-term rewards.  The pleasures of sin are real.  But there is the constant fear of what lies ahead; everyone knows the day of reckoning is coming.   When all is said and done, as long as Satan is in charge, there’s nothing to look forward to except mass destruction.  And there’s no chance of improving the situation from within.

            But then along comes a superior, benevolent power from the outside – in this case, the U.S and its allies.  They’ve got better weapons, a stronger force, and better leadership and planning.  Organized resistance is futile; it soon collapses.  Almost overnight, the capital is captured and the symbols of the old regime begin to come down.

This would be conversion.  The Gospel of Jesus is the power that sends Satan and his forces running.  It asserts a new kind of control.  The captives are set free.  Sins and atrocities committed while under the old regime are brought to light and revealed.  They are confessed and washed away, as it were.  And understand that this benevolent power that’s taken over has no long-term ambitions about occupying the nation and simply making it a slave to a different master.  No, the goal is to make the nation free, and have it be a productive, friendly, partner in the community of nations.  That’s the Lord’s goal for you:  to set you free to live in self-governed righteousness and holiness.

            And so for the time being, there’s a lot of work to do – and that’s because there are a lot of competing factions striving to assert themselves.  These are the various impulses we have fighting within us.  There is, for example, still a lot of strong opposition that would like to see things go back they way they were.  These are the forces – the thoughts, feelings, and impulses we have – that enjoyed the pleasures of sin and don’t want to let them go.  There are others who are finally set free of worry about punishment for breaking the law.  They use the freedom of the Gospel to indulge in a frenzy of crime and looting. Both of these are forces that belong to the old flesh that must be eliminated, captured, and restrained.  On the other side are those who are beginning to have hope for a brighter future.  They want to do what’s right and be part of that future – to help bring it about.  But these forces are weak, disorganized, untrained; they’ve never lived free. They don’t know how.  They need guidance and instruction.  They need protection from the evil forces.  These are like the new nature in each of us. They’ve been given life and a future by the Gospel – and remain dependent upon it.  Without its constant support and supervision, things would soon turn back to the way they were.  And there are yet other forces at play in the struggle for control, many of which are offering simple solutions to complex problems.  They pretend to be good and friendly, but they have wicked designs to put the nation’s citizens into a different kind of slavery, or to exploit them in other ways.  We might think of these as the popular ideas of the world or other false teachings that promise much but always fail to deliver.  Unless we are careful and stay firmly in the truth they may deceive us.

            And this is the way we live.  Set free, but weak and unable to stand on our own.  The sinful nature in each of us is striving to lead us back to captivity.  And for each one of us there is a deck of playing cards – the principle characters—or rather character flaws – that want to lead us back.  They’re different for each one of us, but they need to be brought out of hiding and dealt with.  What’s needed is greater cooperation with the occupying power.  There’s still a lot to do to root out the problems, dig up the old sins that keep haunting, learn how to walk in the way of righteousness, and to avoid those false prophets who would lead us into another form of bondage. They say that in Iraq it may take years to accomplish.  I can say for a Christian it’s a job that lasts a lifetime.

            It was God’s work and God’s work alone to do what was necessary to save you from sin.  He accomplished that work in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ the Savior.  It was God’s work and God’s work alone to bring you to the saving faith in Christ.  He accomplished that work by his Word and Holy Spirit – for most of us at the time of our Baptisms.  And now that he has, there is much of God’s work that remains to be done both by him and by you cooperatively to finish the job he started to bring you to perfection.  May we all then work with him gladly and willingly to bring God’s work in us to completion through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!