Becoming Together Through Generosity: God to People

John 6:25-40

When they found Jesus on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘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 that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ So they said to him, ‘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.” ’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘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.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’

 
Dear beloved of God, grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is the true bread of life, who has come down from heaven, for you and me. Amen.

Early in our marriage, when we’d spend a summer weekend with my in-laws at their cabin and I would start packing up to head back on Saturday night to be in town for Sunday worship services, my father-in-law would joke, is the church open in the summer?

It’s not an uncommon sentiment in Minnesota where the summers are short, but the summer days are long and we love to spend as much time as possible outside.

My father-in-law argued, we have to leave the church for the summer, otherwise, they’d have nothing to rally us back from.

Fair point.

Early in his tenure here at Bethlehem, Pastor Chris Nelson changed the name of rally day, the first Sunday of the program year, usually the Sunday after labor day, to Celebration Sunday. I don’t know his exact reasoning, but I suspect it was to combat the summer slump in worship attendance that churches experience year after year.

It didn’t work. When I interviewed Chris after his cancer diagnosis, I asked him, “What’s the one thing that’s eluded you in ministry, the one nut you still want to crack?”

Without hesitation he said, the summer slump. I’m quoting him here:

“It makes me crazy that our attendance plummets by at least a third during the summertime. I know people are around, but it’s just the culture of Minnesota that I just haven’t been able to figure out. We’ve talked about all kinds of things; summer Sunday school, middle week services, nothing has worked. Attendance goes down, and then every fall I’m wondering are people going to come back or not?”

He was actually worried. Every year on Celebration Sunday he’d stand behind the front of the lectern to deliver the announcements and he’d look out and see a full sanctuary, and there was a sense of relief that broke over him. After he was done, he’d turn around and then whisper to me, or Mary, or Kris, whoever was standing there, “they came back.”

But this year many of you never left. This summer our worship attendance was higher than I’ve ever seen it. As I’ve talked with many of you, you’ve shared how in most summers you maybe made it to church three or four times, with travel and baseball and weekends up north. But this year, many have been with us all summer, every week. Because you could, wherever you were.

And all it took was a global pandemic.

But what now? This is a rally day, a Celebration Sunday like none I’ve ever been a part of.

It’s kind of like the rest of the fall. First day of school pictures are shot in front of the laptop. Every family member has a corner of their house marked off for school and work.

Anyone else second guessing their decision to buy a home with an open floor plan?

We’re all super tired of being on Zoom, or Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. We’re tired of having everything mediate by screens and seeing one another from a distance. And yet it’s what we have. There is still no way to be back together, doing the things that we love to do together, safely.

So I’m not so worried about everyone coming back this year. I’m worried about how long you will stay.

Today’s reading comes on the heels of yet another telling of the feeding of the 5,000. This time in John’s gospel. I’m not going to recap it again, except to say, Jesus fed a bunch of people, with not a lot of ingredients.

And the people are understandably impressed. They want more. So they follow Jesus.

They find him on the other side of the lake and they say,

‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘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 that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’

Chapter six is a really long chapter in John’s gospel. It’s complicated and nuanced and weird. Read it all if you get a chance today; it’ll mess with your mind a bit.

But I’m going to oversimplify it for the purposes of today.

The crowds are looking for a transaction. They see in Jesus someone who can meet their needs. Check their boxes. Fill their stomachs. Help them move through life a little more easily.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s more.

There’s connection, belonging, purpose, there’s relationship.

There’s something that endures, abides, lasts beyond all of the immediate needs and wants that we pursue. There’s the presence of God.

Jesus isn’t feeding the people just to feed them. He’s feeding them to draw them closer to himself. Jesus is doing what he’s doing — the signs, the healings, the miracles — so that people will come to him, stay with him, see and believe and know that in him they can live always.

But relationships are hard. And transactions are straightforward. You do this, I’ll give you this and we move on.

But Jesus doesn’t want to move on. He’s in this for the long haul. He comes to us again and again in the bread and the wine, in water and the word and gives us, just gives us God’s life, saying here it’s your take it, live in it, believe in it.

In our transaction-oriented world it’s hard to know what to do with that.

We want to achieve and deserve and merit and measure up. We want the grades and the accolades. The promotion and the recognition. We want the networks and the net worth.

I want to know what it is that I’m supposed to do. Like the crowds who follow Jesus, I want to know what is my work to do. How do I earn it?

But I can’t. We can’t. We can’t tick the boxes, or pass the class, or notch it on the resume.

This is God’s creative, redemptive and life-giving work. And we just need to keep showing up. We just need to stay in it, near it, so that we can be transformed by it.

Just don’t walk away.

When our country is on fire. When our world is hurting. When people are dying. When nothing is certain or easy or clear it is so tempting to stop, to leave, to hunker down. But we’ve got to stay close. Stay near to Jesus. Stay together.

Jesus said to the crowds and says to us, “anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”

Over the past few weeks Mary and I have been having some conversations with members of this community planting seeds and sharing information about the upcoming capital campaign that you’ll be receiving information in the mail about, if you haven’t already.

And as people talk about why they love this church, this collection of God’s children, to a person, they talk about connections and community. They talk about relationships. They talk about what we are able to do and be together.

The next few months are going to be just as hard, if not harder than the last few have been. The days are getting shorter, the nights colder, our political season is only growing more strident. We don’t know exactly how to be church in this moment. But we can’t do it alone.

The temptation to pull away, to isolate, to withdraw and to turn away will be powerful. But God’s claim on you, God’s promise to hold us together, God’s commitment to remake this world in God’s own image, is even more powerful.

In the face of all this unknown in this world, we know that we are stronger together, that we are becoming something new together. We know and believe and live with a God who comes to us, who holds on to us, who loves us without condition and without end.

So on this peculiar rally day, as we return once again to hear God’s promises and taste God’s presence, let us celebrate what we are becoming together. Amen.