“Gathering Up the Pieces” October 29, 2013 Studies in the Gospel of John, 14b John 6:35 35 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. John 6:13-14 13 So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. 14 After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world. Jeremiah 29:10-14a New International Version (NIV) 10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” The word bread can literally be translated food, but it means more. Bread was the staple food. It was the main dish, just as rice was in Africa. I am the food that sustains, that nurtures, that revives, that reinvigorates. I am that which gives you life. Real hunger is over when you connect with me. There is no such thing as a thirst for life living in connection with me. I am what you need to connect with if you would have and know life. Jeremiah 29:11 is very popular, but again, we miss its real meaning if we fail to consider the context in which this promise is made. Context is all the verses that come immediately before a verse, and all the verses that immediately follow it. This is what the Lord says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This is what the Lord is saying to those who find themselves in captivity. This is what the Lord is saying to all those who believe that their lives are broken, finished, hopeless, destroyed. This is what the Lord says to all who have just given up doing anything other than existing from day to day, waiting for something to happen, we know not what. So what does God tell a defeated and exiled people to do? Does he say, give up; there is no hope for you? Does he say, “Sorry, you blew it? You had your chance in the promised land; you had a moment of opportunity—you had a season, a time of renewal of refreshing from God, of deliverance, but your faith prevented you from responding positively to me and now its all over.” No. This is what God said to them, and this is what God says to all of us who feel like the only move you can make is “down,” the only thing you face is failure, and the only future you have is the grave (Jeremiah 29:5ff): 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” In other words, when we act in faith in the God who has promised to be our connection, our life, our nurturer, our sustainer, we operate as if we were not captives. We operate as if we are not oppressed. We operate as if no threat, no obstacle someone has placed in our way, no system of evil that seeks to rob us of our humanity, can stop us. We build, adopt children, make babies, plan marriages and make plans for our children’s and our grandchildren’s futures. We develop, mature, prosper, and strategize, just as if we were living in the New Jerusalem, because in fact, in Christ we have already passed from death to life. And we pray for the people around us. We “love on people” rather than judge them and condemn them. We reach out to all kinds of people, even those very different, whom we would have otherwise shunned, feared and pushed away. We, as minorities, refuse to demonstrate the same bigotry, isolation and rude behavior that those we live among confront us with. Yes, we pray for and support the leaders we did not vote for, the politicians who seem to sell us out every time, and even the preachers who are preaching fairy tales about how good and great and prosperous life is, when we know that most people face insurmountable odds. Pray for peace for the city, for our neighbors, for our employees, for our bosses. Pray. Because when they have peace, WE have peace. When they prosper, WE prosper. If it is well with their souls then we don’t really have anything to worry about. We have been given the power, the privilege, the right, and the authority, to make life better for everyone around us. We just need to add them to our prayer list. We need to add PGE (light and gas utility) to our prayer list. We need to add Congress to our prayers list. We need to add Chevron to our prayers list. Stop criticizing and start praying. Stop complaining and start praying. Stop being stagnant, living in denial, living in isolation, and start living. Jesus broke up all the fish and bread. He broke it into pieces, because if we would be whole, our lives have to be broken into pieces so that God can put us back together. They were not fragments but pieces, twelve baskets full. Jesus had broken all the bread and fish up into many pieces and they were placed in baskets. These were not remnants of food left on the ground from someone else’s eating. The disciples gathered up baskets of broken pieces. All of the bread (food) had been “fragmented” or broken into pieces. These unused pieces had not been touched and not been eaten. They were still available as the eternal blessed bread of life, and are yet available to the world, waiting for us who have yet eaten this bread of life, to do so and join Christ, not only in his brokenness, his humility, his love but also in his resurrection power. The pieces are there for those of us who would allow the Christ of God to claim us, to emerge within us, to transform us into God’s original purpose and intent as heirs of His life. Too many of us are paupers while all God’s riches in glory are at our disposal. Too many of us have never experiences the nutrition that comes from Christ: the “Bread of Life.” It is absurd that too many of us are satisfied with “churchianity,” with petty envy and jealously, with power plays and personality and character assassinations, with cheap stupid gossip, talking about folks, forming cliques to exclude them, legislation to isolate and punish them. Our focus on those we don’t like and whom we believe don’t measure up is a poor substitute for focusing on the plans God has for us, the future God has for us, the life that is ours if we will but answer: “YES-give me my piece that I might know Your peace!” Why do we starve when baskets full of the bread of life, broken for us by Christ sacrifice of Himself on the cross, lie unused at our sides? The sad reality is that we are pulled by the cult of personality, the cult of success, the cult of unbelief, the cult of self-sufficiency, the cult of ego-and ethno centricity, the cult of empirical sensory perception. We are caught up in idols and false gods that so often determine our approach to all matters and all persons. Too many of those idols are human in this age of codependency, voyeurism and hero worship. Did you once come to Christ, taste of the heavenly bread, and then found yourself like the prodigal son, turning once again to the husks in the swine’s trough? Our churches today are paralyzed, not growing, because too many of us are negligent Christians. Too many of us are “worldly Christians,” who care more for money and other things in life which perish with the using or perish with us. Have you backslidden from the place you started with Christ, so that now you have no longing for him? It is to 21st Century America that the Epistle to the Hebrews cautions: Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).” Does your need to fit it superseded Christ’s broken bread, freely given for your life? Last week some conservative psychologists published a finding that anyone who is a non-conformist in society is insane. Jesus would say, “We need more insane folk in our midst.” We do not need to let our spiritual wealth slip through our fingers, because we have succumbed to Satan’s diversionary tactics. Gather up the fragments. Gather up the broken pieces, which remain over, lest God’s life pass us by. And God’s promise is real and eternal to us: Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. Amen.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 20:04:48 +0000
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