This is the second Sunday when the Gospel continues the chapters of St John’s Gospel known as the Bread of Life. Last week, the Gospel was all about Jesus taking the five loaves and two fishes, and then he multiplied them and there was enough bread for all of them to eat and as much fish as they desired.
Every Jew understood that the meaning of the loaves that Moses fed the people with when the people rebelled against their freedom and wanted to return to the fleshpots of Egypt. And they came to know that God cares, that God feeds His people, that God nourishes people.
All of us must ask in our hearts, “What do you really hunger for?”
And probably at the bottom of all those hungers that we express — the need to feel accepted, the need to feel wanted, the need to feel loved, the need, sometimes, to feel better than everybody else, or richer than everybody else, or more important that everybody else — all these hungers are deeper and deeper and deeper until you get to the final hunger and this is what Jesus has come to give: the final hunger is we hunger for God Himself.
What Jesus is asking of us is not that we believe that he is the Son of God, that we believe that what he says is true, that we believe all these things. He’s looking for our trust.
He’s not saying, “I’ll give you a few sermons and then you’ll see if they are reasonable enough and you follow them and then you will be happy.” He is saying, “I want your heart. I want your soul. I want to be as close to you as you are the bread you eat. The food you eat is one with you. I want you unconditionally. I want you because I want you to understand that when God loves, God gives. And I give myself to you that you might give yourself to your brothers and sisters.”
And in giving yourself to your brothers and sisters, then you will understand that the Messiah is the one who gives himself that all people might finally understand and experience the loving God who gives, and to understand what love really means.
SUMMERFEST 2021
Enclosed in today’s bulletin are the final results from SummerFest 2021. What a wonderful successful year! Thanks to everyone who participated in any way! Just a few notes to accompany the financial summary: