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St
Alban’s (Grand Cayman) & St Mary’s (Cayman Brac) |
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Sermon
delivered on the Seventh Sunday After Trinity the 3rd August 2003 by
Fr Nicholas J.G. Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban’s Church
of England (Cayman Islands). Scriptures:
Exodus 16: 2-4, 9-15
Ephesians 4: 1-16
S. John 6: 24-35 John
6: 27 Jesus said “Do
not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which
endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for
on Him has God the Father set His seal.” While
eating breakfast or some other meal or snack from our kitchen table,
I enjoy watching some ching-chings and ground-doves on our back
verandah. They have figured out how to take advantage of the dry
food and water that we put out for our dog Rufus. The birds cannot
swallow the dry dog-food directly, so what they do is take up a
piece in their beak and drop it into the water dish, and then after
it has softened they take it up again and eat it. As Jesus said, the
birds neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, that is to say,
they don’t, on the whole, plan for an evil day, but actually these
birds have found a way to labour productively, making use of what
they are provided with. LABOURING
FOR THE FOOD THAT ENDURES At first sight the Lord’s injunction to his audience in today’s Gospel reading not to labour for the food that perishes seems difficult, and indeed baffling for all of us who in one way or another need to earn to feed, house, protect and entertain ourselves and perhaps a family, and, indeed contribute to the needs of others and work in one way or another for the good of the community. However, we need to bear in mind the manner of thinking that was current when biblical expressions such as this one are used. The meaning is not that one should not be employed, but that one’s priorities should be right. The way we would express the thought would be: If we have to labour for the food which perishes, how much more should we labour for the food that endures! And as so often with the Gospel of St. John, we have to employ more than one level of thinking to be able to get at an adequate meaning of the teaching. On the surface the teaching is about labouring, but at a deeper level, the teaching is about the reality of an eternal provision that goes beyond what we normally think about when we say “bread” or “food”. This is confirmed by the phrase “the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give you.” For now we have to think about how we are supposed to “labour” for something that is given to us. Is this a different sort of labour? Mostly we think of “labouring” for something and being “given” something as mutually exclusive. The line of thinking is developed in the following verses, when they say to Jesus, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” - or in other words, How must we labour? Jesus’s answer is “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” Jesus does not teach that there is no labour involved. But what He teaches is that this special kind of labour is a labour of belief - to believe in Him who was sent and therefore given. This labour involves a transformation of the mind such as what in principle was given to us at our Baptism. This transformation involves a continuing labour throughout one’s life, when for instance one is called for the Lord’s sake to renounce a state of sadness or depression or indeed a temptation of any kind, which are all states of unbelief, and take upon oneself a state of belief in Him who was sent, indeed was given, to us. LABOURING
TO BELIEVE Look
at the state of mind of the children of Israel as told in the
beginning of today’s Old Testament lesson: “The whole congregation
of the people of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the
wilderness, and said to them, ‘Would that we had died by the hand of
the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate
bread to the full.’” They expressed a state of unbelief. There was
no food to gather and they did not know how to begin to believe that
the Lord would continue to provide for them, just as He had done when
they left Egypt. As the account proceeds, we note that they were
provided for, not just in an ordinary way, but in a special way.
“When the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a
fine, flake-like thing, fine as hoarfrost on the ground. ... They said
to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was.
And Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread which the Lord has given
you to eat.’” So for them to believe that the Lord would provide
for them in their need was a labour of the mind, and as the account
proceeds we see the same thing in regard to their need for water, and
also to protection against enemies, and in regard to their very
faithfulness to the covenant with God and its commands. To actively
believe in the God who had led them to this point was not easy, it was
a serious labour, and it involved at every point a transformation of
the mind. Though our circumstances nearly three thousand years later
and on another side of the globe are very different, we are not much
different in how very hard we also find it to apply what God has
taught us to our actual state of belief. Yet to believe is for us,
just as it was for the Israelites, God’s gift to us. God has given
us the true Bread from Heaven, the Son of God Himself. We are called
to receive that gift without reservation. GIFT
OF ABUNDANCE St.
Paul in our second lesson today shows us that God’s gift in His Son
is not only a gift of survival, but a gift of abundance. St. Paul says
that we in the Church are each provided with a measure of grace.
“And His gifts (to us) were ... to equip the saints for the work of
ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to
mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ.” Now, we are called too to have a transformed understanding
of abundance, and not one that is governed by the general worldview or
the media. This is the abundance of the food that endures to eternal
life, that is God’s gracious gift to us. We obtain such a gift by a
continuing labour of belief, and a continuing transformation of the
mind that is conferred upon us in principle, in power and beginning,
in our baptism, the transformation that is conferred upon us in prayer
and the regular participation in the Eucharist, and the transformation
of the mind and heart that is the gift of God, that we are called to
continually throughout life, day by day, moment by moment, and
challenge by challenge. Let us thank God that by such faithful
transformation, even we may, as St. Paul says, attain to the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Amen and Alleluiah!
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