John 6:35-51 (Pentecost 12B)
St. John, Galveston (8/11/24)
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +

Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Life and death, as we know them, are the two extremes on life’s continuum. They are polar opposites. Being that every generation that has gone before us has experienced both of them, you would think we would have a pretty good handle on how to define them. Traditionally, death has been defined by the medical profession using basic standards. These standards took the form of using either a heart or lung functioning criteria for death. To determine death, physicians would ‘feel for the pulse, listen for breathing, or hold a mirror in front of a patients nose to test for condensation, and look to see if the pupils were fixed.’ But as science and technology advance, our definitions, particularly for death, have become more and more precise. In 1978, the President's Commission on Ethical Problems in Medicine issued a report on defining death which called for a uniform definition based on a ‘total brain’ standard. The standard defines death as the death of the entire brain of a person.

Regardless of our need to define life and death with absolute precision, the Scriptures use the terms in a much broader and in a more nuanced manner. The earliest Biblical reference to death is in Genesis 2. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Adam, as you know, ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree in spite of God’s warning, and mankind has suffered the consequence of his rebellion every since. Adam though, didn’t die in a conventional sense on the day that he ate of the fruit of the tree. In fact, he lived roughly another 800 years. How then did he die “In the day that he ate of the fruit of the tree” as God had warned? 
The Scriptures speak of death as encompassing much more than the termination of breathing, or of brain activity. Death, in a Biblical sense, impacts every aspect of our lives. It reeks havoc on our relationships, on our friendships, and on our marriages. It even has the power to break familial bonds as it did between Cain and Abel. It warps our thoughts and our feelings. It leaves us searching for transcendence, as well as, significance and purpose, not in God, but in ourselves. Death leaves us turned away from God. It leaves us hiding, as it were, in the proverbial bushes of life, so that God can’t see what we’re doing with our lives. It leaves us ashamed, so that we mask ourselves to others.  

That death is more than just the end of life, is clear from God’s words to His people through the Prophet Ezekiel. God’s people had turned away from the Him, and the Prophet said, “the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

St. Paul wrote of the same deadness of people in the Book of Ephesians, where he spoke about the curse of Adam, and how death left all of us completely alienated from God, unable to even desire Him, or to turn toward Him. “You were dead (he says) in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Like those of whom Paul spoke, and like the dry bones in Ezekiel’s valley, all of us were once dead before God. But Jesus came and gave us life. As He says elsewhere, “I have come that they may have life and that they may have it abundantly.”  And here, in John 6, He says, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Jesus came to give us life. The life that He gives us is two fold. First, He gives life to our souls that we might desire Him and the gifts He gives. “I am the bread of life (He says); whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Certainly, God’s people have hungered and thirsted in this life in a physical sense, as St. Paul acknowledges in his letter to the Christians in Corinth. “To the present hour we hunger and thirst (he says), we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.” Such is the ugliness of sin and the depravity of the world. But God’s people needn’t hunger and thirst for forgiveness and righteousness, for Jesus gives both in abundance and without cost. Such gifts flow freely from God’s word, and from the water of Holy Baptism and the bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus.

Jesus has called each of you out of death to life. In your baptism, you were buried with Jesus and you were raised again according to the likeness of His resurrection from the dead. “I have come (Jesus says) that they may life and that they may have it abundantly.” You have that life now, in that you live before God, freely forgiven, and freely redeemed.

And, of course, Jesus has given you the ultimate victory over death and the grave as well. The first mention of death in the Bible is in Genesis 2. One of the last references to death is in Revelation 21. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
As we confront death this week in the passing of one of our own, there are few promises of God that are more comforting than the promise of His victory over the grave.

“Now in faith I humbly ponder 
Over this surpassing wonder 
That the bread of life is boundless 
Though the souls it feeds are countless: 
With the choicest wine of heaven 
Christ’s own blood to us is given. 
Oh, most glorious consolation, 
Pledge and seal of my salvation!”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +