What's the priority ?
Last week we considered the claim of Jesus to be the Bread of Life, and this week he begins our gospel passage (John
And we also heard from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (
This week I watched some of the Jeremy Kyle Show – it’s one of these morning programmes where people share problems and he tries to resolve them – one of the guests was a 16 year old who has dieted down to just over 5 stone, and still believes she is fat – she has been diagnosed as suffering from anorexia and from bulimia. For her hopefully the nightmare may be starting to improve as she recognises the problem and seeks help, for others the misery will continue.
And actually I think both Jesus and Paul are warning us about a kind of spiritual anorexia, where there is a danger that we may be starving ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, of what we need to live a good spiritual life. And like someone suffering from anorexia, we must learn again how to feel hunger – how to feel excited for God and for his message.
The theologian and philosopher, Paul Tillich was addressing a distinguished audience of theologians in
Jesus is the living bread, upon whom we are challenged and encouraged to feast, and we do that in a number of ways.
Firstly we do it through the celebration of communion, as we eat the bread and drink the wine which reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus and his love for us today. If we are joining in properly, then through the mystery of communion we are being filled with his strength and his power to go out and live our lives according to his will and his purpose.
We are joining together as his people committed to giving thanks for his sacrifice and his love, to remembering all that he has done and said, and continues to say, and also to offering our lives up for his service. We are also, and this is perhaps too often forgotten, dining together, as a fellowship, and as a family… We are warned in the Bible not to take communion lightly, and that is because in this celebration we are making promises to God, and promises to each other.
And so, as Jesus commanded, we are feasting upon him through the communion meal. But we must also remember that the communion meal is not an end in itself. We receive God’s grace, we remember his love and we accept his mercy, but we must then go out and celebrate these gifts through our lives. Time and time again I have suggested the need for proclamation of the gospel message – the need to go out and tell people the good news about Jesus and what he’s done and continues to do for us – and that’s not some good sales idea for the Church of today – it is surely just a natural response to Jesus if we are really considering what he has done for us.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (5:15-20) he is, as I mentioned earlier, offering some guidance on how to live – Christians often get quite a bad press for being judgemental and making rules which make life a bit boring, and Paul doesn’t help with this as he warns people not to get drunk on wine, but Paul is offering a much wider message.
He is urging people to live lives based on Jesus – he is taking the teaching of Jesus, and encouraging people to follow – not to misery and not to boredom, but to the fullness and joy of life that Jesus intends for us. It is a fact that people are making judgements on Christianity which are based on our lives – they are judging Christ by our standards.
Our lives must look right if we are to give the right picture of Jesus. We must have the right priorities – we must be following Jesus as the bread of life… there was a woman who was very, very ill and she thought she might die. She needed a major operation to stand any chance – going into the operation she prayed really hard, and she received a voice back from God saying, ‘don’t worry you’re going to live a long life.’ Later, after the operation the doctors were amazed at how well she was doing.
Again she received an assurance from God that she would live a long life – so she decided that she was really going to make the most of the rest of her life. Strangely though, the first thing she did was to arrange to have some major plastic surgery on her face – something she had always wanted. The operation was successful but as she left hospital she was knocked down by a bus and was killed.
Of course, when she got to heaven she was none too pleased and demanded a meeting with God. ‘You promised me a long life, what happened ?’ she asked to which God replied, ‘Yes I did but when you came out of the hospital after your plastic surgery, I didn’t recognise it was you !’
Priorities are important, and the time and attention we give to God are important – time spent in prayer, Bible study, fellowship and in service.
And then after communion and after our lives another thing that we are encouraged to consider is our worship and thanks. And these are things that again we can actually feast upon… Again Paul writing to the Ephesians writes of being filled with the Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and giving thanks at all times.
Paul is suggesting that these are things that we must be doing not just occasionally, and not even just in Church, but on a regular basis, but let’s begin with Church – our worship on a Sunday is very often the shop window that people see if they visit for any reason.
That worship must include the appropriate times of quiet and reflection, it must include the right times of confession of the things we’ve done wrong, it must include prayers for ourselves and for others, but it must also include celebration and joy, because in all circumstances we know that we have a God who loves us, we know that we have a God who has offered us salvation, and we know that we have a God who will never leave or abandon us.
In short, our worship must include an element of thanks to God for all that he’s done and continues to do for us.
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