Sermon Tone Analysis

Communion:Jesus is the Bread of Life

One of the elements we use for communion is bread.

We put some fresh bread out today for communion to make a specific point: God is offering to each of us the gift of life.

The bread itself is a tactile reminder of the life God offers us…and I'm going to talk about this in detail in today's message…

But for a moment, think about how the land the grain is grown on is a gift from God.

The grain itself is a gift.

The people who planted and cared for, and harvested the grain are a gift.

The people who transported it and those made the grain into flour, the people who took that flour and made bread, right here in Duluth—all of this is a gift from the Lord—he's the one who even created the possibility of bread.

Even bread itself, if you think about it, is a bit of a miracle!

And while God reminded his people in the wilderness that humans "do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD."

He reminded them while providing manna, a kind of bread.

Jesus makes all of this much more personal…

John 6:35 (NIV) — 35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

And then, at the last supper, Jesus uses bread to represent his body broken for us.

As we take communion, the bread representing Jesus’ broken body, the juice representing the new covenant in his blood…and we’re celebrating that we, you and I together, we are the body of Christ.

Pray…

Questions Jesus Asked:

We are working our way through a series of talks about all of the questions Jesus asked as its recorded in the scriptures.

Today we’re in Luke 5 & 6, and Jesus is being challenged, again, by the religious leaders, about his eating habits… this isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last that he’s challenged about how he’s eating, and who he’s eating with…

I was reading a couple of books this past week… here’s a quote I enjoyed…in the gospel of Luke…

“Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.”

Eating Your Way Through Luke's Gospel, by Robert J. Karris

It’s a little overstatement to make a point…BTW, I think the same could be said about MY life!

This author isn't the only one to take notice of this… the Pharisees make the same observation

Luke 5:33–35 (NIV): They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

…the contrasting comparison they make of "fast and pray" with "eating and drinking" is not meant to be a compliment!

They’re challenging him.

They even go so far as to call him a glutton at one point!

Matthew 11:19 (NIV)

19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’

But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”

Jesus has an explanation for the Pharisees, but to make sense of it we need to remember why Jesus said he was here in the first place…

Luke 4:18–19 (NIV) — 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus describes his mission using terms from the Old Testament about declaring and enacting the Year of Jubilee.

He weaves together verses from Isaiah 61 & 58.

He's calling to mind for his listeners a whole bunch of biblical images of release—a release of debts, of sins, liberation from the powers of sickness and the devil, a liberation of the land itself.

He then tells the Pharisees…

Luke 5:34 Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?

This is another image from Isaiah 61:10 about a wedding feast at the end of time.

Jesus is adding to the image of his mission of Jubilee…He's saying that the party you’re all long for at the end of time, its beginning!

You don't declare a fast at the beginning of the party.

This is the inauguration of the long-awaited Jubilee!

The land is being set free!

The disciples are to announce good news to the poor, to set the oppressed free, to release the captives, to bring sight to the blind, to declare the year of the Lord's favor!!!

So, why is Jesus eating and drinking his way through Judea?

“…every meal they eat points towards a feast like no other: and feast that makes present and permanent the coming reality of the world set free to find its home in becoming the home of God.” (The Hunger for Home, Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke, by Matthew Croasmun & Miroslav Volf, p.28)

And that future feast is not here just yet.

Right‽ Jesus goes on to say…

Luke 5:35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

Fasting is this sense is the discipline of longing, the discipline of mourning the absence of the table, of the feast, of the home for which we were created.

That's why Jesus says at the Last Supper with his disciples that he won't drink of the fruit of the vine until the day when we're all back together again.

We currently live in this in between time.

Jesus, the bridegroom is absent in the flesh.

The kingdom of God is not fully here yet.

The Jubilee mission is far from complete.

And yet the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the living God is among us even right now.

The kingdom is coming and the world is being transformed.

The Jubilee mission continues right here among us, and with our active participation.

The passage for today comes in the very next chapter, Luke 6. It’s a Saturday, a Sabbath day, and Jesus and his disciples/students are walking through a field and snacking…they snacking in a field on the Sabbath!

Main Passage…turn to it, please…

Luke 6:1–5 (NIV)

1 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat.

And he also gave some to his companions.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Walking through the passage…

The problem they’ve got themselves into by munching on some grain on this particular sabbath day isn’t because they are breaking any property rights.

They aren’t trespassing, as we might think about being in a similar situation today.

The ancient law found in Deuteronomy 23 lays out a set of practices for the use of the land to help support the needy—a provision was made for those in need to harvest grain—by hand, not using a sickle, and only take what you need for that day…much like the manna in the wilderness.…

The goal is to realize that even the cultivated land—like everything else in our lives, the places we work and the income, the food we earn—is a gift from God.

The fields we work are the Lord's fields.

The places our food comes from are the Lord’s fields.

The bread we make comes from the hand of God.

What if we saw everything in our lives as a divine gift, rather than our personal property of which we have total control.

Just wondering…

Side note: this approach—everything belongs to the Lord—has such wide ranging implications for how and what we eat, and from where, how we allocate resources, how we think about consumption and consumerism…I could keep us here all day!

How about this… Just ask the Lord this week how this approach to life—everything belongs to the Lord, everything—how might change one part of how you live your daily life?

Alright, Jesus and his disciples are snacking their way through the fields…

there are multiple times where he and his disciples/students are accused of doing too much of the wrong kinds of things on the sabbath, eating with the wrong people, healing people…

In this case harvesting is strictly forbidden in Exodus 34:21 “21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.”

Is what they’re doing sabbath-violating work?

Is what they’re doing harvesting?

Matthew Croasmun & Miroslav Volf point out that from the law, Jesus has several lines of defense he could’ve used that show this is precisely not the kind of work that violates the sabbath.

He could’ve defended the rights of the poor, he could’ve pointed how their traditions celebrate God’s ownership of the land—and on different occasions he does exactly this…

Instead Jesus answers their challenge with a question of his own, and a story they would know quite well…

Luke 6:3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read…”

Of course they've read it!

They are experts in the scriptures!

They've read every scripture!

But actually seeing the Messiah in the scriptures, well pretty much everyone missed that, so just like (Brian talked about last week) with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus opens the "scriptures to point to himself, using a story about David, the long-celebrated king of Israel.

By bringing up this story, Jesus is highlighting his identity as Messiah, he’s identifying with the great king David.

Look with me for a moment at all the ways Luke point out that the messiah comes from the lineage of King David, they are both the "anointed ones" (all quotes from Luke)

[I’M NOT SURE HOW TO PUT THIS LIST ON THE SCREEN, EITHER AS SHORT BULLET POINTS OR SCRIPTURE PASSAGES…]

Joseph is from the house of David (1:27; 3:31)

the angle Gabriel tells that Jesus will receive David's throne (Luke 1:32)

Zachariah invokes David's name (1:69)

Bethlehem, the site of Jesus’ birth is twice described as the city of David (2:4, 11)

After talking about David here in chapter 6…

A blind man Calls Jesus "Jesus, Son of David” (18:38)