Pentecost 10

Pentecost 10 (John 6:24-35) I am the bread of life
Jesus is life.

Jesus is the source of life for all organisms on this planet. There would be no life on Earth without the source of life in Jesus Christ. We become more of whom our Heavenly Father created us to be as we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The life of Jesus is eternal.

As St. Athanasius asserted: there never was a time when the Son was not.
In the divine realm, our Heavenly Father has always and is always expressing His infinite love by eternally expressing that love in the Son. The Father and Son share that eternal love in the person of the Holy Spirit. The three persons of God are the three persons of love: the one who loves, the Beloved, and the Love that forms their essential being as one God.

Life is love.

Any mode of existence apart from steadfast holy unconditional love is a distortion of life and a disintegration of life.

When our species chose to separate from God in an effort to acquire supreme knowledge and unlimited power, we abandoned love as the central organizing principle of our existence. As we abandoned love so we abandoned life.

We exist in a world of cause and effect, of gravity and entropy, subject to the laws of matter, energy, time and space. We suffer physical death because we suffer spiritual death. Human beings die because our species chose to separate from the very source of life.

Jesus came to Earth to restore us as a species and as individuals to the source of life.

It is important to understand that sin is a consequence of separation. Death is not a punishment for sin. Death is a very real organic and spiritual reality. It is a terrible tragedy. Our Heavenly Father is so concerned about our species that He allowed His co-eternal Beloved Son to come to earth, become a particular human being and suffer a cruel death.

Jesus trapped death by accepting death. As the very source of life Jesus transformed death back into life by the power of infinite and eternal love.

People sought out Jesus to solve all manner of problems. Death was not one of them. The problems people identified are in fact the symptoms of the real problem confronting our species. That real problem is separation from God, from other people, from the truth of who God created us to be, and from the very source of life.
Jesus is the bread of life. He is the nourishment that strengthens the soul to enter into a new way of living. The way of living Jesus offers is eternal.

Every choice we make has an eternal consequence. In Jesus those choices and find transformation in the real presence of eternal love.

We can only overcome the consequences of separation- sin and death- as we allow the Holy Spirit to infuse the Divine Life of the co-eternal Beloved Son into our daily existence.

It is not enough to hold up the Ten Commandments and say: do this. A soul in separation has no desire to keep the Law. The desire comes only as the soul hears the Word of God, believes the Word of God and receives the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God.

The Bible teaches us about Jesus but the Bible is not Jesus. The sacraments infuse divine grace and divine life into our souls but the sacraments are not magic. The Bible and the sacraments are the instruments of reunification and transformation. The reality is Jesus.

That is why Jesus teaches that the work of God is the choice to place your faith and hope and love in the Personal Reality of God. The Personal Reality of God is Jesus Christ.

All souls hunger and thirst for meaning and purpose. Our Heavenly Father designed us to find that meaning and purpose in the co-eternal Son. Nothing less than the Son, nothing of the material universe, can meet that need and fulfill that desire.
We may enjoy a good meal. But we will grow hungry again.

We can delight in a friendship or a romance but we will thirst for something more or something different.

Even the legitimate pleasures of the material world are subject to the law of diminishing return.

Only Jesus can fully and eternally satisfy our hunger and thirst for meaning and purpose. Only Jesus can overcome death. Only Jesus can transform our distorted desires that result in sin.

Only Jesus can say: I am the bread, the source, of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger for meaning and purpose.; whoever believes in me will never thirst for life and for love.