Daily Devotion – September 3, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison

John 6:35, 41-51
6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
6:41 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
6:42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
6:43 Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves.
6:44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.
6:45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.
6:46 Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.
6:47 Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.
6:48 I am the bread of life.
6:49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
6:50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Jesus’s words here say that God the Creator has a giant purpose in mind – to redeem from the inevitable earthly grave all whose spirits can accept that God gets to decide the fate of the human race, that God is sending warnings and teachers and even a savior to help that redemption get into human minds and hearts, and, audaciously, that Jesus himself is that savior.

This message does not go over well. Those who already believed were even more convicted and continued to follow Jesus. Those who were undecided, well,  some at this moment chose to believe and remain faithful to Jesus, and some left off following him from that very day, the text later says.

In this passage, many scholars believe that Jesus is trying to get the crowds to see that his ministry is not about miracles, it is not even about physical healing or feeding. It is about the abundance of God, whom Jesus is but a messenger for – a high messenger, God’s son, but a messenger in this portion of his ministry. Jesus is trying to point to the Father here who is and always has been the source of life and nourishment for the human beings, the race God created so long ago. The message is that God cares for God’s creatures. That we are the creatures, not the creator. In order to have a right relationship with God, we have to know who and whose we are.

Are there ways you rebel against that message, even now? There are certainly ways I rebel against it. But let’s try it on, even for just this one day. We are creatures of God the Creator, who are blessed with multitudinous gifts, day after day. How might our actions with one another be different if we lived as though this were fact, and not just something we think we might be choosing to believe? For even the choice to believe this message has been given to us by God: ”No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” If you are reading this and trying on believing it, YOU have been chosen by God! You have been chosen already! Keep trying it on. The Spirit of God is working in you.

Gracious God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for choosing us and giving us your Son and your Holy Spirit to help us live the way you want us to live, into the vocations you have gifted us for. Help us to remember every day who and whose we are.   Amen.