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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated. I know I would be afraid and I know I would be despondent. How about you? If you were being pursued by the wicked woman named Jezebel, who basically gave you a mafia threat… Let it be done unto you as you did unto my prophets, if you do not die by the morning. Now it’s not as if Elijah had not seen God’s great promises come to pass before his very eyes. Elijah had. So what would make Elijah so fear-filled and despondent that he would run away from the very people he is supposed to preach to, to the wilderness? Yes. And come to the point where he is so despondent, he goes, I might as well die. Hear the words again, he said. Then he was afraid and he arose and ran for his life. He asked that he might die. And what drove him there were his fears. His fears, not God’s promises. And the fuel that feeds the flame of fear is your and my reason and your and my senses. That is the fuel that feeds the flames of fear. What extinguishes the flames of fear, you might ask, are the promises of God. That’s what extinguishes the flames of fear. You know the struggle. I know the struggle between fears and confidence, between letting my fear fan that flame of fear into greater fear or trusting in the promises of God. What’s even more interesting is what does God do with Elijah? When Elijah runs away from the place where God had placed him, where at the whim of some wicked woman, he’s fear-filled to run away and to hide. What does God do with such a man? Wash his hands of him? Cast him to the side? You know what he does? He feeds him. He feeds him. That’s what his God does. He feeds him. While he is asleep, the miraculous thing happens. A cake of bread is baked piping hot. You know, like the kind you like to lather butter and honey on. Right out of the oven kind of hot. He wakes up by the angel touching him and God’s words to him through the angel are not, you knucklehead. They are arise and eat. And he does. He lays down again to sleep and he is woken again by the angel of the Lord prompting him with the words again, arise and eat. And then he goes forth from there for 40 days and 40 nights in the strength of the Lord. Now was that some super-de-duper bread that he ate that gave him that strength? No, because Elijah was fed physically with that bread, absolutely. But what allowed him to go those 40 days was that God affirmed Elijah in his original call and vocation. Here is where I am sending you. Do not let this world… Do not let your fears, do not let your reason and senses judge this world, but let my promise be by which you judge this world. And what is my promise? That I have made you my prophet. Jesus said it another way when Jesus was tempted by Satan. Remember? Satan asked Jesus to turn those stones into what? Bread. During his 40 days. And what did Jesus say to Satan? Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And Elijah did by God’s grace. Jesus said this in this morning’s gospel reading about fears that you and I may have. Fears about people being brought to faith. Jesus said all people, All that the Father gives me will come to me. Not maybe come to me. All that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. That extinguishes fear. That promise extinguishes fear. He goes on. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing. Nothing. Of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. That squelches fears. That promise of God. And isn’t it interesting? Elijah didn’t have to prove to God that he was worthy of being fed by God, did he? In fact, if anything, God was the one who had to prove himself to Elijah to trust him. You don’t have to do anything to prove yourself worthy. To feed on his flesh and blood. It is he who has to go out of his way to continually invite you to feed upon him who is the bread of life. That’s God’s promise. That crushes fears. And yet fears well up within you and me in a different way. Paul put his finger right upon it. When fear wells up within us, words that come out of our mouth are not tender hearted. When fear is well up within us, we’re not forgiving as we ought. We judge harshly and we don’t give grace to people in spite of their behavior. We let corrupting talk come out of our lips because of fears. We don’t season our words to build people up. We use the fear and the words that flow from our lips to crush them so that we can somehow, in some twisted form of self-confidence, feel better. Grumbling and murmuring is ultimately what that’s about. That was the common malady of the people of Israel, wasn’t it, when they were spending their 40 years in the wilderness? Yes. Grumbling and murmuring. Murmuring and grumbling. It tears down families, doesn’t it? It causes rifts in relationships, doesn’t it? It begins to break apart a parish family, not knit her together, doesn’t it? And fears, fears are based on our perceptions. Be they right or be they wrong, but fears are fed by reason and senses. Fears are not fed by God’s promises. It was Paul who reminded us to put on the new self, created in our baptism, after the likeness of God. Speaking of likeness, you know how, you shouldn’t even say, I shouldn’t say you know how, do you remember when your children mimicked you? They sat down like you. They had mannerisms like you. And it was scary sometimes, how true to life it was. It embarrassed you when it was too much like you and you didn’t want to see it. And it humbled you when it was far greater than you. All God desires of you is to imitate him, who is your loving father, your daddy. Be like he who is tenderhearted and compassionate. Words that flow kindly out of his lips, not harshly. Jesus isn’t searching for people whose consciences are are bold and power-filled. Jesus searched for troubled consciences. Jesus desires frightened consciences like mine, like yours. He desires simple folk and humble folk. And he wants to remind you that you have been given to him like a bride to a groom. You’ve been given to him by the Father. And he, unlike earthly bridegrooms, desires Never turns his back on his bride. Always stays faithful to his bride. Always seeks her glory, her honor. Always loves. Always forgives. What does God do with us? We who have so many issues with which we struggle, as Paul points out. What is God’s will toward us? Whose lips speak words of… Corruption and pain to other people, and yet we speak praise to God out of the same orifice. I’ll tell you what God does. He feeds you. He feeds you just like he fed Elijah himself. His forgiveness, his mercy, and his words are to you, arise and eat just as they were to Elijah, for the bread of life has been given for you. He said, everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day. Now the Jews who heard that in this morning’s Gospel reading, they grumbled. How can this be? We know His Father and Mother. We have seen Him grow up among us. How can He be God in the flesh? How can He give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink? How can these words apply to me? How do I know that I have been given to him who is my bridegroom? How do I know I’ve been betrothed? We cannot judge with our reason or our senses nor consult our minds that these things apply to us. To do so is murmuring. And reason loves to murmur and grumble. Reason has its place. And its place is in this world with earthly matters. But with spiritual matters about which we are speaking, reason needs to be driven from us because these things are only apprehended and trusted in by faith. And your God has given that to you in abundance and he will not lose you. What we preach is not in vain. And what we have been sent to proclaim is not in vain because he has said this, the Father will provide those who will heed his teaching of eating and not dying. That’s a summary of what he said in this morning’s text. The Father will provide those who will heed his teaching of eating and not dying. The stress that we as Christians in the church have at times is, For our own flesh and blood, whom we wonder about their faith, to our family members, to our friends, to the lost in this world, we question and wonder. God has said he will provide those who will heed his teaching. That’s his words, not mine. And for that, I thank God, as I know you thank God. Jesus is not your judge or your hangman. In fact, he’s… Jesus is far more willing to give you himself than you and I are to ask him to give himself to us. God be praised that he is so willing. So where will we find our God? How do we know he is good and gracious toward us? We’ll find him in a manger. We’ll see him frail, helpless, and humble. We’ll find him on a cross where we will see him frail, helpless, and humble. We won’t find him in the empty tomb, but we will know that the empty tomb is his victory over sin and death and his righteousness revealed. And we will find him where he has said he will be found by you. Whoever eats this flesh and drinks this blood has life indeed. He said, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. That’s where we’ll find him. And we’ll find him for us to be fed. It’s our fears that drive us and our terrors that lead us away from him. He is your friend. He is your brother. And he most assuredly is your savior. He says to you, I am more trustworthy than your own heart is. I am more trustworthy than even your conscience is. Trust in me. Jesus said to you, 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. Our only response to these words are these, Lord, you are my God. I will believe you. I will hear your word. I will obey you. I will die trusting in whatever you have said. I will not insist on seeing or speculating or exploring with my reason the meaning of it all. And his response to that, to you, he says this, Arise and eat and be strengthened. In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
