### Welcome Back, Travelers
It is good to see all of you again and a very special welcome back to all of our travelers. I can’t call you weary travelers because you are energized by your trip south of the border to see Daniel. We are happy to have all of you back today. And of course, we welcome those who are visiting with us for the first time.
### Words from John’s Gospel
I want to share with you some words from John’s Gospel, chapter six, reading from verses 67 to 69: “So Jesus asked the 12, as we heard read just a moment ago, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. Amen. We have come to believe and know that you are the holy one of God.'”
These words spoken between Jesus and his disciples follow immediately after a very tough teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus said to those who gathered there for worship that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood abide in him and he in them. He said further that just as the living Father sent him and he lives because of the Father, so whoever eats him will live because of him. Indeed, he referred to himself as the living bread that came down from heaven so that one may eat of it and live forever.
### A Difficult Teaching
So Jesus’ claims, as we have thought about them and listened to them over these last few Sundays, presented a significant obstacle for faith, particularly for the Jewish people among whom he spoke. Here was a human being, just as they were, whose mother and father they knew, who is now identifying himself as this life-giving way, as none other than Israel’s God. Not surprisingly, John reports to us in the Gospel for today that many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. They could not abide his statement.
But Peter received the grace to press beyond such externals, the things that tripped up the other disciples. He pressed beyond such externals to actually hear Jesus’ words and to hear them in the context of his life and to recognize that in hearing these words he could stake his life on no one else but this one who now stood before them.
### The Theme of God’s Determination
Jesus’ difficult teaching draws together a two-part theme, which I believe runs through all the scripture readings that we’ve heard today. It sums up and retells the main lines of the Gospel of Israel’s story, but it retells this story within the context of Jesus’ life.
The first part of this theme is the reality of God’s own determination to dwell among humankind in a locatable way. That is, in a way that we might say, “God is there.” The Old Testament passage from the first book of Kings recounts Solomon’s dedication of the temple in Jerusalem. The priests have placed the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord in the most holy place in the inner sanctuary of the house, and when they came out, the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord such that the priests could not even stand there to minister.
### Solomon’s Prayer
As Solomon lifted his hands and recounted the details of the covenant that God had made with David and his descendants, he prayed not only for the Israelite but also for the foreigner, that is, for the Gentile, asking that whoever prays towards the temple, the locatable point of God’s dwelling on earth, God would hear in heaven, heed, and forgive, so that His name would be made known throughout all the earth. That’s Solomon’s prayer.
In this sense, Solomon’s temple is an early sign of the reality that Israel’s God is the one who determines to dwell with and among humankind in such a way that He is capable of being located. Everyone following me so far? That’s the God whom we serve.
### God’s Presence in Christ
Now, in Christ, God, in no uncertain terms, has demonstrated God’s determination to be among us in a locatable way. Paul writes that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. Therefore, Christ’s resurrection proclaims the good news that because of God’s union with us in Him, we too have been raised to new life. We have been raised to eternal life in Him.
### Understanding New Life
How might we understand this, friends? How might we understand this new life in Him in a practical sense? We can say these things and they sound good, but how do we understand it in a practical sense? Today’s Collect, we prayed, “Almighty God, we are taught by your word that all our doings without love are worth nothing.” Then we prayed, “Lord, send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue.”
We are taught most famously that all our doings without love are worth nothing. Everyone knows that passage from 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak the tongues of mortals and angels but do not have love, I am nothing. I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
### The Gift of Love
So all the good works that we might think about or conceive of doing in this world are worth nothing if we do not have love. The only way we can have that love which makes every good action worthwhile is by first receiving that love from God. Pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue. By grace, God has determined to live with and among his human creature. The love that God gives us is nothing but God’s self. Let’s not miss the point. The love that God gives us is nothing but God’s self. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.
### God’s Love and Our Love
There is not God and then something separate called God’s love. They are not two separate realities but one. Therefore, as a human being, I may love you and demonstrate that love for you in any number of tangible ways, but at the end of the day, I am not my love. But God is love.
So as Christians, we confess that if you want to know what God’s love for humankind looks like, if you want to know what God’s love for the world looks like, look no further than the whole life of Jesus Christ, because that’s where you’re going to find it. When we pray, asking God to pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, we are not asking for warm sentimental stuff. We’re not asking God to warm our hearts and give us that pitter-patter feeling, but rather we are asking that God in Christ would come into our hearts and govern our lives from the center of our being, so as to conform our lives to His through the power and presence of His indwelling Holy Spirit.
### The Temple of Our Bodies
The temple Solomon dedicated in Jerusalem was an early indication, an early sign pointing forward to our time, to the reality that the temple of our very bodies is where God comes to dwell. Revelation 3:20–the risen Christ says, “Listen, I am standing at the door and knocking. If you hear my voice, if you open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me.”
### A Humble Cry
Our prayer in today’s Collect is nothing other than our humble cry for God to fill our lives just as He filled Solomon’s temple. It is our prayer for real communion with the living God, to bring us back to what is truly all-important here, which is that we actually encounter this God who is at the heart of our worship. Like Peter, come to the conviction that He is the Holy One of God, that He alone has the words of eternal life.
### Overcoming Distractions
In my own journey and ministry thus far, it has become increasingly apparent to me just how easily we, as believers, can become distracted from this Jesus who desires to be at the heart of our worship, from this God who yearns to be the object of our worship. On one hand, as believers, we may become distracted by the sorts of comfort zones or comfortable routines in which we allow our lives to settle, such that our faith often goes unchecked or unchallenged from day to day. We may be lulled into thinking that we may rest on our laurels and exert no further initiative to grow deeper in the knowledge and love of God.
On the other hand, we may become entirely absorbed by the cares and concerns of this life, such that the Word of God or the things of faith have little or no effect or impact in our lives. They become optional extras. If I have time to do it, if I have time to go to church, if I have time to study the scripture, if I have time to spend on the things of God, then I will engage it.
### Building Other Homes
In both these instances, whether we have become laxed or absorbed by so many other things, we set about building other homes, other shelters for our lives. We miss out on the wonderful gift of communion with the living God, which God gives us specifically in Jesus Christ within the temple of our bodies.
Like David, we want to build a house for the God who cannot be contained. We want to build homes and shelters for our lives, which were not meant to shelter our lives when God Himself wants to come and dwell within us.
### Standing in Faith
My brothers and sisters, the reality is that in coming to live among us, God does not invite us to build Him a temple, or to build other temples. Instead, He invites us to come and to stand in faith and in obedience to Him, to allow Him to build us into His temple. Jesus is at the heart of Christian worship. Our battle is to remain focused. It’s not one against flesh and blood. The weapons we employ are not the traditional weapons of war.
We are called to stand in the truth of Christ, in His righteousness, to be conformed to His life, always ready to proclaim the gospel of His peace. He gives us faith in Him, not worthiness, so that we may be able to stand in the knowledge of our salvation–the certain knowledge that we have been, that we are being, that we will be saved. Our only offensive weapon, if we listen carefully, is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. That alone is sufficient, friends.
### The Journey Ahead
So as we fight to share this life with Christ at the center, let us never forget: there is no wound that mortal flesh can ever inflict upon us that Christ is not able to heal. Let us press on. This God whom we worship has given us His own flesh for the life of the world and, in doing so, He invites us to communion with Him, to truly love Him. Let us return to Him above all else, for the outpouring of this most excellent gift of love, because that for which we pray is the One who is our eternal life.
Amen.
