The
source and the example of God’s continual mercy, of God’s cleansing and
defending goodness, and of “that spirit of self-denying service” is the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. By the gift of the spiritual
presence of Jesus Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, by the truth and
power of the Holy Spirit of God, given us in the new birth of baptism and received
by faith, we can indeed “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been
called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one
another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace.”
We are all examples to one another.
Some of us are good examples; most of us are very mixed examples. David was a
very mixed example. We saw last week his example of yielding to the sins of
lust, and adultery, and murder. Today we hear of the courage of Prophet Nathan,
and of David’s example of truth and repentance. Nathan proclaimed the Lord’s judgment, and
David had the grace to admit, “I have sinned against the LORD.” David’s sins
were many and gaudy, but David did tell the truth, “I have sinned against the
LORD.
Many of us have had, or been, children caught with hands in
the cookie jar – or the like. And many of know the natural human first reaction
to being caught in the cookie jar or the like. What is our first reaction? Do
we naturally admit that we have done wrong? That has not been my experience. My
experience is that the first reaction is to lie. We all want to be innocent,
good children. That is our self-image, and we protect that image - even at the
cost of truth. To paraphrase Alexander Pope’s 1711 Essay on Criticism “to lie
is human, to forgive divine.” (line 275) And when the lie breaks down, our next
human impulse is to blame. I’ve mentioned TEAPOT – Those Evil Awful People Over
There.
We
see this in Genesis 3:8-13: Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the
time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the Lord God among the
trees of the garden. The Lord God
called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said,
“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked;
and I hid myself.” God said,
“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I
commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with
me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is
this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”
When Nathan proclaimed the Lord’s judgment, David had the grace
to admit, “I have sinned against the LORD.”
In today’s epistle we read of God’s desire that “all of us come to the unity
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the
measure of the full stature of Christ. . . . speaking the truth in love, we
must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the
whole body, . . as each part is working
properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.”
The quick lie is easier than the hard
truth, but as we grow up we learn that it is the truth that sets us free from
the tangles that lies get us into.
St. John tells in chapter 8 of Jesus
teaching the disciples, “the Jews who had believed in him, “…you will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are
descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean
by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus
answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to
sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the
household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you
will be free indeed.”
St.
John’s gospel reflects a lifetime of reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ life
and resurrection. Archbishop Rowan
Williams dates it toward the end of the first century – about as far from the
Resurrection as we are from the Korean war. Our Sunday gospels this month focus on the
meaning of Jesus’ feeding the 5000.
“The
truth will make you free.” The disciples who said, “We are descendants of
Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone,” were not telling the truth. The
foundational story of Israel is the Exodus. Slaves in Egypt were set free by
the mighty hand of God working through Moses. For over 500 years Israel had
been subject to Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Alexander and his successors, and
then to Rome. Jesus reminds his disciples, and us, that “everyone who commits
sin is a slave to sin.” Only by Jesus’ death and resurrection can we be free from
sin. Jesus sets free from the spiritual
consequences of past sin, and Jesus gives us the spiritual power of the Holy
Spirit to resist temptation.
In
today’s gospel Jesus encourages the people, and us, to resist the temptation to
work only for the food that perishes, but to work “for the food that endures
for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” We receive that spiritual food, “food that
endures for eternal life” given to us in Holy Communion as we remember with
present effect, spiritually with the disciples in the upper room on the night
in which he was betrayed the Son of Man giving the bread of life, “this is my
body given for you,” and the cup of salvation, the new covenant in Jesus’ blood,
shed for us and for all who will receive him.
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