{"id":21,"date":"2012-12-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/2012\/12\/08\/sunday-12th-august-2012-bread-of-life-3\/"},"modified":"2012-12-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-08T00:00:00","slug":"sunday-12th-august-2012-bread-of-life-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/2012\/12\/08\/sunday-12th-august-2012-bread-of-life-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 12th August 2012 &#8211; Bread of Life 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<span class=\"imgPusher\" style=\"float:left;height:0px\"><\/span><span style=\"z-index:10;position:relative;float:left;;clear:left;margin-top:0px;*margin-top:0px\"><a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theword-this-week.weebly.com\/\/uploads\/4\/1\/5\/2\/4152650\/2677649.jpg?364\" style=\"margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; border-width:1px;padding:3px;\" alt=\"Picture\" class=\"galleryImageBorder\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"display: block; font-size: 90%; margin-top: -10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<div class=\"paragraph\" style=\"text-align:left;display:block;\"><font size=\"4\"><strong>The Word This Week:<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<ul style=\"\">\n<li style=\"\"><a title=\"\" style=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts.php?id=214#hebrew_reading\">2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33<\/a> and <a title=\"\" style=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts.php?id=214#psalm_reading\">Psalm 130<\/a>\u00a0 <i>OR<\/i><\/li>\n<li style=\"\"><a title=\"\" style=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts.php?id=214#hebrew_oth_reading\">1 Kings 19:4-8<\/a> and <a title=\"\" style=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts.php?id=214#psalm_oth_reading\">Psalm 34:1-8<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/li>\n<li style=\"\"><a title=\"\" style=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts.php?id=214#epistle_reading\">Ephesians 4:25-5:2<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0<\/li>\n<li style=\"\"><a title=\"\" style=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts.php?id=214#gospel_reading\">John 6:35, 41-51<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span><\/span><font size=\"4\"><strong>Thoughts on the Word:<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<p><strong style=\"\"> <strong>John <\/strong><\/strong><strong> <strong style=\"\">6:35, 41-51<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span>Jesus said to them, \u201cI am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will  never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.<\/p>\n<p>Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, \u201cI am the bread that came down from heaven.\u201d They were saying, \u201cIs  not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How  can he now say, \u2018I have come down from heaven\u2019?\u201d Jesus answered them, \u201cDo not complain among yourselves. 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. It is written in the  prophets, \u2018And they shall all be taught by God.\u2019 Everyone who has heard  and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I 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.\u201d <br \/><\/strong><br \/>In today&#8217;s Gospel we continue our reading of John 6, which focuses on the idea of Jesus as the bread of life.\u00a0 Jesus re-iterates his contention that he is indeed the bread of life, he brings to the attention of his Jewish audience that their ancestors ate manna in the desert (while grumbling much as the crowd before him was!) but that manna did not stop them dying.\u00a0 He contrasts himself with the manna, by declaring that by eating this new bread, which comes from heaven they will not die!\u00a0 <br \/><span><\/span><br \/>What he says next though is something that as we will see next week causes much disillusion in the crowd.\u00a0 He says that the bread that he will give is his flesh.\u00a0 Now the allusion to the Eucharist here is inescapable, Jesus gives of his flesh and blood for all of us, and in the Eucharist we gather to partake of that body and blood.\u00a0 But more on that next week!\u00a0 This week I want us to focus on the broader meaning in Jesus&#8217; words.\u00a0 Jesus in declaring he is our bread of life, is calling us to follow him, he gives us the clearest example of what living a life of dedication to God looks like.<\/p>\n<p><span>A life dedicated to God leads to one not only declaring God&#8217;s love and forgiveness, but living it! Jesus calls us to ingest the message of his life, death and resurrection, to absorb it and use it as our energy source.\u00a0 He calls us to make his life, death and resurrection a part of us.\u00a0 <\/span>Jesus means for us to eat of him, for all people in the  world to taste his  goodness, to be filled with his mercy, to believe  that the Father has  sent him among us, so that filled with the bread of  heaven, his promise  to raise us up will be our destiny*. <br \/><span><\/span><br \/><span><\/span> So with Jesus we as Christians must stand for the weak against oppression, we must confront hypocrisy, we must declare love &#8211; true love which is honest and confronting to be the force which guides our lives.\u00a0 If we have truly taken Christ into our hearts, and made him our energy source (our bread of life) then we must live as he did.\u00a0 By becoming one with Him we become one with the Father, and the Spirit also.<\/p>\n<p><span>Have you eaten of the bread of life?\u00a0 Is Jesus your energy source?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>God bless you this week.<\/span><br \/><span>Daryl.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>* I took this sentence from a sermon by Amy C. Schifrin here: <\/span><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.predigten.uni-goettingen.de\/aktuell-index.html\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.predigten.uni-goettingen.de\/aktuell-index.html<br \/><\/a><br \/><span><\/span><br \/><span><\/span><br \/><span><\/span><\/div>\n<hr style=\"width:100%;clear:both;visibility:hidden;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Word This Week: 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 and Psalm 130\u00a0 OR 1 Kings 19:4-8 and Psalm 34:1-8\u00a0\u00a0 Ephesians 4:25-5:2\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0 John 6:35, 41-51 Thoughts on the Word: John 6:35, 41-51 Jesus said to them, \u201cI am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/2012\/12\/08\/sunday-12th-august-2012-bread-of-life-3\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Sunday 12th August 2012 &#8211; Bread of Life 3&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordthisweek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}