Text — John 6:24-27

24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”  26 Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” 

 A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon I went out with my kayak on top of the car to look for a place to launch on a certain section of the Connecticut River.  I looked at my map and found a road that appeared to end right at the river.  I drove down this road; there was no launching site.

What I did find was a new housing development that actually shocked me.  These homes were huge, with not only three car garages, but oversized garage doors high enough to get trucks into.  I experienced a certain gut reaction to this sight.  These houses weren’t just big.  They were fancy.  They were showy, over-decorated, and gaudy to an extreme.  One house had two big stones lions flanking the front door.  I said to myself, “This is really disgusting.  Who would pay to build and live in a monstrosity like these?” 

 And then I saw someone, a young couple in fact, in their big driveway with a very big vehicle hitched up to a very big trailer with a very big, long boat — and my guess is, a very loud one.  I’ve encountered on the river many times.  They’re deafening, and I confess a certain measure of disdain for such boats.  But I tried to keep an open mind.  After all, these people, like me, were getting ready for a Sunday afternoon on the water.  At least we had that in common. 

 So I stopped, got out of my car, with my little kayak on top.  I started down their driveway, and they came toward me.  I said, “Hello.  Do you know of any place where I can launch my kayak?” 

At which point, the male member of this household said, “This is all private property.”  He gestured with his hand to indicate all of his neighborhood, all of Connecticut, and maybe the whole world. 

It wasn’t a long conversation.  I was able to warm him up enough to tell me about a public boat launch 10 miles away.  I got back in my car, and as I was driving away I thought again, “Who would pay to live in a monstrosity like that?  Probably someone who wants to say, or scream “Look at me.  I’m important.  I’ve made it.  I’m successful.  I spend lots of money.”

 But then I realized something else, something more important: That same hunger, to be recognized, to be seen as important, to have a place in the world, to be successful at something, and to have something to show for it, is in me too — in a less pretentious, more tastefully disguised form, I hope.  But it’s there.  It’s in all of us.

 Hold that story in the back of your mind while I tell story #2.

 Two days after the events I just described, the Jacob Group was meeting on Tuesday afternoon as we always do.  We were reading chapter 19 in Matthew — the chapter in which Jesus says, “Let the children come to me, for it is to such as these that the kingdom belongs.” and “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

 Those are evocative statements, and they led to a lively conversation, which prompted Bob Dutcher to tell us about a recent visit with his father who is now a resident at Highview Health Care Center.  Bob gave me permission to share this today. 

 His father has lost a lot of his physical and mental capacities since last spring, when both of his parents fell in their home in Philadelphia.  He told the Jacob Group, “I was sitting with my father, holding his hand.  He can’t have a conversation anymore, but we can communicate back and forth in other, simpler ways — with gestures and so on. 

 “My father was never a rich man in the material sense, but he made a comfortable living and was successful in other ways — even more important ways.  But as I sat there with him, seeing what his life has been reduced to, I thought of the expression “dying in the gutter.”  He isn’t literally in the gutter, because he’s receiving excellent care and so on, but that’s where most of us are headed, or all of us are headed.  No matter how successful we are, or accomplished we are, or how glorious our lives are, or how much good we do, we’re all stripped bare in the end.  We die in the gutter.”  

 The Jacob Group is a very talkative, verbal bunch of guys.  We don’t have many long silences, but after Bob said this there was a very pregnant, sober silence.

 I could offer a lot of commentary on these two stories.  But rather than wrapping them up into some neat lesson, this time I think it would be a lot better for you to provide your own commentary. I’d rather have you talk about these stories among yourselves.  Or talk about them with me.  I’ll be in the parish hall after worship.  Send me an email.  Or talk about them with someone else after you leave here, even if that person isn’t here right now.  What do these stories have to do with each other? 

 Jesus said to the crowd, You’re following me because you ate your fill of the loaves.  You’re following me because you hunger for food that perishes.  That’s the heart of the passage. 

 Notice, Jesus isn’t saying, “That’s wrong.  Shame on you for wanting the food that perishes.”  We’re bound to have this hunger.  It comes with being a creature.  God made us this way, to desire the fruit on the trees, as it says back in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.  We’re hungry.  We need food.  We need shelter.  We need recognition.  We need to have a part to play in the world.  These are things that perish.  We’re destined to lose them.  But until we lose them, we need them.

 Jesus says, “You have come to because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  Notice the irony in that.  Our hunger for the food that perishes is what brings us to Jesus, searching for God — that is, searching for some kind of food that won’t perish.  This is why we’re here. 

There’s a kind of futility built into our lives.  In the end, we lose everything.  We die in the gutter.  This is terribly painful.  We’re wise to prepare for it.  We’re also wise to face the fact that we’re not going to avoid some version of that end, no matter how well we prepare, or how much recognition, praise, money, or glory —tacky or tasteful — we pile up.  That we are headed there isn’t something to be ashamed of.  It’s just the way it is.

 And it drives us to the question, is there any food that does not perish?  Is there anything in life we can count on?  Is there anything that “endures” as Jesus says, “to eternal life”? 

This will be my subject next week.  Why do we say — “we” being Christians through the centuries — why do we say that Jesus is the bread of life that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die?