Years ago I read a book about a real life character who was a very intelligent young man who went from job to job passing himself off as an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, and was very successful in these charades – he got people to believe in him -until he got caught and was shown to be a fraud.
They eventually made a movie, if not about the character of that book, then someone very similar named Frank Abagnale titled “Catch me if you can”. A genius, he was able to learn how to play the role he took on, and as a master counterfeiter, he was able to verify and validate these roles. Ultimately he was successful because people came to believe in him; they trusted him, he seemed to be what he appeared.
The need to believe in people is hard wired into our makeup; we need to be able to trust people to be whom they appear to be. It is the heart of all our relationships – consider just how important belief in someone is – in marriage it is the keystone of the relationship, it is central to counseling and pastoral relationships but also every time we go to the doctor, or we call an ambulance, we are putting our trust in that person and who he seems to be. We trust them with our lives.
Anytime we hire a contractor, a plumber, an electrician we are putting our trust in them, we trust them to preserve our property, to keep it safe. We believe in them; all of life seems based around this premise. We need to believe in people, in who and what they claim them to be.
This need is such an important part of our makeup that you will see it time and again in books and movies with the line: “Trust me” as either the lead to a humorous disaster or as a very poignant moment of serious human decision.
And just consider advertisements, hawking pills, and serums, compounds and elixirs to do all sorts of things: to make you healthier, wealthier, wiser, younger, skinnier, more muscular, more attractive, smell better, clean deeper, grow hairier, shower safer – the pitch man for these things is saying: “Trust me,” and many believe, and we buy.
Belief and trust are hardwired into us.
So it should be no surprise that this need to believe, to trust, is the great theme of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The word believe occurs in the Gospel of John alone in one form or another some 90 times.
Earlier in this chapter, when the people whom the Lord miraculously fed with five loaves and two fish asked Jesus what must we do to do the work of God; Jesus answered: the work of God is this; to believe in the one he has sent.
John ends his gospel account telling his readers that he wrote these things so that we would believe that Jesus is the Christ, and by believing in him have life in his name.
Luke records in Acts, when people aroused by Peter’s sermon ask what must we do to be saved, the response is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
The object of this call to believe is always the person of Jesus. To believe in Jesus, or belief on Jesus, that he is who he reveals himself to be, and this belief supposes a relationship of trust.
In the passage this morning Jesus is calling his listeners to believe that he is the bread of life, to believe that all who come to him will not hunger, will not thirst, to believe that he alone guarantees eternal life.
To acknowledge Jesus as the bread of life is to acknowledge that he will completely fill, completely strengthen, completely sustain the one who partakes of it. As we used to think of bread as the staff of life, so Jesus proclaims he is the bread of life – the source of life – through whom one will never hunger. It is to acknowledge him as the sole source of one’s existence, as the sole purpose and reason for life. Ultimately it is to have him as guide, mentor, friend, supervisor, protector. He becomes the very definition of life.
To believe that he is the bread of life means to let go of every claim to self, self-fulfillment, self-dependency, self-satisfaction because nothing else will satisfy, nothing else will give definition, purpose and significance to life but him: If he is the very bread of life then nothing else can be.
Jesus’ call to belief, his claim about himself is not empty bluster. He has already qualified his claims by his actions. Just to summarize John’s account to this point in his record; Jesus has calmed a storm, fed a multitude from little, caused the lame to walk, the blind to see, the deaf to hear, restored health to the sick, changed water to wine, and walked on water,
yet when he says to them: “Trust me, believe in me,” they look askance at him, they doubt him; this is the boy from Nazareth, Joe the carpenter and Mary’s son, he can’t be what he claims: Living water, bread of life, source of eternal life.
It seems almost absurd that one could not immediately claim to believe in Jesus, to trust him given the evidence, and yet…..
How many of us say we believe in Jesus yet treat him, the bread of life, as one of myriad options; Jesus is one of many selections, like picking different foods from a buffet table.
We believe in Jesus but define our identity by our career success, the degrees we attain, the positions we have attained. We believe in Jesus but seek our security in money or a good paying job. We believe in Jesus but in making decisions we first defer to the opinions of others, or even our own feelings for answers.
Jesus says that he is the bread of life, and living water, that if we come to him we will never hunger and we will never thirst. He claims that if we consume him as the bread of life we will have eternal life. We may be baptized and confirmed, but do we believe in Jesus? Is he our bread of life?
Jesus offers himself to us to be our very life, our ultimate security, our very identity, and we all so often choose lesser things to fill those spaces in our lives. Jesus offers himself to us as the bread of life and so many of us are content to choose a Twinkey. It looks good, tastes sweet, but has no nutritional value at all. In fact, if one is to believe some nutritionists, it may even be poisonous; have you ever looked at the label of one of those things?
D.L. Moody, the great evangelist of the 2nd great awakening stated: Trust in yourself, and you are doomed to disappointment; trust in your friends, and they will die and leave you; trust in money, and you may have it taken from you; trust in reputation, and some slanderous tongue may blast it; but trust in God, and you are never to be confounded in time or Eternity.
If the axiom is true that we are what we eat, our belief in Jesus, manifested and proclaimed in our reception of Holy Eucharist, means that he is in us and we in Him, that we have given our entire lives: our goals, ambitions, gifts, talents and abilities for his purposes, that we give our worries, fears, questions, struggles for him to deal with. And he gives himself totally and completely to us as our Savior, forgiving us and cleaning us of our nastiness, and our friend who will guide us, encourage us, direct and discipline us and bring us ultimately to his home.
So when you come to the altar today to receive communion, receive the bread of life, tell the Lord you want his life in you, tell him your life is his and mean it. Tell him no more Twinkies to fill your life, you want him and him alone; you want the bread of life.
“Trust him when dark doubts assail thee, trust him when thy strength is small, trust him when to simply trust him seems the hardest thing of all. Trust him, he is ever faithful, trust him, for his will is best, trust him, for the heart of Jesus is the only place of rest.”