Love - The Bread from Heaven - John 6:41-51
I have spoken before of a book that I found in a charity shop a few years ago. It is entitled: “Why love matters, how affection shapes a baby’s brain.” From research that has been done, it outlines how important love and affection are in the development of children and babies. Love, care and affection are like a hidden food that nourishes a baby’s emotional and physical development, even shaping the wiring of the brain. And when the receiving of this love and affection is somehow interrupted, perhaps due to some family trauma or separation, and in other instances due to neglect, the implications can be quite far reaching and include:
• Emotional and Behavioural Issues –
• Mental Health Disorders - anxiety depression, low self esteem
• Cognitive and Academic challenges
• Social Relationship difficulties
• Physical Health Issues.
• Long term unhealthy Behavioural patterns – which includes an inability to make good and healthy decisions in life.
• Trans-generational effects – these struggles and dysfunctions in turn get passed on to further generations.
These issues in turn have enormous implications for society – including increased healthcare, higher rates of mental health issues, greater social services needed. I think we must be clear: It doesn’t mean that all mental health issues are the failure of parents. Some people are born with a predisposition towards mental health issues – mental health issues are complex.
But the book is a reminder of just how important love is. Love is our spiritual food. It is not an optional extra. It is absolutely essential. Without it our humanity becomes dysfunctional and our societies become fractured.
In last week's sermon entitled “Satisfaction” we explored how Jesus can be the bread of life for us. Because he had awakened to the timeless, eternal I-Am within, he is able to help us to awaken to the eternal I-Am presence within us too – thus deep spiritual nourishment that leads to true satisfaction.
Today, we continue on from last weeks Gospel passage from John 6:41-51.
The passage begins with the reaction of the crowds to Jesus' claim: “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
Firstly I want to explore the idea of Jesus being the Bread that has come down from Heaven. In the original Greek, the word for Heaven is ‘ouranou’ which comes from the word ‘ouranos’ meaning sky or starry heavens. (It is where the planet Uranus gets it name – named after the god of the sky – the god of the heavens.)
In the ancient world, the sky and the starry heavens were the most expansive things they knew stretched out above them. From the perspective of the inner world of the spirit, or consciousness, to say that Jesus is the bread that comes from heaven, suggests that Jesus lives from a place of spaciousness and expansiveness. To live from a place of openness and spaciousness like the sky, is to live in Love, for the way of Love is the way of the open and spacious heart.
By contrast the crowds in the story grumble and question, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
The reaction of the crowds highlights a common struggle: the difficulty of seeing beyond the literal and familiar to grasp the spiritual and divine. The crowd's scepticism mirrors our own tendencies. Often, we are confined by our limited understanding and our habitual way of seeing things which leads to a frustration and inner grumbling which represents the heart that is narrowed, contracted and closed. Whenever we feel our hearts narrowed, contracted and closed, it is a sign that we are not living in the spaciousness and expansiveness of love.
Secondly in this passage we see that Jesus responds to their grumbling by saying, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Here, Jesus speaks of what some might call ‘the Divine Draw’, the magnetism of the divine, the grace that initiates our spiritual journey. It is God who awakens in us the very desire to seek deeper meaning and fulfilment in life. The sense of discontentment and dissatisfaction with with the surface things of life is already the Divine within us drawing us back to God-self.
This divine attraction is a fundamental concept in many spiritual traditions. It is the pull of the soul back towards its source, the divine reality. In the Tao Te Ching, the little book of Ancient Chinese Wisdom we read:
“Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
And Jesus assures us that this journey of return to the Source, is initiated by the one he calls Abba (the Loving Heart of Wisdom), The One who is Love itself.
Lastly Jesus concludes the passage with a profound statement: “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” It points to the selfless love of Christ which is expressed most profoundly in the archetypal image of crucifixion.
To awaken to the timeless, I-Am Presence at the heart of life, that nourishes our deeper inner hunger, is ultimately to awaken to Love. And so it makes sense that it is through acts of selfless love, as we see in Jesus, and all the holy people who have ever walked this earth, God draws us back to God’s Self and awakens us to the Divine Love (that spaciousness of the heart and mind) that is our very essence as those made in the Divine Image.
I close with a story that is often attributed to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. It expresses how the selfless love which we see expressed in Jesus is able to break open our hearts to that we can begin to feed on a deeper spiritual nourishment that transforms us.
It is a story of a young man who was travelling around Europe with a group of friends. He was challenged by the friends to go into one of the confessionals of a cathedral and to make up a bogus confession, confessing to a whole list of outrageous sins. But the dare was that he would have to do whatever penance was assigned to him by the priest. But the priest saw through the young man, and after listening intently dismissed the young man without giving him any penance. Knowing that his friends would ask what penance the priest had given him, he asked the priest: Aren’t you going to give me any penance? After a moment of thought, the priest responded giving him a simple penance. He was to kneel in front of the crucifix and looking at the image of Jesus on the cross he was to say 3 times "All this you have done for me, and I don't give a damn". The young man was unable to complete the words, for in kneeling before the image of Christ’s act of selfless, sacrificial love, the superficial nature of his own life and love was revealed. In that moment, the selfless love of Christ symbolised in the archetypal image of Christ on the cross became a moment in which he began the journey of being drawn back to his spiritual source had begun, and would culminate in him becoming a priest himself.
I don’t know whether the story is literally true or not. Stories don’t have to be literally true to convey truth. But it does express in a powerful way how selfless acts of love have the ability to draw us back to the Source of Love itself. Amen.
I have spoken before of a book that I found in a charity shop a few years ago. It is entitled: “Why love matters, how affection shapes a baby’s brain.” From research that has been done, it outlines how important love and affection are in the development of children and babies. Love, care and affection are like a hidden food that nourishes a baby’s emotional and physical development, even shaping the wiring of the brain. And when the receiving of this love and affection is somehow interrupted, perhaps due to some family trauma or separation, and in other instances due to neglect, the implications can be quite far reaching and include:
• Emotional and Behavioural Issues –
• Mental Health Disorders - anxiety depression, low self esteem
• Cognitive and Academic challenges
• Social Relationship difficulties
• Physical Health Issues.
• Long term unhealthy Behavioural patterns – which includes an inability to make good and healthy decisions in life.
• Trans-generational effects – these struggles and dysfunctions in turn get passed on to further generations.
These issues in turn have enormous implications for society – including increased healthcare, higher rates of mental health issues, greater social services needed. I think we must be clear: It doesn’t mean that all mental health issues are the failure of parents. Some people are born with a predisposition towards mental health issues – mental health issues are complex.
But the book is a reminder of just how important love is. Love is our spiritual food. It is not an optional extra. It is absolutely essential. Without it our humanity becomes dysfunctional and our societies become fractured.
In last week's sermon entitled “Satisfaction” we explored how Jesus can be the bread of life for us. Because he had awakened to the timeless, eternal I-Am within, he is able to help us to awaken to the eternal I-Am presence within us too – thus deep spiritual nourishment that leads to true satisfaction.
Today, we continue on from last weeks Gospel passage from John 6:41-51.
The passage begins with the reaction of the crowds to Jesus' claim: “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
Firstly I want to explore the idea of Jesus being the Bread that has come down from Heaven. In the original Greek, the word for Heaven is ‘ouranou’ which comes from the word ‘ouranos’ meaning sky or starry heavens. (It is where the planet Uranus gets it name – named after the god of the sky – the god of the heavens.)
In the ancient world, the sky and the starry heavens were the most expansive things they knew stretched out above them. From the perspective of the inner world of the spirit, or consciousness, to say that Jesus is the bread that comes from heaven, suggests that Jesus lives from a place of spaciousness and expansiveness. To live from a place of openness and spaciousness like the sky, is to live in Love, for the way of Love is the way of the open and spacious heart.
By contrast the crowds in the story grumble and question, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
The reaction of the crowds highlights a common struggle: the difficulty of seeing beyond the literal and familiar to grasp the spiritual and divine. The crowd's scepticism mirrors our own tendencies. Often, we are confined by our limited understanding and our habitual way of seeing things which leads to a frustration and inner grumbling which represents the heart that is narrowed, contracted and closed. Whenever we feel our hearts narrowed, contracted and closed, it is a sign that we are not living in the spaciousness and expansiveness of love.
Secondly in this passage we see that Jesus responds to their grumbling by saying, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Here, Jesus speaks of what some might call ‘the Divine Draw’, the magnetism of the divine, the grace that initiates our spiritual journey. It is God who awakens in us the very desire to seek deeper meaning and fulfilment in life. The sense of discontentment and dissatisfaction with with the surface things of life is already the Divine within us drawing us back to God-self.
This divine attraction is a fundamental concept in many spiritual traditions. It is the pull of the soul back towards its source, the divine reality. In the Tao Te Ching, the little book of Ancient Chinese Wisdom we read:
“Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
And Jesus assures us that this journey of return to the Source, is initiated by the one he calls Abba (the Loving Heart of Wisdom), The One who is Love itself.
Lastly Jesus concludes the passage with a profound statement: “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” It points to the selfless love of Christ which is expressed most profoundly in the archetypal image of crucifixion.
To awaken to the timeless, I-Am Presence at the heart of life, that nourishes our deeper inner hunger, is ultimately to awaken to Love. And so it makes sense that it is through acts of selfless love, as we see in Jesus, and all the holy people who have ever walked this earth, God draws us back to God’s Self and awakens us to the Divine Love (that spaciousness of the heart and mind) that is our very essence as those made in the Divine Image.
I close with a story that is often attributed to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. It expresses how the selfless love which we see expressed in Jesus is able to break open our hearts to that we can begin to feed on a deeper spiritual nourishment that transforms us.
It is a story of a young man who was travelling around Europe with a group of friends. He was challenged by the friends to go into one of the confessionals of a cathedral and to make up a bogus confession, confessing to a whole list of outrageous sins. But the dare was that he would have to do whatever penance was assigned to him by the priest. But the priest saw through the young man, and after listening intently dismissed the young man without giving him any penance. Knowing that his friends would ask what penance the priest had given him, he asked the priest: Aren’t you going to give me any penance? After a moment of thought, the priest responded giving him a simple penance. He was to kneel in front of the crucifix and looking at the image of Jesus on the cross he was to say 3 times "All this you have done for me, and I don't give a damn". The young man was unable to complete the words, for in kneeling before the image of Christ’s act of selfless, sacrificial love, the superficial nature of his own life and love was revealed. In that moment, the selfless love of Christ symbolised in the archetypal image of Christ on the cross became a moment in which he began the journey of being drawn back to his spiritual source had begun, and would culminate in him becoming a priest himself.
I don’t know whether the story is literally true or not. Stories don’t have to be literally true to convey truth. But it does express in a powerful way how selfless acts of love have the ability to draw us back to the Source of Love itself. Amen.
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