What is Your Job Description?
Good Morning Friends,
God’s promise of abundance for all creation and our desires to claim it for our personal use brings us face to face with the sin of Adam in the garden…It brings us face to face with the challenge of being good stewards. It is a big job, considering that we have a propensity to act like Adam.
In my work I get to meet a lot of people and part of my job is connecting them to others in the faith community. In this work you find that materialistic people, whether paupers or multi-millionaires, can find it difficult to stomach the shift from physical food to spiritual talk. The results when Jesus gives the “bread of life” sermon is just that kind of rejection….still both dough and Spiritual Bread are needed. You just need to understand that one lasts and the other does not. What Jesus was saying was hard to swallow. He was in everyone’s face on this topic and perhaps he is so hard on this point because it is the one thing that is nonnegotiable. So, as part of my job, I still ask people what they do to make a living, so that I might engage them in the harder conversation about what they do to make a life. What is Your Job Description?
Scripture: Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
John 6:35 (NRSV)
10Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. 11Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 4:10-11 (NRSV)
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:56-69 (NRSV)
Message: The people who followed Moses eating mana and the people who followed Jesus lived on leftovers. It was their job to collect it. In today’s scripture we see Jesus declare God’s spiritual provision and abundance as his own. Now today we live in a land of such material plenty that it is hard to approach it each day with a thankful heart. Here materialism, legalism and sensationalism kill the spirit. The sad indictment in today’s scripture is found in Chapter 6 verse 66 indicating that Jesus’ disciples, like the crowds, were turning back and no longer following him. Here is one of the most poignant moments in the Bible. Jesus, who was totally God but also totally human, asks his disciples if they will follow where it is difficult to follow and it is Peter who acknowledges that there is nowhere left for them to go. Their job then and our job now is simply to believe enough to act….to follow Jesus. Sometimes it is money that people seek but what is universally needed is something of a spiritual nature.
Pray we not look to God for only what we can get. Pray we not turn our back on God the first time our Lord delivers something we were not expecting. Pray we understand that which lasts and that which is gone at the end of the day. Pray we not miss out on Jesus himself. Pray we understand what the crowds miss. Pray we are filled with the nourishment that gives us life beyond this day. Pray we are thankful for living in the land of plenty. Pray as Christians we really believe. Pray that we help feed those who hunger.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 