bread from heaven, bread for the world

In the name of God, source of all being, eternal word and holy spirit. Amen.

How are we to live?

The people in the wilderness cried out and God said to them, I will give you bread from heaven. They were in a time of turmoil and change, of fear and doubt. All that they knew in the security of their captivity was gone!

Something new was coming. But what was it?

How are we to live now? Between the old place and the promise?

To begin to accept ourselves as sustained by the grace of God.

To begin to trust Jesus – that the source of our being is the source of all being.

To trust God’s provision and providence – and move forward through life alive to that promise – and its fulfillment here and now.

In the desert the people yearned for their past, the security of their captivity, and they complained. Paul in the epistle says, put away rancor and wrangling and bitterness and anger – as a Lutheran theologian, Paul Lee, said to me last summer, Badmouthing is negative prayer – put all that away and be imitators of God. God is loving, God is kind, God is forgiving and tenderhearted. In your speech and in your actions be imitators of God.

God’s word builds you up, sustains you.

May God make us a gracious people, a generous people.

SO how are we to live? We are to live as imitators of God, as members of his kingdom.

Be kind to one another, be tender-hearted to one another, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven us.

How are we to live? Through Jesus: he is the bread of life, bread from heaven, bread for the world.

Live free from fear, free from want. Rejoice in God’s abundant grace and sustaining love.

Hope in the promise of the presence of God with us, giving us life through his son, sustaining us.

Act secure in the knowledge of the love of God, as his hands in the world, heralds of his kingdom arriving in our midst.

God is with us. Christ is with us. Let’s live that way. God give us the bread we need today – the sustenance of your saving love.

Jesus live in our hearts forever. Amen.

August 9, 2009

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