"Is Loving The Teacher Enough?"

Sermon Preached By Rev. Richard E. Stetler - August 10, 2003

Psalm 130; John 6:35, 41-51

     This morning we are going to be talking about one of the "I am" passages written in the Gospel of John.  Jesus said, "I am the bread of life.  Those who come to me will never be hungry and those who believe in me will never be thirsty." Was Jesus' intention to encourage his listeners to focus on him, or was he communicating something else?  In this particular reference, Jesus obviously was not talking about food and water.  What was he teaching to those who had gathered? 

     The same words that are intriguing to us inspired confusion among many of his listeners.  Jesus said, "I am the bread that came down from Heaven." This caused some of them to say, "This man is Jesus, son of Joseph, isn't he?  Why is he now saying that he came down from Heaven?" 

      Most of them did not understand the meaning of his words.  Perhaps the same thing occurs today.  There may be millions of us who are strangers to what it means to respond to his message.  We have absolutely no problem responding to him.  We may know the story well, and may even refer to the Gospels as "the Good News," but we also may not know how to apply Jesus' teachings so that the hunger and thirst which grows from our neediness will stop controlling our attitudes and decision making. 

     Let us consider a number of examples.  First, the number one cause for failed marriages today is financial mismanagement.  Many people do not know how to be in relationship to their money. They cannot save it.  They do not know the first thing about investing it. At the end of the year, they look at the amount of money they earned and simply have no idea how they spent it.    

     Recently we have been reading about the spent wealth of Mike Tyson. We wonder how in the world any man could spend over three hundred million dollars, which is $43,000 a day, and be broke.  In fact, he is more than broke; he still owes millions to various vendors who extended credit to him. 

     To better understand this, all we need to do is consult the reports coming from banks and credit card companies to discover that a majority of us spend anywhere from 8 to 15 percent more than we earn each year.  The more we earn, the less careful we are in how we spend it.   

     Jesus talked more about wealth than any other topic in the Gospels.  Are people taking time to look at their spending habits in light of, "Where your treasure is, there will your hearts be also."?  Just how driven are we to spend money because of our imagined needs or our "required" conveniences? 

     A second example can be found in the number of men and women who carry attitudes and opinions that are absolutely poisonous to their bodies, families and colleagues.  No one has ever died of a snake bite.  What kills people is the venom that slowly travels through the blood stream.   

     Many people both inside and outside of the Church are held prisoner by self-destructive, venomous attitudes. They may know the story of Jesus without thinking about their need to apply what he taught.  His prime directive was that we must learn to love ourselves before we can authentically love anyone else.  We are not caring for ourselves when we allow hostile and frustrated emotions to continue boiling in our lives. 

     A third example comes from  the complaints that men and women have about each other.  They are nearly identical. Neither gender has an inside track on taking the high road.  Each wants the other to change so that the promised happiness will automatically rise like the sun. 

     When couples come to my office for counseling, the litany is the same. "He doesn't remember birthdays or anniversaries.  She doesn't know how to cook.  He is insensitive to the members of my family.  She's too possessive of my time.  When we go out to dinner, he doesn't talk to me.  When it comes to intimacy, she's too tired.  His timing is always about him and his needs.  She does not possess good parenting skills. When he is in front of the television set, the rest of us become invisible."   

     How many of us have heard such endearing descriptions directed toward us? Every relationship needs tweaking, which is a slang term meaning growth.  We need to learn how to be more careful of what messages we are sending to each other through our attitudes and behavior. Jesus' teachings direct us toward more caring and wholesome responses.         

     A woman in one of our churches came to me for some advice.  She was always emotionally drained.  A poor relationship at her office was weakening her attitudes and energy levels.  I sat with her for an hour and found that she was experiencing constant rejection from another employee. I gave her an assignment. I told her that engaging in it would be fun!  She shot me a look that communicated, "FUN!!?  I can't stand being around this woman!"  

     I directed her to find something attractive about this troublesome person and compliment her for having it.  On a second occasion, she was to invite her to lunch and seek her advice or opinion about some issue our parishioner was facing.  During a third episode, she was to take her some homemade cookies as a thank you for listening to her.  Using a fourth moment, she was to tell her a funny story that would make her laugh.   

     In other words, I was directing her to give this "horrible person" the simple gift of "friendship."  I told her to experiment with her.  Make this experience a game.  The fun in the experience would come as she used various techniques to get the "frozen" spirit and personality of her colleague to melt.  

     The most exciting things will happen to us when we put into practice what Jesus taught.  This is the bread which Jesus brought from heaven! The bread is the attitudes of being, with which Jesus prefaced his Sermon on the Mount.  The bread is not the messenger.  When we eat the bread of life, we quite literally take into ourselves Jesus' teachings so that we live in his Kingdom.  As we do this, the hunger and thirst created by our neediness fades.  Power comes when we prove in our personal experience the reality of what Jesus taught.   

     Within a week, her colleague started to change. Our parishioner thought it was nothing short of a miracle.  Within a month this "horrible person" came to her with two tickets to the Kennedy Center and invited her to a show. The ice had melted.  Who would have ever guessed?             

     Hindsight told her that she could have used her spiritual bread a year and a half earlier when the relationship started to decay.  This was her life issue, not her colleague’s. She thought she was a disciple of Jesus yet she failed to practice the insights for living that Jesus taught.              

     Jesus would be the first person to say, "While I appreciate your love, loyalty and devotion, why don't you invest your energy into living the way I taught?" Jesus himself said, "I am not looking for human praise." (John 5:41)   

     It should not come as a surprise to us when people display an angry temperament or constantly respond to us with sarcasm, that they are communicating from a fear that no one likes them.  In fact, their behavior is a call for love.  Step in there and dissolve that fear with some solid one-on-one tender, loving care.  What does anyone have to lose? Such a response costs  us nothing.  

     We cannot expect people to be anything other than who they are, but Jesus taught us how to prevent other people's behavior from poisoning us.  We have to stop personalizing everything that other people say and do.  When we enter their lives with our attitudes changed, watch how quickly a window opens to let in the fresh air.  This is what we were sent forth to do.