Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Places on Our Life Map
What places mark the map of your life? “That’s where I went to first grade.” “That’s where I had my first date with my spouse.” “That’s the church where we got married.” Those places are locations of meaning. Your life’s direction was changed by something that happened there.
A crowd receives bread in abundance from Jesus. The next morning, they look for him again, but their search is confused. (They don’t know he walked across the water!) John’s Gospel notes that some boats “came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks.” The feast ground has become a place to mark on the map. But is it a place where life’s direction was changed?
When the crowd finds Jesus, they’re hungry! Yesterday’s bread did not satisfy them for long. Jesus urges them to work for “the food that endures.” When he explains that the work of God is to “believe in him whom he has sent,” the crowd asks Jesus for a sign to help them believe. Have they forgotten how he fed them all? They’ve already had both bread and sign. What do they still need to be satisfied?
They need to recognize that their lives are different now. Jesus showed them the abundance of God’s love, and he offered that love through relationship with him. They have seen something they cannot ignore, so they have been changed by the seeing. How will they act on the change? Will the feast ground become a location of meaning, a place on their life maps where they turned in a new direction?
“That’s the place where I ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks. And now, I will never be hungry again.” Amen!
Ginny Tobiassen, pastor, Home Moravian Church
Winston-Salem, North Carolina