Arise and Eat
Lutheran Service Book 3 Year Lectionary • Sermon • Submitted
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Text: “And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’” 1 Kings 19:5
What does the genuine, true Christian life look like? If someone is a true believer, what is his life going to look like? What is it that God wants for you as you live as one of His people?
There are several different pictures that various churches offer. For some, the life of a true Christian is health, wealth, and prosperity. For others, the life of a true Christian is one that transforms the world, helping to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth. For others, it’s a glorious thing where you carefully seek out God’s great purpose for your life. For others, it’s a perfect marriage, perfect family, perfect career by faithfully choosing to obey God’s rules.
What picture do you have?
It’s an important question the way you answer it has a bearing in a lot of different ways. Whether you see it as health, wealth, and prosperity or transforming the world or one of the others or something else entirely—depending upon which way you see it, that mental picture changes how you relate to God. It has a big impact on what you are expecting from Him. It shapes how you need to see yourself in relation to God. It changes what you come here for when you gather to worship.
Do you come here, for example, to be set free from the negative thoughts that are holding you back from the personal success and achievement that God wants to give you? Are you here to tune into the message God’s trying to send you about His plan and purpose for your life so that you can rise above the daily grind of work and home and kids and bills and laundry and doctor visits—rise above the daily grind of ordinary life and achieve some great, divine purpose through some special calling to really minister to people? Do you come to be affirmed in God’s vision for what this world should be and all the ways that vision is being attacked by the world around us? Do you come to learn principles you can apply to better live the way you should?
I think you probably follow what I’m asking, don’t you? What is it that God wants for you as you live as one of His people? There are, as we said, a number of different pictures that various churches and prominent pastors use to answer that question. And the way we answer it has an impact on how we see ourselves, how we see God, and how we relate to Him.
I would suggest to you this morning that the Old Testament and Gospel Readings today give us scripture’s answer to that question. The answer is found by looking at what Jesus comes to do in each reading.
Yes, I said what He came to do in both readings. Did you notice Jesus there in the Old Testament reading? He’s there. Not by name, but He’s there. Where do we see Jesus there with Elijah? There’s really only one possibility, isn’t there: the Angel of the Lord. In other passages “the Angel of the Lord” and “God” are used interchangeably. To see the Angel of the Lord is to see God. The Angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate Christ—Jesus before He has taken on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
What is He there to do? To release Elijah from the negative thoughts that are holding him back from really being successful? To reveal Elijah’s greater purpose in life? To teach Elijah how to better apply God’s commandments to his life? No. He is there, in Elijah’s moment of complete weakness and despair, because the journey is too much for him, because his enemies, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, are greater than he can handle. He’s there to feed him. And, in the strength of that food, Elijah goes and does what he has been called to do as a prophet.
That’s really the point of this series of Gospel Readings from John 6 that we’ve had, too. The point of all this talk about the bread of life is that Jesus has come to feed us this bread from heaven. He comes to us for the same purpose as He came to Elijah—the Angel of the Lord comes to you in your complete weakness and despair; He comes to you because the journey is too much for you; He comes because your enemies, the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh, are too great for you to overcome. And He’s here to feed you.
That is why I say that this picture of Elijah is a very good picture of the life of a faithful Christian.
“Arise and eat. The journey is too much for you,” Jesus invites Elijah. And He invites you, too. As the Son of God fed Elijah, he now feeds you, not with just bread and water, but with his own body and blood in the bread and wine of his Supper. “No one can come to me,” Jesus said, “unless the Father who sent me draws Him. And I will raise him up on the last day. …Truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
“51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51).
His body and blood were strong enough to resist the devil in the wilderness for 40 days; they were strong enough to heal the blind and the sick; they were strong enough to calm the storm and walk on water; they were strong enough to stand in the face of those who falsely accused Him; they were strong enough to take the beating and the mocking and the spitting; they were strong enough to take on your sin and suffer the pains of hell that you deserved; they were strong enough to walk all the way to the cross and take the nails and say “Father, forgive them;” they were strong enough to defeat the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh.
This is the gift that He lays before you. He prepares a table before you, here in this world, in the midst of your enemies—in the midst of the devil and the world and your own sinful flesh—and invites you: “Arise and eat.” The journey is too much for you. But not for Him.
That’s what we’re here for. And, yes, we could even go so far as to say that if that’s not what you’re here for—if you’re here to set loose the prosperity that God wants for you, or to get that spiritual power-up to become more than just an ordinary person trudging through life—then we’ve got nothing to give you. Because that’s not what God’s Word promises to give us.
The church, as others have pointed out, is for sinners only. This is the place where the Angel of the Lord feeds you with His body and blood in the sacrament as often as possible—even more than every other week if you need it!—where He feeds you by hearing His Word preached and taught. Feeds you so that you can respond by serving Him with every gift that He’s given you, so that you can stand against the devil, the world, and your own sinful nature; so that we can live together in unity of fellowship and confession of faith just as certainly as we arise and eat together; so that, in that strength, you rise to take up the great ministry He has called you to—work and home and kids and bills and laundry and doctor visits.
Those other pictures of the Christian life that I mentioned paint a different picture of who we are in this whole equation and how we relate to God. They paint us as the next Bill Gates just needing to unlock and unleash the wealth and prosperity that God intends for us. Or they paint us as an aspiring hero who is just in need of a spiritual power-up to move to the next level.
That’s not the picture that these readings give us, though. The picture scripture gives us is of a savior who comes to those who have no strength, who can not come to Him.
More and more I find myself gently correcting people who say, when I ask how they’re doing, “I’m fine. I suppose I have to be, don’t I?” No. No you don’t have to be. There are times when God doesn’t just allow more than we can handle, it seems like He’s crushing us. Often it’s those times especially—as everything we use to prop ourselves up (like our health, wealth, and prosperity) is pulled out from under us—when our ears are opened to hear Him saying, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too much for you.”
That’s what His commandments, themselves, do to us, isn’t it? I’ve mentioned a couple of times recently that, the more we strive to live like we should, to holy lives according to His commandments, the more we see how far short we fall. There’s always more than could be done. We could have done better. We should have done it with motives that were more pure, less tainted by selfishness. And, when His law has crushed us, He comes to us and says, “Arise and eat. The journey is too much for you,” and sends us to honor our father and mother, to bring up our children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord; to help and support our neighbors in every physical need; to lead chaste and decent lives in what we say and do and husband and wife love and honor each other; to help our neighbors to improve and protect their possessions and income; to defend them, speak well of them, and put the best construction on everything.
And yes, this is precisely why I would love to be able to offer you the Lord’s Supper—not just twice a month—but every single week. You aren’t only under attack by the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh twice a month, you are under their attack daily. You don’t just live out your calling as a parent or child, a neighbor, a worker, an employer, a friend twice a month. You are called to them daily. It is certainly true that you are fed each week by hearing the word read, preached, and taught. But He also desires to set before you His body and blood to strengthen you for the battle, to strengthen you for all the ways that He’s called you to serve Him. I would love to be able to offer it every single week because you and I need it every single week.
As we prayed earlier in the collect, “Gracious Father, Your blessed Son came down from heaven to be the true bread that gives life to the world. Grant that Christ, the bread of life, may live in us and we in Him, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”
As the psalmist wrote: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessèd is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!”
The meal is ready. And yes, the journey is too hard for you. Arise and eat. Amen.