Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“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.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, February 13, 2022
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Jesus’ words, though hard for some to hear, were filled with love: Jesus is the bread of life!
Despite Jesus’ repeated attempts to explain himself, many simply failed to understand. They were so hung up on the literal meaning of Jesus’ claim to be “bread from heaven,” that they missed the point completely. Further complicating Jesus’ message was the messenger. Wasn’t Jesus the same little boy they knew years ago?
I have a good friend who is a pastor in a local congregation. She came to professional ministry late in life, and so had many years to develop friendships as a lay person. Once ordained, she was surprised when she encountered those friends again, and they were shocked and tickled that she had become a pastor. They knew her when she was just a child, a teen, a young adult, and she was, let’s say, a little wild. Now in middle age, she had left that lifestyle behind to follow a more purposeful calling. But those old friends could never really see her in the role of pastor because they “knew her when.”
The funny thing is that people change. But it’s hard, sometimes, for others to acknowledge and accept the change. For some reason we want to believe that people don’t change much. Maybe it’s because it’s scary when someone we have counted on to be a particular way is suddenly no longer reliable in that way. It throws us off our game. So we pretend they are the same, resisting acknowledging that they are a new person with new interests, values, and behaviors. Maybe we just don’t like the change because it shines a spotlight on the things about ourselves that we know we ought to change but don’t.
If Jesus can become someone his old friends and family hardly recognize, then we can, too. We can change the things about ourselves that will haunt us when our old friends remind us of who we used to be. We can become the person God has created us to be. But only when we work at it: when we accept the changes within ourselves, when we accept the changes inside others, and when we can stand up and be genuinely, authentically ourselves, even when others refuse to see or accept it.
Maybe Jesus’ message is not as complicated as they made it. God sent Jesus to be bread—nourishment—for people’s hungry and weary spirits. People can truly grasp the depth of God’s gift when they fully consume everything that Jesus brings. And Jesus—the bread—must give everything of himself for God’s people—his spirit, his mind, and even his flesh and blood. Jesus had to be all in—and so he was. We have to consume Jesus fully—and so we strive.
You can be new and improved. Give everything of yourself for God and God’s people. Find your passion and purpose, and give yourself fully to it. Be all in.