John 6:24-35
Every so often in early March just before the UN’s declared World Happiness Day the much awaited for World Happiness Report is released. The authors of the study send a survey out to 3,000 people in 150 nations. With this study of just a handful of people from each nation in the world they try to determine overall “Subjective Well-Being” in each nation…happiness. The 2016 report ranked Canada the 6th happiest country behind Finland, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Denmark which was happiest. The United States was 13th.
I remember one year in the wake of one of the studies the CBC ran a phone-in show on happiness. They asked Canadians how they would define happiness. What was clear in it all was that Canadians say that happiness just comes about. If you seek it, you’ll be miserable. Happiness involves being part of a healthy community, service to others, self-acceptance, and also thankfulness. Oddly, even the atheist said you had to be thankful. Interestingly, most of the callers included faith in God as crucial to happiness. Some even defined happiness as blessedness. In the end it seems that happiness is a sense of contentment, or satisfaction, or being fulfilled….aaah, life is good.
Well, I mention all this natter about happiness because happiness, or satisfaction, or fulfillment plays a major role in why this crowd of people came seeking Jesus here in our passage from John’s Gospel. The day before they had been seeking Jesus because they wanted to see him do miracles and what happened was that at the end of the day when they were all hungry Jesus fed this crowd of likely 15,000 on two fish and five loaves of bread and they were satisfied. Down south we call it fat, dumb, and happy. The people were so impressed that they wanted to make him king. If Jesus could make their bellies happy, how much more could he do for their common life as a people?
In the wake of that meal, the next day, when our reading picks up, these people came to Jesus seeking happiness. When they found Jesus, he immediately pointed this out saying, “You are not seeking me because you saw signs, but because you ate the bread and were satisfied.” In other words, “You are not looking for me because I fed you all with two fish and five loaves. Rather, I made you happy.” They were not seeking Jesus because they understood that these signs revealed him to be the Messiah, indeed the Son of God. They were seeking him because for a brief moment they were happy and they wanted more.
So Jesus continued to teach them. “Don’t labour for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures into eternal life that the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Jesus hits home here not only with this crowd but also with us. I cannot think of a statement that would be more counter-cultural to our way of life, than what Jesus has just said here. He tells us not to spend our lives on pursuing what we think will make us happy for it is all perishable.
Western culture thrives on the individual pursuit of happiness. The preamble to the Constitution of the U.S. as a historical document sums up in one statement what has been the striving of Western culture since the 1,400’s. It says every human being has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Many have died and continue to die for these basic values. They are the impetus behind every Western government, our economy, our health care system. The Christian religion has even been co-opted into being about the pursuit and protection of life, liberty, and happiness.
Yet, Jesus says that there is something greater that we should labour after – food that endures unto eternal life. Eternal life does not mean going to heaven when we die as we are accustomed to think. Jesus defines it at John 17:3 where he says precisely this: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is knowing God through Jesus and there is no true happiness apart from that.
Jesus says that eternal life is found by believing in him. There is only one work we should labour at and that is to believe in him, that is to work at being faithful in him. The preposition “in” is important. The Greek preposition there is used primarily to describe location or place; i.e., in the store. It’s like saying we are playing baseball in the park. To believe “in” Jesus literally means being located in Jesus situated in the new humanity God has brought about in him and sharing in his relationship of Son-ship with the Father in the Holy Spirit. It is by being located in him by being united to him in the Holy Spirit that we believe, that we work at being faithful.
To believe in Jesus means to personally know him and through him know God the Father and his faithfulness and steadfast love for us his children. The Holy Spirit brings this about as a free gift. From this personal knowledge arises trust. Faith as trust is something that we learn and grow in as God day to day, month to month, year to year proves his steadfast love and faithfulness to us.
Finally, faith as personal knowledge and trust in God must become faithfulness. To have faith in Jesus is to live life on his terms. Faithfulness is a community effort to love as he has loved us. Just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are a communion of mutual love so must we be. We come into relationship with Jesus in a community of believers whom the Holy Spirit has bound together in the love of Christ, a community that worships and prays to the Father together, a community that commits itself to live according to the scriptures, a community that thrives on repentance and accountability in accordance to Scripture. To be truly human is to have faithfulness in Jesus Christ which is living according to his commandment to love with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Today we gather around the Lord’s Table to share his meal. To eat the Bread of life and drink the cup of the New Covenant sealed in his blood. This act of sharing this meal, of sharing him who gave his life for us to have life is the best image of what it is to believe in Jesus, to work together at being faithful in him him. It is in him that we are faithful. Bound together in the Hoy Spirit sharing him who gave his life for us, we are “in him” being faithful. Let us come to the table. May we eat and be happy. Amen.
