Everyday Faith: Russ Howard

Good morning, I'm Russ. Get the privilege of being one of your ministers here. And let's buckle up, okay? We got places to go this morning. January sometime, some Saturday morning in January 1995, some of you were alive.

Then.

I went on my second date with Jen, Picked her up from her apartment at 9am and we drove to Indianapolis, went to a museum there. Lots of time to talk in the car. Continuing to get to know each other. As we wrap up early afternoon, I start giving her options. First option, I say, hey, we could get, you know, late lunch here in Indy and I could take you back home.

Or we could get a snack, drive back to Cincinnati, get dinner there. She said, let's do that after dinner. Next option, I say, I could take you home, it's been a long day. Or we could go to a bookstore. She said, let's do that.

We go to a bookstore. After that, I say, hey, it's been an even longer day. I could take you home or I could take you back where I live and you can meet the friends I live with. She said, let's do that. I dropped her off at her apartment at midnight.

This was a 15 hour date. We got married six months later, right?

The friends that I live with said this. They said, russ, you went on one date and then you went on a second date and then you fell off the face of the earth. Because I wanted to spend every waking non working hour with her. You've had seasons in your life like this when you are so clear about what you want and today really is about want. It's a want check for us Jesus invitation.

You only ever had one. Here's what it looks like in Luke 9:23. Whoever. What's the next word? Wants.

Whoever wants to be my disciple. Whoever wants to be trained in my way of life. Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. Whoever wants. So today everything I'm about to say can kind of be summed up this way.

If that statement is true, then following Jesus means at the very least wanting to follow Jesus. And so how much do we want him? Or there's another word. Hunger. How hungry are we for God?

How hungry am I for Jesus? We just read a psalm, right? Together, we prayed. That psalm where David says, my soul thirsts for you, O God. My flesh yearns for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Another time he's seeing the way the animals drink and he goes, as the deer pants for water, my soul pants for you, O God. For the living God. This is A theme all the way through scripture about thirsting, panting, yearning, spiritual hunger. I'm looking at a room full of hungry people, and I can tell you what you're hungry for. You're hungry to be known.

You're hungry to be loved.

You want to matter. You want to be safe. You want to have an inner security, to be secure in yourself. You want to be valued. You want to belong.

You want to be forgiven. You want to do something that matters, to leave a legacy. You want to be free. Free from the habits that hurt you. Free from your hangups.

You want to be whole, complete, inside and out, right the way you're supposed to be. And if any of that resonated with you, how do I know that it's because we're human?

It's because we're made for a world that doesn't look like this one. We're made for a world where everything is set right. The world we were made for eternity is set into our hearts. We have these transcendent desires, and where can those desires be met? We're going to kind of just spend a little time with Jesus this morning in John, chapter six.

If you got a Bible or you got a. Got a. Got a app, you can pull it up. I'll point to a few verses as we go. John 6 begins with Jesus doing maybe one of his most famous miracles.

Feeds 5,000 people, right? So the people had gone out into the countryside to hear him teach. They're away from home, away away from town, and there's a whole lot of them, and they get hungry. And a hungry crowd is bad news, right? And so if you're familiar with the story, he takes a kid's lunch, he prays over it and multiplies it until everyone is fed, and there's a whole bunch of leftovers.

Now, what's going on here? I want you to remember who these people are, because they are a people who are under the boot of Rome. Like, they know, hey, we are God's chosen people. But it sure doesn't feel like it out here. We are weak and we are poor, and we're getting weaker and poorer all the time.

And Rome says, you should thank us because we're bringing you peace. Pax Romana, right? So these are people for whom they're longing for things to get set right, and they're clinging to God and a promise that the prophets had made, that. That God would send a king who would show up, set up a kingdom and set things right. That king, the word for that is Messiah.

So When Jesus shows up and feeds 5,000, they go, that guy could be the king, the king that God sending to set things right. And they are right, but they are wrong because they're imagining it way too small. Because what they think that means is that, hey, if he can feed 5,000 people, he can feed an army. And this king is going to need an army to revolt against Rome and set up his own global military superpower based in Jerusalem. This is what they're thinking.

So when Jesus leaves by crossing the Sea of Galilee, which, by the way, this is when he walks on water like he's kind of having a day, right? Let me just feed these 5,000. I'll walk on water, you know, no big deal. When he leaves the next morning, they get to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and this crowd is there. They walked around the lake to get to him, and so they're there.

He sees them, and this is what he says. This is John 6:26. Very truly, I tell you, you're looking for me not because you saw the signs I performed signs pointing to God in the kingdom, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. In other words, you want what I can do for you. You like the free lunch, right?

You like the potential to feed armies and to set up this whole thing. Do not work for food that spoils. He says, we'll come back to that. But for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man, that's himself, will give you. For on him, God the Father has placed his seal of approval.

Let's zero in on two phrases. First one, eternal life. He says, work for food that endures to eternal life. In the Bible, in the New Testament, there are two words that get used for the word life. It was written in Greek originally.

The first one is bios. Sounds familiar. If you're a scientist, right? Or you're in school biology, it is literally that our natural, biological life, that is not the word that gets used here. And it's not the word that Jesus continues to use and that John records all the way through his biography of Jesus.

That word is the word Zoe. And Zoe is not about the physical nature of our life. It's about the quality of our life. Zoe is the best kind of life. Zoe is the kind of life.

Later in John 10, Jesus will say, hey, I came to give you life. Zoe and Zoe, to the full abundance. Zoe, is life abundant? Here's an issue we have. We hear eternal life, and we think, oh, that's the life that we'll get one day after we die.

And that is true in a sense, that he's offering his life, right? A full quality of life, like fullness of life. Zoe, life is an active, vigorous, dynamic life. But it is both now and forever. Eternal life isn't, oh, I get to live forever.

It is. I get to live with him now and forever, right? It is a life filled to the brim with things like maybe the fruit of the spirit, right? Not maybe, for sure. So Jesus is saying there's food to feed our deepest longings.

There is a food that is. That will lead to a rich, full, meaningful life that ultimately will endure forever. But our issue is. Go back to the other phrase. Our issue is we work for food that spoils.

These people are showing up with their little tiny hopes and dreams of their own empire where they get to be on top. And Jesus knows man. Empires come and go, man. They come and go. The life he's offering them and the life he's offering us is life with him in his kingdom that will last forever, ever.

And here's their problem. Here's our problem. We love spoiled food. We get addicted to it. We try to satisfy all these deep longings with good things, man, the good stuff of earth.

But we're walking around with this deep hunger for meaning, purpose, belonging, inner wholeness and freedom. We were designed for full tanks of these things. Meaning, belonging, purpose, wholeness, freedom. And we're trying to fill those tanks up with things like, you know, if I just get the right job, if I have the right amount of money, which is usually just a little bit more, the right person to love me, the right friends, the right marriage, the right kids, but the right body, in image or in health, the right church, all good things, right? But they wind up if we're trying to get satisfied on them, they're spoiled food.

I want you to hear how this works. It's this word, my right. I want my marriage to meet my need for Zoe. Full life. I want.

I want my kids to meet my need for Zoe. I want my 401k to meet my need for Zoe. I want my fill in the blank for yourself. My, my, my. Jesus says, whoever wants to be my disciple, deny your what self.

Spoiled food is us. Over and over and over again, something about us. And none of it, none of those good things and none of nothing about myself is enough to meet my deepest needs. And it's true for you.

We're trying to get full on spoiled bread. And here's the problem with spoiled bread. It just Makes us sick. And this may be a reason why we are the most anxious and lonely generation who has ever lived in human history.

CS Lewis said, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We want too little. We're half hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum when he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at sea, rather play in a puddle than be at the beach. We are far too easily pleased.

So Jesus says, stop settling for spoiled bread when you can have food that leads you to life. And then people begin to argue with him because they stone unfed and they're like, well, at least Moses gave us bread in the desert, right? There's a back and forth and then he gets really clear and he drops this line. At first he says, there's a food that does this. And then he says what the food is?

He says, I am the bread of life. I am the bread of Zoe. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. If you are a church person and you, like you are too familiar with this, probably pause for a moment.

If somebody. If I walked out here today and I looked at you and I said, I just need you to know that every possible thing that you long for in your life, I am the answer to that thing. All you need is me. You would run so far away from me. Because that's crazy, right?

What? Human is enough for all your deepest longings. They don't exist unless he's more than human.

Those two words, I am are doing a ton of work in that sentence. I am the bread of life. It's a callback and it's one that they're really clear of. This guy named Moses has a burning bush moment, literal burning bush, and he's talking to God. And Moses grew up in Egypt and he knows that gods have names.

Osiris, Ra, Isis. So makes sense. He goes, can you tell me your name? You're a new God to me. What is your name?

And God answers and he tells him his name and it clears things way up. He just says, I am. That I am. That helps, right? But that phrase I am became the proper name of God 6828 times in the Old Testament.

When you read capital letters L, O, R, D, Lord, it is those four letters, Yod. Hey. These are Hebrew letters. Yod. Hey, Vad.

Hey. We use this in church sometimes, if you'd hear us, hear us use the phrase, the word, Yahweh, Jehovah, these are, these letters. It is God's proper name. I am. And what does Jesus say?

I am the bread of life. And the people hearing that know exactly what he's saying. He's placing himself in only the place that God can. And this isn't the only time he does this. John frames his entire biography around statements, seven of them.

Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. Here's one that should be familiar. I am the true vine and y' all the branches, and if you're connected to me, you'll bear much fruit. The fruit of the spirit.

He is the bread of life. I am. He is. They know he is saying, I am far more than just a human telling you this and that I can. Then if I am God, I can be the bread, the food that nourishes you, that sustains you, that gives you life, and that you will never die, that you will never die.

He's saying, I'm the only one who can meet your deepest longings. And it's a wild claim. Unless he happens to be the kind of God who emptied himself out, let go of his godhood to become like one of us, to become a servant, to give us life by giving up his. His life. That we might not just have life, but life to the full.

Zoe, now and forever, this cuts through this thing and you just go, how compelling is this? But most of the people he's talking to can't imagine this. They start grumbling and this makes sense. They start going, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're Joseph and Mary's kid, right?

Like, we saw you grow up. Like, you're dropping the word. I am. I am the bread of life. And he speaks up again.

He doubles down and he says, I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. In other words, we can fill your belly all day long, but it's going to happen to you in the end. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread again get unfamiliar for a second. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. We read that and we go, he's talking about the cross. They didn't see that.

This is offensive. And he gets more offensive. He looks at them and he goes, hey, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life. And they hear exactly what we would hear if somebody said that out loud to us. Like, you're talking about eating people, and that's disgusting.

But even more so to them because they have these instructions about how to stay clean. And in that is like, man, you don't. You don't go near blood, right? And so the thought of drinking blood, it's unthinkable. And this leads to one of the biggest understatements in the entire Bible, because these are folks who are following him.

These aren't just a crowd that are paying attention. There are folks who have been following him, this larger group of followers. And when he says that, they say this, they go, boy, this is a hard teaching. Yeah, eat my flesh, drink my blood, right? And here's what it says.

A large group of his followers, followers turned back and left him.

And this should be sobering. It's sobering to me that if Jesus says, whoever wants to follow me, if you want me, you're in, right? You get it. All you got to do is want it. It's a gift.

You want life, you want Zoe. All you gotta do is want. But if you don't want this, he seems to be okay with letting you walk away.

Hunger check for the bread of life, how hungry are you? Put it on a scale, 1 to 10. Where are you on a spiritual hunger scale today?

I know there are some of you here today that are feeling hunger pangs right now, and you're familiar with them. And all I'm doing is poking at them. I'm drawing your attention to it. And you know there is more for you, right? Because Zoe is just more.

There is more of that for you, and you want it, it today.

But I imagine there are others of you here who have settled, who have ignored those hunger pangs long enough that you almost don't notice them anymore. They're there, but you kind of live with them, and you're muddling through things, making mud pies, right? Just trying to sin a little less today. Just trying to do a little more good. And mostly just trying to endure until, you know, he comes back.

And I'm confident there are some of you here today who have been gobbling up spoiled bread and you can't figure out why you're still so hungry and why you're so weary, tired, because you're trying to get full on something that cannot fill you and in fact, is doing worse. So no matter where you are, no matter where you are, on that scale, it's not bad news. It's actually good news. Because here's the thing. No matter where you are, there is more for you, right?

There is more Zoe for you in the here and the now. There is more bread of life for the taking because God is doing the giving. There is more for you. We will never reach the end of Zoe with him. So want more.

I want to introduce you to two people, two brothers and sisters, two of us who have wanted more, who have been hungry. One of them is this old guy, and I mean really old. That's the years he lived. His name was Augustine. He grew up and lived in North Africa.

Super smart young guy, really ambitious, was radically committed to promiscuity and a wild life. And he had one really good thing going for him, and that was a praying mom, Monica praying for her son, praying for her son, groaning for her son. And at about 30, he returns to life with God. And we know this because I became one of our greatest theologians. And he wrote what I think is potentially the first actual autobiography or memoir called Confessions.

And I just want you to hear how he talks about God here. Late have I loved you. Some of you are here. Some of you have squandered your life. He felt like he had squandered his life.

So he's saying, I've come late to you. Late have I loved you, beauty, so old and so new. Late have I loved you. And see, you were within, and I was in the external world and sought you there. And in my unlovely state, I plunged into those lovely created things that you made spoiled bread.

You were with me and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me from the good things in life. They kept me from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and I cried out and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent.

You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant and I drew in my breath. And now what does he do? And now pant for you, hungry for you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you.

You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace, the shalom, the wholeness that is yours. Man, this guy is not content making mud pies, right? He wants to see.

Here's the thing. Like Christianity to this guy. This is. It is not a worldview. It's not a set of ideas or beliefs to agree with.

It is a red relationship with a being. The I am our king Jesus. The Bread of life.

I want to introduce you to two people. That's our brother from long ago. I want to introduce you to one of us. See, there's a danger in telling a story like that because that guy seems so special, right? In fact, some people call him a saint.

Saint Augustine. But here's the thing. When the Bible uses the word saint, the Bible applies it to everyday followers of Jesus. In fact, the Bible doesn't treat. There is nobody who's special in the kingdom.

We're all just everyday people following Jesus. Some of us get to help train and equip others. But at the end of the day, we're just everyday folks following Jesus around. So Paul writes to a church in Corinth, and he says, hey, to all the saints over there in Corinth or to all the saints over there in Philippi. So right now, I am looking at a room of everyday followers of Jesus.

So I am looking at the gathered saints that are part of the body that calls itself White Water Crossing. Right now. Look at a bunch of saints. Saint Jim. Is that the first time you've ever heard that?

St. Jim over here, right? Oh, man. St. Mary Saints. So I started. I said, buckle up.

I meant it because I had trouble last time, man, because I want to introduce you to St. Dorie. Here's the thing. You're going to hear us continue to say everyday people, because the movement of Jesus is for everyday people. And we've got to break down this thing like some people are special, right? Because we get up and preach or something.

I got to tell you, man. Dorie. All right, here we go.

So Dorie's just one of us. She showed up a year ago, hadn't been to church in a while. Here's how she said it. She said, when life was good, I wouldn't go to church. But when it was bad, I'd show up at church.

And things were really, really bad a year ago. So here she comes. She's hungry. Hungry enough to walk into this building and sit down on a Sunday and hungry enough to come back.

She had been through a hard breakup at the time, dealing with some serious health issues. Emotionally, she was in deep despair, but she was just hungry enough to keep coming. Hungry enough to walk over to that information desk and say, hey, I'm new here. And they said, well, we got this conversation we do called connect. You can learn about us.

You can meet some of us. And she was hungry enough to show up at that. She was hungry enough that when she was invited into a smaller group of Christians that meet during the week. She showed up at that. And she showed up again and showed up again.

And last summer, in a sermon being taught on Psalm 46, she heard God tell her that she can stop worrying, that she can stop fretting. And she joined in a prayer where she gripped hard, fingernails digging into her palms, holding her problems, and then let them go to God. And something broke open in her. Be still and know that I am God. She marked the moment with this tattoo on her forearm.

Just hungry enough to begin to want to experience a little more. Zoe, right? And each invitation, willing to take that step. Hungry enough to take a step. To take a step.

If you hear anything from us around here, it's like we want to be the people who show you how, show you how to pray, how to pray for others, show you how to read scripture, show you how. We started showing her how, right? And now today, she helps lead the group that she's a part of. So she's enjoying reading her Bible on a regular basis. Here's what she said to me.

She said, God and I have this amazing relationship where he sets me straight and I feel like I can dump my burdens at his feet and go on. He gives me a different perspective. I feel calmer than I have in a long time. I'm way happier than I've been in a very, very long time. God is giving me the confidence to continue to explore and learn, the confidence to take each next new step.

I was very careful about telling her story. She can't be here today, and I wanted to make sure I represented her well. So I sent this to her and I said, is there anything more that you'd want to say?

She said, you can tell them. She said you were. She said you were very kind and careful about how you said the condition I was in. She said, you can tell them that I've been divorced three times. You can tell them I've had an abortion.

You can tell them I've been raped. You can tell them I was on a verge, it was a suicide.

See, I knew this would happen, Right? Here's the thing, man. It is the goodness of God.

This is what Jesus is saying when he says, I am the bread with what? This is life.

Dory wants you to. Can you imagine the kind of healing it takes in someone? The kind of growth it takes in someone in less than a year to be willing to let someone like me tell that story to you? Because she wants you to know that that's what Jesus does. And he did it for her and he'll do it for you.

How hungry are we, Right? Hungry enough. Just take the next step. How hungry are we? So here's the thing.

We're really not done talking about this. We're going to spend more time with Jesus in the next few weeks. Because part of this is like, okay, so here's the dream. What. What if we were an entire body of people like Dori, just hungry enough to take the next step, right?

There are people in this room who are only here because she brought them, right? What if we're just people? It's all. What if people knew us as people who were like, what was that psalm we did? Like, we're the people who were satisfied with Jesus, right?

Like we're eating food that's full of fat and marrow, whatever it is. It's like those people over there, man, they're satisfied. Those people over there, they've got life. Those people are fulfilled, man. What if you're that person in your family or life?

We just want to be a church. Be a church full of St Doris and Jim's and Mary's and all of it. So here's the thing. It leads to a question. So how do I get hungry like that?

And the answer is, you don't have to. Because hunger happens. Some of you right now, your stomach's grumbling, right? Like, it's coming up on lunch, you're ready. Hunger happens.

Just gotta tend to it and attend to it.

So there is one ancient way to do this. Christians have been doing it forever. Even before Jesus. Jesus did it. It was a normal part of their lives.

He gives instructions on it. And when he starts the instructions, he says this. When you fast, you can check out the instructions if you want. What I want you to notice is that he doesn't say if. He says, when you do this, and if you're like me, there's a thing in me that says, well, fasting for Christians is a little like Bengals fans who go over the top, right?

It's one thing to be a Bengals fan. It's another one to, like, go to a game shirtless and, you know, body paint yourself up in orange and black on a below freezing day, right? Those people are nuts.

You know who you are. Here's the thing. We're talking about, Zoe. Life, right? Like, if fasting is the version of that, man, let's fast, right?

Bring on the body pain. Let's go.

So we're inviting you in. We've been inviting and challenging all of us to individual practices over the last, really, all year, right at the end of each sermon, it's been, here's the challenge. Try this. Practice this. We want to move into a short season where we're just all practicing the same thing together.

And it is to fast. It's to fast together. We're not starting tomorrow so you can breathe. We're going to start after next Sunday. And so that gives us a week to kind of prepare ourselves.

And so on your way out, man, grab one of these. Why we fast, when we fast, how we fast. These are invitations that this is a thing we can do together, and we can fast our way into Easter. In other words, fast our way into feasting. So make sure you have one of those that we can kind of walk into this season together, as we can tend to that spiritual hunger together.