What's Your Tomorrow Gonna Look Like?

John 6:51-59 - August 15th, 2021

The Lord Be With You.

A parable …

There once was a guy who would wake up each morning and make a list of things that he thought would occur the next day. Some would see this list and wonder why he was so concerned with what was gonna happen the next day when he didn’t even know what was gonna happen in the current day. They would talk about him to others and just shake their heads. Finally someone went up to him and asked him that very same thing. Why are you so worried about tomorrow when you should be concerned with today? This guy answered them that his tomorrows are defined by whatever happens today. By making a list of what he thought would happen tomorrow, it affected how and why and what he did today. Today shaped his tomorrow and his tomorrows tomorrow. The person that asked him the question went away with the insight that everything that occurs in our today’s will shape and mold what happens the next and, quite possibly, the days after that. So it is with us. Our decisions today will determine our actions tomorrow.

Here ends the parable.

Verse 52 says, in part, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” and I’ve focused in on this because it illustrates that those that live for today without giving a thought to what the next day and the many days after that will surely miss the message about their eternities too. When we read about the Jews reactions to what Jesus was saying, we find that they cannot get outside of their world and envision and believe on a possibility that truly exists for them and their tomorrows.

I’ve called this message, “What’s Your Tomorrow Gonna Look Like?” because like the Jews of yesteryear, we can find ourselves concentrating so much on what’s going on in our lives today that we miss the proverbial forest of our tomorrows for our lone tree of today. Our passage has the Jews continuing to go back to the stories of the manna from God that their ancestors ate in the wilderness. But what they didn’t quite get was that even though the bread satisfied their immediate needs, they still died. They still suffered an eternity because many of their ancestors grumbled and complained that it wasn’t enough.

In other words, while their ancestors immediate need was to fill their bellies today, their future need was to fill their soul tomorrow. That can only come from what Jesus has to give. What Jesus gave them was the bread of Himself. The true bread that was gonna last them throughout all of eternity. Bread that gives them a new life so much so that their today changes their tomorrows. We are destined to do the same as these folks if we cannot grab ahold of the promise of the life through the body and blood of Jesus. We can be so caught up in what’s going on right now in our today that we miss the possibilities of tomorrow. But sometimes the current day’s trials are so difficult that it’s very hard to even see what tomorrow can bring. It sort of reminds me of a story I heard …

You see, a young mother left her two preschool children for the day in the care of their less experienced father on his day off from work. At the end of the day, she returned home to find her husband exhausted from a day with his children but trying to hide the fact.

The mother gently asked her husband: “Did everything go okay?” The father answered, “Oh, sure, it was fine.”

“Did you have any trouble?” she asked. “Just a couple of times the kids were a bit unmanageable.”

“And when did these episodes take place?”

Her husband confessed, “The first time was the first four hours after you left, and the second was the five hours before you returned.”

Now, what the Jews were going through, at that time, was certainly bigger than that father’s. But, in a sense, they’re both the same because of what we focus our lives on. I can understand what was going through the Jews, of that days, minds. What they saw and focused on as their todays. They were under very oppressive Roman regimes. They were used and abused. They only saw themselves as subjugated peoples. They lived life one day at a time and their own religious rulers who were supposed to give them hope were, many times, in league with the very Roman occupiers that made living for tomorrow very difficult to keep in mind.

I kind of know what that’s like. As I’ve mentioned before, there were days, weeks, months that it was all I could do to focus on today. Everything around me crumbled. I was so hungry, at times, that I would save the wrapper from something I got from a vending machine just so I could later lick the crumbs that were left over. I first lived in the back of my car and then in a place that rented the room by the hour, if you know what I’m saying.

Every morning, I had to pack up what little belongings I had in the trunk of that car that I used to sleep in because I wanted to still have them when I got off work. I got paid every week but after paying for seven days of room rent, I had very little left that wasn’t set aside for gasoline to get to work the next day. Thinking about tomorrow? You gotta be kidding me. I had a hard enough time just thinking about the next hour. But I’m still here.

It’s like that though. Many of us are so focused on the here and now that we miss the morning rainbow. We miss the beauty that’s created each and every new day for us to enjoy. And in missing all that God has done for us, whether we can sense it or not, we miss that relationship with Jesus. The relationship that Jesus came down here for. The relationship that has Jesus walking right beside us. We miss all that because we don’t allow what we know and sense about Jesus to drive deeper into our souls to touch that part of us that’s longing, yearning, to be touched. Unless you can sit back and reflect on what it means for Jesus to offer Himself up for us, you walk away from this deep meaning just as the Jews did then and give up the possibilities that the true gifts that God, the Father, has reserved just for you can be brought to the surface and enjoyed. And more than that, you deprive all those who are interconnected with your gift from enjoying them either. You forgo your tomorrows.

You know, me and some of my classmates were sitting around years ago and talking about how this baseball player or that basketball player seemed to be so gifted. It occurred to me that they allowed their gift from God to shine through. Then I began to remember all those people who just hated to get up each day and go to work. They grumbled, just as the Israelites did in the desert, about their jobs and all the people who they thought were just a pain in the kiester. They didn’t have anything good to say about what they were doing but felt trapped because they didn’t know anything different.

All they could see was their plight of the day. Not what they could be for their tomorrows. It occurred to me that what they were doing was depriving others of God’s gifts. They were taking up the space that another had a gift for. So, not only were they discarding what God created for themselves but they were also depriving someone else from using their gifts too because it’s possible that someone else felt the same way as they did. Now, what if each of those people looked at their tomorrows in light of their todays and came to realize that it really did matter, in the whole scheme of things, that each of us finds our true gift so that everyone’s tomorrows could be brighter. Just a notion that we talked about though.

You know, none of us is getting out of this life alive in the very end. I heard this this other day and it fits. It’s not about how many summers we have left. It’s about what we choose to do with those summers. God says that we start out as dust and unto dust we shall return. Don’t be a dust bunny in between. Climb a mountain. Ride some rapids. Plant some afro turf. Don’t live life like you’re already dead. Because if God can’t tell the difference, He may just go ahead and call you up early. So, instead of crying about the number of grains of sand left in your hourglass, do something to make sure there are as many in there as possible. In other words, live your life today like your tomorrows matters.

And Jesus is saying to these Jews the same thing although He’s putting it the way of regaining your whole life. Not just a part of it. The whole thing. Gifts and all. Jesus says to these folks that if they can look past what is evident in front of their eyes and begin to see with their hearts then maybe they can begin to see tomorrow in light of today but in a positive notion. True bread from Heaven gives life, real life, to the world. Jesus says to us that if we too can really look at what He’s offering, we can see that the bread that He’s offering is not something you can touch, taste, or see. But something you can feel. Just the way that an athlete can feel it when he dunks that basketball or hits that homerun. You can also feel it when you do what you’re supposed to do and everything just clicks and gels.

Folks, our churches must be looking forward to what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Many churches just go along, day by day, rarely giving a second thought as to how they’re approaching the meanings of what Jesus says and how it will affect what’s gonna happen to God’s house tomorrow. When religious denominations begin to dissect the message of Jesus in order to prop up their own dogmas, they’re like the Jews Jesus was talking to. Those Jews just couldn’t get past the physical to see the spiritual. Same thing with their ancestors. Their ancestors couldn’t get past the mana, the physical, for the gift, the spiritual gift from God.

When we take what Jesus said and reduce it down to a few catch phrases that makes us feel good rather than seeking what the whole message is we’re putting blinders on our tomorrows because every verse in these Gospels and the other New Testament writings as well as the Old Testament are full stories meant to tell a truth. We are limiting our understanding for something that fills us for today. That’s why we sometimes read passages out loud that are longer than what’s printed. It gives you more of the full story.

It really boils down to this. Are you gonna really hear what Jesus is saying here? Are you gonna accept that what Jesus offers goes way beyond the physical straight into the spiritual part of your heart that reaches out for that light only He has to give? Are you gonna walk away from here, saying to yourself, “Well, that was interesting” or are you gonna let the bread of life live within you each time you come up here at the rail. Each time you celebrate where two or three are gathered together. Each time you look at your todays as something limited instead of looking forward to tomorrow as something extraordinary?

Folks, you can be like the Jews, arguing about semantics, walking away because it don’t fit some preconceived notion of what you thought you knew, or you can really think and ponder about what it means when Jesus says to eat His flesh and drink His blood. He’s not saying to eat a piece of bread and drink some wine or grape juice as a representation of His body and His blood. He said, eat my body, drink my blood. That’s about as clear as it comes. To interpret it anyway else would be to ignore what Jesus said, like the Jews did, and discount the whole thing as some big misunderstanding.

We can choose to look at what Jesus says and go deeper. Find the true meaning of what Jesus meant when He was offering Himself up for those that wished to believe. Or, we can just pass it off like we would if we were working someplace that didn’t fit. Our todays affect our tomorrows. Like the guy, in our parable, that makes the list for tomorrow each today, what we take away from this passage will affect how we will look at things tomorrow.

What we take away from this body of God will change how we interact with others tomorrow. We can live for today or we can prepare for tomorrow. Jesus will come back. Is it gonna be today or is it gonna be tomorrow? What’s your tomorrow gonna look like in light of today? Something to think about! Something to pray about?

Can we pray? …

Father, we pray that we can understand what you have in store for us. We pray that you send your Holy Spirit into our midst to guide us into our tomorrows so that our todays can be ones that lift us and all those we have around us up. Father, be with us as we search for what we should do to be in service for you. Father, we pray for your endless grace in allowing us to be called your disciples and your servants. Help us to live out those destinies and help us to live in the light that you shine on us. Open our eyes, our ears and our hearts to the gifts that are a part of us so that we can then share those gifts to others. Father, we pray for your grace. We pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus the Christ.

And all God’s people said – Amen?!

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