A Quality of Life that Lasts

A QUALITY OF LIFE THAT LASTS

Jn. 6:51-58

The thought of death frightens some people.  They would love to live forever.  When we are at our best, when our minds are at their sharpest, our hopes at their highest, we might long for immortality.  When we are enjoying life like this, we never want it to end.

Well if we want to live forever it is to Jesus that we must go.  In today’s Gospel He promises immortality to those who are in union with Him.  He said, "I am the living bread come down from Heaven.  If anyone eats this bread, he shall live forever."  In other words Jesus is saying if you love Me so much that you want to be a part of Me you must eat My body and drink My blood.  My promise is you will live forever.  Yes, physically, like Me, there will come a time when you will die, but your soul will live forever.  Eating My body and drinking My blood is the secret of immortality.

Recently I have met Travellers who call themselves Born again Christians.  They have thrown out many of the practices of the Church.  In their service of worship, led by a man not a priest, instead of the bread and wine that we use at Mass they substitute ribena and biscuits.  This is not the way Jesus wanted Holy Communion to happen and so they will not live forever.  They must obey Jesus.

When Jesus promises eternal life He is talking about a quality of life that is so eternally real and right that not even death can destroy it.  This was how He lived; this was the meaning of His resurrection.  There was a quality in His life that could out last anything, even death.  The beautiful thing is that we can share that life.  What were those qualities in the life of Jesus that transcended death and have now endured for almost 2,000 years?

The first and most obvious is love.  We need to hear that.  We need to remind ourselves of that for at times it appears in our world that hatred and ill-will are the dominant and enduring themes, with terrorism an ever-present threat.  What chance has love in this world?

But what chance has anything to endure other than love?  Much more than a lovely ideal, love is our one and only hope.  Violence and hatred can endure to a time, but they can be wiped out by love.   Bullets and bombs are powerless to destroy the idea of love.  The only answer to hatred is love.  The surest and best and most permanent way to conquer your enemy is to make him your friend.  This is because violence only breeds violence.  That cycle must be broken and it can only be broken by love.  There is only one solution to this world's dilemma of lawlessness and war, and that is for people to learn to live together as neighbours and friends.  So, when Jesus exhorted His listeners to “love one another and do good to those who hate you” He was more than a starry-eyed dreamer - He was a realist.  In this world of ours, there is nothing else that endures, nothing else that really works.

The other quality in life that lasts forever is service.  One of the ironies of history is the durability of Jesus of Nazareth.  There have been people who have tried to destroy the memory of Jesus but they have been unable.  The world has not been able to forget Him.  When He was born, Augustus Caesar ruled the world.  When He died, Tiberius was Emperor in Rome.  They were both powerful but Jesus, a nobody from a carpenter's shop who never possessed station or rank, almost unknown among His contemporaries and hated by the leaders of Judea who had Him die on a Cross, was the One who conquered the hearts and minds of millions in the following centuries.  How strange!  And the only possible explanation of this is that He was whom He said He was the Son of God.  The purpose of His life was to serve; He measured greatness in terms of serving and helping people.

The book recording the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount continues to be the world's best seller.  What He taught still endures - and will endure forever.  The only quality of life that really lasts is service.

Lord Jesus, You said, "I am the true bread come down from Heaven.  If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever."  Yours is the kind of life that death can never destroy, for it is built on the two enduring qualities of love and service.  If we eat Your Body and drink Your Blood, we can claim those qualities for our own.

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