Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Give Us This Day

Home
Evangelical
John 4:27-42 – A Strange Food

John 4:27-42 – A Strange Food

Last updated on: May 25, 2017 at 12:58 am by Fr. Charles Erlandson

John 4:27-42 – A Strange Food 2017-05-25T00:58:28-05:00 Fr. Charles Erlandson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.”

If you’ve read the New Testament enough times, this saying may be familiar to you. It may, regrettably, be so familiar to you that little meaning remains in it for you.

But when Jesus says in verse 34 that “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work He is saying something so contrary to the ways of the world that we ought to be shocked into some sort of reaction. Laughter, anger, skepticism, or confusion: these words of Jesus ought to draw some reaction from us.

In the first place, how can you eat the will of the Father? But Jesus says that His food is to do the will of the One who sent Him, who is the Father. But then Jesus loves to use food and drink to illustrate what life with God is like. He’s just used water as an illustration of Himself and the life He brings, and now it’s food’s turn.

Since we’ve all heard figurative language before, I suppose we can accept His analogy of food. But then we hit something even more perverse and contrary to what we know and expect. It’s not the figurative language that gets us: it’s the substance of metaphor. We wouldn’t mind if He’d said that something we liked doing was His food. You know something like, “My food is to kick back and relax” or “My food is to hang with my buds and open a few brewksis.” This is what we really want to hear so that we can be affirmed in what we really want to be doing.

But it offends us that what sustains Him as His food is to do the will of the Father and to finish His work. How can what sustains a man be what someone else wants him to do? It’s unthinkable. It’s unmanly. It’s un-American!

Even worse, it’s not only doing the will of someone else, but it’s completing their work. Now He’s done it: now Jesus has just cut you loose from any connection you had to Him, that is, if you’re living by the Old Man.

But why should it surprise us that what sustained Jesus in His life and ministry was to do the will of the Father. Are we like Joseph and Mary who didn’t know that He had to be about His Father’s business? It all seems backwards and nonsensical.

Until you understand one thing. You see, we assume that doing someone else’s will is going to be unpleasant, onerous, abominable, offensive, burdensome, laborious, repulsive, irritating, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling, invidious, vexatious, troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome, plaguing, boring, tedious, trying, uninteresting, stupid, dumb, dry, monotonous, dull, and humdrum. We have a lot of words for the things we don’t like to do, probably because there are so many of them.

And we assume that work is what we’re doing that we don’t want to be doing, that play and leisure is doing what we really want to be doing, and that life is to be all play and no work.

But there’s something we miss about Jesus and something we miss about the way life is supposed to be and the way it can be once again. And it’s this: Jesus did the will of the Father, not because he had to in the sense of being forced to work against His will but because He wanted to. The Father’s will became His will so that the Father’s work became his work. What Jesus took delight in was precisely to do the will of the Father, and once He had accomplished this, His life was full, and full of joy.

Do you want to know what the most common source of frustration, anger, and discontent in my life is? I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I guess it’s really no secret: it’s me not getting my way.

The source of most of my misery is that simple: I don’t get my way, and so I’m unhappy, ungrateful, sad, mad, angry, and frustrated. The reason I’m this way so much of the time is because I’ve been eating the wrong diet. I’ve made my food to do my own will, and so I eat the bread of sorrows that I’ve baked for myself while grumbling about how crumby and crumbly and distasteful it is.

But look at Jesus, how even when the will of the Father was the Cross how He obeyed the Father and was sustained by the Father.

Jesus has food for you to eat today and, SURPRISE!, it’s Him! He is your daily bread; He is the food that will sustain. But as you eat Him you become aware that to eat Jesus is to become like Him (it really is true that you are what you eat!) And to be like Jesus is to desire what He desires and to do what He does, which is the will of the Father.

When you pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,” you are praying that God’s will will be done through you. Since Jesus said that His bread was to do the will of the Father, “Thy will be done” is connected to “give us this day our daily bread.” One of the forms that our daily bread comes in is to do the will of the Father. More than just the will of God, it is especially the Son of God who does the will of the Father who is our daily bread. And only as we partake of Him can we do the will of the Father.

I don’t know how it is that I grew up not liking garlic. Maybe it was the faky garlic salt that I’d had, or maybe I never gave the alliaceous herb a fair chance. But until I met the fair Lady J, I didn’t like garlic.

Now I love it! But I learned to like it and then love it by degrees. And I hear that it’s actually really good for me.

You may not naturally like to do the will of God, but the amazing thing about Jesus is that through the gift of the Holy Spirit you can learn to have your taste changed so that you actually desire to do the will of another, the Father. And once you begin to like to do His will and then love it, you’ll wonder what took you so long.

Now: if I can only learn to love, or even like or tolerate, cilantro!

Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

What are some things God has asked you to do that you find distasteful?
As you practice doing the will of the Father, practice liking to do it, remembering for whom you are doing it.

Resolution: I resolve to practice desiring to do God’s will today, treating it as my daily bread.

Food – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Previous Post

May 25, 2017

John 4:15-26 - The Well

Next Post

May 25, 2017 John 4:43-54 - Your miracle

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Book Reviews Featured Give Us This Day Give Us This Day Devotional love me love my wife Love My Wife Reformed Catholicism Blog Spirit-Reality Take This Cup Uncategorized

Select a Month February 2022 November 2021 October 2021 August 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 September 2018 July 2018 March 2018 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was Bezalel's profession?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Priest Craftsman Soldier Farmer