Last week, today, and next week, we’re
spending some time with the bread discourse, Jesus’ enormously influential
sermon that takes place just after the feeding of the 5,000. If you’ll recall,
the crowd he’d fed follows him across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum—after
trying to kidnap him and make him king—and confronts him there, and in response
to a series of questions and misunderstandings, he talks to them about how he’s
the bread of life, come down from heaven: “I am the bread of life. Whoever
comes to me will never be hungry . . .”
And now, on the North shore of Galilee,
there are apparently some folks who knew Jesus back when, who knew Joseph and
Mary and everything, and it’s like the story over in Mark when he came to his
hometown of Nazareth, and you’ll remember that because of their lack of belief,
he could do no deeds of power there. Here in John, the same kind of sentiment
is expressed, only this time it’s a reaction to Jesus’ claims. They begin to
complain about him, they begin to grumble
about him, saying “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and
mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Its like
they think claiming he’s bread from heaven is more than a little uppity . . .
And I use that language deliberately . .
. uppity. It’s the language used by people who want to keep others in the boxes
they’ve placed them in. Of course, it was most famously used by white folks in
the bad old days to try and keep black folks in their place, keep them in the
boxes they’d been moved into. Emmett Till was a black kid who said something
uppity to a white woman, and they lynched him in good, old Mississippi—where
Pam and I lived for a decade, and where we have lots of friends—they strung up
his skinny, fourteen-year-old body for something he said, only whaddya know?
The woman he supposedly said
it to now says it
didn’t happen.
Thank goodness that doesn’t happen these days. Thank goodness
white folks don’t put African Americans in boxes, paint them all with the same
brush. Only . . . wait. Isn’t that kind of the idea behind profiling—either
intentional or unintentional? Black folks barbecuing in a park have the police
called on them in Oakland. A black student taking a nap in a common room in her
own dorm has the
police called on her. The other student—white, of course—says she appears out
of place. And of course, we all know this can have fatal results, as seen by
the spate of un-armed blacks being shot and by police. Jesus knew this as well,
when he fled the crowd that wanted to shove him—by force, if necessary—into the
box of glorious, triumphant king.
In fact, you might say that Jesus’ whole
life—from cradle to grave—demonstrates the folly of this sort of thing. Everybody
has a misconception about him, everybody’s got their own box. His parents
search frantically—and understandably—for him when he was twelve, only to find
him teaching, in temple, saying “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s
house?” His mother and brothers are embarrassed when he’s preaching, and try to
get him to stop—after all, they think, he’s just a small-town carpenter’s son.
The disciples never understand who he is until it’s too late, and in fact his
crucifixion is arguably about the Roman authorities placing him in the box
labeled “revolutionary” and “agitator.”
Well. Jesus scolds them for murmuring
amongst themselves, and proceeds to offer a theology of “coming to” him, which
he seems to use interchangeably with “believe in”. And remembering last week,
we saw that to believe in Jesus means to give yourself over to him whole hog,
to align yourself with him, to have faith in him and to unify with him. In
other words, the whole enchilada. And now he’s saying that nobody can do all this unless drawn by
God, who Jesus calls Father. No one can come to him unless drawn by the God who
sent him. And this is very different from the presuppositions of the Jewish
crowd here at Capernaum. For Jews, they are the chosen people, God has
designated them as such, and for their
part, there is that matter of circumcision and those 613 mitzvoth to attend to.
The idea of being “drawn” has a
different flavor, a different feel.
There’s no vengeful God kind of stuff, no saying “you shall be my people and I
shall be your God.” Drawing has an altogether more gentle connotation.
Augustine thought so, anyway: in his Tractate
on the Gospel of John he wrote “See how (God) draws: Not by
imposing necessity” but by grace enabling the “inner palate” of the soul to
find its greatest “pleasure” and “delight” in partaking of the truth. Even for
Calvin, infamous for the doctrine of pre-destination, it’s gentle: “As far as
the manner of drawing goes,” he wrote, “it is not violent, so as to compel by
an external force; but yet it is an effectual movement of the Holy Spirit,
turning us from being unwilling and reluctant into willing.”
Most of you know that I’m a graduate of
Richard Rohr’s “Living School of Action and Contemplation,” out in Albuquerque,
and one of the first things we were told was that we were called there, that if
we were there, we were already on the contemplative path . . . and nobody comes
to that path except one who has been drawn by the Father, no one comes to that
path unless drawn by God. Similarly, no one comes to Jesus, no one comes to
belief in Christ
on their own, without first being drawn by God.
Is this being drawn any different from
being called, a bedrock doctrine within Reformed Theology? I’m not sure,
perhaps it’s in intensity? Just thinking about the words, if someone calls you, you can hear the
call but there’s no compulsion to answer. If someone draws you, theres perhaps
a tug, a pull
involved. I don’t know . . . have any of y’all out there felt drawn?. Have you ever felt pulled by the divine?
Well. Whoever believes has eternal life,
whoever has faith, whoever aligns themselves with Christ, will have eternal
life. And we all think we know what this term “eternal life” means, that it
means we’ll go to heaven when we die, and that maybe true. But especially in
here in John, it has the connotation of fullness, of abundance. And it makes a
certain kind of sense, doesn’t it? After all, the word eternal indicates that
it begins right here on earth, that our lives take on a different, perhaps more
blessed character.
Elsewhere in John, Jesus is likened to the stem and believers the branches,
nourished by him as a vine nourishes it’s fruit and leaves. Still elsewhere in
John, Jesus promises that he will be in us just as God is in him . . .
In the Wisdom tradition, which is what I
studied at the Living School, it is said that all have the spark of the divine
within them, and the task of the seeker after Christ is to uncover, to realize,
and ultimately unite with that spark. Roman Catholics call this the unitive stage
of spiritual development . . . is that
what Jesus is talking about when he says “eternal life?” This idea of “eternal
return” is integral to many spiritualities, where at the death of the physical
body this spark, our true essence, returns to being part of God . . .
Jesus is the bread of life, not death . . . the
world’s bread—the miasma, the waste,
the constant stream of sounds and images we are fed daily by our culture—does
not give life. We can eat the manna from our
wilderness and still die, but those who eat the bread come down from heaven do not die. Jesus is that living bread, that
bread of life. Just like bread from wheat, from the soil, when we eat it
becomes a part of
us, that is the
heart of the metaphor . . . Jesus feeds us, nourishes us and becomes a part of
us . . . and whoever eats of this
bread will live forever.
And now, during this time of meditation,
close your eyes and get lost in the smells of fresh-baked bread . . . know that
when you inhale it you are taking the bread into your body, it is becoming a
part of you, and in the same way, Jesus becomes a part of you as you partake of
him . . .
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