First and Last (Mark 9:30 - 37)

      Jesus and the twelve are on the road through Galilee . . . and in Mark – as in Luke and Matthew – Jesus uses this time to teach about discipleship, about what it means to follow him.  And last week, we saw that the disciples didn’t quite understand what it means to follow Christ, they thought – like many of their Israelite brothers and sisters – that the Messiah would come to be some kind of warrior-God/King, who’d lead a revolution against the Herods and their Roman masters, and restore the glorious kingdom of David, renowned in song and story and scripture.  But Jesus bursts their balloon, he spells out exactly what is going to happen to him – he’ll be captured and killed and rise again – and when Peter takes him aside for a good talking-to, Jesus calls him Satan, and then he explains just what following him entails:  If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake – and for the sake of the gospel – will save it.

      And it seems to me, anyway, that it’s pretty clear.  One.  Jesus is not some glorious, revolutionary, War-Christ, no matter how many times he appears on the cover of Newsweek.   Two.  In point of fact, far from leading the glorious armies of the revolution, he’s gonna die a horrible death.  Three. To be a follower of Christ, you gotta give up your own life, just like he’s gonna give up his.  Get it?  Got it?  Good.

      Except that evidently his followers didn't, . . . and this time, Mark comes right out and bashes us over the head with it . . . after Jesus tells them a second time about his crucifixion, Mark says they still do not understand what he’s saying.  And further, that they were afraid to ask!  And I wonder why?  Why were they were afraid to ask?  My first grade teacher used to say “There are no dumb questions, children . . .”, so maybe that was the problem, maybe they were afraid of looking dumb . . . or maybe they remembered the last time, when Peter was verbally assaulted for not understanding . . . or just maybe they were afraid of the answer they might get, like this life they’re all living, this tramping around Palestine, this giving up of family and livelihood and themselves, might all come to nothing, nailed up on a cross with their dead leader . . . and was this what he meant by “take up your cross and follow me?”

      They don’t understand, and I’m not sure it’s much better today, either . . . the warrior-God/King Jesus seems alive and well in modern Christianity, the Jesus of success, the Jesus of getting ahead . . . and how about that Jesus of the apocalypse, the Jesus of the Left Behind series, read avidly by millions of our brothers and sisters who get some kind of vicarious rush when Jesus melts the faces off of sinners  in the last days . . . Call me a religious nut-case, will you . . . Take that, you Starbucks-sipping, tassel-loafered, effete-liberal snob!  There goes your face!  What’s that?  Don’t like the 700-club?  Don’t like it when Pat tells the God’s-honest truth about you Godless Muslims?  Off with your head, Jesus is gonna come again, and the kingdom will be established with his sword!  That’s what it says over in Revelation, isn’t it?  Tim and Jerry wouldn’t lie to us, would they?

      Of course, that’s just the extreme end of our modern fixation with Christ the King, emphasis on the king part . . . every time we think God’s will coincides with our getting ahead, every time we thank God for moving a little bit up the old corporate ladder, every time we agree with some politician who co-opts God for the National good, we probably oughta’ take a good look at our assumptions about what it means to be followers of the crucified God.  Do we really understand any more than did the twelve?

      Well.  When they get to Capernaum, they enter a house – they always stayed in homes of the faithful along the way – and when they get to the house, he asks them “What were you arguing about on the way?”  And you kind of get the idea that he knows the answer – over in John he would, as John would oh-so-carefully explain – because they’re silent, hanging their heads, scuffling in the dirt, they know they’re busted . . . and so Jesus sits down and calls them around.

      Now we should pause here and note that it’s not an accident that Mark tells us that Jesus sits down . . . and in fact, in general, whenever a Gospel writer gives us a detail like this, it’s good to pay attention. In this case, sitting is the position a teacher in the synagogue takes, so Mark wants his readers to know that this is a formal teaching moment, with the disciples gathered around, sitting on the floor at the feet of the teacher . . . can you picture it?  The dim coolness of the house, suddenly silent, for all in the house know what’s going on, that a Teacher –with a capital T – is in the house, that he’s getting ready to impart something of major importance, and so it is: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

      The disciples are arguing about who is greatest, and oh, snap!  He lets them have it right between the eyes.  This sort of behavior is unacceptable in the kingdom . . . this kind of rivalrous competition for place does not happen in the new reality . . . and to see why, all you have to do is look at any denomination, where squabbling over who will be first seems to be the order of the day . . . and of course, we should look no further than our own PCUSA . . . seems lately that the majority of our national energy is spent on squabbling about “who will be the greatest” – whose view of sanctification, of the Eucharist, of ordination, of the nature of Christ – the list goes on and on – who’s views should be reified and made normal for the church – and thus deemed most acceptable in the eyes of God – are at the basis of church battles far and wide.  And if your view of ordination standards or the Eucharist or the nature of Christ is the one that wins, why you win, you are the greatest, God smiles at you, you take home the prize . . .

      And as Jesus knows, these rivalries corrode the soul of communities, religious or otherwise. They cripple them, render them ineffective and laughable, and so he gives us the answer, he tells us how to do it.  The basis of stable, non-rivalrous, non-violent community is – if you think of yourselves as last of all, if you behave as if you are last of all, as in you are a servant of all, then destructive, rivalrous behavior will not happen . . . and of course, it makes sense, doesn’t it?  If you think of yourself as last of all, if you believe it, then there is no need for competition, for rivalry, for in-fighting.  Humility – from the Latin “humus” as in soil as in close to – humility prevents contention, it thwarts conflict precisely because if you are humble – if you know yourself to be low to the ground, as Jesus put it last of all, then you won’t feel the need to prove you’re better than everybody else all the time.

      This is such an important principle that Benedict of Nursia – Saint Benedict – made it the heart of his Rule for monastic life.  It’s the longest chapter of the rule, and it’s the seventh, and thus the “perfect” chapter.  He describes the path to humility as a ladder with 12 rungs; listen to this description on the seventh – and thus the perfect – rung: “The seventh degree of humility is that one considers oneself lower and of less account than anyone and this not only in verbal protestation but also with the most heartfelt inner conviction . . .”  Or as Jesus put it 600 years earlier, whoever would be first must be last of all, and servant to all . . . for who is lower than a servant, who is lower indeed?  And the model for all of this is the Son of Man himself, who will be betrayed into human hands and murdered on a tree, the ultimate servant of all . . . how much more “last of all” can you get?

      But his followers refuse to understand this, so he gives them another example—he's already given them one—taking a little child to give them an object lesson.  And it’s important to remember that they are still in the physical arrangement of teacher and disciples, and it’s important as well to understand that in ancient Judaism, women and children and gentiles and other outsiders – the ones Jesus calls “the least of these” – were not allowed to sit at a teachers feet, to be disciples of a master like Jesus.  And so what does he do?  He takes a child, one of the least of these, low on social-location totem pole, even lower than women and slaves were in those days, and he brings her into the circle, into the company of his disciples, admitting the child into their adult male, ritually-pure Jewish circle.

      And he amplifies the effect, he emphasizes it by drawing the child up and taking the child into his arms, in the attitude of a loving parent . . . and in being so close to him, the child becomes a part of him, is merged into his identity.  And this interpretation is confirmed by the very next words out of Jesus’ mouth:  Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me – the child is identified with Jesus!  Jesus is identified with the child . . . whoever welcomes this child, welcomes me . . .

      And of course over in Matthew, this identification is seen as well . . . the King, who represents Jesus, tells his followers whatever you do to the least of these, those at the bottom of the heap, the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder, whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me . . . and Jesus, the Lord and master of them all, the first of all, becomes the last of all, becomes the least of these, becomes a little child.

      And so, by taking up a little child, by taking into his circle one of the least of the least of these, he is revealing a stunningly radical view of community and indeed God – the outsider, the marginal not only comes inside, not only becomes equal to them, but when he is taken up into Christ’s arms, when he is merged with Christ, he becomes in a sense Christ himself . . . a child, the ultimate “last of all” in their society, does indeed become first of all.  And the final words of Jesus are icing on the cake, they confirm what has been shown in that silent scene – whoever welcomes one such as this child, welcomes me.

      And today in our middle-class world, children aren’t considered the least of these—although having no vote, their education and children’s services are always the first things cut—but no matter – the child in Jesus’ arms is a metaphor for the least of these, those on the lowest societal rung, in any society, ours no less than theirs . . . and so this passage – like its counterpart over in Matthew – should set us to thinking about the identity of “ones such as these” are around here, in Hamilton County . . . it should set us thinking and wondering, are they here in Greenhills, in Forest Park, in the Greater Cincinnati area?  Have we, like Christ, brought them here into the center of our life as a congregation?  Why are they not here in the circle at Jesus’ feet with us? The answer of course is complex, not at all conducive to a simple slogan or saying . . . and yet, welcoming the un-welcomed, absorbing the unabsorbed, taking into the center the marginal is at the center of the Christian life itself . . .

      You know, evangelical Christians have a phrase they often use for the conversion experience . . . they say that to experience salvation we must “invite Christ into our lives.”  Here in our passage, we see that at work, I think, but it’s on an anthropological level as well as a spiritual one.  What Jesus implies in this passage, what he demonstrates in that circle of discipleship, in the circle that is his congregation, is that whenever we welcome one such as this little child, whenever we go out of our way to gather of the least of these in our arms--whomever they are, whatever they look like--we not only invite them in, but we invite Christ in as well.  Amen.

Cross Cultural (Mark 8:27 - 39)

      Do you remember that guy who was hiking around the country toting a cross?  I do . . . he visited Tuscaloosa when Pam and I lived there, and there he was, walking down McFarland Avenue, one of the town’s main drags, a big white cross slung over his shoulders with what looked like training wheels bolted to the bottom.  He'd been doing it for seven years, reminding us of the need for God in our lives . . . apparently he thought Tuscaloosa needed a lot of reminding, because he’d been there several times . . . anyway, I wonder what was going through his mind?  Did he think that’s what Jesus meant in today’s passage, where he says that to follow him we must “take up our cross?”  Did he take him literally?  Or did he look upon it as a bit of holy theater, a symbolic act with evangelical overtones, like the man who traveled all over the South years ago, erecting crosses in groups of three?  Or was he just nuts?

      Whatever the case, the question of how literally to take Jesus in this passage has bothered Christians from the start . . . there were some, in the early centuries, who carried large wooden crosses around, to show their devotion, presumably without the training wheels, but early theologians took a more nuanced view . . . “Your cross” wrote Tertullian around 200 AD “means your own anxieties and your sufferings in your own body, which itself is shaped like a cross.”[1]  A couple of hundred yeas later, Augustine identified our cross as our “preoccupation with domestic cares,” and summed it up by saying   “what else does the cross mean than the mortality of the flesh?  This is our very own cross which the Lord commands us to carry . . .”[2]  Over the centuries, the cross we are commanded to bear has been identified as our frail humanity, our weak flesh, our condition of sin, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Of course, this saying has entered into the vernacular as a maxim, an aphorism, as in “That’s just a cross I have to bear,” accompanied by a heavy sigh, and meaning something that we suffer that we can’t get out of.  Perhaps this is the kind of thing Paul called “thorn in his side,” and that he asked Christ three times to remove, without discernible results . . .

      But what does all this have to do with Jesus’ famous command “Get thee behind me, Satan?”  And what does it have to do with “Who do people say that I am,” the question that begins this whole episode? . . . he’s on his way to Caesarea Philippi – Philip’s Caesarea – when he asks that question, and the disciples answer by telling them what they’d heard – John the Baptist . . . Elijah . . . one of the prophets . . . but then he asks them what they think, he says “Who do you say I am?” and good old Peter, who represents here all the disciples, answers “You are the Messiah!”  And you’d think he’d get a little praise for his confession, you’d think he’d get a little approbation, but instead, Jesus sternly orders them not to repeat it, not to tell anyone about him.

      And what’s remarkable about this is that in the Greek, it’s much stronger than our English translation . . . literally it’s “rebuke,” as in he rebuked them so that they would-not-tell anyone about him.  So poor ol’ Peter, he gives the right answer, and he gets slammed for it, he gets rebuked for it . . . and immediately, Jesus launches into the first of three predictions of his passion and crucifixion: “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”  And the thing is, it’s not an accident that it follows directly after the rebuke, and in fact it, like the rebuke, is provoked by Peter’s declaration that he is the Messiah.

      And it all hinges around one little word . . . must.  Jesus teaches them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise . . . and we usually interpret this as some kind of theological necessity, as in it’s necessary for the Son of Man to suffer to fulfill the prophecies, to carry out some divine plan, called by some “God’s plan for salvation.”  But that’s a theological reading, it attempts to answer why it was necessary in terms of the inscrutable mechanics of God . . . there’s another reading, equally valid, an anthropological reading, as in the suffering and rejection and killing and rising again must necessarily follow certain human actions, that they are logical consequences of what was happening and what will happen . . . the Son of Man must undergo great suffering why?  Because the Romans and the religious authorities got nervous, fearing that Jesus came to seize their power, that he came to usurp their authority . . . and we know that this did happen, just as did the readers of Mark.

      Now we’re in a position to answer the question of why Jesus rebukes the disciples, why he keeps them from spreading the news that he was in fact the Messiah . . . he knows that it will only inflame an already volatile situation, it will only bring his murder on more quickly, it will only bring on the inevitable.  Calling Jesus Messiah will inflame Messianic expectations, it will increase the agitation of the people, increase their revolutionary fervor . . . they expected the Messiah to be a warrior-king, who would restore the Davidic Kingdom to its former position of ascendancy.  Talk like this would make the rulers of Palestine – the Romans and their Israelite Herod toadies – very nervous, because no military dictatorship wants a popular revolution on its hands . . .

      And so the fact that Peter’s declaration of Jesus’ identity is followed immediately by the Savior’s rebuke is not really a mystery . . . Jesus is trying to put a lid on the violence, he’s trying to avoid a revolution – which would inevitably lead to thousands of Israelite dead, and indeed it did 40 years later, when Jerusalem was burned to the ground . . . Jesus is trying to live up to his title of Prince of Peace, and he explains it all by pointing out what inevitably follows that kind of Messiah talk, which was indeed what did follow it:  he became a scapegoat for all the contagious violence, all the unrest of the day, as peace in Jerusalem was momentarily bought – and the Romans momentarily appeased – by his blood.  As the high priest Caiaphas said to the San Hedrin, “better . . . to have one man die for the people than the whole nation destroyed.”[3]

      Jesus explains it all quite clearly, he says it all quite openly, for God and the world to hear, and it enrages Peter . . . he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, and there’s that word again, rebuke . . . Mark tells us that Peter does the same thing that Jesus did to the demons, the same thing that he did to his disciples . . . Jesus rebukes his disciples so they won't tell, and then Peter does the same thing to him . . . maybe he thinks Jesus is possessed, maybe he thinks that he’s nuts, maybe he thinks that a good, stiff talking-to will bring him around . . . but to Peter’s mind, it's crazy-talk, it's gibberish.  The Messiah was going to take them all to glory, not die spiked to a tree . . . he was going to lead them in a glorious military re-taking of Palestine, not carry a cross up the via dolorosa . . .

      But Jesus calls him Satan – “Get thee behind me, Satan” – he identifies Peter with the demonic power that leads to bloodshed, the demonic power that creates mob violence, that threatened even then to plunge them all into a bloody, un-winnable war, that threatened – and eventually did – make of the Messiah a scapegoat, a sacrifice to appease the violent gods of oppression and foreign rule.  Jesus says Get thee behind me, Satan, and why?  Because Peter – ever the stand-in for the rest of the disciples, ever the stand-in for us – is setting his mind not on divine things, but on human things.  He’s setting his mind on the ways of the world – Satan is after all the ruler of the world – he’s setting his mind on things of the world, not on those of God.

      Anybody seen the movie Moulin Rouge?  In it, the charming bohemians orbiting around the night club are dedicated to “eternal principles,” eternal verities . . . Like the Greek idealists before them, they attempt to live their lives informed and guided by the ideals of "truth, beauty, freedom and love."   The courtesan Satine is torn between her love for the impoverished writer – named, I’m sure wholly coincidentally, Christian – and the evil Duke, who stands for the money-grabbing ways of the world, where love is just a commodity that can be bought and sold . . . the movie plays like a struggle for her soul, as she has to choose between setting her mind on the things of the world – money, comfort, security – or the divine attributes, the divine ideals of “truth, beauty, freedom and love."

      Like Satine, Peter can choose to set his mind on the ways of the world or the ways of the divine . . . and when he upbraids Jesus for predicting his own death, for acting not like a warrior-Messiah-king, but like a weakling, like a servant, he betrays that choice, he betrays the fact that he’s set his mind on, that he’s chosen to think in the categories of the world, that might makes right, that violence can end violence, that retribution is the way to justice.  And notice that it’s a posed as a choice . . . Peter can choose to think in worldly terms or he can set his mind on the divine.  It’s his call, his choice, his option.

      And of course, we have that choice as well . . . we can set our mind on the divine things, we can imitate God as revealed in Jesus Christ – non-violent, non-retributive, wholly forgiving – or the world – dedicated to the proposition that the ones with the most power – the most guns, or political power, or money – the ones with the most power are the ones who get their way.  It’s up to us, it really is . . . we can choose to set our minds on worldly things, or things of God . . . and we many times take this dichotomy to revolve around consumerism . . . put your mind on God, rather than all your stuff . . . and that’s a good thing, but it’s not what this passage is about . . . it’s about power and violence and hierarchy.  And like Peter, we have a choice: we can set our minds on worldly things or things of the divine.

      And now we are ready to see what carrying our cross has to do with Jesus’ identity as the Messiah . . . Jesus uses the metaphor to clarify what he means by setting our mind on divine things . . . if we carry our cross we suffer—like Jesus—what the world throws at us for preaching the gospel.  Of course, in the first few hundred years, especially before the faith was legalized by the empire, that could be a lot.  But even today—especially some non-Western countries—the cross can be heavy.  But Jesus has one more metaphor and that’s losing our lives for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the gospel . . . and like the carrying the cross, the meaning of this has been debated over the years . . . some have thought that our faith is not complete, that we’re not following Christ if we do not die a martyr’s death, others have seen it to be metaphorical, and that we are to give up our selves, our identities, our egos, for the sake of the Gospel . . . and that’s perhaps the scariest thing of all.

      Jesus puts the contrast sharply: we can either be Christ’s or the worlds, we can be shaped by a Christian world-view, a world-view that rejects hierarchy and violence and oppression, that substitutes the rule of love for the rule of violence, or we can be shaped by another world-view, one powered by our need for things, by the need for more, the need for power, the need for domination . . . it’s up to us.  We have the choice.

            And what’s the good news in all of this?  Well, of course, it’s that we do have a choice.  God sent God’s son so that we have a choice of how to live, and mo’ better, so that we have the power, the ability to choose . . . Christ said that when he is gone, he will send a Spirit, an advocate, to be with us, and through that Spirit Christ empowers us to follow the way, to set our minds on things of the divine.  When we make the choice for Christ, the choice to live the way Christ would have us live, it can seem like the whole of our world is arrayed against us.  Not necessarily violently – although that can happen – but all the hype, all the culture, all the dog-eat-dog, free-market competition that values getting ahead at any cost, even the cost of our neighbor.  But we have an advocate, we have the Holy Spirit with us to show us the way, who will be with us whatever the world throws at us.  God with us, Christ with us.  Ever and always.  Amen

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[1]   Tertullian, On Idolatry 12

[2]   Augustine, Letters, 243, To Laertus.

[3] John 11:49-50

12 Confused Men (John 6:56 - 69)

So.  We come to the last of five examinations of John’s remarkable sixth chapter.  In the course of them, we’ve seen movement, both physical—after the feeding of the 5,000 they cross the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum—as well as pedagogical, as Jesus’ teaching moves from group to group.  He arrives in Capernaum, maybe staying with Peter’s folks, and soon the people he’d fed—whom John dubs “the crowd”—show up looking for him, which prompts a sermon from Jesus about how he’s the bread of life.  Then the scene switches to the synagogue and his teaching to the authorities there, whom John calls “the Jews.” And at first they complain, muttering amongst themselves, because they just can’t get their heads around how Jesus could be human, the son of Mary and Joseph, and the bread come down from heaven at the same time.  Then, they begin to dispute amongst themselves, squabbling over how in the name of all that’s holy Jesus could possibly give them his flesh to eat.  Gross!

Now we come down to the response of the disciples, those people who’d been following Jesus since the beginning.  And it's important to consider the differences in the three groups . . .  The crowd has followed him across the sea because, as Jesus himself put it, they “ate [their] fill of the loaves.”  And they are irritated that he’d given them the slip, presumably because they wanted some more bread.  But Jesus tells them not to work for the bread that perishes, like that which he fed them across the sea, but for the bread that never perishes, that leads to eternal life.

Next up are the religious authorities, the experts in theology and the law, and they’re grumbling and disputing, as theologians are wont to do, and it's clear that where the crowd wants physical sustenance from Jesus, they’re after something else.  They’re after theological acquiescence, they desire that he fit in their little theological boxes, the boxes over which—not incidentally—they have control.  They react as if he’s an affront to their sense of power . . . After all, they are the ones who—in the name of God, of course!—determine who’s in and who’s out, who’s clean and who’s unclean, who was holy and who was profane.  And In answering their grumbling, Jesus threatens the status quo: the life of the world is his flesh, not in their rituals and observances, and no one may come to that life unless drawn by God—not by them, but by God.

And his followers, the disciples who—at this point, are many more than twelve—have heard and seen all of this. They’ve heard his teaching to the crowd.  They’ve witnessed the grumbling of the rabbis and scribes, and listened to his disturbing reply, they’ve seen his feeding the 5,000 and walking on the sea, they’ve been there for the whole thing, and now they’re the ones doing the complaining, doing the grumbling, and they collectively express these sentiments: “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  And though it’s tempting to read this comically, like they’re not the brightest bulbs in the old marquee, I think that they’re irritated, like the crowd, like the complaining Jewish authorities.  Here they’ve been following him around for months, they’ve given up their ordinary lives for him, their families and settled homes and occupations, and all of a sudden, here he is, spouting the most ridiculous-sounding nonsense that they’ve ever heard.

This teaching is difficult . . . who can accept it?  Well, a lot of modern day Christians can’t, for one thing . . . It offends a lot of us to say at communion “the body of Christ, broken for you” and “the blood of Christ, shed for you.”  So we substitute stuff like “the bread of life, food for the road” and “the cup of the new covenant” without the “in Christ’s blood” part.  And that’s ok, but I think Jesus asks us the same question he asked the followers of his day: “does that offend you?  Does that scandalize you?  Does it cause you to lose your faith, to stay away from the church and the life-giving sacraments?  Well, what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”

He is ascending to the spiritual realm, to a realm that is not fleshly, that is not made of what we call matter . . . “It’s the spirit that gives life,” he tells them “the flesh is useless.”  And it’s important not to read this as a dualistic “flesh bad . . . spirit good” dualism, kind of thing . . . many Christians have, after reading verses like this, and it has led to all manner of depredations, all kinds of abuse of the body to save one’s immortal soul . . . conquistadors had no problem murdering their conquests, sometimes even baptizing them beforehand, because after all, the spirit is life, the flesh of no account . . . People have been encouraged to endure tremendous suffering, because things of the flesh are of no account, the spirit gives life . . .

Jesus didn’t mean the flesh was evil, that it was bad . . . All you have to do is look at his life: he spent it cherishing human life, healing human bodies, feeding human stomachs . . . He is directing their minds away from temporal things.  The flesh is temporary, the spirit eternal  . . . as Isaiah said, “the grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.”

And guess who, in John at least, is the Word of God?  When we—or anybody else—pretty up the faith, however well-meaning it is, we rob the Gospel of a lot of its symbolic power.  When we ingest the word made flesh, we are commissioned—like the prophets of old—to proclaim that word.  Further, when we talk on the eternal word, he abides in us, and we in it . . . the word dwells within us, it nourishes us, powers us, it gives us life, and that eternal.

Well.  Jesus knows, of course, that he is speaking symbolically, he says as much right then and there: “the words I speak to you are spirit and life” . . . It is because he is the word of God that he is able to say that he is life as well, and here he speaks of a fusion, an inseparability of life and spirit . . . Life is infused with spirit, and spirit with life . . . They are unified on the words he speaks, and the Word he is . . . He is the very model of a complete human being, a perfect wedding of spirit and life, so that, in the end, there is no difference between them. 

Jesus also knows that there are some who don’t believe, who don't understand that he is that, that the very, living Word of God has been made flesh, has been incarnated, and stands among them.  And he takes their objection—and how it is phrased—seriously:  who can accept it, they ask, as in who is able to accept it, and he answers them when he tells them, once again, that no one can come to him, no one can believe in him, unless it is granted by God.  Who can accept it?  Only those to whom it is granted by God.

And it's at that moment when John says many of them abandon ship . . . not when he tells them they must eat his flesh and drink his  blood, but when he tells them it's God who does all the work.  Interesting, isn’t it . . . that kind of reminds me of the so-called original sin itself . . . Human beings trying to be like God, trying to do it all themselves.  Kind of reminds me as well of a lot of modern day Christian communities, who insist on doing it all themselves, who insist on trying to save themselves, to grow themselves . . . Jesus' teaching, no one can come to him unless drawn, unless granted by God, is difficult, at least as much so as eating his flesh! And it's especially hard in the modern, individualist, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps culture in which we live.  Who, indeed, can accept it?

Apparently, on that long-ago day in the hot Capernaum sun, only the twelve.  Jesus asks them: “Do you also wish to go?”  And Peter, always the spokesman, comes back with “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Believe and know.  Belief and knowledge . . . It's both.  They know that he’s the Holy One of God, and they believe it, they accept it.  They don’t understand it, necessarily, but they have faith that it is so.  One day, perhaps, they will understand it as well: Paul certainly thought so, that one day we will “know fully,” that we will understand, but that's kind of what faith isn’t it?  A being open to the revelation of God, accepting that Jesus is the Word of God, and we will continue to hear it, continue to be puzzled by it, continue to consume it.

Christianity is difficult, it is a mystery, much of it seems to go against the grain of who we are as people . . . How can we eat of Jesus' flesh and drink of his blood?  I don't know, but I do know that we do, that we must . . . I know that Jesus has the words of eternal life . . . To whom else can we go?  Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Are What You Eat (John 6:51 - 58)

Thus beginneth the third sermon on the Bread Discourse from the Apostle John.  And lo!  Our reading repeateth once again the final verse of last week's passage: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  And lo again!  Those self-same Jewish religious authorities, whom John calleth “the Jews”, that last week responded to the first sentence—I am the bread come down from heaven—with grumbling, respond to the second sentence, the one about the eating of his flesh, by disputing amongst themselves.  And lo a third time!  That has been a cause of disputing ever since.  Because Christian religious authorities like to dispute every bit as much as Jewish authorities do.  Indeed, next week we’ll see some of Jesus’ own followers doing some disputing, and of all people, you’d think they’d get it, but no: it's so hard for them that some of them actually give up the whole thing, they leave off following Jesus altogether.

But that’s next week. This week, we look at the way some theological types reacted—rabbis and scribes and such, people who were experts in their religion, and they are puzzled, and arguing among themselves: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  And once again, we see them grappling with something outside their frame of reference, outside their normal knowledge base.  And we also see them being quite literal, which of course carried over to the organized theologians and theologies.  Just how can this man give us his flesh to eat, anyway?

Well, of course, Jesus’ comments about eating his flesh were connected by the earliest theologians to the Lord’s Supper which, after all, Jesus had commanded them to observe.  And in Matthew, Mark and Luke—but not John—Jesus actually tells the disciples what he means as he takes the bread and says “this is my body, broken for you.”  But in our passage, the religious authorities had no such teaching from the Christ to guide them, so they were left to scratch their heads in puzzlement.

But even with Jesus’ taking the bread and the wine and demonstrating just how this man can give us his flesh to eat, this passage remained a contentious one for theologians and other ne’er do wells . . . Like the earliest commentators, most relate this passage to Communion, even going so far as to say that this is John’s version of the institution, which he doesn’t literally include.  In the fourth century, John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, wrote that as is “characteristic of those who greatly love,” Christ “brought his body down to our level, namely, that we might be one with Him as the body is joined with the head.” The literal reality of this coming-down of love means we can do more than just “look upon” him.  Rather, those Christ feeds can “fix their teeth in His flesh and to be commingled with Him.”

Although most folks associated this passage with Communion, there was at least one theologian—a fellow named Martin Luther, you may have heard of him—who denied it, and with gusto.  He thought that Jesus’ use of the flesh-eating metaphor in this passage was a way of jarring us into thinking creatively about that whole incarnation thing.  He wrote that those who hear this are “to investigate what He was driving at with this peculiar speech. What could He mean? Is one man to devour the other? Surely this cannot be the meaning. Then let them deliberate and reflect on the matter, and ask what He did mean.”  According to Luther, we shouldn’t read the words as “my flesh,” with the emphasis on flesh, but as “my flesh,” as in Jesus’ flesh is not like ordinary flesh.  And with characteristic, Luther-ian rambunctiousness, he preached that this flesh is not “the sort of flesh from which red sausages are made,” nor is it “flesh such as purchased in a butcher shop or is devoured by wolves and dogs,” nor “veal or beef found in cow barns.”  Good to know.

Maybe wanting to shock them into thinking explains why he doesn’t answer their questions straight out, he doesn’t roll his eyes and say “no, you idiots, it's a metaphor.”  Instead he doubles down, he continues to hammer it home: “. . .   unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” and “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day . . .” And finally, reading it with Luther’s emphasis “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”

Zowie.  Talk about rubbing it in.  I can imagine the religious authorities’ heads almost exploding at that.  But John’s congregation, the outcast Jews who heard his gospel read aloud in each other’s homes, would have had no trouble understanding the metaphor.  They would have remembered the first chapter, where John said that Jesus is the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.  So? you say, what does that have to do with eating his flesh?  Well, they also would have recalled that a common thing that happened at the commissioning of prophets was that they ate the scroll, they ingested the word of God, and it thus becoming a part of them.  So perhaps John’s audience would have viewed this in part as a call to prophesy, a call to proclaim the Word, which Jesus embodied and which they were asked to eat.  And of course, because you are what you eat, does that imply that they became the Word as well?

Well.  Jesus says that his flesh is the bread of life, not the bread of prophecy, and those who eat it, will live, and eternally, at that  . . . thus, the ante is about as high as it gets: it’s life itself.  But what does eternal life look like?  What is its shape, it's warp and its woof?  By what is it characterized?  He gives us a hint when he speaks of abiding, and this is what advances his argument beyond where we ended up last week: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”  They abide in me and I in them . . . This life, that is in some way eternal, is characterized by a mutual abiding, a mutual indwelling.  Those who eat of Jesus’ flesh and drink of his blood abide in him, and he abides in them.

What is this abiding, anyway?  What does it mean to abide?  Well, on the simplest level, of course, it means to dwell, to have one’s abode.  But it also has the sense of staying, of remaining.  The last line of the film The Big Lebowski is “The Dude abides,” implying that the main character—the Dude—is  steady, sturdy, immovable . . . that he abides implies that he sticks with it, come what may. Another sense of the word is of waiting, of patience. Another is tolerance . . . When someone says I cannot abide that, they mean that they can’t tolerate it . . .

And I think Jesus means it in all of these senses . . . When disciples—and that’s us!—abide in him, it is an indwelling, for sure, but it is also secure, stable . . . Our abiding in Christ implies a tolerance on our part of things we don’t understand—and there are a lot of those things in Christ as well as life—as well as things that go against our world view . . . When we truly abide in Jesus, we are patient, we wait upon God, and what does Isaiah say? “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

But there’s another side to this, of course: Jesus said “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” Jesus abides in us, within us, as we go abut our business, as we go abut our daily lives.  And he is stable, he is patient with us and tolerant of all our foibles, he is in it for the long run . . . His love permeates us and fills us with its presence.  John Chrysostom had it right: in Jesus, the love of God comes down and fills us if we ingest the Word of God, if we let it . . .

But how do we do that, how do we eat of his flesh and drink of his blood?  Well, our ancestors in the faith knew that to deepen our walk, to strengthen our journey, spiritual practices are essential . . . Prayer . . .  contemplation . . . immersion in Scripture, the Word written . . . Meditating upon the presence of Christ in everything and every person we meet . . . Although it is God who does the filling, these practices open us up to it, they empty a place in us so that it can be filled by God.

There’s one more thing I want to talk about, and it's looming over this entire portion of John’s Gospel . . . We often talk about the incarnation as in the past, as over and done with.  It began in that stable, surrounded with God’s creation, with sheep and cows and doves, and it ended when the disciples watched Jesus ascend on a cloud.  But it is clear from these verses—and that other great metaphor, where Jesus likens this abiding to a vine and branches—it is clear that the incarnation never ended, that it is happening even as we speak.  Jesus is here, among us, abiding in you—in Betty and Bill and Brad and Dot—and in me.  Wherever else Jesus is, he is here, abiding, embodied, incarnate, in us.  Amen.

iness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on ot

A Particular Incarnation (John 6:35, 41-51)

So.  Here we are in our second sermon in the Bread Discourse.  The last one ended with the iconic “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  And this reading begins with the same verse, then skips a few . . . The architects of our lectionary evidently thought it important enough to include it two weeks in a row, and it makes sense: it is the foundational saying of this whole section of the Gospel, and an important revelation about the nature of Jesus’ identity.  As we saw last week, the central importance of bread in the ancient Middle East makes it a stunning metaphor—bread represented life to its people, and so it's almost like Jesus is saying “I am the life of life.”  He is life squared, life to the nth degree.

This section of the discourse is theologically dense—sorry about that!—as it builds on the section we read last week.  It's doubtless partly because the audience has changed:  last week, if you'll recall, Jesus’ audience was a crowd who’d followed him cross the Sea of Galilee, to catch up with him in Capernaum.  Jesus used their search for him, and their rather grouchy questions when they did find him, as an excuse to contrast good, old, fragrant, solid bread, like the manna God gave their ancestors in the wilderness, or that provided the crowd in the feeding of the five-thousand, for that matter, and the bread he is, the bread of life.

John calls the bunch that Jesus addresses in today’s segment Jews, and whenever you see that word  in John, it means the Jewish religious authorities.  It's not like the crowd last week wasn’t composed of Jews, it was. But the complainers are theologically more sophisticated, and Jesus takes the opportunity to expand on the bread metaphor in greater depth.

They’re complaining (literally, murmuring or muttering) about Jesus for a specific reason: “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’?”  And where have we heard that one before?  We heard it a couple of weeks ago, when we looked at Mark’s version of the sending of the disciples, when Jesus came into his own home town, and the folks he grew up with were scandalized—simply scandalized—at his teaching in the local synagogue.  Remember?  They said essentially the same thing: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses . . .” etc., etc., but here, in this case, we’re not in Nazareth anymore, Toto, we’re in Capernaum, on the other side of the Galilee Sea, and how would the religious authorities in that place know a poor carpenter from a tiny little village?

Be that as it may, the religious authorities, supposedly the more sophisticated of the lot, make the same mistake as Jesus’ home-town friends and neighbors: they judge who he is by categories they already know, ones with which they are familiar, and cannot think outside the narrow confines of that box.  Jesus is a mortal man, born of mortal parents . . . How could he be this bread come down from heaven?

It might have been even harder for these people because, after all, they were the experts, perhaps rabbis and scribes, well-versed in the law.  They knew every jot and every tittle, could quote great swaths of the Torah, and could be as rigid as any of today's inerrancy-believing fundamentalists.  In fact, as theologian Raimon Panikkar points out, having a written scripture can lead to a dry, brittle religiosity if we aren’t careful.  Faith is reduced to a dry consideration, a fervent pouring-over of texts looking for pin-dancing angels and support for whatever one’s particular opinion might be.  It's a problem many religions have, of course, but it seems more prevalent in the “people of the book:” adherents of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.  We can see by this story its work in Judaism, and in the endless debate over whether or not the word “jihad” in the Quran justifies mass murder.  But it's just as prevalent in our faith, when we’ve used scripture to justify slavery, among other things—after all, Jesus never condemned it and Paul told Philemon to be a good little slave.

Well. The religious authorities in Capernaum were just as blinded by scripture as we can be today, and they had the extra, added problem of worrying about someone usurping their power, as many do today as well.  So they mutter amongst themselves, and Jesus calls them on it—“don’t complain amongst yourselves,” he says, then he proceeds to preach, and what he says has been at the core  of many a theological debate over the years.

First, he says “no one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me” and this strikes at the heart of how one becomes a Christian, how one becomes “saved.”  It seems to encapsulate quite neatly the idea of “salvation by grace alone,” that nothing we can do or say or indeed, even be, can ensure our being made right with God.  And of course, this bolsters we Presbyterians’ argument about election: being drawn to Jesus doesn’t seem to leave much room for our free will.

But in what manner does God “draw” people to Jesus?  Well, he says, it is written that God shall teach them, and everyone who has heard and learned from God comes to Jesus.  Note the everyone: everyone who has heard and learned from God the father comes to Jesus.  Everyone . . . Again, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for choice . . . And that’s a scandal in these days of idolatry of the human will, of free will, if you like.  How can one even think that God wouldn’t give us a choice in things?  I mean, doesn’t God love us too much for that?

And there may be some wiggle room in this . . . The Greek word for “to hear”—akuow—can mean the simple catching of a sound—as in I heard a noise—but it can also have a deeper connotation, one of understanding, assimilating.  Similarly, certainly not everyone who hears something learns it, but the scandalous fact remains: nobody can come to Jesus unless God wants them to.  No one can come to him unless drawn by God, and certainly, even if we don’t have free will in this, God certainly does.  And of course, the question of the ages is this: if some people do not have eternal life, does it mean God doesn’t want them to?

But wait . . .  there’s more!  If it’s God who draws people to Christ, then it's not us.  We don’t have a say in who God draws to Jesus, either in what we do or do not tell them, or in how well we advertise, how well we attract them and keep them coming back.   And that’s a liberating thought, as legitimately a part of the Good News as anything else we preach.  We can sit back and relax, content to spread the gospel in thought, word and deed, and God will do the heavy lifting.

Of course, there’s a flip side to this as well . . . God draws anyone to Jesus that God wants to, no matter what we think, no matter how we interpret the Bible, no matter who we decide is worthy of ordaining, allowing into our congregation, or marrying.   God draws to Jesus, and thus bestows everlasting life, upon everyone who has heard and learned from God, no matter what we think.  And to paraphrase Billy Graham, I think we’re gonna be awful surprised who that is.

Jesus is the bread of life, come down from heaven, come down from the abode of the divine, and a second great theological truth is in that “come down” part.  It harkens back to John’s prologue once again . . . The Word, the messiah, the Son of God is made flesh and has dwelt among us.  Here is no absentee landlord, no infinitely separate God, Jesus came down from heaven, became one of us, walked our roads, ate our food, died a death that was, after all, not so much different from our own.  As Paul said, Christ Jesus emptied himself of God-hood and dwelt among us.

And—according to the man himself—he became bread, the most common, everyday thing around, and yet absolutely necessary and vital.  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” he says.  “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  That’s what we enact every communion Sunday, and that’s where we leave off this week.  Next week, we take up this question of eating his flesh, the bread of life, something that most of those who hear this—including his disciples—just can’t get their heads around.  Be there or be square.

Sweet Mystery of Life (John 6:24 - 35)

I’d like you to sit up straight with your feet on he floor.  Your spine should not be rigid, but not slouchy either.  Think of your head sitting comfortably, supported by your spine.  Sit with your hands by your side, loosely, or clasped softly in your lap.  Now, I ask that you close your eyes . . . Close your eyes and steady your breathing.  Feel your breathing, feel it filling your lungs, then let it go, not forcing, but letting it out deliberately, neither slow nor fast, but just right, comfortably.  In and out, in and out.  See if you can feel your breath filling your being, first in the sinuses behind your face, then spreading out, to fill your body.  Imagine as you breath—in and out, in and out—that you can feel it filling your shoulders, then your torso and thighs and calves, in and out, in and out.

Now.  Do you smell the bread?  Can you smell the heady, yeasty, delightful aroma?  With each breath it fills you up, then empties you . . . Don't be greedy . . . Keep your breathing slow and steady, in and out, in and out, savor the bread . . . Did you know that when you smell the bread, you are inhaling minute particles of the loaf?  Molecules of bread, and as you breath them in, some of them remain in your lungs, and I wonder if they absorbed into the capillaries surrounding the alveoli, those tiny sacks where oxygen enters the blood.  Perhaps not, they are likely too big, but I imagine they are absorbed, anyway . . . but I know that just breathing the aroma of baking bread nourishes us, fulfills us , if not in body then surely in soul . . . In and out, in and out . . .

Now: imagine you are in a dusty mid-eastern town, imagine that you’re in Capernaum at the break of day, and the smell of bread permeates the place, inundates it, you can smell it wherever you go.  Every woman in town is baking their day’s bread in the cool of the morning, before it gets intolerably hot, so that they don’t pass out before their open oven doors.  Women are the keepers of bread, the keepers of life . . .

Bread is a staple in the ancient Middle East—you can open your eyes now—it’s a staple, or rather the staple, it is so important.  In a village like Capernaum, on the north bank of the Galilee Sea, it is supplemented by fish, at least in season,  so there’s a faint, fishy smell wafting up from the harbor, a ripe undercurrent to the overwhelming odor of morning bread.

It’s early yet, but you have been up for hours, going about your work; for you and many others in your village, it will end only after sunset.  Suddenly, there is commotion from the harbor: boats have pulled up at the quays, boats filled to the gunwales with people.  Their voices pierce the morning quiet like the shrill whinny of donkeys, and they’re getting louder as they approach you up the winding path from the harbor.

Suddenly, there is a man awaiting them, quite an ordinary-looking man, of average height and average build, with the same dusky skin as you . . . Indeed, he has the same general features as the newcomers: though they are strangers, they are clearly members of the tribe . . . you have heard that he has come from across the sea, that he arrived late one night on the wings of a storm, and that he is staying at the house of Peter’s mother, although you know him by his birth name of Simon.  And suddenly you put two and two together, and you know who this man is: it’s Jesus of Nazareth, mighty in word and deed, who healed the Royal official’s son right here in Capernaum, when he wasn’t even here!  And involuntarily, you look over and see the house with the patched roof, through which the paralytic was lowered and healed by this very man.  Oh, they know Jesus of Nazareth very well here in Capernaum, and now here he is again, waiting calmly for the approaching crowd.  A strange, wild joy creeps over you as you sidle in closer; you just know something is about to happen.  And that overwhelming yeasty odor hangs in the air, and you breath it in and out, in and out.

The crowd halts in front of Jesus, and a gentle smile crosses his lips.  The first words are from the crowd: “Rabbi, when did you come here?” And you are a bit shocked, to tell the truth, it's kind of rude, especially to someone of Jesus’ stature.  The crowd seems on edge, irritated, even, and it’s clear that they have a history together, Jesus and the crowd, and you wonder why they speak that way to him?  Did he refuse them some favor or another?  Some service?  Or maybe he gave them the slip somehow, and they really want to how he came here, but that doesn’t explain the tone . . .

Be that as it may, you expect Jesus to scold them for their rudeness, or at least answer their query, but what he says mystifies you: it has nothing to do with the question.  “You aren’t looking for me because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  And you’re thinking: what does this mean?  What signs?  What bread?  Except you know about bread, because it’s odor caresses you still.  Jesus continues: “do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which will be given by the Son of Man, upon whom God has set his seal.”  And his speech grows more mysterious, more incomprehensible still, because what kind of food endures forever, for eternal life?  What is this eternal life, anyway?  Everybody dies, every body turns to dust, some at a younger age than others, and you reflect on all the women and men you know who have passed on, most of them well before their allotted 40 seasons . . . You have heard that some wealthy landowners live sixty, even seventy years, but they don’t work in the brutal sun, or go down to the sea in tiny boats, at the mercy of the storms.  Life could be brutish and short for the men and women of Capernaum.

And because of this, Jesus’ words give you hope: what if there was this eternal food, this everlasting bread?  Jesus was a man Who was clearly in the favor of God . . . he’d healed the officials son from afar, and the paralytic man as well . . . Who knows what he can do? If there were such bread, perhaps the village women wouldn’t die so often from overwork, or from having one too many children.  Perhaps those children wouldn’t die so often from malnutrition, or from common infections . . . And so you are overwhelmed with excitement, because you know what Jesus has done in the past, but the crowd asks “what do we have to do to perform the work of God?”  What can we do to insure we get this everlasting bread, what can we do in return for this everlasting food?

But Jesus says “This is the work of God: that you should believe in him whom God has sent.”  But you see that it is not enough for the crowd, they want to make sure the get their money’s worth, to insure that they are not being deceived: “Ok,” they say, “what sign are you going to give us, so that we may see it and believe you?  What are you performing?”  And now you are incensed, your back is up, so to speak . . . they want him to prove himself, to perform like one of the trained monkeys passing tradesmen sometimes bring. “Moses gave our ancestors manna to eat in the wilderness,” they say, and the unsaid question hoping in the air: what are you gonna do?  And you steady your breath, breathing in the aroma of bread, in and out, in and out . . .

But Jesus remains calm, and reminds them that it wasn’t Moses who gave them the manna, but the Lord God almighty, it’s the bread of God that comes down from heaven that brings this true and everlasting life.  And your breath catches in your throat, and a light begins to dawn within you . . . your heart lifts up and a glow seems to surround Jesus as he stands in front of you and the crowd.

But they are still thinking solid, earthly food, bread that can last forever, like an eternally excellent harvest year, where there is plenty of grain, or like endless water drawn from a well, without a drought to slow it down.  “Sir,” they say, and at least they’re being polite, “Sir, give us this bread always.”  And then Jesus says it, and with this, you think, he says it all: “I am the bread of life,” he says, “whoever is coming to me will never be hungry, and whoever is believing in me will never be thirsty.”  And suddenly, the scent of bread in the air becomes overpowering, and you are carried away on its fragrant currents.  Amen.