Chewing on Jesus' words for life . . .

      I suppose the seeds of this sermon were planted more than a month ago.  It was then that I was reminded by those outside our denomination that many in the wider Church do not understand Jesus’ teaching nor the multi-layered purposes or instructions of Jesus’ teachings, particularly in John’s Gospel.

     For those of you who have been on vacation, we have spent four weeks on Jesus’ teaching that He is the bread that has come down from heaven.  This further revelation began with the miraculous feeding of the 5000 in John’s story, but it bookended by the re-creation described by John in his Prologue—In the beginning was the Word, and the was with God and the Word was God.  Everybody remember that from Christmas or the Feast of the Incarnations.  The other bookend that frames John’s Gospel is Jesus’ Death, Resurrection, and Ascension.  That is THE SIGN that confirms Jesus is who He said He is.  John presents all three unique experiences of Jesus as a trifold event.  It is part of the reason why we remind ourselves when we gather for worship that we remember HIs death, proclaim His Resurrection, and await HIs Coming Again as we remember His blessed Passion and precious Death, His mighty Resurrection, and glorious Ascension.  Everybody remembers our liturgy, even if you have been traveling, right?  Good.

     Now, remember how hard this is for us to wrap our head around when we are paying attention to Jesus’ teaching and wondering about the response of the crowds, and of the disciples, and of the Apostles.  We have almost 2000 years of post-Resurrection history and reflection!  It is no small wonder the crowds and the disciples do not fully understand Jesus’ continued instruction.  Jesus has been speaking about bread.  But while speaking of bread on one level, He has also been claiming to be the One sent from God and that He is the center of God’s plan of salvation history.  And though He feeds 5000 from a few fish and loaves and ends up with more leftovers that He had when He started, and all of this is done with no intercession for God to act, like Moses, most miss the significance of the sign.

     Jesus begins this pericope with a reminder of what He has taught the crowds.  He is the bread that has come down from heaven.  But then He pushes the metaphor, summing up to the audience and us of His centrality to God’s plan of salvation.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. Jesus has chastised the crowds and us that we seek full bellies rather than the power and mercy and grace of God.  Like woman at the well or those that followed him to Capernaum, we are interested in satiation rather than the things of God.  We would rather full bellies, slaked thirst, and no pain, right?  Then comes the fun part.  Jesus insists that the bread is His flesh, which He will give for the life of the world.

     The Jews, John tells us, begin to argue sharply.  It is, of course, understandable why they find this a hard saying.  They question how Jesus can offer His flesh for them to eat.  Though there is no explicit command that we should not eat one another, few have been willing to argue that the lack of such a commandments means that we can.  I am not aware of a Rabbi arguing that when God gave Noah all living things and green plants to eat, He included other human beings in that instruction.  In fact, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as well as some of the prophetic books, describe cannibalism as a horrible curse and a final sign of Israel’s faithlessness.  Cannibalism was an anti-sacrament in a way — it described at outward act that resulted from a depraved inward heart-attitude.  Turning completely from God and remaining unrepentant despite His warning would result in such horrible behavior.  Now, this prophet, the One who John the Baptizer has told his disciples to follow, the One who has worked the amazing signs, claims He will give His flesh as bread for the life of the world.  How can He be claiming such a thing!

     Jesus, of course, ignores the sharp arguing.  A few experts like to argue that Jesus pushes through because He does not understand the threat to Himself.  John, for his part, always reminds us that Jesus knew the hearts of those whom He engaged, and Jesus warned those who followed Him that He would be put to death and raised on the Third Day.  Jesus even instructs that the ones who should know His identity best will be the ones who put Him to death.  Jesus knows what He is doing.  He is forcing those hearing Him, including you and me, to understand His mission.  We can decide to accept or reject His teaching, as always, but there is cost if we reject Him and a blessing that exceeds all that we can ask or imagine if we accept Him.

     Jesus warns His audience, both then and us today, that unless we eat of the Son of Man and drink his blood, we have no life in us.  John uses esthio, to eat, in a common way.  But the emphasis on the blood would have been even more challenging to those hearing His words.  The reason that Israel offers sacrifices for their sins is because God instructs them that life is in the blood.  All of the Old Testament sacrifices point to Jesus’ eventual work on the Cross.  But Israel understood on various levels that the life in the blood offered to God atoned for their own sins, which should cost them their own lives, apart from the mercy and grace of God.  The cool part of the verse for us word nerds, though, is that the last verb, ouk exete, is present indicative, meaning “y’all do not have.”  To possess life, in this case zoe rather bios, one must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus.

     I know some like to lower the sting of the words.  Even if we claim the words are purely metaphorical, which they are not, it offends us, and we are liturgical Christians!  But think how much energy has been poured in to trying to explain what Jesus really meant.  Romans went trans-substantiationly; congregationalists went zwinglian; we Anglicans and Lutherans chose con-substantiation to explain what happens at the Eucharist.  Some of us give up and say it is a Holy Mystery, but the elements become His flesh and His blood.  Right?  Whatever a denomination determines is happening, Jesus is pushing us a bit to understand that we have to eat His flesh and drink His blood to possess life.  And that word I just mentioned, zoe, is important.  Bios, as all our doctors likely know, is the word that gives us biological sciences, the study of life.  Plutarch uses the term to describe the lives of those whom he writes about.  Those lives, as he describes them, end with their deaths.  Zoe, by contrast, means kinda the opposite of death.  It means existence, and it is usually written about as the opposite of death, however death was perceived in the ANE.  For our purposes, such a distinction makes sense.  We have both bios and zoe, right?  We have a life that ends, but thanks to Jesus’ work at the end of this book, and the other Gospels, we know death cannot take the zoe that God has given us.  

     I see some confusion.  That is the teacher’s fault.  How about this?  When Jesus speaks of God being the God of the living and not the dead, he is talking about those who still possess their existence, even though they seem gone from our perspective.  Better?  Ok.  Good.  The implication is that zoe in some way transcends bios in the way we were created.  To begin to possess the life that God intended for us to have, according to Jesus, we have to eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood!  If we do not eat His flesh and drink His blood, we do not have zoe within us, even if we have bios.  Jesus emphasizes that in the next verse, right.  Look at verse 54.  Whoever eats His flesh and drinks HIs blood has eternal life, and He will raise them at the Last Day!

     The fun part of verse 54, though, is the introduction of a new eating verb.  Trogo is one of those words that has no English equivalent.  Some translators will go with gnaw or chew.  Some may choose grind.  I also like one translators use of savor, but that lacks the effort implied by the verb trogo.  Jesus chooses an excellent verb here because of the effort it implies.  But it is better, we would say, because of the metaphorical teaching behind the initial image.  Jesus original audience, and we this morning, have focused on the offensive language of cannibalism.  That is certainly implied by Jesus’ instruction in this passage.  But, as is so often the case, there is more behind the initial image.

     The best analogy I could come up with was the idiom “something to chew on.”  When we use that phrase, we generally mean that somebody has given us something to think about, something that will take time for us to consider.  Jesus has been instructing us now about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, a hard enough teaching, but He has given and will give other hard instructions.  Let’s start with the easy instructions, say the ones in the Sermon on the Mount.  Does Jesus really mean that the humble are blessed?  I mean, has He heard of this world?  Everyone strives for their fifteen minutes of fame or to be an internet influencer.  Does Jesus really expect us to be poor in spirit?  Maybe that is a bad example.  The meek will inherit the earth.  Wait, does He know what meek means?  Conquerors get control of the earth, not the meek.  Let’s think of more challenging teachings.  What does it mean to love our neighbor as ourselves?  Who is our neighbor?  Is Jesus serious when He says we must love our enemies?  When people steal from us, does He really expect us to offer our cloak, too?  If we did that, we’d all end up poor, beaten, and naked.  Hmmm.  That sounds a lot like His physical condition when He was crucified, come to think of it.

     The good news about His instruction here, thinking particularly as those who think of Him as not just a Savior, but the pattern for holy living, He is encouraging us, in a sense, to chew on Him, to grind on what He teaches, and to savor those new tastes that inform us about His character and the character of His Father.

     You know this on one level.  How many times do you come to the Eucharist without joy?  Good.  I am glad to see that nobody raised their hands.  God wants us to be honest before Him.  Sometimes we go to that rail with bad news.  Sometimes we go to that rail following a challenging diagnosis or injury.  Sometimes we go to that rail having been stabbed in the back by a co-worker or the subject of gossip with a friend.  Sometimes we go to that rail lacking various things we are convinced we need.  Miraculously, though, Jesus meets us there.  All that He demands is that we are repentant before Him and at love and charity with our neighbors.  That’s it.  There is no faith-scale we have to hit.  There is no test we have to pass.  Though we may not understand the particulars well, especially when newer to the faith or immature in our relationship with God, but time and time and time again we go to the altar just as we are, repentant of our sins and at love and charity with our neighbors, and chomp on that wafer, His flesh.  We grind that bread in our teeth because, like Elijah last week, things are not the way we think they should be.  And we don’t like it.  That’s not what we signed up for!  We want the glory, but we do not want the cross!

     More amazingly, as we listen to Jesus’ instruction this morning, those of us who chew on HIs words, who wrestling with His instruction, abide in Him just as He abides in the Father.  Think about that for a second.  It seems like Jesus was chewing on the Will of the Father when He dwelt among us.  It is almost as if He would rather that Cup given to Him had been passed in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It’s almost as if part of the Messianic temptations were to trust the Father, despite the circumstances that Satan used to try and sow doubt!  One of the seeming corollaries to Jesus’ instruction is that the chewing, the grinding, the wrestling forces us to experience grace of God in our lives and world around us much in the same way a foodie tastes the spices, the texture, the aroma, the plating and who knows what else.  Because we are chewing, because we are wrestling and working to abide in Jesus, and because He has been raised from the dead, we know that God will instruct us, teach us what we need to know, give us a different perspective, whatever we need, because we are sharing in HIs purposes, His redemptive plan.  Admittedly, we are like toddlers and seldom get what we want as quick as we want, and we might want the wrong thing, but God, through His Holy Spirit dwelling in us, will instruct us in what we need to know.  

     Then comes the big promise.  Whoever does this.  Whoever chews on His instruction.  Whoever feeds on this bread, Jesus, will live, in the Zoe sense of the word, forever.  We will share in the same life as Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebecca, Jacob & Rachel, Elijah, Jesus, and all those Adventers and believers in our families whom God has brought to Himself, even though we see them no longer.

     My brothers and sisters, I understand the challenge of today’s pericope and my efforts to keep it somewhat brief.  No doubt you sitting there have reflected a bit differently now on the importance of the Incarnation, God taking on human flesh and dwelling among us.  Some of you have likely learned something new about the importance of the Eucharist in your own walk with God.  As John will say near the end of this Gospel, there is not time enough to exhaust what Jesus’ is instructing us today.  There is always more to chew, more to ponder, in the mysteries of God.  But on this day you have, I hope, been prompted by a priest and by the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, to consider the challenges, to consider the teachings of Jesus from a number of perspectives.  My hope and prayer for all of us is that, as a result of all that and maybe a few conversations later this week, we will all come to savor better what Jesus has done for each one of us. And fortified in that knowledge, reminded of His Will to reach every human being and draw them into His saving embrace from the Cross, we will go back out into that wilderness out there, committed and obedient daughters and sons, intentional in our efforts to pattern our lives after His.  And dwelling in Him, dwelling in the love His Father has for Him and He for us, we can approach that work with confidence and mercy, knowing that the life, the Zoe to which he has called each and every one of us, will be ours not just for today, not just for next week or month, not even for next year, but for eternity!

 

In His promise and Peace,

Brian+

On food and naps and God's care of us . . .

      The temptation to continue our discussion of Jesus as the Bread that gives life to the world and to do a bit of liturgical instruction about the Eucharist and, more specifically, about the power of the Sacrament, but I felt nudged most of the week to our passage in 1 Kings.  In part, I figure it is because it is not an opportunity that comes around often.  In fact, it only comes up on Track II of Year B, so, in our case at Advent, every six years.  Before I start in on today’s passage, though, we need to do a bit of history.

     First, by way of reminder, the focus of our pericope today is Elijah.  When I mention that name, many of you think of a heroic prophet in the OT, if you know anything about him, right?  One of the great things about the Bible, though, is that there is truly only one heroic figure, Jesus.  Everyone else is just like us.  Peter has great peaks and valleys of faith.  Abraham & Sarah do a great job of following God, except in those cases where they think He needs their help.  David is a great king, except for the rape/adultery of Bathsheba and the killing of her husband, Uriah the Hittite.  Solomon is likewise a good king, until he chooses to marry an Egyptian woman to cement that relationship.  Josiah is truly a great king, right up until the moment he ignores the warning that God gives Necho.  Good I see nods and some looking like they are thinking of their own favorite heroines or heroes of the Bible.

     The great news for all of us is that it is God who makes human beings glorious.  It is God who is the real hero of salvation history.  He can take men and women and youth like all of us gathered here today, with all our faults and all our frailties, and use us for His redemptive purposes.  We have only to step out in obedient faith, and the rest is up to Him!  He will remind us of that yet again today as we consider this story of Elijah.  And the craziest thing about all of it is that, because of our obedience and His redemptive purposes, people may well think we are the glorious heroes, that we were the source of what they needed!

     To place our story in its context, we have to turn back a couple chapters to one of the best, but mostly unread, stories in Scripture.  It really should be the focus of a movie.  Elijah challenges the priests of Ba’al to a contest on the mountaintop in Israel, the northern kingdom.  Both the priests of Yahweh and the priests of Ba’al will build an altar on top of the mountain, offer the appropriate sacrifices, and call down fire from the heavens to show their power of their respective God or god.

     The priests of Ba’al go first and end up exhausting themselves.  They build the altar, slaughter the animals, and then start the hard work of summoning their god.  Their dances and incantations and fervent prayers go on for hours.  Meanwhile, Elijah is relaxing while waiting his turn and mocking them and Ba’al.  The best line, I think, is when Elijah teases the priests that Ba’al must be stuck on the commode, to use a more modern euphemistic translation, and cannot answer their prayers right now.

     Eventually, the priests of Ba’al give up from exhaustion, and the priests of God go to work following Elijah’s instructions.  The odd instruction given by Elijah is that they need to pour all the water on the wooden altar.  Most of you will have forgotten that all this comes after a 3-year drought, which was a reminder from God that Israel was ignoring the Covenant their ancestors swore with Moses.  Most of you have learned over the course of your lives, though, it is incredibly hard to start a fire when the wood is wet.  Most of the men are gathered up on the mountaintop this morning at the laymen’s conference, but I am sure they would tell us to pour something flammable over wood, rather than water, when it comes to starting a fire.  Priests in Ancient Israel would have had that knowledge, too, but they listen to the prophet and do as they are told.  With little more than a “show them what You got” from Elijah, the Lord sends down a consuming fire that burns the altar built by both His priests and the priests of Ba’al.

     Everyone is stunned.  Elijah instructs the priests of God to kill the priests of Ba’al for their blasphemy.  Surely Israel will return to the Lord, right?  Wrong.  In fact, Jezebel doubles down.  She kills all the priests of the Lord, as far as Elijah seems to know during his complaint to God, though we know Obadiah saves about 100 priests loyal to Yahweh.  Worse, Jezebel tells Elijah that she will surely kill him within a day.  What’s a prophet to do?  That’s where our pericope picks up.

     Elijah has been fleeing to the south.  Remember, Israel is the northern kingdom.  Jezebel would risk civil war if she sent soldiers after him into Judah.  So Elijah does the sensible thing and flees to the south.  Interestingly to some commentators, Elijah makes it to Beersheba in Judah.  We might think Elijah would stop in a city of Judah, but Elijah keeps going south.  Why?  Probably it is her promise that he will be dead within a day.  Jezebel is not known for playing by the rules or the laws or the Covenant, right?  So rather than stop, Elijah keeps heading south into the wilderness, though he leaves his servant there, likely to keep an eye out for Jezebel’s hirelings.  That’s where we pick up in his life.  He is afraid and running for his life.

     It is also the scene that proves even memes are redeemable by God.  Those of you who have seen the memes that say we should never overestimate the power of a good nap and a good meal when we are feeling like failures know one of the lessons of this pericope.  I know, a few of you have shared it.  I’ve seen your social media accounts!

     Elijah, we are told, comes to a broom tree and lays down and and prays to God to let him die.  Ironic, isn’t it, he has been fleeing for his life for 24+ hours, but now he asks God to let him die.  He expresses that he is no better than his ancestors in verse 4, and then lays down exhausted.

     What does Elijah mean by his comment on his ancestors?  Could it mean that his ancestors had been unable to convince others to follow Yahweh?  Sure.  But there is, I think, a more obvious meaning.  Elijah is a prophet.  In fact, Elijah will end up being THE PROPHET in Hebrew culture.  It is Elijah and Moses who appear with Jesus in the Transfiguration.  When Jesus asks who the people say He is, His disciples say that some say He is Elijah.  One of the strands of messiah understanding taught that Elijah would return in a fiery chariot to lead God’s people.  It made sense, Elijah was one of two people not to die.  Elijah was carried off by fiery chariots to heaven in view of Elisha and the other prophets!  Elijah seems to be recognizing that his own failures are like his fellow prophets.

     For example, can anyone think of a prophet who failed miserably, in his own mind at least, and lay down under a plant giving him shade in the heat?  That’s right, Jonah.  Remember Jonah.  He tried hard not to preach repentance to Nineveh, even hiding in the belly of a fish to avoid that sermon, right?  That’s right.  He boarded a ship and was tossed overboard when he realized he was the focus of the storm and swallowed by the fish.  It was only when the fish spit him out that he finally obeyed God.  He preached the shortest sermon of all time, and Nineveh repented.  Jonah should have been thrilled, right?  Nope.  Nineveh was the ancient enemy of Israel.  Jonah had argued with God that if he preached repentance in Nineveh, and they repented, God would forgive them.  He contemplates his rightness under that plant and is mad that God relents of the planned disaster, and God reminds Jonah and us that He loves our enemies every bit as much as He loved us.

     Another prophet is referenced in verse 6.  The angel gives Elijah bread that baked on a hot stone, a resapim.  That word appears here and in Isaiah 6.  You might remember it since Funmi’s ordination was not too long ago.  God calls Isaiah to prophesy, and Isaiah resists by telling God he is an unclean man with unclean lips.  The angel in Isaiah’s vision takes a hot stone from the holy altar of The Temple and touches it to Isaiah’s lips.  Isaiah and his lips are now cleansed and able to speak the words God will give him.

     The angel even references Elijah’s experience.  The word for the jar, or sapphat, of water from which angels gives Elijah drink is the same as the jar which keeps the widow of Zarephath, her son, and the prophet Elijah fed during the drought.  We often miss such clues in our readings, but God is really good at ministering to the needs of those whom He calls to work in His plan of salvific history.

     As you all know, none of the prophets are excited to answer God’s call on their lives.  All of them experience incredible failure despite their obedience.  At Her very best, Israel listens to the prophets for only a short time.  Usually, they ignore the prophets or try to declare them false.  Some are cast into cisterns; some are killed.  But all have the same lesson to learn as Elijah is now learning.  God is the One who gives meaning to the work.  Elijah might love the mountaintop experience and have other ideas about what should happen as a result of these powerful signs, but God almost always has different plans.  Worse, at least from the prophets’ perspective, the people to whom they are sent, His people, seldom ever listen.  The desperately want those listening to them to hear God’s warning, God’s offer of grace, and to return to God, but more often than not, the people grumble and ignore their call.  They end up becoming suffering servants in anticipation of the Suffering Servant, Jesus of Nazareth, who will be killed for His own obedience.

     It is that same Jesus, though, who reminded us of the ego eimi just a couple weeks ago, of the truth that God is.  No matter our expectations, no matter our failings, no matter our courage or cowardice, no matter our strength or weakness, God is.  No matter the calamities and disasters around us, God is. And it is His desire to reach all humanity.

     In his current state, Elijah is incapable of doing what is necessary.  The angel tells Elijah it is rab, which is translated as “too hard.”  The physical and emotional toll on Elijah is apparent.  He longs to die.  He has given his best and it makes no difference.  Now he has fled; he has run scared for over a day.  Those in power want him dead.  How does God respond?  He feeds Elijah; He waters Elijah; He lets his body recover.  He allows Elijah to come to come to the understanding that all of us dread.  God does not need us.  But even as we come to the realization of our own impotence when compared to His, as we come to realize our incredible weakness and folly when compared to His strength and wisdom, we begin to understand that we still matter to Him.  In fact, we matter so much to Him that He is willing to die for each one of us, scorned and rejected.

     In Elijah’s case, though, God feeds and waters him and allows him to rest.  Notice, though, God is not finished with Elijah’s calling.  God sends him back into the teeth of those who want the prophet dead with orders Elijah to anoint the new leadership and Elijah’s own successor!  How many of us really want to choose our successors?  None of us really likes to think of a time when we are not going to be around, right?  None of us like to face our mortality.  Oh, we make wills and trusts, but can you imagine how you will fill if I came to you and said, “God tells me it is time for you to appoint a new matriarch/patriarch in your family because your time is running out”?  You are laughing, but part of your laughter is knowing what it would do to you, right?  Yet it is God who just provided for Elijah, God who told Elijah the way was too hard for him, who tells Elijah what he must do.  Elijah, now ministered to by God is prepared for his work, and because he will trust in God, the way will not be rab for him, even if it seems contrary to common sense.

     All that brings me back to the second big teaching of this pericope today.  Ego eimi in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our valleys, in the midst of our shadows, in the midst of our mountaintops, in the midst of our disease and injuries, in our strength and health, and in the midst of our all our life and work and rest and feeding.  More amazingly, though He does not need us, He wants us to choose to love and serve Him.  And He is so with us that He knows what we need in order to serve Him.  In Elijah’s case it was rest, and food, and water, and a reminder of his own experience with God, and a reminder of the experiences of other prophets with God.  For us, it may be entirely suited to us, to what we need to learn that He is, that He loves us, and that He has work for us to do!  And then fortified by God’s tender loving care to him, Elijah is sent back north to do God’s work, just as you and I are during this liturgy, where we remind ourselves intentionally of God’s work in the past and promises of the future, and having shared in His Body and Blood, we are sent out to do the work He has given us to do.

     As I reminded you at the beginning of this, Elijah is not a superhero of the faith.  You have seen that God wanted you to know that Elijah, for all the glory that is attached to his work, was just a human being.  He had plans; he had ideas.  He experienced bitter failure and longed to die.  The hero of his story is, of course, God.  God is the one who shapes and forms and uses us to His glory.  And just as He did with Elijah, He promises to do the same with each one of us!  Can you imagine?  Can you really imagine?  That is part of why it is Good News, great news.  His plan of salvation history is not up to us.  All He asks is that we do our best to stay on the path He directs.  The rest, even the feeding and watering and the rest and the picking us up after we stumble, is up to Him!  And that is a reminder we all need to hear from time to time, just like a good nap or good meal.

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian+