In today's reading from John 4:27-42, Jesus once more confuses his disciples. When they offer him food and he explains, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." As often happens in John, they take Jesus literally, wondering who might have brought him something while they were gone. But Jesus is speaking of doing God's will as his food.
I've been reading a book by Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor. Peterson says that modern language is about description, explanation, and information, and modern people have largely lost the ear for poetry, for language that touches our hearts and speaks from our hearts. Sunday sermons often reflect this, being more an attempt to explain and convince than to evoke God's presence or touch people's hearts.
In John's gospel, the truth Jesus speaks is almost never found in the literal meaning of what he says. Jesus is "the Word made flesh" but obviously this doesn't refer to some run of the mill word that might be looked up in the dictionary.
One of the greatest spiritual awakenings for me in the the last year or so has been learning the freedom to hear scripture as more than information, more than something to be dissected and parsed. It has a lively power to speak deep within my heart, if only I will listen to it with different ears.
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