John 6:35, 41-51
More Than What We
Know
August 12, 2018 James
Sledge
The bread of life; the bread that
came down from heaven; the living bread that came down from heaven. If
you’ve been around the church for much of your life, these sayings may not
register as particularly problematic. But think about what odd statements they
are. Jesus says he is bread, living bread at that, and bread that came down
from heaven. It’s hardly surprising that “the Jews” complain about this.
(Jews, by the way, is a term used in
John’s gospel to designate Jesus’ opponents and not all those who follow the traditions
of Moses. Jesus and his disciples are Jews after all.)
I would think that many Jews who
heard Jesus talk about bread that came down from heaven – and I include Jesus’
own followers here – would immediately have thought about the manna that the
Israelites ate in the wilderness when Moses led them out of Egypt. That was
truly bread that came down from heaven. And Jesus clearly wasn’t manna.
Then there is the whole “came down
from heaven” thing. Unlike manna, Jesus wasn’t found out of the ground early in
the morning. He showed up just like any of us did, born as a helpless little
baby. Some listening to Jesus knew his family. They knew without a doubt that
he had not come down from heaven.
Many of Jesus’ opponents were
religious leaders, and they “knew” lots of things about scripture and God and
how to be a good member of God’s chosen people. And along with obvious things
such as knowing Jesus’ mom and dad, there were religious problems with what
Jesus said. For Jews, and for early Christians, heaven was God’s home. People,
living or dead, didn’t go there. To be from heaven was to be divine, and
scripture clearly said that God was one. Jesus couldn’t be from heaven.
Religious folks generally like to
be as certain as they can about such things. It’s why the church has doctrines
and why theologians write systematic theologies. They want to spell things out
and be as certain possible. That makes sense when you’re talking about weighty
issues such as eternal life, salvation, and the true meaning of human existence.
But this desire to figure things out and be as sure as possible can make people
blind to things God is doing that don’t fit easily into their certainties.
Think of all the things Christians
have been certain of down through the centuries, things that we now find
abhorrent. Witches and heretics were once burned at the stake. Slavery was a
God given institution, and dark skinned, sub-Sharan people were created by God
to do menial labor and to be subservient to whites. It offended God for women
to speak in church, much less lead one. Same sex relationships were a horrible
affront to God. And there were scripture verses to confirm every one of those
certainties.
Every attempt to change any of
these things was met by fierce resistance from good Christians who were, and in
some cases still are, certain that God is mortified by these misguided people
who “don’t believe the Bible,” who go against the clear and obvious meaning of
scripture.
Of course more progressive and liberal
Christians, like a good many of you here, aren’t typically the ones waving the
Bible at those who fight for change in society or in the church. Dogmatism
about church doctrine, theology, and the Bible aren’t usually characteristics
of more progressive congregations. But that is not any reason to feel superior
to other Christians. Progressive sorts have their own certainty problems.
Today’s scripture with its talk of
manna and the bread of life flows out of the miracle Jesus did shortly before
when he fed five thousand people with only five loaves and two fish. This story
were clearly well known in the early church. All four gospels contain a version
of Jesus feeding a great crowd, and Matthew’s gospel even has two such stories.
In many ways, all five versions are
pretty straightforward miracles. They point to the divine power in Jesus, his
ability to provide food in the wilderness, much like happened with Moses and
the manna. At least that was the case until Mainline Christian scholars decided
that there were other ways of understanding these stories.
I have a Bible commentary set in my
office that came out in the 1950s and was considered the pinnacle of Mainline
scholarship for preachers back then. It describes Jesus’ feeding the five
thousand as a miracle of sharing. The musical our children did earlier this
year suggested something similar. All those people who had come to hear Jesus
had a little food stashed away somewhere in their robes, but they kept it
hidden, fearing what might happen if a bunch of hungry people saw that they had
food.
But when Jesus takes the small
amount of food that he has and begins distributing it, that spurs first one
person and then another to share what they have, and before you know it, there
is more than enough for everyone. Moral of the story: there is enough for all
if only we will share.
Of course there is little in the
actual gospel account to suggest such an interpretation. But it is nevertheless
attractive because it is a way of understanding the story without it violating the
laws of science. Turns out that one of the certainties for many modern,
Mainline, and progressive Christians is that there must be a natural
explanation for just about every so-called miracle in the Bible. Jesus didn’t
really feed thousands from one lunch box.
I’m not sure it really matters
whether one’s certainties are about what the Bible demands or an exact formula
for salvation or what is or isn’t scientifically possible. No matter what the
variety, they all constrain God to whatever it is we are sure of. They demand
that God conform to what we’ve figured out, and that all but ensures that we
will resist anything God is doing that runs counter to our certainties.
In our scripture reading today,
Jesus says that no one comes to him unless they are drawn by the Father, and he
speaks of people being taught by God. I wonder if Jesus isn’t talking about how
God gets past our certainties, about ways of knowing that aren’t about taking
in information and deciding what is right. This is something else, like food
that is ingested, bread that gives life. It’s mystical, something experienced,
and not the sort of thing that easily leads to certainties.
I put a quote on the bulletin cover
that seemed to me to speak of this, of mystical food rather than information
and certainties. I attributed it the Rachel Held Evans because it is in her
book, Searching for Sunday, but she
is quoting Barbara Brown Taylor.
“In an age of information overload
... the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the
practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose
intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low
on the Bread of Life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more
about God. More God.”[1]
More God. Not more information or certainty, but
mystical presence, incarnation, bread of life. Thanks be to God.
[1] Barbara
Brown Taylor, as quoted by Rachel Held Evans in Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (p.
17). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
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