Living Into What We Do Not Know

Last week, we started talking a little bit about what it means to be fed. We talked about those moments when you really felt fed, and that we can give over our fish and loaves to Jesus, who multiplies those out to help us feel abundantly full, and not sense the scarcity that surrounds us.

There’s one part of that statement that makes sense to us, right? We know the moments of feeling like there’s never enough, and we can follow that our community of abundance helps stave off that feeling. But, there’s also a part of last week that makes no sense to me. Fishes, loaves? In this economy? How are we going to be full on what we can bring? Did something like that actually happen? I can’t figure that out. Even the concept of “Jesus, Bread of Life” is a odd phrase, isn’t it? We’re delving into issues and concepts that we can’t completely make sense of.

I felt that tension when I wrote the sermon last week, especially as I was thinking about the times when I really felt fed - Red Lobster the best example. Again, cheddar bay biscuits are great, but the seafood isn’t going to win any awards - the lobster that sits in the all-too-small aquarium at the entrance is not the same as the lobster fresh caught that morning off of the coast of Maine. But still, year after year, I go. Because I still see my grandfather in the chair near me, my grandmother across the table. I still remember the feeling of being especially loved then. I remember all of the meaningful conversation that happened. I remember watching my grandparents take the check year after year despite the protestations of my parents. More recently it connected me back to home in Austin as we’d travel up the street. It’s telling my kids about why we go to Red Lobster on my birthday and reliving some of my favorite stories again. 

The food is serviceable, not bad, but it’s the experience that counts. Take another example - I have this bag of freeze dried food here. Any of the rest of you take this with you when you camp? There’s a ritual I like to do with these when the kids and I go camping: I love making my way into REI about a week before and slowly but surely exploring each of the varying food packets we can take together, looking at the packaging, making sure there are enough calories so I make sure that my children's needs will be fulfilled. But let's be honest here, this isn't good tasting stuff. The egg powder always comes out as mush, the apple crisp really neither apple or crisp. But I come back every time because of the experience. 

For all the good that the enlightenment and our modern scientific age has provided us in terms of being able to explain so much of this world, our constant drive to break everything down and explain it all takes us further away from the moments where we actually live them. Let's get even closer to this moment. 

We sing out of a book or from a screen. We say some words together. I say some words, you say some words. You think some words internally.

Look at the font: if we broke down the actions and lined them all up it involves someone taking a glass and filling it up at the sink and then coming back here to say some words and dump it into a special bucket. 

Over here is a a packet of bread mix. Welch's grape juice, some cups and plates. You’ll walk up here, you take it, you’ll dip it, you’ll eat it, you’ll sit back down.

There may be all sorts of ways we can characterize why we do all of this. We know that “Religious attendance — at least, religiosity — boosts the immune system and decreases blood pressure. It may add as much as two to three years to your life.”¹ So we may be biologically predisposed to recite and pour water and eat bread and juice.

Tuesday chapel at the seminary always featured communion, and occasionally, I’d get a bit brave and take the kids with me. One Tuesday we were trying to figure out new ways to have the children at the seminary participate in worship, and so I had the kids with me about 500 feet away from the chapel in the overflow room. As I’m watching the bread being broken, I’m trying to figure out how to get Abe and Frankie to the chapel. And so begins the time-honored parental tradition of herding cats, because of course they wanted to stay in the room where they could be noisy. Then, of course, they both wanted carried. So here I am with one kid on my shoulders, and another on my hips, making my way across a parking lot to try to get into line for communion. When I get there, I’m close to last in line, so everyone is watching me slowly lose grip of Frankie on my hip. I’m processing all of these pieces as a good member of the worship committee - how is this going to work? We need more time to get from one place to the other, why aren’t the kids doing what I ask them? On and on and on it goes until I’m right in front of one of my professors, who is presiding at the table. She gives me the bread and the cup and I take it quickly to move on to helping the kids. By this time Abe’s a little older and he understands a bit of what we’re doing.

But Frankie. Just past her first birthday. No language yet, no way to ask the questions why or what or how. My professor tears off a piece of bread for Frankie, and says the same words I say to you; the same words we explore this month: “The Bread of Life.” She held that bread, and she seemed to let the words wash over her - her eyes were fixed on my professor. As we moved to the cup, she followed our lead as I gently guided her hand to place her bread into the cup, and she ate it. 

She knew. She didn’t understand, but she knew. She couldn’t rationalize or analyze or break it down, but she knew. She was being in that moment, and in that moment taught many of us more about the Bread of Life than many of the classes we had studied hard in. For as much as the knowledge is meaningful, and valuable, it cannot contain the wisdom and life held in a toddler letting the reality of bread and cup wash over her with no apprehension - she just was, and that was enough.

Our gospel text today explores the interplay between knowledge and experience. When we read the interactions between Jesus and the people, we witness how Jesus didn’t make sense to them: Jesus don’t I need to do something? Jesus, don’t you need to do something? Jesus, can’t you just give us the bread? Jesus, can’t this make sense in the ways I can process them? Can’t this be like how it was before? I get Moses, I get Manna - what are you talking about?

Jesus doesn’t give them easy answers, but instead invites the people towards himself. That it isn’t the constituent parts that make being fed make sense, but instead it’s abiding. It’s being with Jesus. It’s experiencing Jesus as someone who is completely different - that isn’t going to make complete sense rationally or scientifically or historically, but instead is inviting us to live into a radical being that we cannot completely know.

Our spiritual journeys together won’t always make rational sense - and do we want it that way? Do we want the experience of the infinite God to be bound by our finite intellect, or do we hope for the same God ee Cummings wrote of when he penned:

And so, dear siblings of faith, I invite you in this space, and even today as we gather at the table, to be. To experience. To approach this table with the eyes and heart of the youngest child. To taste, touch, hear, see, breathe, and to shout. To let this be a moment, even if for just a moment, be a time where we can’t explain everything, and we can’t understand it all. For here, in this place, the infinite God meets us; the bread of life is amongst us, and the Spirit moves with in us. The past and the future are gathered together, and we celebrate with those who have come before us and those who will come after. We abide. We come and see. We witness. And we just are. We are the created of God, and we are beloved beyond what we can understand.

Thanks be to God who is beyond our understanding, but is always and ever feeding the deepest parts of our being. Amen.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/luhrmann-why-going-to-church-is-good-for-you.html. Interestingly enough, the article also mentions “absorption,” or the ability to be caught up in a moment. That’s part of what I think this section of John 6 could be hinting at, and part of what is contrasted in Exodus. ↩︎