You Are What You Eat
You Are What You Eat
John 6:35, 41-51
35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
41 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42 They were saying, "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'?" 43 Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, "And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 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."
So today we’re about half way through the series of lectionary readings that centers around John 6 - the Bread of Life. And it’s funny to read as I prepare week after week how people who love and study Scripture are beginning to slowly get tired of it. They joke about putting their podcasts on repeat for the next couple weeks. Some folks are using old commentaries from three and six years ago, no doubt believing that they’ve earned their stripes working through and preaching these passages. Even some of my fellow preachers hit this point and starting primarily looking to preach on other things, having thrown in the towel with the Gospel. I can understand - this sermon is probably as much about Ephesians as it is John.
It begged an obvious question for me - why do we spend all this time on John 6? I was looking through the next three years, and this is the only time - August every three years - that we end up tackling this chapter week after week. What is it about these ideas that the wise folks who had developed the lectionary thought to slow the pace?
I wonder if it’s because it’s all so overwhelming, maybe unbelievable. To hear that the savior of the world, the one who had fed 5,000 people literally, who had garnered a following so broad who just simply wanted to hear his message and be restored. And right in the midst of it he says “I am the bread of life.” This is not some ordinary claim. If you’ve had a chance to study some Hebrew, you may know that phrase “I AM,” is what God calls himself in the Hebrew texts, beginning with the burning bush and Moses, the first time God reveals himself that way. Jesus is not being very subtle here - he’s directing whomever was listening back to that moment with Moses and God and saying that he, Jesus of Nazareth, is that same I AM. Here is the fullness of what we can witness of God in human flesh right next to us. And by eating this bread - however we’re meant to do that - are able to have eternal life!
Imagine if Jesus walked in here this morning, and even more, imagine that Jesus had grown up in the church. You saw him go to youth events; saw him get confirmed - maybe he was a deacon for awhile. He goes away for a little while, and then he comes back, and says to us “I am the Bread of Life - the heavenly sustenance brought down to you!” Here’s the thing - as much as I love my kids, if either one of them does that in 20 or 25 years, I’m likely going to consider them delirious.
Which is why we probably can’t get too upset at the folks rendered “The Jews” here. I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least say here that passages like this have too often be used to demonstrate a kind of anti-Semitism that just isn’t really part of this text. And so it’s probably more helpful to think of these folks as part of the crowd - maybe folks like in this crowd, who might hear our former youth come up and start talking about being God here on earth. These were probably good people. Law abiding people. People who knew their Torahs, people who were faithful. There were likely even spiritual leaders there - the pastors and elders of their time, listening.
We’re often good people, too, living with the things we can know - things that we can surround ourselves with, a life with traceable outlines, well-defined. It’s safer, but it’s certainly more static. The boundaries are set well. And when those boundaries are tested, it’s so easy to get uncomfortable, to find reasons to avoid moving past the law-like boundaries we set for ourselves. We start to push back, find reasons to stay where we are.
That seems to happen with the crowd. Their sensibilities and boundaries were beginning to be challenged by someone who seems to have no reason to be able to do so. The New Revised Standard Edition say they begin to complain, although that might not be the best way to consider it. The word here, γογγύζω, is an onomatopoeic word, similar to how doves chatter with each other. For our purpose, it’s a time of muttering, murmuring, or grumbling. An under-the-breath type of complaint, the one you’ll find on any given day in the lunchrooms of any given work location, child’s room after being sent there in punishment, happy hour bars, and parking lots across the nation after Saturday and Sunday worship services. The type of grumbling when the concrete lines of our worlds become more pliable and abstract. In the gospel, it also is the type of murmur that can be the gatekeeper to dealing with the overwhelming claims of Jesus, a defense against what he is saying. When the crowd can find the things that helps them invalidate Jesus’s claims, then they can stay with what they know, what they understand, what they can grasp. We know Moses, the people say, and we know your mom and dad. You can’t possibly be who you say you are, you can’t possibly be asking this of us.
But it seems like Jesus doesn’t want to argue, and isn’t interested as much in their ability to understand - Jesus doesn’t try to negotiate with the people as they murmur, but instead responds by saying stop, and that he is the bread of life again.
Jesus invites us to something beyond ourselves - invites into a brand new way of living - not based on the law either self-defined or otherwise, but instead on the deep compassion for the other. Right before we started this journey in John 6, we heard about the crowds that would chase after Jesus, and he had compassion for them. Not just a simple sympathy, no, this was the type of gut-wrenching feelings of someone who shared in the sacrifices of a ever-hopeful crowd. The type of gut wrenching compassion that took on the weight of the world. Jesus Christ, the bread of life from God, full of compassion for the world.
What if we take this radical, overwhelming invitation? What if we are willing to as much as we can take in the Bread of Life, and not murmur our way into a safe, good space? What happens when we are compassionate first, comfortable second? Paul gives a sense of that transformative change.
In his exhortation to the church at Ephesus, Paul is honest - it’s not as though we are somehow not going to have disagreements or be angry at each other - but as we are transformed by Jesus and take on his compassion, we are more concerned for the other than holding onto our comfort through our murmurs and grumbles. We edify one another, we hold each other tenderly. We see how we are for each other, and not just for ourselves: we stop stealing, selfishly taking what we want, because we are for each other. We use our anger to build each other up, not tear down. We forgive each other just as Christ has forgiven us. If we think about this passage in Ephesians less as a type to to-do list that we mark off, and more as an image of a transformed group of people, we begin to notice how compassion means a lot less worrying about myself, and more about concern for the other - a lot less defending my own space, and more about embracing someone else where they are. We transgress our own grumbling and murmuring in order to heal someone else.
We sing joyfully with people in a nursing home, who would be so easy to ignore. We pay an anonymous person’s electric bill without a second thought. It is the tireless ways so many of us provide meals and cards and conversations, embraces and encouragement. And that’s just what I’ve heard and seen within the last couple weeks.
It may be you being angry at each other. It may be you being angry at me. And I know that this may come as a surprise to y’all, but sometime, it maybe me being angry at you. And, gosh, isn’t so easy to go somewhere and just complain? Isn’t it easy to just tell someone off? And isn’t it easier still to get back at someone who tells you off? I mean, that’s about 100% of Twitter right now, and almost all of the language coming out of Washington, DC!
However, through it all, the Bread of Life within us offers a chance each and every time to be transformed and seek compassion, and walk together in kind, tenderheartedness, our lives connected to each other because, indeed, we are members of one another, vulnerable to each other, and connected by the same Jesus Christ, bread of life who transforms us.
But I don’t think that compassion stops there, because just as we are members of each other here, we are members of each other throughout the world. If any of you watch NBC Nightly News, you may have heard about William McKinnon III, an African-American pastor at All Saints Holiness Church in Jacksonville, FL, who reached out to Ken Parker, a KKK member who became a Neo-Nazi because the KKK was not hateful enough, and who was a participant in the Charlottesville white supremacist rallies last year almost to the date. Parker was invited by McKinnon after time to his church, and was transformed by the compassion of the church. On July 21st, he was baptized in the waters of the Atlantic. Parker talks about his early conversations with McKinnon, stating that while he was still full of hate, something was different about the pastor. 1 It’s sad to think that compassion is something different about someone.
Closer to home, it may be hearing the stories of the refugees of Mauritania who live in an area near Refugee Road. In the late 80s, a rising sense of nationalism had caused the majority Arab culture to ethnically cleanse and enslave the black minority, and for those who have been able to escape, the government had erased them from their citizenship databases. And over the last couple years as immigration reforms have become more aggressive, the refugees are becoming more afraid. When you watch the video of the people telling the stories, it is gut-wrenching - and I’d invite you to take a look through The Atlantic - I have it posted on my Facebook page, and I’ll have it linked in my sermon as well.2
And while within the space within the law we may able to debate immigration policies, compassion cries for the child afraid to sleep in her bed, grieves the father who only has a single suitcase to his name who must sell his home and liquidate his retirement funds, and believes that there must be something more for the children of God in whom we are connected than separating them from their families families and extraditing them to places where they are guaranteed to be enslaved or worse.
Compassion feels pain for the man with Downs Syndrome who is ignored as he tires to speak to fellow customers at the Wendy’s on South Sandusky yesterday. It hears the cries of the over 9,000 people in this county - the wealthiest county in the state of Ohio - who are below the poverty line, some of whom live just outside of my home. Compassion overwhelms us, it transforms us, and forces out of what is comfortable. But without that compassion, our care stays within our own self-defined boundaries, becoming at worse a cold and convenient charity, the law a tool for oppression, and Scripture a weapon to ensure that our grumblings are justified.
Siblings in Christ, of whom we are members of each other, God through Jesus Christ is calling us to eat our fill of compassion. Calling us to break through our murmurings and collapse the walls of our comfortable knowns and to walk with him into the compassionate unknown with the modern sinners, criminals, and tax collectors that Jesus so often found himself in company with. Jesus Christ is asking us to be what we eat, and be fundamentally changed by him - to be overwhelmed by the unbelievable.
How do we start this now? How do we live a life of compassion, being transformed by the Bread of Life? Ask for forgiveness. Be gentle to the one who offends you. Seek justice for those who do not have a voice. And may each of us pray that walls we may have set up be broken down and we meet Jesus where we are fed, our thirst quenched, and we may be prepared for the compassionate journey ahead. Amen.
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