pentecost 9 Year B

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a NRSV text
Exodus 16: 2-4, 9-16 NRSV text
Psalm 51:1-12 NRSV text
Ephesians 4: 1-16 NRSV text
John 6: 24-35 NRSV text

 

“I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty!” This is what John has been working towards telling us. This is why John has picked the feeding miracle out of all the synoptic miracle stories to relate. Yet it is more than just a summary of the feeding miracle: it also includes the story of the woman of Samaria in 4: 1-42. If you re-read that story, you’ll see some obvious markers. Most notably, the conversation between Jesus and the woman and Jesus and the crowd follows a similar track. Both the woman and the crowd ask the wrong question, and Jesus ignores it, going instead to the heart of what they need to learn. Both are looking for the wrong sort of provision from Jesus: the woman wants water daily to save her going to the well (4:15) and the crowd asks, “Sir, give us this bread always” (6:34). Both their expectations are too low. The gift that Jesus offers is himself – salvation (cf 6:51).

Despite what many commentators seem to think, it isn’t because this is a particularly spectacular miracle. John doesn’t present us with “Jesus-the-super-magician”; John presents us with “Jesus: heaven come down to earth”, or “eternal life incarnate”. For all the apparent heightened emphasis on the miraculous in John, there is a corresponding de-emphasis happening at the same time. Look at Jesus’ statement in 6:26. It’s prefaced by the solemn “Amen, amen, lego humin” – “Truly, truly, I tell you …” This isn’t just a colloquialism of Jesus’, or of John’s writing either (as though he has his Jesus always begin statements like that!). It’s a sign that Jesus is cutting to the chase – speaking with divine insight. He’s saying, “Listen to me. Let me tell you the deepest truth about what’s actually going on here. Don’t misunderstand me or yourselves! You’re seeing the sign – but you’re not reading it properly. You look at me and see a miracle worker. That’s not who I am. I am the stuff of life, sent you from God! Don’t have your minds on your stomachs – look more deeply and face the hunger and thirst for Life that is there at the core of you. Then look at me, and you’ll understand!”

 

Bread and manna: salvation and provision (cf Exodus 16: 2-4; 9-16)
I made the point last week (and assume the content), but it’s one that bears repetition in a world where two thirds of its inhabitants are starving and the remaining third has problems associated with overeating: when Jesus speaks of being the Bread of Life in John’s gospel, and criticises his hearers for being concerned with full stomachs, he is not spiritualising hunger, nor is he advocating some sort of aesthetic focus on the “spiritual” rather than the “physical”. John’s Jesus is, more explicitly than in any other part of the New Testament, God incarnate. Incarnation is about God’s entry into the human condition, not some sort of flight from it! John has had bad press as a “theological gospel” – by which is meant a “pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die” sort of understanding of God and salvation that leaves human misery and need largely untouched, or so de-emphasised at the expense of “eternal life” that it may as well be untouched! It is the gospel that can be read (illegitimately!) as the least challenging gospel to the rich, the well-fed, the powerful and the “haves”. If Mark’s Jesus can be read as the Liberator of the world, John’s can be read as the Saviour from the world, with Jesus’ constant emphasis “on above”. It’s a bourgeois-friendly gospel, in other words.

That this is illegitimate is clear from v33: Jesus is the Living Bread who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world! “Ah,” you might respond, “but what sort of life? Is it the life that comes from giving bread to the hungry?” Duh! Isn’t that to miss the point that this is a miracle about feeding hungry people – people who have no means of feeding themselves? There is no way in which John presents the feeding as the “stunt from the front” – the trick to hook people in order to get to the really important bit (ie the sermon)! Provision and salvation belong together.

Now, while John clearly sets up the reference to eating manna in the wilderness as “bread from heaven” in order to allow Jesus to make his point, the point Jesus makes is that the true Bread from Heaven is more than temporary alleviation of hunger, not less! In today’s reading from Exodus, we see a parallel: the Israelites are complaining because they are hungry. Note their complaint: “It would have been better to have died in Egypt, where at least we ate our fill of bread!” (Exodus 16:9) It appears to them as though Yahweh has “brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger”!

We ought not to be too quick to condemn the Israelites. Behind their complaint is the experience and terror of a slow, lingering death by starvation. We need to have in our heads the pictures we see of malnourished people in Ethiopia and other places: stick-thin bodies, swollen bellies, and hands too weak with hunger to brush the flies from the eyes and sores. Famine was something real and never far away. This isn’t some sort of pathetic whinge by a group of malcontents: an “I’m sick of this! I want to go home!” It’s a hard calculation: “Exodus is all well and good, and slavery killed. But at least we died with full bellies! And given a choice between salvation (with death by starvation) and slavery with whips, brutality and bread, we opt for slavery!”

Nor ought we to condemn them for hoarding the manna against instruction (16:20). It is hard for people on the brink of extinction to trust that, if they ate today at Yahweh’s hand, they will eat tomorrow too. The hard fact of human life in many parts of the world is that we may bless God for the harvest, but that doesn’t stop God sometimes failing spectacularly to ensure that a harvest happens regularly enough to prevent widespread and terrible suffering and starvation.

The wonder of the provision of quails and manna is seen in 16:18b: “They gathered as much as each of them needed”. Here’s the point, then: Exodus (salvation) includes the provision of what is needed to sustain life. When the hungry are fed and the naked clothed; when the poor are given enough and the thirsty given a cup of cold water, this is part of salvation! It is not some sort of “preparatory spadework” for evangelism. And when Jesus feeds the crowd, they do not only have enough, but far, far more than enough. There is “something more”.

It is this “something more” that Jesus goes on to stress. Pay attention to the hunger and thirst of the soul. In a materialistic age, this is an important point. And for those of us who are exquisitely alive to the sense in which the gospel is the Good News of a transformed world order of justice and provision for all, it is important not to neglect the dimension of human existence that is about more than eating, being clothed and having clean water.

Incarnation is about bridging the “gap” between heaven and earth. The spatial metaphor (and it is only a metaphor, as Yuri Gagarin discovered when he went into space!) serves to emphasise the way in which we human beings have built our lives and created our world to exclude God. Individually and collectively, we are cut off from God. That fundamental “gap” manifests itself in injustice, oppression, poverty and death. To talk theologically, sin is both a personal and a structural problem. The “gap” is the absence of the Life of God – in John’s terms, “eternal life” or “life in all its abundance”. That is something we experience here and now – it is not only or even primarily a question about “what happens to us when we die”. We are created for fellowship with God, as children of God. Jesus, as the Word made flesh, does not only show us what God is like: he shows us what it is to be truly human! And to be human as Jesus was is to live in the same relationship to God as he did. It is to live in the awareness of being God’s child and of the constant, immediate and transforming presence of God in our lives. In Paul’s words from last week’s reading: it is “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 4:19). That is “eternal life” – in other words, a dimension of life, rather than only a question of duration.

 

Hungering and thirsting for God
Why is evangelism apparently the exclusive preserve of so-called “evangelicals”? There ought to be no such thing as a “non-evangelical” Christian! I frequently hear evangelicals described as “born again Christians”. What they are wonderfully alive to is the startling difference that a relationship to God in Jesus Christ makes to life. God in Jesus is personal – however embarrassing some of us might find that! Abundant life in Jesus is a life that overflows. We are made for joy, for love, for hope, for laughter, for deep relating. Yet these depth experiences of God in Jesus and through the Spirit are pooh-poohed as “emotionalism” or something equally unimportant and ephemeral. Not so! No wonder so many Christians are uncomfortable with notions of evangelism! Yet if knowing and following Jesus – being “born again” – is genuinely a new birth and transformation of personal life, then evangelism is nothing more sinister than passing on good news. DT Niles said (in a way that is marvellously appropriate to today’s readings) that, in evangelism, “We are nothing more than beggars telling other beggars where to find bread”.

We fail people if we do not recognise the reality of spiritual hunger. Yet the signs of the hunger for the Bread of Life are evident everywhere to any eyes that are open. Look at the current explosion of spirituality. The bookshops are full of self-help books on the subject. Magazines carry stories and accounts. Psychic fairs, seminars on spirituality, meditation centres and classes on eastern mysticism are all flourishing growth industries. Millions of people who have nothing to do with the Church are desperate to make connections with spiritual reality. And yet the Church is failing singularly to help them make any connection between their own deep sense of spiritual hunger and Jesus, the Bread of Life! We stand by in embarrassed silence, while people who have found something of significance in witchcraft, meditation, Buddhism, wicca, yoga, astral travel and reincarnation share their experiences eagerly and find them equally eagerly received. If the reason for our failure is that we do not recognise in it a mirror of our own deep hunger and thirst for God, we ought to examine ourselves, lest we, like the crowd, fail to read the sign correctly.

 

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice” (2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a)
Jesus told his hearers (in that Sermon) that the yearning for justice is like a gnawing hunger and parching thirst. It is something that consumes one – fills the horizon. The drive to be filled and to slake one’s thirst becomes the most and only important thing worth doing.

There is a deep connection between justice and spirituality. It’s what Nathan exploits to bring home to David the seriousness of what he has done over the murder of Uriah. David is blind to the corruption of his own power, yet still alive to the issue of justice, so that Nathan is able to tell him a story of injustice that has David filled with godly rage – precisely the point that Nathan is trying to make about Uriah and Bathsheba. Yawheh is displeased with David because of David’s abuse of power, and Nathan uses the story of the lamb as a device to get David to feel about his actions in the way that Yahweh does.

Nathan’s parable is actually a strange “fit”, isn’t it? Yes, it’s about greed and the abuse of power to steal something important to someone else. But apart from the instinctive unease we ought to feel today about the implication of women being men’s “property”, it’s difficult to see an obvious correspondence with David’s conduct – other than the fact that this is an example of blatant abuse of power. And that is enough. When Nathan says, “Thou art the man!”, David’s understanding is immediate. He recognises in himself Yahweh’s righteous anger at injustice.

The hunger for justice, in other words, has converting power. Part of what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice” is that it is a hunger that puts us in touch with the heart of God. It gives energy and power in the struggle for a new world. But here, in this story, we see something unusual: the hunger for justice can be the vehicle for the conversion of those whose power is that from which the world needs saving! David is part of “The System”. He is “The System”! While God’s chief concern is for those who are the victims of injustice, God is nevertheless concerned too for those who wield power and who are trapped (albeit differently!) in the cycles of injustice, oppression, despair and death. Here is the story of a powerful tyrant who is converted – because Nathan is able to appeal to a hunger and thirst for justice! And the blessing for David, as the man who wields power abusively, is that he recognises the problem, is repentant, and is restored.

 

Beyond bread (Ephesians 4: 1-16)
This is a rich passage! There is the theme of unity, which could be followed. Yet, in the context of this week’s readings, I want to make only one point: Paul here talks about the Church as a body which needs “feeding”. In v7, he writes, “To each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift”. That evokes strong echoes of the Exodus passage, where each Israelite gathered manna which, when measured, was exactly enough (even though some gathered much, and some little).

Whether we are talking about bread, manna or spiritual gifts, the point is that they are all gifts of grace. Grace is a measure of God’s love. It is also God’s provision. Grace means that God provides life and that which is necessary to sustain life. Grace further means that God provides the means of growth. Bodies are not just meant to exist: they are meant also to grow and develop.

Grace, in other words, is purposive. God’s intention is to make us Christ-like, just as God’s intention is to make the whole of created reality Christ’s. The gifts of the Spirit are given, not to individuals for their own glory, enjoyment or ownership, but to the whole Church. They are manifested in individuals precisely in order to make us interdependent (hence the image of the body).

Christian life is essentially communal. We make a great deal of “I don’t have to go to Church to be a Christian! I can worship God on a golf-course or up a mountain just as well as at Church!” Well, not according to Paul! This isn’t a point about church membership or attendance: it’s a point about growing. We are all given gifts for the common good. Unless we take an active part in the life of the Christian body of which we are a part, we are amputating part of the body and failing others. Similarly, unless we are part of the body – of the flow of the life-blood of the Spirit (4:16) – we will remain stunted in our own growth. The image of a body growing by means of the grace given through gifts stands as a strong critical counter to the excessive individualism of our present age. One of our challenges is to restore the Church’s “body image” – to discover and make it work.

 

A rich diet
“Don’t be children, blown about by every wind of doctrine. Grow up, for Christ’s sake!” says Paul. I am astonished at how determinedly and deliberately so many people remain in a state of Christian infancy! Having been “born again”, it’s as though they are content to remain babies. A new baby is a beautiful thing: a 10-year old baby is a tragedy! Yet churches are full of babies.

What Paul is telling the Ephesians is that they need to be theologically sophisticated. Despite the popular anti-theological perception one frequently encounters, theology matters – or good theology does! This isn’t about some sort of “theological league table for churches”! It’s not about a middle-class drive for an educated church population. It’s about discernment and faithful discipleship.

The point is that there is an awful amount of absolute c*^p doing the rounds in church circles. Churches can be hotbeds of all sorts of dodgy practices, emphases and rank superstitions. And the danger is that they distract and prevent proper discipleship of Jesus Christ. They even obscure and “lose” Jesus! Paul’s “corrective recipe” is a sound theology, deeply rooted in the scriptures.

Of course, this begs the question of what theology is! If it is a tick-box list of hard philosophical concepts, people can hardly be blamed for not being remotely interested. Yet if theology has to do with life – the life of faith and the life of the world – then theology and the bible should rightfully be part of the answer to our ongoing hunger and thirst for God. It is interesting – but by no means accidental - that both Paul and John get the most passionate about faith when they are at their most “theological” – which in their cases, means most deeply aware of grace! Because that, at the end of the day, is what this all about: a God who answers hunger and thirst with a gift that is far, far more wonderful and life-giving than we can possibly imagine: the gift of Jesus. This is not dead, dry, academic puzzles: this is Living Bread! And we are invited to come and eat and drink … if, of course, we are hungry and thirsty in the first place!

 

Amen.