Last Resort

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday August 23, 2009, the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time.

1Kings 8:22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Today is the end of our time with the sixth chapter of the book of John. We began with 5,000 men being fed bread and fish on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. After dinner, Jesus shares a little one-on-one time with some disciples while the twelve sail across the lake. Later in the evening, leaving everyone unaware, Jesus follows the boat using only his sandals and his very being to make his way across the water. The twelve were shocked and amazed to see Jesus water skiing without the benefit of a boat across the lake, and those who Jesus left on the other side were just as shocked and amazed because Jesus was gone and all of the boats were still there.

This is when Jesus begins teaching lessons about the true bread of eternal life; and many of these lessons are repeated and repeated again so that all may hear, so that all may know. Some of his words are hard truths, like when he told the people that they came to see him because he could fill their bellies with bread, not because he is the bread. Some of his words are offensive. Jesus uses the “I AM,” the holy name of God when referring to himself. Jesus teaches that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood. This freaks out the people who take this too literally. This really freaks out those who make the connection between drinking his blood and the Genesis 9 prohibition against consuming blood. Those who make the connection between blood and atonement found in Leviticus 14 are ready to rent their robes and cry “Blasphemy!”

So for those who were going along with the difficult teachings about flesh and blood, Jesus then tells the disciples that flesh is useless! It’s the Spirit that gives life. His words are spirit and life; as are his flesh and his blood. The twist is not that his flesh and blood are useless, it’s that our flesh and blood are. There is nothing we can do to create truth. There is nothing we can do to make good. There is nothing we can do to earn salvation. Our flesh is the source of nothing. By him all things are possible. Life is found in him, by him, and through him. Just as the living Father sent him and he lives because of the Father, so too we live because of him; because of his flesh and because of his spirit.

It’s all in a day’s work for the bread of life.

A missionary told how she was once describing the loving character of the Christians’ God to a company of her Chinese sisters. As she went on in her holy enthusiasm, picturing God’s real character as full of mercy to the sinful and the suffering, one of the Chinese women turned to her neighbor and said, “Haven’t I often told you there ought to be a God like that?”[1]

These women had obviously believed in what we would call other gods. I don’t know what these other gods were. We could speculate and consider and think ourselves more enlightened because we don’t believe in the same sort of god-play that they do. But to what end?

When I was a young man, I would go on walks with my father. He would tell stories and impart wisdom. One evening crossing Brush Creek in Kansas City he told me, “You know, I tell you these stories so that you don’t make the same mistakes I did.” I answered him, “Don’t worry, I’ll make my own.”

We can say we don’t make the same mistakes these Chinese women made, not knowing about the one true Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No, we have other Gods.

One recent example of this sort of idol worship is a sense of security and protection emboldened by American power. In the third episode of the NBC drama “The West Wing,” the liberal democratic President Josiah Bartlett learns that his former chief physician, a naval officer, was killed going overseas to a new deployment. As the President laments this death he asks, “Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words ‘Civis Romanis’ I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.”[2]

Whether in ancient Rome, a fictional Washington D.C., or a real life Hometown, U.S.A.; this sentiment is not without appeal. When I heard that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the man responsible for killing 270 people, many of them Americans, in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland was set free to die at home,[3] a choice he did not give his victims; I don’t wonder if “Civis Romanis” is American Imperialism. I’m thinking it’s a good idea.

This is the sort of thing we might expect to hear from a pundit on Fox News, not the liberal President Bartlett.

What we would expect from this fictional president, a character whose fictional opponent called him a weak, lily-livered, intellectual, elitist snob, is something more of what we knew as a nation in the 1970’s in the morass of post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, hyperinflationary times. This quicksand of indecision which was often coupled with a hand-wringing of guilt over national sins, some of which are older than the nation itself, was caused by actions and inactions which needed then and continue to need national atonement. Still, handwringing and being ashamed are not the acts of atonement scripture prescribes. I looked it up.

It’s easy to say that these are two different sins; one of vanity and the other inferiority. I see them as mirror images of the same sin, one of an overblown sense of self held over the blessings of the Lord God. In our oh so enlightened culture, we often think that there is something that we could do to make things better; something we can do with our power, or something we can do with our wealth, or something we can do with our intellect, where without God we can do nothing. Without God, we can do nothing.

We as individuals and as a nation must remember that Jesus offered everything he had to end the separation between God and God’s good creation. He offered his flesh and his blood, his human life so that we may know eternal life. He emptied himself of his Godly status to be fully human, flesh and blood, so that he may be exactly like we are, though without sin. The man who could have brought himself off of the cross and changed life as we know it through power and might stayed there unto death, changing life as we know it by the power of weakness and submission.

When we depend on our strength more than we rely upon the Lord, we look to a god who is not our God. When we allow our weaknesses to overwhelm us, we fall before a god who is not our God. Have we made the same mistake that the Chinese women made? Not really, in truth, we have made our own. This tension between divine action and human choice has been a theme of this chapter from John’s gospel, of the past month of Sundays.

This might be a hard teaching. It may cause some to turn away. It may even offend. Jesus knew this. He knew his teachings would divide families, he knew his teachings would cause separation. Not because of anything he does, on the contrary. God the Father sent Jesus so that all may come to know God not only as Spirit but as flesh and blood. By sending Jesus, God the Father grants us the ability that we may all come to the Lord. But Jesus knew that because of who we are, because of human choice, because of the freedom we have to love God and one another, because of who we are, Jesus knew his hard teaching would cause some to turn away.

In this case, more than five-thousand turned away, the five-thousand who came just for the bread that fills the belly. The twelve who came because Jesus is have the bread that fills the soul, the words of eternal life; they stayed because they knew Jesus was their last resort. They stayed because they had come to believe and know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

Jesus knew they would stay, for a while; but in his perfection, he knew that we are not so perfect. Jesus knew Judas would betray him to the Roman Legions. Jesus even knew Peter, the speaker for the twelve, would deny him. Yet Jesus loved them. He loved them all. He loves them all.

Peter is held in this piece as the paragon of virtue. But we know better. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, we know Peter will draw a short sword and take the ear off of one of the slaves of the Pharisees. Peter will deny Christ just because he wanted to hear what was happening and keep warm. Some days we will act like Peter, professing and proclaiming the name of the Lord. And there are days when we abandon the Lord just to keep warm. Yet Jesus loves us. Jesus loves us all.

If you ever get the chance, the next time you are in Tulsa, go to the Great Harvest Bread Company store. Great Harvest is a maker of fine artisan breads and the smell alone is worth making the trip. The first time I went to Great Harvest was to the store in Colorado Springs. I walked into the store and was overwhelmed with the scent of the grains, yeast, spelt, berries and melting butter.

The most wonderful thing about going into the store is the free samples. They cut off a big hunk of bread, slather it with real butter—none of this margarine or “it’s not butter”—they slather it with real butter and hand it to you to taste that it is good. In line you find yuppie mothers with twin strollers, business people in high dollar suits, and homeless folks coming in from the weather. They don’t give you a tiny little spoonful of heavenly goodness like a Baskin-Robbins sample; they give you a thick slice of bread with butter.

It’s amazing; people come in as much for the experience and fellowship as they do for the filling of their bellies. This is a foretaste of the bread of life which fills our bodies and feeds our souls. Even more than great artisan bread, Jesus feeds us on every level. Jesus is the last bread we will ever want—not just for the physical fulfillment—but because once we experience God in Christ nothing else is the same.

Our flesh is useless; in his flesh is eternal life. As Jesus shares in our life we are to share in his so that we may live together in God’s peace and love. It is in his spirit that we have eternal life, life worth living.

It is this bread and this cup, his body and his blood that we share together at the table set by him so that we may be fed body and soul. It is by this bread and this cup that we are fed and strengthened to go into the world taking these hard lessons and the knowledge that there is no one and nothing else that compares to life in Christ.

It’s all in a day’s work for the bread of life.

[1] “Dome on the Range,” HomeliticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93000158, retrieved August 13, 2006
[2] “The West Wing: A Proportional Response,” TV.com. http://www.tv.com/the-west-wing/a-proportional-response/episode/790/summary.html, retrieved August 22, 2009
[3] Lockerbie bomber freed, returns to cheers in Libya, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090820/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_lockerbie, retrieved August 22, 2009.