July 27, 2003 -SeventhSunday after Pentecost
Ephesians 3:14-21
NRSVKJV
John 6: 1-21
“Christis Among Us!”
“Christ is among us.”It’s a powerful statement, isn’t it? In the liturgies of the Christian Eastthat statement is used as the greeting when the peace is passed. The celebrantsays, “Christ is among us.” The response is, “He is and ever shall be.”After that affirmation is made the congregation is invited, “Let us love oneanother so that with one mind we may confess…” and the congregation respondswith the confession of faith. Here is an occasion where ritual does exactly whatit’s supposed to do. It reminds those participating in the service of God’sabiding presence and of our being drawn together into that presence. This Sundayand for the four of the Sundays in August we will be reading the sixth chapterof John’s Gospel. That chapter does what I just spoke about – it points usto God’s presence among us and to the reality of our participation in thatpresence.
Today’s reading covers halfof the six major sections into which scholars divide this chapter. In verses oneto four we are introduced to the where?, when?, who?, and why?, of the chapter. The fifth to fifteenth verses takes us through the miracle of the loavesand fishes. And then, and no one is quite sure why John arranges his story thisway, Jesus comes walking across the water in verses sixteen to twenty-one.Ultimately, these three sections draw us into the reality of God’s presencemade real in the person of Jesus Christ.
In the course of these eventsJohn draws some powerful parallels of times when God acted or was presentthrough a chosen person. The psychologist Gerald May has commented on this ishis book Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology:
. . . divine love, though notoriginating in human beings, can be recognized by and manifested throughhuman beings. In popular religion, the notion of human expression of divine loveis often taken to mean that people should try to act in ways that they think arecompassionate and loving. Although this is indeed excellent advice, the morecontemplative traditions interpret the theme more literally. It is not just amatter of acting in a loving way; it is also that divine love, in its pure formwithout any psychological processing, can come directlyfrom the Creator through human beings alone and in groups. In Christianity ofcourse, the fundamental truth of this is demonstrated in Jesus Christ. [Willand Spirit, p. 203]
What John seems to be showinghere is precisely what May says. In Jesus’ going up on the mountain andspending time with his disciples, we see a parallel being drawn to Moses’reception of the law on the mountainside. Mountains, of course, are commonsettings for the Divine-human encounter. There is also a tie being made, asindeed there is frequently in John’s Gospel, between the events of Jesus’life and the various events of the Exodus event. So Jesus, as the early teachersof the church would say, becomes a ‘type’ of Moses who will lead the peopleout of bondage and into freedom in a new land.
In the feeding of the fivethousand there are multiple ties to the experience of Israel. Jesus sees theneed of the gathering crowd and doesn’t wait to act. He takes the initiativeout of concern for the welfare of the people. This is what happens in the Exodusevent, when God sees the need of the people and acts to feed them and give themwater to drink. The feeding of the five thousand also evokes the Twenty-thirdPsalm. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …. Thou preparest a tablein the presence of mine enemies . ..” What we see here is a blendingof the early church’s experience of the Eucharist, Holy Communion, in whichbread is blessed, broken, and given, thePassover and the Manna God gave in the desert. In all three God provides notonly the substance which nourishes, but is present to do the nourishing.
Houston Smith, one of the greatcontemporary scholars of comparative religion, has said, “Wherever peoplelive, whenever they live, the find themselves faced with three inescapableproblems: how to win food and shelter from their natural environment (theproblem nature poses), how to get along with one another (the social problem),and how to relate themselves to the total scheme of things (the religiousproblem).” [Why Religion Matters, p.11] So I’d like to focus a bitmore on the feeding episode, simply because it seems to me that all three ofthese problems are taken up there and, ultimately, find some resolution in therealization that Christ is among us.
John alone identifies the breadthat the little boy had with him as barley bread. Why is this significant? Well,it gains importance because barley bread was not only another tie to an OldTestament figure, Elisha, but more importantly because it was the common, coarsebread of the poor. Jesus takes this common stuff and does something with it thatraises it beyond the common, even to the point that he says, “Gather up thefragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” Here is a deliberate contrast between what they started with and thatwith which they ended – it began cheap, coarse, common and ended precious,valuable. John calls us back to the first ‘sign’ at Cana when Jesus turned water into wine. He takes that which is most common and renders it mostprecious. The common, the ordinary and the everyday is the stuff which Christtakes and transforms into something wondrously special. The barley bread, justlike the wine made from water at Cana, is symbolic of human life. God takes ourlives and gives them purpose, meaning, and value.
These signs challenge the faithof the people and their meaning appears to be lost on them. However, it is madeclear in the person of Jesus who takes his common, ordinary human nature andmakes something special of it in self-giving love. We may see some echoes of theChristian celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist here, but what isreally going on in the story is not some ritual surrounded sacrament. Rather, itis shown to be a central sign of God making God’s presence real right in themidst of human life, in the middle of the ordinary workaday world. It may cometo us under the signs of unpretentious, ordinary, everyday things – bread andthe fruit of the vine – but it points us to more. We are also reminded thatall of life is Eucharistic, that what goes on when we gather around the tablesof Word and Sacrament is precisely what God is doing around the tables of homes,the very tables of our lives.
Faith and the wisdom of lifelived, as Jesus did, in a God-directed, unselfish manner opens up life’shidden meaning and rescues it from boredom. Now why should I mention boredom?Because it is, I believe, one of the chief problems of our modern Westernsociety. We have so much, have so many opportunities, have so many ways todistract and amuse ourselves that we begin to get bored. How many times,parents, have you heard one of your children – surrounded by a sea of toys,games, and what-have-you – say, “I’m bored!” What is boredom? Thedictionary tells us it’s the “feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction.”That which is boring is uninteresting. Boredom appears to be the result ofself-centeredness, self-focus.
Gerald May, the psychologist Ireferenced earlier, has pointed out that the ‘unitive experience,’ that is,the feeling or experience of oneness with one’s environment or even withone’s God, is broken by self-awareness. The minute someone becomes aware thathe or she is in the midst of such an occurrence – it’s over. [see May, p. 97ff.] The spiritual writers of the early church called this accidie, the spiritual condition of restlessness. It comes into ourlives as a result of being too self-aware, too self-focused, or simply bored.The way we get beyond it, grow through it, is by becoming other-focused. Whenthe Thou is more important than the I, then we are in the position to experiencewhat Paul prays for the Ephesians, “….that you may have the power tocomprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height anddepth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you maybe filled with all the fullness of God.”
It is only when we begin tounderstand the holiness of the ordinary, the wonder that God is constantlypresent, undergirding all reality, and know that Christ is among us that weenter the fullness of God. And the only way we come to that is by being willingto give of ourselves, to move outside our own narrow spheres of self-interestand, like Christ, to become Eucharist for one another. Jesus shows us the way byhis willingness to be taken, blessed, broken, and given – like the bread –and poured out – like the cup – so that others might find life and hope andmeaning. As common barley bread became the food for the multitude, and thesimple bread of the Lord’s Supper conveys more than it is, so it is with lifeitself. When we are open to this God of surprise who makes worlds with words andcomes to us in simple things we can receive the gift of life – life that isfilled with the presence of God.
When Jesus comes walking acrossthe water to the disciples there are again all sorts of Old Testament allusionsgoing on. The picture of the sea in chaos is much like the Creation story inGenesis one. What’s happening here is what we’ve just talked about –we’re supposed to get the point that God is present, that we’re no longerlost, alone, and in the dark. Christ is among us and where he is, there is hisFather, who made this world and gives it meaning. Jesus comes across the waterand says to them, “It is I, do not be afraid.” The Greek there is egoeimi. That simple phrase can mean, “It’s me” and can also echo theDivine Name, “I am who I am.” One commentator suggests that we could bestrender it, “Here I AM,” so that we capture the ambiguity of the words.What’s happening here is that Jesus is comforting the disciples and, in themind of John and the early church, revealing who he is.
John’s juxtaposing of thesetwo stories is designed to do something – and does it very effectively. Justas the crowd and the disciples are left wondering who this person is, so are we.Jesus challenges the accepted notion of what a Messiah and a Savior look likeand they have to deal with that – so do we. We hear these stories, begin toexperience a bit of the wonder of God’s presence and we have to ask ourselveswhat does this mean for us and for the way we live? We can’t just stop at the miracle parts, because what isgoing on here is so much deeper than a mere miracle. I like what Barbara BrownTaylor wrote,
“The problem with miracles is that we tend to get mesmerizedby them, focusing on God’s responsibility and forgetting our own. Miracles letus off the hook. They appeal to the part of us that is all too happy to let Godfeed the crowd, save the world, do it all.” [The Seeds of Heaven, p. 32].
What John shows Jesus doingcalls us beyond miraculous occurrences to the presence of God in thehere-and-now of life itself. The question for us is – what are we going to doabout it? We can’t push it aside, can’t not take responsibility because thenwe’re back to being bored.
Christ is among us! He is andever shall be. Hold on to that truth, revel in it, and wrestle with it. Look atthe people around you, every aspect of life today, even your lunch, as what theyare – vehicles of God’s presence. Christ is among us and draws us together– now we have to do something about it.