The 1^st United Methodist Church of Napa

August 20, 2006

11^th Sunday after Pentecost

Scripture Readings:

Hebrew Scriptures – Proverbs 9: 1-6¹

¹ Wisdom has built her house,

she has hewn her seven pillars.

² She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,

she has also set her table.

³ She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls

from the highest places in the town,

⁴ “You that are simple, turn in here!”

To those without sense she says,

⁵ “Come, eat of my bread

and drink of the wine I have mixed.

⁶ Lay aside immaturity, and live,

and walk in the way of insight.”

Gospel – John 6: 51-58²

⁵¹I 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.”

⁵²The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

First We Eat and Drink. Then We Understand.

A Moment for the Child in Us All

The transforming power of the bread of life is part of almost every culture. Here's an example from a Chinese fairy tale:

At the foot of a great mountain in China lived a father and his three sons. They were a simple and loving family. The father noticed that travelers passed by, excited about climbing the dangerous mountain. It was thought to be dangerous because no one ever returned. The three sons heard stories about the mountain, how it was made all of gold and silver at the top. In spite of their father's warnings, they couldn't resist trying their luck. So they set off to climb the mountain.

Along the way, under a tree, sat a beggar, but the sons neither helped him nor paid any attention to him at all. One by one, the sons disappeared into the forests of the mountain: one to a house of fine food, one to a house of good wine, one to a house of gambling. Each of them became a slave of each of these temptations and forgot about his home. Meanwhile, the father was so sad it felt like his heart was sick. He missed his sons so much. "No matter what the danger," he said, "I've got to find my sons." So he, too, set off to climb the great mountain.

At the top of the mountain the father found that it was true: the rocks really were made of gold and were streaked with silver. But he hardly noticed; he only wanted to find his sons and to help them remember their lives of love and of the home that they once knew. But he could not find them. On the way down he saw the old beggar under that tree and asked him for his advice.

"The mountain will give you your sons back," said the old man, "but only if you can find something from home that will make them remember the love of your family."

The father ran down the mountainside, and brought back a bowl of rice, giving part of it to the old man in thanks for his wisdom. He found his sons; and when he did he carefully placed just a grain of rice on each of their tongues, one at a time. At the moment that he did, his sons recognized their father, and their own foolishness. Suddenly their real life came back to them as a wonderful memory. Each of them left the mountain and returned home with his father, and they all lived happily ever after as one loving family.³

What wonderful food would remind you of home – and of all of its blessings? With me, it might be a lot of different foods, but today I want to share with you all a taste of cinnamon toast – which, for me, is a "taste of home."

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It's hard for most of us who've never lived on a farm, hunted, or fished, to really appreciate the potent meaning of these words this morning that John's Gospel puts in the mouth of Jesus: "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them."⁴ In a world where the grocery store offers skinless and boneless chicken, as well as tuna that hasn't been sold in the shape of a fish for decades now, most of our children and grandchildren have the impossible task of identifying these neatly processed pieces of meat as ever having been living, breathing, clucking, bubbling or mooing creatures! Never mind the particular theological perspectives of The United Methodist tradition surrounding Holy Communion, practically speaking, this kind of raw imagery for the postmodern person is distasteful, at best, and maybe even repulsive.

Even as familiar as his disciples were with the everyday act of butchering, gutting, cleaning and cooking animals for food, I'll bet that the seemingly cannibalistic overtones of these words here were nonetheless outrageous. But these were the very kinds of things that Jesus of Nazareth must have said – to offer a hard truth in very uncomfortable ways in order to shock his followers into recognizing the new reality that he'd come to deliver.

So what's all of that stuff that sits in bottles and cans on Martha's and my shelves in our kitchen and is neatly packaged in our freezer and refrigerator? Why are we so addicted to it? Why do some people hoard it? Why is it, all too often, a source of intense conflict, guilt and identity crises for so many people – particularly young women? How could Jesus' claim to be "food" himself – the only food that truly is life-giving – make any sense against this kind of human context of our preoccupations and obsessions?

There is an additional context, sadly, a wider view of the contemporary human condition. While most of us here in North America, as well as others in industrialized nations, suffer from obesity and diabetes, heart and liver disease, anorexia and bulimia, far too much of the rest of the world struggles, almost daily, to get fed at all. I've no idea how this passage from the Gospel According to John might sound to them.

So I go back to the only place that I know best, to prosperous North America, after having had a comfortable breakfast and recalling yesterday's uninspired trip to Brown's Valley Market. And as far as that stuff sitting in the cupboards of our and kitchen and on the shelves in our refrigerator, we can get the most out of it (at least as much as our Food Network television programs and Martha's talent and ingenuity can supply!) by choosing and preparing it in a way that best fits our tastes and personalities. We can use it as at least one way to express control over our lives ("What do you want for dinner?" "I don't know. What do you want?"). If I were the victim of an eating-disorder, I could invest all of this time and energy with so much symbolic power that it would, quite clearly, take control of my life – as any kind of obsessive, addictive, self-destructive behavior or substance can. In either case, if I were to really take Jesus' words seriously in their implications, food would still be the "bread of death" – not life – for me. No matter what I might try to make it symbolize or whatever problems I hope that it will solve for me, it will never give me life – in all of its fullness. Yes, it will help me with physical survival, but we here in the United States of America have long ago rearranged the meaning of food – beyond it just helping us survive. Our fascination with it, and the power that it holds over us, comes from somewhere else.

Even if there were no longer any ethical problems surrounding the unfair distribution of food – like the simultaneous presence of starving Africans and a gourmet potato-chip industry – I have an idea that Jesus would find our culture's symbolic reliance on food to be much like invisible chains that keep us shackled to the wrong source for our sense of well-being.⁵ Whatever the sources of that bond might be, they can't become a source of true life for us; nor would we keep investing ordinary food with such desperate hopes, fears and power if we could understand Jesus saying to us:

This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.⁶

The Jews (simply a designation for the religious leaders there that day, as distinct from the rest of the crowd) find Jesus' words…"hard to swallow." "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" they ask. Who does he think he is? Whatever answer Jesus gives, it never does seem to satisfy his critics; and so later on we read that "because of this [even] many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him."⁷ It didn't seem like the smart thing to do.

For some years now (beginning, I think, well over a decade ago with one of the presidential campaigns) Newsweek magazine has been running a weekly column that contains what the editors have called the "Conventional Wisdom Watch." Every week this gauge on the political scene has told readers what the conventional wisdom thought about various issues and about candidates for political office. Conventional wisdom, of course, is the wisdom that everybody knows is true. It's the kind of knowledge many might call "common sense." Conventional wisdom, though, has its inherently dark side – i.e., it's so pervasive and so rarely discussed that it's just accepted at face value.

"Everybody" knows that North Korea and Iran are part of an "evil empire." And while we didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it doesn't mean they didn't have them! What about China? Well, China is now one of our most lucrative business partners, so they can't really be all that evil. Can they? And don't get me started about Islamic fundamentalists! Those people are known terrorists!

Conventional wisdom is the way the crowd thinks. It's how the masses become wise. Conventional wisdom may be okay, as long as it's true, but when it isn't, it sinks insidious roots into our spirits and psyches. "Who does this Jesus think he is?" is vintage conventional wisdom. It always looks for the obvious; and it's so powerful because it seems to be so logical.

Most of us simply assume that we know what wisdom is. Many, so-called, religious people make the tragic mistake of believing that the wisdom of God is always in harmony with the conventional wisdom – which, not surprisingly, is also their own. Much of the stories and teachings of the Bible is where the tradition contends with conventional wisdom. It's here where the "word of God" stands authoritatively over against common sense, over against what "everybody knows." And everybody knows that nothing good can come from Nazareth.⁸

There's a reason why the Jewish culture has come to associate wisdom with bread. While I've never baked bread, myself, I've eaten a lot of it over the years and I never cease to be amazed at how appropriate the image of bread is for helping us to understand the nature of our life in Christ. There is magic to the way that flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and water mix together in bread dough so that every ingredient seems to be in every part of it. At dinner you might hear a child whine that she didn't want to have to eat the crust, but you'd never hear someone say, "Give me the part without the yeast," or the dieter say, "I'll have the slice without the sugar." The good news of God come to us in Jesus isn't a do-it-yourself salad bar where we can pick and choose among the onions and the anchovies. Every single part of the mystery is contained in every other part. The shadow of the cross is present in the incarnation; and we've got to choose whether we'll turn away when, like here in today's reading from John, we're asked to say yes without a full explanation to a part of this mystery that we cannot understand.

But the final wonder of it all, to me, is that you and I are part of this great mystery. And so I'm reminded of what that Roman Catholic contemplative, St. Teresa of Avila, was reputed to have said:

Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks [with] compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.⁹

First we eat and drink. Then we understand.

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