disclosing new worlds

Proverbs 1: 20-33
Psalm 19
James 3: 1-12
Mark 8: 27-38

There are lots of words and their relation to truth, wisdom and community in this week’s readings. Plenty of “tongue-use”! Running through all the readings is something important about both the power and the ambiguity of words; about how what we say relates to what we believe and how we do and don’t live. Proverbs challenges us about listening to the right words – about following in the way of wisdom. Psalm 19 celebrates the Law – words which delight the heart and shape life for flourishing. James focuses on the ways in which the tongue can run away with us, with words that have both the power to build up, to praise and to shatter and destroy. And, at the midpoint of Mark’s gospel, we have Peter’s confession, the passion predictions, and Jesus’ startling response to Peter.

The incident at Caesarea Philippi is often seen as a turning point in the gospel – the moment when Peter “gets it”. “You are the Messiah, the Christ!” he proclaims. This is portrayed as Peter’s epiphany. Midway through his ministry, when his disciples have been with him and experienced the healings and miracles, when they have heard him and spent days and nights with him, month after month, Jesus says, “Ok guys. You’ve seen it all, heard it all, shared it all; now, what do you make of it? Who do you reckon I am?” And Peter, on this reading, gets it right. He “sees” – just like the blind man Jesus healed in the previous verses at Bethsaida.

If only that were true! Wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be good to know that Jesus, just beginning to face the way of the cross ahead, is surrounded by staunch allies – people who share his ministry and mission, his understanding of God’s kingdom and his priorities? Wouldn’t it be good to know that he was among friends – even if there were only twelve of them?

Yes, it would be – but that’s not what Mark gives us! Why do we actually even expect that? Well, probably because we more easily remember Matthew’s version of the confession (Matthew 16: 13ff). And probably because we want it to be like that. Most of all, though, because it’s the way we operate: “Get our theology right, and that’s it!” As long as we get the technical terms right (in this case, recognising that Jesus is the Messiah), then we’re being faithful followers.

But then we’re really shocked when Jesus turns to Pete and calls him “Satan”! How can Peter go from saint to Satan in 4 short verses? That’s precisely the sort of shock Mark intends to administer, because he wants to startle us out of our complacency that we “know” Jesus and that it’s enough to “get our theology right”. We should have been prepared for it. Our antennae should have gone up the moment we saw that Caesarea Philippi follows immediately on the heels of the healing of a blind man. We should know Mark’s style by now: he’s ironic. We should expect precisely the fact that the disciples will fail to “see”. And that is what happens.

Far from presenting Jesus surrounded by friends as he begins the journey to the cross, Mark begins the narrative of the disintegration of the disciple group. This is the group who will have abandoned and denied Jesus; who will have turned their backs on their friend and master in his greatest need. This is the group who will be Jesus’ closest opponents of the way of the cross and who will do most actively to dissuade him from his course. The point is that the disciples can neither understand nor accept Jesus’ version of messiahship because it involves the cross.

“Messiah”, “Son of Man” and the way of the cross
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks his disciples. They’ve already reported the word on the grapevine: Jesus is John the Baptist (come back to life); or Elijah. The point here is that John is presented as an Elijah figure – the great prophet who was expected as the herald of “the great and terrible Day of the Lord” (Malachi 4:5). Peter says more than that: he calls Jesus the Messiah – the culmination of all that God planned and promised. And he’s right. Jesus is the Messiah. So why is Jesus’ immediate response to shut Peter and the others up? He “sternly ordered” them not to tell anyone about him. “Sternly ordered” is very strong. Think Mafia threats to keep quiet and you’re at the right sort of level of seriousness (though not, presumably, right about the content!).

This is the “messianic secrecy” motif, a narrative device identified by Wrede. That is not to suggest that its roots do not go back to Jesus himself. The point that Mark makes is that Jesus is in the business of redefining messiahship. He is the messiah, but the dominant messianic categories – political liberator of Israel, royal Davidic figure and/or spectacular miracle-worker – don’t fit Jesus’ mission. That is a different “way” of being messiah – a different path and a different destination. Jesus’ way is the way of the cross. That is why, in the very next verse, Jesus goes on to teach them about the forthcoming passion. It follows perfectly logically from the command to silence when we understand it as an explanation for his concern that the disciples don’t go around saying, “Hey! Listen up! This is the messiah!”

The passion predictions lay out Jesus’ messianic agenda: suffering and death. This is not a “way” calculated to win friends and disciples! “He said all this quite openly”, Mark tells us. In other words, he’s saying, “Jesus couldn’t have been clearer. He laid it out clearly – on the line. There could be no mistaking what he was saying. There was no “wriggle-room”!” Peter doesn’t even try to wriggle! He grabs Jesus, takes him aside, and lays the law down. Imagine the conversation. It’s at least, “Look, Jesus, just forget all that death and suffering stuff! What’s wrong with you? You’ve got power! You’re a hit! You can feed crowds of people, cast out demons, heal people. Just imagine how they’ll flock to you! You want followers? Jesus, you could raise a standing army at the click of your fingers. We’re with you! Israel – no, the world! – is just yours for the taking! Think of it, Jesus: king of the world! What couldn’t you do? And how much good couldn’t you do? Why, these people will worship you as a god! So cut this other suffering and death” nonsense!”

What we are meant to hear, in other words, are echoes in Peter’s rebuke of the Matthean material about the temptation narratives. Let’s not be precious about this: Peter tells Jesus something that Jesus desperately wants to hear! It’s got power and pull. Its power is to distract Jesus from his chosen path – the path that he actually desperately fears and wants to avoid. Here is a reprise of Jesus in the wilderness, and a preview of Jesus in Gethsemane. He is being faced with the way of the cross and every fibre of his soul and being resists. How much better to be a kingly, powerful messiah! How much easier to have “all the kingdoms of the world” than the kingdom of God, which is reached only by way of the cross!

This is the reason for his sharp rebuke to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!” He immediately calls the crowds and explains that this is the way his determined to travel, so that any who wish to follow must travel the same route. There are two ways: the divine way and the human way. The human way is an option for the path of glory, adulation, miracle and power. It is an option to save its own life. The divine way is the way of the cross – of humility, scandal, and incomprehensible self-sacrifice.

This is the parallel to the “Two Ways” passage in Proverbs. There are two choices: the way of foolishness, or the way of Wisdom. Wisdom – the way of Yahweh – is portrayed as a woman wandering the streets, calling out almost in vain to the heedless crowds that throng the busy streets and squares of the city, blind to their own folly. The way of Wisdom is the way to avoid calamity. It belongs to an early tradition in the Wisdom literature of the bible, underwritten by the belief that troubles and disasters are a result of abandoning the ways of Yahweh and thereby cutting oneself off from Yahweh’s provision and blessing. It is only later in the developed tradition – supremely in the book of Job – that we see a shift: following the way of Wisdom is no guarantee of an easy life. Job raises acutely the question of incomprehensible suffering, and the crumbling of any easy equation between wisdom (faith in Yahweh) and a trouble-free life.

What we see in the juxtaposition of the gospel and the book of Proverbs, therefore, is what Paul will call “the foolishness of the cross”. There is an irony here: fidelity to God requires that Jesus walk a road that is manifestly “foolish”! It is a way of suffering, failure and self-destruction. Small wonder, then, that Jesus – from the very outset of the passion predictions here in this chapter – recoils so thoroughly from it! There is indeed a “wisdom” to it – the wisdom of resurrection. There is no way to resurrection other than through the cross. So Jesus is right when he says that the only way to save one’s life is to lose it for his sake, and for the sake of the gospel, is to lose it. There is no other road that leads there. But it is not a road to be taken lightly, enthusiastically or joyfully. It’s time we stopped being sentimental about the cross, because that sort of sentimentality disguises its awfulness and its “foolishness”. The call to the way of the cross – to discipleship – is a fearful call, and if we hear what it really means, we will resist it as strenuously as both Peter and Jesus do!

This is why Jesus refuses to be known as “messiah” at this point. Yes, he is the messiah – but the messiah whose messiahship is via the cross. To hear “You are the messiah” as Peter meant that is to mishear. It is to get Jesus radically wrong, and therefore to get Christian faith radically wrong. Jesus is no wonder-working, would-be royal!

The kingdoms of the world – that was the most seductive version of messiahship on offer. But the way of God – the kingdom of God – is different. It takes a different route. Ironically, just as Jesus is the messiah (though not as others understood messiahship), so too he is king – ruler of the kingdom of God – though not as kingship was commonly understood. This is the point of the title, “Son of Man”.

“Son of Man” has become a christological title because it was Jesus’ self-description. He chooses “Son of Man” as a way of speaking more truly about himself (before the cross) than “messiah”. But it was not a title circulating in the thought and theology of the people of his day. “Son of man” in his day was a Jewish colloquialism for “a human being” – “a bloke”. It literally means, “I as a man”. Jesus’ hearers would have taken it as insignificant. Yet there is an irony to Jesus’ use of it. There is a hidden meaning. He uses it in reference to the heavenly figure of the Son of Man in Daniel 7: 13-14. Here the Son of Man is a human being-like figure who becomes king of the whole earth and ruler of an everlasting dominion. Daniel is apocalyptic literature. This type of literature presents everything in “code”. This is the “mystery”. The point is that only those “in the know” have the “key” to interpreting the code. Here Jesus takes up the title – in such a way that those outside of “the know” would hear it as insignificant and everyday. But to us – readers “in the know” – it plays as a statement: “I am a king. I am a ruler. But not one like you’ll imagine! I am king and messiah – but am both only by way of the cross!”

Truth, correlation and consistency (James 3: 1-12)
“It’s not just what you say that matters, but what you mean!” That’s what we see clearly in the conflict over words and titles between Jesus and his disciples. It’s no good getting the theology right if we mean something different. We behave often as though what is most important is getting the words right. We think that if we craft fine-sounding and worthy Church statements, we’ve “dealt” with an issue. But saying correct things is not the same as saying true things!

That is the whole thrust of James’ letter. He says in 2:1 (referring to the practice of favouritism) “When you live and act like that, can you really claim to believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” James doesn’t ask them for their church position paper on Christology – or, indeed, on how to treat people of different rank, class and income levels! He simply says, “Listen. I look at Jesus, and how he behaved. And I look at you, and how you behave. And I struggle to find the correlation! It doesn’t add up!”

What we say is important. But it isn’t the same thing as making clear what we believe! It is the correlation between words and actions that reveal the truth or otherwise of faith. Peter can say “You are the messiah!” – and then, with the same mouth and in the next breath, try to dissuade Jesus from being the messiah! Similarly, James points to the ways in which the believers in his church use their tongues both to bless one minute and curse the next.

I’m glad I’m not part of James’ church! It sounds as though they had real problems with the ways in which people used their tongues and spoke to one another! If the gospel passage in one sense pointed to the way in which actions shape words (by giving them their content), James is alive to the power of words to shape actions, relationships and personalities! It is not true that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”! Words can wound, scar and remain in the psyche long after bones have healed and bruises faded. John Bell starts off music workshops by asking how many people have been shaped by being told that they can’t sing. He then tells them that they can – and proceeds (in most cases!) to work to undo what people have come to believe about themselves – the words they use to describe themselves.

Of course, James is concerned more about the words we use to each other and about each other than about “theology” – words about faith. But the two are intimately related. Like Jesus, words, for James, express what is “inside” – what is in the heart. He clearly believes that faith in Jesus issues in some sort of discernible transformation of people. They change character – become more like Jesus. And this is seen not only in actions but in the ways in which words are used to create or destroy relationships.

Words! Jesus is the Word – God’s self-disclosure in human form. Jesus, in other words, shows us what it is to be human, as well as what God is like. We are flawed and damaged, broken and needy. That is not to say that we are as bad as we could possibly be! Nor is it remotely to say that we are therefore unlovable as far as God is concerned! But it is to say that what we find in Jesus is not just a wonderful example to inspire us. We don’t need “reforming”, as human beings: we need “recreating”. And that is what Jesus does for us (as Paul reminds us in 2Corinthians 5:17). We have the chance to become a new creation – part of the new life of resurrection and salvation that God yearns to pour out. But that involves the death of the old, and the rising to life of the new. That is what we are given in Christ. It is above and beyond all that we can imagine or think. But it lies on the other side of the cross. And Jesus says, “There isn’t any other way, folks! I’ve looked – believe me, if there were, I’dve found it. So that’s the way I’m going. Want to follow?”

Amen.

Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2: 1-10 (11-13), 14-17
Mark 7: 24-37

Jesus – boorish, exclusivist, racist and defiled? Jesus – taught a lesson about grace by a Gentile woman? Of course not! This is Jesus, the Son of God. This is God in the flesh. It’s absurd and faithless even to suggest that Jesus might be anything less than perfect! Jesus is perfect. Jesus knows everything. He doesn’t need a lesson from anyone about anything – especially from a Gentile woman about God and the gospel! On that basis, scholars have done all sorts of exegetical gymnastics to avoid the plain meaning of what Mark tells us in today’s gospel passage. The most common way to go is to suggest that this is a particularly “edgy” – but highly successful – teaching strategy by Jesus to lead the woman to understand something she doesn’t know beforehand. One exegete goes so far as suggesting that calling the woman a “dog” was not an insult at all. He (surprised at the gender?) suggests that both Jesus and the woman were Cynics, for whom the term was actually a compliment. What we have, therefore, is a scenario in which a delighted Jesus discovers what must be the only Cynic in the region of Tyre for miles around and enters into friendly, spirited repartee. To his surprise and pleasure, he is bested by this adept cynic and concedes defeat good-naturedly. Yeah! I’m convinced … NOT!

We might laugh, but it goes to show the deep-seated unease at Mark’s presentation of Jesus in this encounter. Show this passage to anyone who isn’t conditioned by concerns about traditional Christian Christology, and they will tell you that it hardly shows Jesus in a complimentary light. This is about Jesus, not the woman, learning a lesson about grace and inclusiveness.

Look at how Mark sets it up. Jesus has just explained that the evil things that come from within are what defile (v23). Then follows an exchange – a conversation. The very first words to be reported after v23 – the very next “thing from within” to emerge – come from Jesus (the Gentile woman’s request for healing is in indirect speech). And what we hear is: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs!” Now, however much we may want to major on the fact that Jesus is not being necessarily offensive or harsh in suggesting that “salvation comes first to the Jews”, we cannot escape the harshness of “dogs”. This was a term of real contempt and abuse – the equivalent of “nigger” or “kaffir” or “kike”. What makes it worse is that Jesus isn’t using this heatedly: he’s completely dismissive of her. It’s standard, crude, unthinking prejudice.

Remember, he’s trying to escape notice. Here comes a woman with a request – and Jesus moves to brush her away and move on. Yet she won’t let that happen. Her response is both unexpected and audacious: she takes Jesus’ words and turns them back on him. “Yes, I may be a dog, but are you so hard-hearted that you won’t even throw me a crumb?”

We almost sense Jesus’ surprise. He stops in his tracks, “seeing” her for the first time – as a mother, a woman, a human being, a child of God. Mark presents this as a “conversion experience” for Jesus. Jesus realises something he hadn’t realised before: the “Bread” (the use of “crumb” isn’t accidental) is for all people, not just the Jews! And eight verses later, as a result, Jesus feeds a huge crowd of Gentiles – with bread! And look at the contrast between Jesus’ responses here and then in 8:2: “I have compassion for the crowd …” Do you see? He’s learned compassion for Gentiles – from the woman!

Jesus has learned the truth of his own insights. He has recognised (in last week’s passage) just how damaging exclusion can be, and how it depends on an absence of compassion. He’s rejected the purity laws that marginalise people for that reason, stating clearly that holiness and purity have to do with God-likeness. Yet Jesus himself has to learn that he himself is not immune to the drive to reject people who are different. He learns to expand his compassion – to widen his definition of “neighbour”.

For those of us who pay lip service to Jesus’ humanity, but really believe that his divinity by-passed all the things that we human beings share, this passage is problematic. Yet if we put our money where our theological mouths are, it is a profoundly encouraging and hopeful passage. It presents us with a Jesus who is human, just as we are. It presents Jesus as “growing in grace”, just as we need to. It encourages us to do so, and affirms that genuine growth in grace is possible and realistic.

Putting our money where our mouths are (James 2: 1-17/Proverbs 22)
James confronts the ways in which we say – and mean! – good things theologically, but fail to live them out. Often our failures are unconscious. We simply don’t notice the significance of how we view and treat people, because that’s the way we’ve been brought up. We don’t intend to be unkind or exclusive – we simply are. That’s because “sin” is more than the intention to do evil. It is also the ways in which “things just are” because we’ve set them up that way – sinfully.

In today’s reading, he cites the example of unconscious partiality – the unthinking favouring of rich people, and the instinctive revulsion against poor, dirty, smelly and unpleasant people. Recognising that and overcoming it requires an effort. It requires a conversion – the realisation that we are not living by the insights of our faith and not putting our money where our mouths are.

James quotes the “second great commandment” to love neighbour as self (v8). He could easily have made his point by citing the example of Jesus in today’s gospel passage! “It’s all very well professing to love your neighbour, but if you choose as your neighbour only those people who are easy and whom you like, or who are like you, or whom you want to be friends with, then you are failing to keep the commandment!” Nor is it enough to say, “Well, I may have failed in this (insignificant) area to keep God’s Law, but I’m not an adulterer, or a murderer!” James goes straight for the jugular: if you want to play the game of calculating whether you’ve kept the letter of the Law, you’ve had it! If the Law is about that calculated form of rule-keeping, remember: fail in one (tiny) area, and you’ve broken the Law!

Either the Law is a means of self-justification (in which case, says James, we’ve had it), or else it is what God intends: a law of liberty which frees people to act in a God-like way! How will we know the difference? If we “really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ” as we claim to do (v1), we will be like Jesus. We will behave and act like Jesus – ie our definition of “neighbour” will be bounded only by the limits of our compassion. Words are cheap and theology is easy: what matters – and what gives the truth or lie to words and theology – is the extent to which they result in Christ-like actions. This is the theme he will take up in next week’s passage: faith without works is worthless. Put your money where your mouth is!

Note that for James, as for Jesus, the “test case” is always how we treat those less fortunate than ourselves – the poor. This is the acid test. It’s the same “test” applied in Proverbs 22. The “good name” is not about riches. It’s about how the poor are treated, because the “good name” is about God-likeness. It is about generosity (grace) in v9 – the generosity that shares bread (hmmm! Now where has that theme appeared this week?) with the poor. It’s all too easy to rob the poor and crush the afflicted (v22). That doesn’t necessarily happen out of a deliberate sadism or wickedness: it happens easily because it happens unconsciously. The poor are “invisible”, just as the Gentile woman was off Jesus’ radar screen … until he noticed her in a way he never had before. And remember, says the writer: you may not even “see” them, but Yahweh does – and their cause is Yahweh’s cause! So if you want to be God-like, be as vigilant for the poor and dispossessed as Yahweh is!

The deaf hear and the dumb speak (Mark 7: 31ff)
Mark goes on immediately to record the healing of the deaf mute in the Decapolis region. Note two things: firstly, there’s the contrast between Jesus’ desire for privacy (v33) while healing, and the crowd’s broadcasting of the miracle (v37). Here is part of Mark’s “Messianic Secret” motif. Although the crowd are not calling him the messiah, they are still getting the wrong end of the stick over the miracles, and majoring on the spectacular rather than the true meaning. This is paralleled by the commands to silence over Jesus’ messiahship: “messiah” is true, but not if it’s being misinterpreted! In the same way, the crowds have got the “true-but-misinterpreted” dynamic over miracles here: they say, “He even makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak!” (v37). These are signs of the Last Days, although they’re not framed here as a deliberate citation. This is the irony: these are indeed signs of the Last Days, because “the time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand” (1:14). But it has been done so by Jesus – in ways that people never dreamed it would be and which, in the end, they refuse to accept.

Secondly, this is part of the discipleship narrative. Mark will increasingly use incidents like the healings to contrast the truth about Jesus with the disciples’ increasing inability and refusal to believe. So the disciples will be “blind” while blind people are made to see. Here, Jesus wishes to keep his privacy, because people are “deaf” to the truth he is proclaiming and likely to “shout out” the wrong sorts of things, so that Jesus will be increasingly seen as a populist wonder-worker, making his mission more difficult. Significantly, the disciples will increasingly buy into this vision of the messiah as a populist, miracle-working, invincible Jewish nationalist, rather than the suffering messiah that Jesus is called to be. They will be “deaf” to Jesus’ passion predictions, and the more he wishes to silence wrong notions of messiahship, the more they will try to drown him out.

What we have in this week’s texts, then, is the encouragement to recognise the things that blind us to the truth about Jesus. Christian faith and truth – discipleship – is not “obvious”. Salvation and faith do not automatically inoculate us against deep-seated prejudice, or open our eyes to the people who are victims of the “in/out” boundaries within which we enclose our so-called Christian communities. I say “so-called” not to be derogatory or cynical, but to emphasises the point that all the writers today make in different ways: we need to be vigilant and self-critical, because what we say we believe doesn’t always cash out that way in our lives. We may claim to be followers of Jesus, yet be startlingly unlike Jesus! That will be far more obvious to others than it is to us – and to none more so than “the poor” – those we exclude and simply don’t even notice.

Amen.

1Kings 2: 10-12; 3: 3-14 NRSV text
Psalm 111 NRSV text
Ephesians 5: 15-20 NRSV text
John 6: 51-58 NRSV text

“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” (6:51). This is the culmination of the “Bread of Life” section. It has been a complex section – complex, rather than complicated. John has explored different aspects and implications of the image through a series of misunderstandings. It began in 6:26, with Jesus telling the crowd that they were looking for him only in order to have full bellies, whereas he was offering eternal life. John then uses the question about manna in the wilderness (6:31ff) to emphasise the theme of “bread from heaven”, picking up one of his key themes about Jesus being “from above”.

At this point (6:41), Jesus’ opponents (“the Jews”) appear in the narrative. There’s a certain artificiality about their appearance. Until now, the story has “worked”: there’s a crowd who has been fed miraculously in the wilderness, who has also realised that Jesus performed some sort of “teleporting” miracle from one side of the Lake to the other, and this leads fairly naturally into a discussion about physical vs soul hunger, and comparisons between what has happened to them and what happened to the proto-Israelites in the wilderness. Suddenly, though, “the Jews” appear in the narrative – as though Jesus were in Jerusalem or a synagogue. Their appearance signals something important: there’s a serious theological dispute in progress here!

“The crowd” are the hangers-on and would-be followers of Jesus. Jesus doesn’t “dispute” with them – he teaches. He speaks to them as possible followers. The issue is that they need to see in him much more than the miracle worker who will keep their bellies full: they need to see him as the Living Bread who satisfies the soul-hunger that mirrors starvation of the body. “The Jews”, however, are Jesus’ opponents (see the section on The role of “the Jews” in John’s gospel in last week’s post). They have already decided that the are not going to be followers of Jesus. They are his “persecutors” (5:16) who are seeking actively to kill him (5:18). Their opposition is rooted in their refusal to recognise Jesus’ authority and the truth (grace and truth) he proclaims, and justified by appeal to the established religious norms and traditions. Hence their appearance in the narrative signals that John’s Jesus is about to engage in a theological dispute, centred on the person of Jesus himself.

It is centred on the person of Jesus because this is precisely what Jesus offers: himself! He is the Bread of Life. His flesh is given for the life of the world. He is the true bread that comes down from heaven. And so the dispute is divided into two parts. In last week’s section (6:41ff), the first dispute is over the “came down from heaven” bit. Jesus’ authority is vested in his origin: he knows what he is talking about! So now, in v51, he repeats the claim in order to deal with second part: “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”. This leads to the second “complaint” of “the Jews”: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (v52).

Bread, flesh and the Eucharist
John’s is not only the most overtly “theological” gospel, it is also the most overtly “churchy”, in the sense that it is a sustained presentation of the Christian Church’s gospel – it’s message of salvation in Jesus Christ. To that extent, it is unapologetically a “post-Easter” gospel: John’s primary intention in presenting a “life of Jesus” is to draw out the meaning of it all – the “grace and truth” to be found in Jesus. It is furthest away from what we would understand as “biography”, and most expressly reflects the context of a post-Easter, established Christian community. We find, then, precisely what we might expect: things which are implicit in the synoptic gospels (eg Christology) are made most explicit in the Fourth Gospel.

We have seen how the Eucharistic shaping of the feeding story (which is present in the synoptic tradition) is deliberately heightened in John’s account. And here, in the dispute about “how can he give us his flesh to eat?” the answer is quite explicitly Eucharistic: we “eat his flesh and drink his blood” (vv54-5) through the Eucharist! This is where it all comes together: Jesus is the Living Bread which has come down from heaven to give Life to the world. How is Jesus “Living Bread”? By giving his life on the cross. But why “Bread”? This is a strange image! Bread is something which is eaten. And that’s the point, isn’t it? We “eat his flesh and drink his blood” (remember: Jesus talks about satisfying hunger and thirst – being food and drink in 6:35) in the Eucharist. This is what gives eternal life! Far from being a passage that makes it apparently easy to distinguish between the so-called “physical” (body hunger) and the so-called “spiritual” (soul hunger), John’s gospel is almost disgustingly “bodily”! It’s not only “the Jews” who recoil from Jesus’ words in vv53-57: just ask any vegetarian how it sounds to them!

In fact, just ask any good low-church memorialist what they think! The high sacramental theology here is a real problem for them. I know – because I was one! It was this passage, in fact, that made me realise a non-sacramental understanding of Communion just wouldn’t do. You’ve got to do an awful lot of insupportable spiritualising gymnastics to avoid the clear sense of what Jesus says here in John’s gospel: there is a direct connection between eating Eucharistic bread and receiving not only bodily nourishment but eternal life; between eating the bread and literally (sorry, sacramentally!) being fed on the body of Jesus, which is life for the world. Put it this way (or at least, I did): whatever the disputes we may have about how the sacrament “works”, the sacrament is more than mere symbolism (“eat this bread and remember what it symbolises: Christ’s sacrifice”). Furthermore, however we may want to argue about “what happens” at the moment of consecration, whatever does happen is what makes it “eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood” as Jesus says we do, here in this passage! What John is playing on here with mischievous delight is the fact that non-Christians – particularly Jews – mistakenly thought of the early Christians as cannibals, who feasted on their saviour’s body and drank his blood. That was the rumour in the local inter-faith meetings – and John lays the blame for its origin squarely on the lips of Jesus himself!

Sacrament, Incarnation and salvation
It’s a novel position for me to find myself in at this point, banging the drum for a highly sacramental view of Communion. But then, John’s theology (and that of his Christian community) is highly sacramental! The Eucharist is the means by which we (literally) ingest salvation. God – or at least salvation – is present in the bread and wine. Eating and drinking is the means whereby we “abide in Jesus” (v56), “live because of him” (v57) and “live forever” (v58).

That is not the same thing as saying that much high-church Eucharistic theology is right, though – or at least, that it is “biblical” in the sense that John’s community is sacramental! To say that John’s community has a “high” sacramental theology is not the same thing as saying they are “spikey” as we understand high church theology and practice! The Christian Church has struggled over sacraments. Christians have killed each other over how Jesus is present in the Eucharist. The Feast of Life for the world has been the cause of bitter, deadly wrangling. Christian division over Eucharistic theology means that Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians will not share Communion with Christians of other denominations. It means that huge amounts of energy are spent over trying to “solve the differences” between understandings of the feast that expresses our fundamental shared union and identity in Christ. “High-Church” people refuse to recognise the validity of other practices. “Low-Church” Christians accuse their “higher” brothers and sisters of “selling out to superstition”. The Eucharist becomes the outward, visible sign of an inward, invisible refusal to recognise shared Christian faith! We would do well to look more closely at John’s view of the relationship between sacrament, Incarnation and salvation.

Unlike extremely “low” understandings of the Eucharist, John’s community has a real theology of sacraments. They convey grace – the “grace upon grace” that we receive in Jesus, who is the Word made flesh (cf 1:14; 16). John doesn’t buy into a distinction between receiving salvation through faith alone (“belief”) rather than through the sacraments. Look at Jesus’ words in 6:47: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life”. So salvation comes through faith – but then Jesus goes on immediately to talk about “eating bread” – his flesh! And that is the means of eternal life! On the one hand, then, it appears that salvation is through the person of Jesus (low church), while on the other, it is through the sacraments – ie the Church. This latter position is the reason for the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus – “there is no salvation outside the Church!”

John doesn’t buy this “either/or” because of Incarnation! Jesus is the Word made flesh – the sacrament! Jesus is heaven come down to earth – the presence of God in earthly, created things. He is “the Bread come down from heaven”. Therefore salvation is nothing other than Jesus. It is Jesus who is the Bread that gives life to the world. But just as Jesus was God’s sacramental, saving presence among us as a human being, so Jesus continues to be God’s sacramental, saving presence among us in bread and wine. To eat and drink, believing, is part of whatever we mean by “saving faith” – or whatever Jesus means when he says “whoever believes has eternal life”. “Believing” is a whole-life-involving matter. It is following. It is believing. It is eating and drinking. The point is that all of these involve and are part of being drawn into the life of Jesus and therefore into the very Life of God. Our encounter with Jesus in the sacraments is no less a saving encounter than is conversion – or daily discipleship of Jesus! To try and make those sorts of distinctions is to do violence (in John’s terms) to the fact that Jesus is God in human flesh, come among us to save us – to transform every aspect of our lives, daily!

This means that there is no place for a theology of the Eucharist that treats it as “the Church’s possession”. When we say, liturgically, “This is the table of the Lord”, we are criticising any church-attempt to “take over” the Eucharist and control it. When we make it some sort of Gnostic mystery, with access controlled by the Church and surrounded with arcane requirements about the ordained status or gender of the president, we have lost the plot – the “salvation plot”. This is the feast of Life for the world – not a celebration of the “in-status” of the Christian community! The Eucharist is no more “ours” than is the cross! And that is no more pronounced than in John’s gospel, where Jesus says, “And I, if I am lifted up [on the cross], will draw all people to myself!” John presents the “lifting up” of the cross as the great, free invitation to all! How dare we do less with the Eucharist! The Eucharist is the anamnesis – the remembrance – of the cross. It symbolises the cross, and ought to do so by virtue of its radically open invitation: “whosoever will may come”.

True bread and false bread (1Kings 2: 10-12; 3: 3-14/Ephesians 5: 15-20)
John presents Jesus as the True Bread. The manna in the wilderness was not the true bread – it merely foreshadowed it. It did not give Life in the sense that Jesus does.

I want to look at our other two readings in terms of this gospel theme of discernment – distinguishing between what is true and what appears to be true. Solomon asks Yahweh for the gift of wisdom in order to be able to discern between good and evil (3:9). Now we often naively suppose that the difference between the two is as clear as black vs white, light vs dark, death vs life. For all the fact that John talks in these terms of absolute opposites, today’s gospel passage should caution us against supposing that he is as dualistic as he is often accused of being! “The Jews” claimed that the manna in the wilderness was “the bread that came down from heaven” – the True Bread. The weren’t saying, “The Golden Calf is the true God”! They had taken something good and used it as a means of resisting the truth about God in Jesus. Solomon knew what John portrays: it is sometimes intensely difficult to distinguish between good and evil, truth and falsehood. And the stakes can be enormously high!

Similarly, the Ephesians are enjoined to be wise (Ephesians 4:15), exercising discernment. There was apparently little difference between a good old drunken sing-along and Christian services of worship in Ephesus (Hmm! It would be pretty darn difficult to mistake some of our exquisitely ordered services, solely with hymns written by people who have been dead for at least a hundred years, for anything like a riotous party! Wonder what that says?). Yet Paul says there is a difference, and it isn’t about appearance.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the implications for the types of spiritual freedom that were clearly commonplace in the early Church and which we might do well to discover! The point I want to make is that “living as wise people” is about the spiritual discipline and task of discernment – of distinguishing between true and false claims to truth. The fact is that a lot of stuff – from froth and bubble to dangerously evil things like Apartheid, Nazism and contemporary Israeli nationalism have been “justified” by appeal to Jesus, the Church, the bible, tradition and God! Things which are good in themselves (like manna in the wilderness) can be misused to resist the truth of God in Jesus – the grace which saves. It’s about discerning what is true bread, and what is false. And failure to discern which is which means that people miss out on the True Bread and the Life which is offered in Jesus – the True Bread whose flesh is given for the Life of the world.

Amen.