John
6:35, 41-51
“She never complained.” That comment
always gets my attention. Over the years of my ministry I have sat with
countless families in the aftermath of death. And it is during this tender time
that families reflect on the wonderful qualities of their loved ones. “She never knew a stranger.” “He was devoted
to his family.” “She was selfless.” “He was giving.” “She never complained.”
“Really?!?!?” I wonder, “She never complained?” Of course I don’t
say any of this out loud. I know better than that. And I also know that my
internal questioning has little to do with the recently deceased. Whether they
did or did not complain is really not the issue. The issue is that I know that
that would never be said about me. So if I predecease you and you are kind
enough to come to my funeral, heads up, if someone says, “That Kathleen, she
never complained.” They’re flat out lying!
That’s why I feel such a kinship with the
Jews in our gospel reading...because they are complaining. Jesus has just told
them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and
whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Lovely words, but they can be
hard to swallow. It’s not that the Jews don’t believe that God provides or that
God feeds. Their beef is that they KNOW Jesus. They know his mom, his dad. They
know where he’s from - Nazareth, not heaven. And the two just don’t mix. Jesus
can’t be both from Nazareth and from heaven. It’s a complete violation of their
expectations. And when expectations are violated the complaining begins.
Isn’t it nice that we know better? I mean
we know that Jesus came from Nazareth but that he also is the Son of God who
came down from heaven. We can hold that tension - that both/and quality of who
Jesus is, the mystery of being both human and divine.
So we might not have a problem about
Jesus being the bread of life. But what about the part where he’s talking about
eternal life? Because oftentimes when we hear that phrase, “eternal life,” our
minds automatically jump to “eternity.” As in a far-off fantasy future where
the promises of resurrection, and seeing God’s glory in heaven, and having
every tear wiped away are all perfectly fulfilled. As I heard one parishioner
put it, she hopes that it’s like Disneyworld for adults. Which sounds pretty appealing.
But guess what? When Jesus talks about
eternal life he’s not talking about some future fantasy Disneyworld. He’s
actually talking about the present, real world - life that is now. Which then
gets harder to grasp and may violate our own expectations of how things should
be. Because the eternal life that Jesus is offering to us is a life that is
always in the present - which is made clear by the present tense that he uses
whenever speaking of eternal life. Like in our reading today, “Very truly, I tell
you, whoever believes has [present tense] eternal life.” Life the believer is
living in the present, right here, right now.
Just as the Jews found it difficult to
accept that Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus of heaven could be one and the same.
Maybe you are like me and may struggle at times with the idea that this
imperfect earthly life and eternal life go together. Now it’s not that this
life is all bad, but it’s far from perfect. The good and the bad are so mixed
together. Grace and goodness and love are real, but at the same time brokenness
and pain and suffering abound. This mix is not what eternal life is supposed to
be, is it? Because if it is, it’s a violation of my expectations: cue the
complaining.
But complaining really gets you nowhere.
The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor reflects on this in a sermon on the story of
manna in the wilderness - the manna which Jesus speaks of in our reading. You
may recall that when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness they
started complaining about being hungry (a testimony to the fact that God has
been putting up with our complaining for a very long time!). Now in response to
the people’s cries God provides food, manna. But it’s not the kind of food that
everyone expected. It is a pale, flaky substance that melts in the heat of day
and attracts worms if stored overnight. Many modern scholars believe that this
ancient manna is most likely a substance that comes from plant lice, plant lice
who feast on the sap of certain trees and then excrete a ball of juice or flake
that is rich in carbohydrates and sugar. Meaning that manna - the heavenly food
that God provided in the wilderness - was probably bug excrement!
Which presents a challenge for us all.
Can we let go of our expectations, our preconceived notions about how we think
things should be, so that we can embrace what actually is - God’s grace, God’s
life, God’s provisions that may be ordinary or unexpected, but all around? The
Rev. Taylor puts it this way, “If your manna has to drop straight out of heaven
looking like a perfect loaf of butter-crust bread, then chances are you are
going to go hungry a lot. When you do not get the miracle you are praying for,
you are going to think that God is ignoring you or punishing you or - worse
yet- that God is not there...Meanwhile, you are going to miss a lot of other
things God is doing for you because they are too ordinary - like bug juice.” [1]
Jesus does not want any one of us to miss
out. He doesn’t want us to get stuck complaining because the life that God
offers might somehow violate our expectations. Jesus is the bread of life, our
bread of life. The One who is both from Nazareth and from heaven at the same
time. The One whose very self is the nourishment that offers us eternal life as
we live our lives right here, right now. It’s a tension for sure. But a mystery
of both/and that we are invited to experience. For as we feed on the bread of
life we are assured that grace and goodness and love are ultimately more real,
more powerful, more lasting than any brokenness or pain or suffering. That is
no fantasy. That is eternal truth that lasts forever. And that is nothing to
complain about.
[1] Bread of Angels, p. 10.
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