Bread of Dissent

Sunday, August 13th, 2006
Proper 14 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 6:41-51

41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 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.”

What was it about Jesus that so infuriated the leaders of his day? What was it that set their teeth on edge, that made them cringe, or tear their garments, or want to chase after him with an armload of rocks to throw at him?

It seems the image we have of Christ today is the victim somewhere along the line of a publicity rewrite. Somebody wanted to make him a lot more popular than he started out to be, a lot more palatable than he might have otherwise been; a lot more pleasing to the general public.

I’m reminded of one of the selling points when you see an add for a cat from the animal shelter – “de-clawed”. I wonder if we haven’t sanitized the image, tamed the rhetoric, smoothed the rough edges, and come up with a Jesus that is … just so NICE, that you wonder why anyone could possibly have anything against him – and by extension, against US, as his followers? After all, doesn’t Jesus preach peace, and justice, and truth, and righteousness, and isn’t he so incredibly gentle that it would basically take a madman to oppose him in all his frailty? A friend of ours has a term for it – terminal, toxic, NICENESS.

Before I get into this, here’s the disclaimer: I don’t have anything at all against niceness, against nice people, against the concept or practice of being nice … heck, I think I’m probably one of it’s strongest proponents … and I DO believe Jesus was incredibly nice – that he showed us a way to be nice that hadn’t even been THOUGHT of, much less experienced, in the world before he arrived on the scene.

What I’m getting at is that we make a mistake if we stop there. And I confess to you that *I* DO that TOO often – stop at the end of the niceness and say “that’s what Jesus was all about”, when in truth Jesus was as fully multidimensional, as fully complex an individual as we are. You’ve heard the terms “single issue voters”, or “single issue candidates”? Well, I don’t think Jesus was either—and while I can understand the reasoning that would make one a single-issue voter or a single-issue candidate, it would not be advisable to call Jesus a single-issue Savior.

Yes, he DID come to reconcile the world to God.

Yes, he DID come to teach us the way to live meaningful, rich, FULL lives.

Yes, he DID come to show us how to face tyranny and injustice and call a spade a spade, and not let the truth get buried in the froth of distracting chatter.

Yes, he DID come to live a life that shows US how to live in his footsteps.

…

You see? We can’t stop at any one of those items on the list and say “this is what Jesus was ALL about.” It’s a yes, AND list, not an either-or list.

So what do we do with that?

How do we figure out what it means to follow Christ when he was about so many different things?

In all honesty, it is safe to say that these all stem from a single point.

Life, fully lived, as God intended.

God gave us life and we squandered it. We devalued it, we discredit the life of those with whom we disagree, we belittle the ideas and philosophies of those who are different from us, we more often than not find ways to diminish the views and attitudes and … contributions of those with whom we are not comfortable sharing a PLANET, much less a room.

But it is all part of what it means to participate in the life of this world.

Yes, the world is broken, yes, it seems to have broken more over the last 5 years, and especially in the last 6 weeks, with everything that is going on … it seems almost overwhelming to even contemplate the hope that it will one day get better.

But it will.

Hope tells us that. Faith tells us that.

Love pushes us in that direction.

Last night I had the privilege of conducting the wedding ceremony of a couple in Montross. The groom is from a local family. The bride is from Mexico. When we met for their premarital counseling, I asked them how things were with their different cultural backgrounds. They didn’t gloss over their answer. They both said there were times when they realized there were some pretty big hurdles to climb in that area. But what got them through was the fact that they are committed to each other and had made that promise to love each other – whatever happens. The bride’s three brothers and one of her sisters were able to be at the ceremony, but her parents were not. They are back in Mexico. At the beginning of the ceremony, there was a beautiful song sung by a cousin of the groom – in Spanish – that spoke of the wonder that love unbound brings to a life – how it opens our eyes, how it shows us things we’ve never seen before, how it communicates when there is not always an easy way TO communicate … and the bride began to cry.

I know it’s not unusual for the bride to cry at her wedding, but I couldn’t help but wonder what was behind the tears. I suspect it had to do partly with the absences of immediate as well as extended family members that she would have dearly loved to have seen on this occasion, of all. But I think it might have had to do with the words of the song – to realize that there is something strong enough to break through the walls that we build around us – for protection, or for isolation, for insulation or for defense… there are as many reasons to put up those walls as there are people in this room. But there is an overarching, overwhelming and COMPELLING reason to tear the same walls down.

Love.

I started out talking about how we’ve come up with a nice Jesus, (good boy!) whom we are much more easily able to pigeon hole into a box and keep him there, away from the darker aspects of our lives, the ones we want to keep hidden from him – and from God – and pretend that there’s really no need for him to either see them or be aware of them.

Does it sound as silly to you hearing it as it sounds to me saying it?

That we really DO somehow think that God doesn’t know – THROUGH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE – what some of those darker aspects of life on earth are all about?

Why do we equate niceness with innocence? Because we don’t think that anyone who has been around the block a couple of times can remain NICE. They have to develop an edge somehow. They have to be rough deep down inside – where the wounds first appeared, and scarred over … where the knife-words or -acts cut, or festered, and created that blackness that we express by being ‘real’, a euphemism that usually translates into salty language or bawdy humor at some point. We have a way of communicating our experiences without actually communicating them, don’t we?

So let’s take one of our better-known passages and read it in new language, to see where it leaves us:

If I can sing so gorgeously as to melt your heart with the beauty of my song, and don’t love, I am fingernails scraping down a chalkboard.

If I am uncommonly wise, brimming with insight that illumines the minds of many, and do not love, I am a waste.

If I apply my gifts and make a contribution in my church that makes a difference in the world and love is lacking, I might as well not exist.

If I reject the shallowness of my culture and live by values that are honest, pure, responsible and right, and am not so loving, my values don’t mean squat.

If I pray daily, think spiritual thoughts, give generously, volunteer for mission work, and am actually loveless, none of it counts.

If I am totally committed to care for the neglected, am an advocate for the poor, and am personally lacking in love, I amount to precisely nothing.

The point Jesus was making was that it makes a difference what moves us – what motivates us, what fires our engines.

If it isn’t love, then there’s precious little worth doing.

That is a radical concept to folks who are consumed with DOING for doing’s sake. That is, I think, what got the leaders so riled up at Jesus – the fact that he was telling them “look at your heart, what is THERE, what is making you do all this stuff? If it isn’t love, you might as well not be doing it.”

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Let’s explore that together.

It means to seize hold of that love that we have at some point in our lives experienced, that we have known that we have felt, that we have shared. And make that our engine. Make that our fuel. Make that that which fills us to the point where we cannot hold it in.

We are in the process, we are coming to the point where we are going to have a meeting to vote on who is going to lead this church as committee members, as teachers, as officers, and I would invite you, those who have added their name to that list, to make a conscious effort to make love your motivation for being in the position. Whether it is sitting down there or up here, behind me or back behind the sound mixer, whether it is being downstairs in one of the classrooms with the children during the worship hour, or whether it is taking care of the outside or the inside of this building, whether it is making sure that all the light bulbs are on, or that the carpet is clean. Make it love.

Make love your fire.

Let’s pray.