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John 6:41-59

⁴¹ Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴² They 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’?” ⁴³ Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. ⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It 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. ⁴⁶ Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ 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.”

⁵² The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³ So 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. ⁵⁴ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵ for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ 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.” ⁵⁹ He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

Lots going on here, but let’s talk about bread, wine, blood, and flesh: non-zombie edition.

Jesus certainly seems to be pushing the limits of his whole “bread of heaven” idea pretty far. But John, editing Jesus’ memoirs decades later, also seems to phrase this in terms that evoke the practice of communion, or what some places is called the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist.

What’s happening when each week I take this little piece of bread and dip it in wine, and eat it in memory of Jesus?

Well, I’m eating a wine-soaked cracker, for starters, which is an odd thing to do. Odd doesn’t seem like a problem for Jesus. He takes it weirder.

He was turned over to the justice system by the leaders of his own religion and then killed as an enemy of the state. But he and his friends said that his death was also no accident, that in it Jesus was completing God’s tour of getting to know the suffering of the human experience first hand, taking on our burdens and grief and consequence of all our jacked-up ways. He was the sacrifice to end all sacrifice, rooting violence out of the religious experience. He showed us what God is like, loving and forgiving even as we killed him. And he began undoing the power of sin and death from the inside out by overcoming it himself. I pick up that piece of bread that Jesus said was his body, soaked in the wine that Jesus said was his blood, and I remember some of these things.

Jesus also said this wine was about a New Covenant, a new agreement God has made with people. The Old Covenant said obey me and life will go well, disobey and you will die. I’m simplifying – it had its beauty, to be sure – but I’m also fairly directly paraphrasing the words key words of the law books.

Jesus’ new way sounds very different. No wonder they’re arguing. Change in our mental models of anything, including our models for God and faith, is hard.

Jesus says to trust that he’s from God. He knows the Father. And feast on him, live with him. Eat what God’s sent down, and live forever.

That little wine-soaked cracker isn’t going to help me live very long, but as I chew and swallow, I think, Jesus, you are my way to God. You have what I need for all the things I can’t do for myself. You can stir in this crazy concoction of my life circumstances and make out of it joy and peace and love and courage and wonder. Help me live today, Jesus.

John 6:22-40 (NRSV)

²² The next day the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there. They also saw that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. ²³ Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. ²⁴ So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

²⁵ When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” ²⁶ Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ²⁷ Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” ²⁸ Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” ²⁹ Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” ³⁰ So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? ³¹ Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” ³² Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” ³⁴ They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

³⁵ Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶ But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. ³⁷ Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; ³⁸ for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. ³⁹ And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. ⁴⁰ This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”

This conversation reminds me of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. She’s thirsty, and Jesus is like, “No, you’re thirsty.” She’s talking about water, and Jesus offers living water.

Here, Jesus says they think they’re hungry for bread, but really they’s hungry at a deeper level.

The crowds think: wait, this reminds us of those stories from so many centuries ago, when old hero Moses summoned that magical bread called “manna” to keep feeding our ancestors. Jesus says: I am the manna. I am God’s food for the whole world.

Interestingly, the word “manna” for the food God provided in the desert meant something like, “What is this?”

And that is the question at this point in John regarding Jesus. Who or what is this man?

Some of what Jesus has to say:

• Bread of heaven
• Make you never-hungry and never-thirsty
• Sent from God
• Giver of life
• Never driving anyone away
• Never losing anything or anyone
• Doing exactly what God wants
• Extending life forever, even after death

That’s some list, isn’t it? How does this list relate to the best or worst experiences in your own family or cultural history?

Are you inclined to do what Jesus calls “the work of God,” to trust Jesus to be these things for you and yours?

John 6:16-24 (NRSV)

¹⁶ When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, ¹⁷ got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. ¹⁸ The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. ¹⁹ When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. ²⁰ But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” ²¹ Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

Jesus’ four memoirs included in the Bible all tell stories of nighttime boating adventures. The Sea of Galilee was important landmark in Jesus’ hometown region, some of his apprentices had been fishermen, and these stories were important to them. In some of them, Jesus is purported to have walked on water, meeting them at night, in the midst of a small storm.

Power over the waters was a feature of what it meant to be God in the Hebrew Bible. The ancestors of the Jews were very much not sea-faring people, and the waters of the Mediterranean – the largest body of water they would know of – represented fearsome chaos that only God could control.

For Jesus to walk upon these waters would for his apprentices, have been a mark of his connection to the divine. I suppose it would be for us too, for other reasons. Not only that, but the Greek line translated “It is I” could also be read “I am.” We’ve heard this phrase, I am, out of Jesus’ mouth, and it sounds suspiciously like the personal name that Jews had called God ever since Moses encountered the divine in a bush set aflame out in the Middle Eastern desert.

This is an odd little story – a beautiful little myth, or a truly nature-bending moment in history. John insists, though, again and again that Jesus had the capacity to bring an encounter with God to ordinary people, to infuse human lives with an experience of God.

I invite you to consider an area of life where God appears absent. This could be an area of your life, or something in the world. Mediate on that area for a moment. Call to mind a personal disappointment, or a friend’s grief, or a rusty pipe in Flint or a refugee in Jordan. Then invite Jesus to walk into the scene, and to announce, “I am. Do not be afraid.”

Be still, and sit in this hope.

John 5:30-47 (NRSV)

³⁰ “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

³¹ “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³² There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³ You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴ Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵ He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶ But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸ and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

³⁹ “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰ Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ⁴¹ I do not accept glory from human beings. ⁴² But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵ Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷ But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”

Welcome to argumentative Jesus, who we’ll see off and on for the next three chapters, I’m afraid. Consider yourself warned. My primary image of Jesus isn’t as a rabbinic debater, but that’s exactly the side of him John shows us in significant portions of chapters 5 through 8.

As a reminder, Jesus was spurred into this line of conversation when his encounter with a disabled outcast radically changed that man’s life for good, but the local religious conservatives were offended by the time of the week Jesus helped him.

I pick up on two themes here that speak to me today. We choose our truth. And we choose our judge.

We choose our truth.

Jewish law governed valid testimony in discerning truth claims. If you had something important to say, or a case to adjudicate, you couldn’t testify on your own behalf, but needed two Jewish men to testify for you. Jesus says he doesn’t need people to back him up, but that John (the baptizer we met in Chapter 1) spoke on his behalf, and that he’s got two more witnesses – the awesome things he’s doing, and God himself.

So John, God, and his actions. Jesus plays a little fast and loose with the whole “two people” requirement, but he doesn’t seem to care. Listen to him or not. Read your Bible if you want to look there, but it’s possible you could hit a dead end there. Choose your truth, but see if Jesus can give you more life.

Meanwhile, we also choose our judge, the authority or standard for our lives. In the case of this dispute, Jesus finds irony in his adversaries appealing to the Mosaic law, given that Jesus thinks Moses points to him. That said, Jesus isn’t eager to accuse anybody. He is eager to love and save and give life.

What positive or negative experiences do you have with discovering truth or with authority that judges you?

What hopes do you have for deeper truth or better judgement that you could ask Jesus for?

John 5:9b-18 (NRSV)

Now that day was a sabbath. ¹⁰ So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” ¹¹ But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” ¹² They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” ¹³ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. ¹⁴ Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶ Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. ¹⁷ But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” ¹⁸ For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.

I’m tempted to laser in on the utter strangeness of Jesus’ warning to the formerly paralyzed man when they cross paths again. What’s the sin he’s warning about? And after decades of disability that grew into a disempowered, vulnerable existence within a victim mindset, what’s this worse thing that could happen?

But to focus on that line would be to do the same thing that these officials are doing, to miss the forest for the trees, and for a not very interesting patch of trees at that.

Yesterday, we talked about the ways we can become attached to our own illness. We settle into stories of our problems that define us and can be unsettled by the possibility of change.

Today, we see how a whole system can become attached to the victims that define it. The officials of Jerusalem, as John paints them, aren’t especially interested in this man being well. They see a man who is healthy for the first time in decades, and they’re troubled that he’s carrying the mat he used to lie upon. Change, however good it is for this man, troubles them.

They need a society where everyone follows the rules on the day of rest, and sick people don’t suddenly get well, and people don’t talk like they have some special connection to God. And change to this system troubles them, even angers them.

Jesus is not troubled my change, though, because he isn’t directed by societal norms and stability but by his sense of what his parent-God is up to today. Dad feels like working on a day off? Well, then Jesus thinks it’s a good day to work as well.

This unique in-tuneness and intimacy with God that Jesus describes is unheard of for these officials, but in John, it’s not Jesus’ unique experience, but the destiny of all who follow Jesus, to experience God with us, and to increasingly be defined not by the way things are but by the newness God is making.

Ask God if there is something new God is doing in or around you today that you can be part of.

John 5:1-9a (NRSV)

5 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

² Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³ In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. ⁵ One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” ⁷ The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” ⁸ Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Do you want to be made well?

I read that question a couple of different ways. One way it’s a rhetorical question. Of course, this man wants to be made well, and Jesus is simply opening up a line of conversation, taking a first step toward another radically humanizing, radically powerful encounter. This man has been disempowered for decades – so marginalized by his disability that he has no real friends or help in the world.

Read another way, Jesus is really asking. This man has been disabled for decades and has perhaps spent many of those days in magical thinking, waiting for someone to come along to help, waiting for something to happen when he’s placed into one of these bathing pools outside the temple. Perhaps the marginalization runs so deep that this man lacks agency as well and has become attached to his own life-defining story as a victim.

Jesus asks: Do you want another story? Do you want to live another reality? Do you want to be made well?

Interestingly, the man never answers. But Jesus begins rewriting his story anyway.

In a recent Liturgists podcast, philosopher Pete Rollins asks if we are psychologically addicted to the enemies we create for ourselves. Influenced by the scapegoating theories of Renee Girard, Rollins posits that a focus on enemies allows people and societies to avoid facing our own complicity in the problems within and around us.

He gets there by analogy of a hypochondriac who is addicted to the existence of their own disease.

I’m not saying this man is a hypochondriac, but I am struck by Jesus starting with his question: do you want to be made well?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the other side of this story and of the undoing of the very real oppression this man lived under, how the broader society can be complicit in life-sucking, victim creating ideologies and behaviors. But today, we’ll go personal.

Is there any story of your own brokenness or weakness or dis-ability have you become attached to? Imagine Jesus extending a hand to you today and saying to you: do you want to be made well?

John 4:27-42 (NRSV)

²⁷ Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹ “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰ They left the city and were on their way to him.

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶ The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

³⁹ Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Jesus: Crossing long-hostile cultural and gender and religious barriers to bring spiritual uplift to an entire community. Chooses an outcast woman to start this all, so in the process brings her dignity, uplift, and hope. Doesn’t worry about where his lunch is coming from, but is satisfied by participating in the work that his unseen God is doing on earth. Trying to inspire more people to live this way, because it’s a joy and because the earth needs people to join God in the beautiful things God is doing.

The Samaritan Woman: Suddenly surrounded by a bunch of speechless men she doesn’t know, she drops her water jar and runs back home. She doesn’t take a nap or open up her facebook, though. No, she tells her neighbors, “You have got to come with me to the well and meet this man Jesus! He just might be God’s messenger to us!” She becomes Jesus’ first “harvester”, his first ambassador to her own community, and a good one at that.

The disciples: Um, they interrupt a powerful one on one conversation Jesus is having, just at its most dramatic moment. But do they apologize for intruding and back away from the well? Do they make some gracious small talk and introduce themselves? Do they even say what’s on their mind, wondering why he’s talking to this woman?

No, no, and no. They start talking about food, and they take metaphor-spinning Jesus literally and ask dumb questions about his lunch money.

Some days we’re enlightened, and we are the hands and feet and voice of God into a world that needs good work, good ideas, healing touch, or encouraging words.

Some days enlightenment comes to us, as we are aware God is with us and we praise God, or we notice the kindness of friends or colleagues or strangers, and we have gratitude. Or, I don’t know, a business does right by us, and we post a glowy yelp review.

And then some days we’re just useless. We can’t get our head out of our rears, and we say and do awkward things, and we slip into the worst proclivities our genes or culture or bad habits or whatever have made available to us.

Strikes me that days like this, the disciples in this story are encouraging. Jesus still invites them to taste the food of doing God’s work. Jesus doesn’t shame them for their clueless bumbling, just as he doesn’t shame the woman for her marital history. He invites them to good work that will satisfy.

What kind of day are you having so far today? Ask God if there is food for you to eat today in the form of joining God in something God is doing.