August 11, 2024 – Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
Kahu Gary Percesepe
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.
God is revealed differently in the gospel of John. When it comes to John, I confess to being a resisting reader. I feel like Nicodemus when he asked Jesus, “How can these things be?”
By contrast, Mark gives us an earthy Jesus, always on the way to somewhere else. Mark tells Jesus’ story with a breathless tempo. I wonder if Mark was secretly a New Yorker! Yo, look, There goes Jesus, watch out, whoa! Didja see that? Fuhgeddaboudit. Jesus is on the road and—bang! – he’s on the way to somewhere else, some new healing, some fresh hell to confront or demonic power to cast out, some new parable to stun and ponder like a koan. Jesus’ followers are breathless trying to keep up, but they’re always a step or two behind in Mark, Jesus always already ahead of them.
But Jesus seems oddly detached in John’s gospel, serene, in command of the situation, floating somewhere above the fray. He is with his disciples but also somehow above them, talking strange; they struggle to understand. Consider this typically Johannine pronouncement: I am the bread that came down from heaven. That just sounds weird.
In the gospel of John, one never knows. Water is not water. Wind is something other than wind. Bread is not only bread, it is life. John constructs his gospel around seven signs, all pointing beyond themselves to something greater.
Taking the bible seriously requires serious study. John makes frequent use of the literary device known as metaphor.
The word metaphor is constructed of two Greek words meaning “to change” or “to transform” and “to shed light upon.” When metaphor is working well, we see things in a new light. When Jesus calls himself bread, we see bread in a new way, but we also see Jesus in a new way.
Metaphor unlocks the beauty and ethereal wisdom of John’s gospel. God wants to nurture us and sustain us. Jesus saves us, yes, but he also feeds us. He becomes the staff of life. The Risen Christ not only rose from the dead to liberate the world from domination, sin and death, the Risen Christ also stays with us—abides with us. In the words of the old hymn:
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me
Receive John’s gospel as a gift. Don’t suffer from “analysis paralysis.” We’ve spent three Sundays sitting with chapter six of John’s elegant and mysterious gospel. Don’t analyze it, dissect it, argue, or struggle to interpret it. Instead, receive it, savor and ingest it like bread. Just as the Israelites had manna in the wilderness to sustain them on their journey, Jesus is that bread came down from heaven to sustain us on the way to the Other Shore.
Sara Miles was a war correspondent who wrote for The New Yorker magazine. She quit writing and went on a journey that took her from New York to San Francisco, where things fell apart. Sara felt alone. Out walking one day, she passed a church. Sara was an atheist whose grandparents had been Baptist missionaries. She was done with faith, done with war, done with men. But as she walked by this church, she smelled fresh bread baking. With the curiosity of a veteran journalist, she opened the door and peeked inside. What she saw astonished her. The church was a giant mural. Familiar figures from the bible fused with modern life, Moses and Rosa Parks, Duke Ellington and the apostles linked arm and arm, all plastered on the ceiling and walls, and they were dancing, and there was Jesus, lord of the dance. But it was the smell of the bread that did it. Sara Miles realized she was hungry, hungrier than she had ever been in her life. It was that bread she wanted. The smell of freshly baked bread spoke to her of food made with love, of home, of safety, comfort, and it was so close to her, this bread, it was being served from a table in the center of the church, where people were dancing and singing and holding hands. It was the celebration of the Eucharist in an Episcopal church. She was hungry in every way possible—hungry for food, hungry for love, hungry for meaning in her life, hungry for the companionship of other caring people, hungry for communion. Sara Miles, official atheist, entered that church and received the bread and joined the dance. She feasted on Jesus; the bread came down from heaven for her.
For you.
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me
Jesus wanted the world to be whole, but it could only get there through his broken body, his spilt blood. That is why we must come to the table, come to the feast. I am the bread of life, Jesus says. Receive this bread, and you will live.
Amene.