Food and Word - We Need Both

“Give them Something to Eat …” –

Lent and food (3-2-2020)

           

            In his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, theologian Stanely Hauerwas reads the feeding miracles and writes, “food and scripture are inseparable” (p.139).  Does this mean we need to keep a bowl of peanuts handy for whenever we read the Bible?  Not necessarily.  Rather, what’s important is to be God-aware all the time, including when we eat. 

            We don’t have to think about eating.  Instinct tells us to do it.  Hunger drives us to open our mouths, chew what goes in, and swallow.  During Lent, some Christians might include fasting as a spiritual discipline.  In this act we go against our nature.  For the sake of clarifying our focus on our need for God, we go without the food our body craves for periods of time.  Does doing this really help us grow in faith? 

            Jesus fasts as a spiritual discipline.  His effort is almost superhuman, going 40 days without eating (Matthew 4:2).  The devil tempts Jesus to quit the fast by miraculously producing food for himself, but Jesus responds, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”  Inseparable indeed; Jesus believes God’s word is more essential than food for life.

            In Matthew 14 & 15, he is teaching large, large crowds, gathered in the wilderness, away from settlements.  No time limits govern him, and he expounds upon life and God’s word and faithful living, speaking up to and through the time of the meal.  He feels that what he teaches is as important for people as the food the crowd needs to eat.  Then, demonstrating the power of God and the importance of staying attuned to God’s word, he blesses five small loaves (picture circles of pita bread) and two fish.  Thousands are fed to the point of being full, and there are baskets of leftovers. The goodness from God will never run out. 

            The idea of endless provision is one take-way from the miracle feeding stories in Matthew.  Another takeaway is the high value Jesus places (and we should place) on the word of God.  Tying food and word together, Jesus demonstrates that there is no separation between body and soul.  In Christ, we are embodied.  Our bodies are not shells to be shed, but parts of ourselves.  In resurrection, our bodies are redeemed and made ready for the eternal kingdom of God. 

            So, fast sometimes and feast at other times.  In times of fasting and times of feasting and times in between, be awake to God’s presence.  Be attuned to who you are in Christ.  The normalcy of life is bathed in our faith when we give ourselves to Jesus.  No place or activity is truly profane when the Holy God is always with us. 

Allows these stories of Jesus from Matthew to awaken you to His presence in your life.  

John 6:60-69

Sunday, August 26, 2018

            Though today’s passage is John 6, we begin in Mark 10.  Jesus and the disciples are walking to Jerusalem, Jesus knows this will end in his death.  The disciples do not know that, but they have intuited, from Jesus’ demeanor, that something has changed.  Many around him believed, or at least hoped, that he was going to Jerusalem to assume Israel’s throne.  He would be crowned, throw the Romans out, and then serve as a very human king.  He would re-establish the line of King David and usher in a new golden age. 

            His followers’ minds were on Jerusalem, not their immediate surroundings.  Jesus was always in the present. So, in Mark 10, when the crowds try to hush a blind man who loudly calls out to Jesus, Jesus hushes the crowd. He gives his full attention to the man, named Bartimaeus.  He asks, “What do you want me to do for you” (Mark 10:51)?  We know that Jesus restores his sight, and Bartimaeus in turn follows Jesus. 

            What if, reading imaginatively, we transport the conversation from the pages of the Bible to our lives? Jesus says, “What do you want me to do for you?”  But he doesn’t say it to Bartimaeus in 33AD.  He says it to you, right here, right now.  What do you want me to do for you?

            ‘Help me make straight A’s this semester?’

‘Give me enough money to enjoy a comfortable retirement?’ 

‘Get my boss to stop riding me so hard?’

‘Get that boy to get off the fence and get me an engagement ring?’

            What do you want me to do for you?

            Does Jesus ask us this question?  Each one of us has our own definitions of success, our own thoughts about what makes life good. As people who go to church, do we suppose Jesus can help in any real way?  Will Jesus help with the GPA, with material comforts, with our relationships on the job, or in our social lives?  Does the faith we claim at church have anything to say with what goes on in the rest of our lives?

            I am not going to promise that Jesus will get the girl or guy for you, will help guarantee that you love your job, and that you and I will retire wealthy.  We don’t find those types of promises in John chapter 6 or anywhere else in the Bible.  Jesus does promise his followers an abundant life.  Do we believe him?  Is that enough?

            What’s the best place to eat out in Chapel Hill? (Allow answers).  My family frequents the Loop, Breadman’s, Elmo’s, and the Mediterranean Deli on Franklin Street.  Why did you pick your favorite spot?  The taste of the food?  The atmosphere?  The people you know you’ll see there?  The familiarity of the place? 

            At the beginning of John 6, a large crowd is thronging to Jesus.  They have watched as Jesus healed diseases that in that day were sure death sentences.  These people knew what they wanted Jesus to do for them.  They wanted to see miracles and to benefit from miracles.  They were attracted by the spectacle.  Others believed, or at least hoped, he might be the Messiah.  Many had been followers of the John the Baptist, and at the Baptist’s prompting left their old teacher to become disciples of Jesus.  And of course there were the 12 he hand-picked to be disciples. 

            They all followed Jesus up on a mountain side to hear him preach.  Jesus looked asked his disciple Philip, “Where are we going to buy food for all these people?”  Philip said 6 months wages would not be enough to feed such a crowd.  Then another disciple, Andrew, introduced Jesus to a boy who was willing to share the lunch his mom had packed, two fish fillets and five pieces of pita bread. 

            Jesus fed the entire crowd from that boy’s lunch, and had 12 baskets of leftovers; such is the extravagant generosity of God.  In a frenzy, the masses decided to crown Jesus as king of Israel, right there on the spot.  Jesus rejected the offer.  He was the king, but not the way they understood. 

At this point the narrative shifts from focus on the crowd, to that group of antagonists in John often referred to as “the Jews.”  They opposed Jesus, but this doesn’t mean all Jews were his adversaries.  Jesus was Jewish.  So were his followers.  So were the people in the crowd.  When John writes “the Jews,” context makes it clear that he means opponents of Jesus, religious leaders who felt their own position threatened by Jesus’ theology.  The leading clergy couldn’t tolerate Jesus’ superior knowledge and dangerous claims about God.  So they schemed to confront him, trick him, and ultimately manipulate the Romans to kill him. 

Both the crowds who wanted to crown Jesus king and the authorities who wanted to silence him were confused by his message. 

In 6:35 he says, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Again, in verse 51, he says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Nothing in Israel’s history involved cannibalism.  Jesus talked about drinking his blood, but drinking an animal’s blood was strictly forbidden in the book of Leviticus.  And there is no thought of ever drinking a man’s blood.  What was Jesus saying?

Recall the book of Exodus.  God led Israel out of slavery in Egypt and on a march to the Promised Land.  Along the way, God sent bread that just appeared on the ground.  It was called Manna, which is translated, “What is it?”  What is this that we are eating?  It is life; that’s what it is.  Bread sent from Heaven to keep us alive so we can become who God is calling us to become.

At first, they were filled with awe at God’s provision.  But their wonder gave way to grumbling as they wanted God to up the ante on works of miraculous power.  Manna wasn’t enough, and they complained (Numbers 11:4ff).  God provided, the people were saved, but then wanted more.  God wanted a relationship of love with his people. Instead of rejoicing in a relationship with God, his people desired earthly thrills. 

The same dynamic is evident in the way John constructs his Gospel, especially here in chapter 6.   When Jesus multiplied the boy’s lunch out in the wilderness, the gathered crowd would have immediately recalled the way God provided manna for their ancestors.  Jesus’ miracle feeding was a godly act that all present would recognize.  They wanted to crown him as an earthly king.  He said, no.  No, I won’t be the king, at least not as you understand a king.  What I will be is your link to a relationship with God. 

Beginning in 6:54: “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.  Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”

He doesn’t mean a literal eating of his flesh.  He means living life under His lordship, with our eyes fixed on him in all that we do, and with His Spirit in us.  He speaks of resurrection and of abiding in Him.  This connects today with the future.  Jesus is our assurance that today, God will provide both bodily nutrition and sustenance, and relationship.  Furthermore, when the Spirit of Christ is in us, God assures our eternity will be spent in the Kingdom of God in resurrected bodies. 

The crowds around Jesus did not understand all of this. We have the benefit of four completed gospels.  They didn’t have that.  But they knew he wasn’t talking about literally cutting his limbs up for people to eat.  They knew he meant consuming His teaching.  They also most likely perceived that when they argued with him, he in turn compared them to the Israelites in the wilderness who complained against God. 

It leaves us with a question: do we want to complain about the food, or enjoy it?  When we pray, and God provides, do we accept the gift God gives us, or do we send it back?  Remember the opening question.  Jesus says to you or to me, “what do you want me to do for you?”  He will give us what’s best for us. Do we accept what Jesus gives, or do we try to send it back?  Do we look to God and say, ‘yes, Lord, I will live the life you’re leading me to live?’  Or do we say, “No God, I don’t like what you have for me.  I’ll do this my way?”

They complained.  The crowds, the religious leaders, and even many of the disciples: Jesus did not fit into the mold any of them had predetermined for him.  They ran to the wilderness to see Jesus work miracles and crown him king, or to crucify him.  Now at the end of John 6, we see 1000’s become hundreds as they leave in droves.  Jesus tells them, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”  But, they find it hard.  Some can’t understand it.  Others cannot accept it.  They keep leaving until Jesus looks around where there had been 1000’s.  All he sees are the 12 he selected.

“Do you also wish to go away?”  Jesus won’t the change message just because it’s unpopular.  His words are from God and he’ll speak them even if he’s alone in the desert. 

Peter responds, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life” (6:68).

Where do we find the best eats?  It’s not Breadman’s or the Carolina Café or Top of the Hill. Those are wonderful places.  But food that brings life is at God’s table.  It’s the beginning of the semester.  People are new to our town, and maybe that includes many of you.  We face new challenges.  As life gets stressful in coming days and weeks, where do we go to be refreshed, strengthened, comforted, and encouraged?  As the world around us ceaselessly tells us we aren’t smart enough or professional enough or capable or acceptable, where do we go to be reminded that we are beloved, that we belong, and that we are God’s precious possessions?

The communion table and the gathering of the church – the body of Christ – is where we are filled; filled with grace and love; filled with the Spirit.  The Lord’s Supper is the food that fills us with Christ.  Bring your mistakes.  Put on Christ and be made perfect.  Bring your regrets.  Drink in Christ and be made new.  Brings your fears.    Consume Christ and be filled with Holy Spirit who gives courage and power.  In Him, there is life. 

All are invited to the table.  Come with the church family and receive the body and blood of Christ.  A hard teaching?  Yes.  Embrace it.  Don’t run from it.  Step toward Jesus as He receives you in love.

AMEN

Driven by Compassion

At the end of the week, this past week, the headlines told of an awful tragedy.  A gun man walked into a crowded theater in Colorado and began shooting.  This was front page news, but not in Burgas, a city in the Eastern European nation of Bulgaria.  There, the big story was a terrorist attack.  A suicide bomber blew up a crowded bus.  And in Iraq, the big news was the seizure of border stations along the Syrian border by rebel militia groups.

            Where you live determines what you would call the biggest news of the day.  Everything I mentioned would fall in the category of bad news.  Horrific; awful; tragic; depressing. 

            As followers of Christ, we are called beyond our own lives.  We have our individual problems which are significant.  Our individual stories are stories of faith.  We are also a body of believers, bonded together in Jesus.  As individual disciples and as a body, we are called to respond to the happenings of the world, elections, wars, random violence, weather patterns (like extreme drought) and natural disasters.  When chaos is unleashed and humanity panics, people look to the church because they’re looking for someone – anyone – to help bring order and reveal meaning in all that goes on.

            We’re in our 3^rd week of seeing Jesus in the pages of Mark’s gospel.  In today’s passage, we find a key component, not the only one, but an important aspect of a Christ-follower’s response to a world afflicted with suffering, chaos, fear, and hurt. 

            We pick the story up with Jesus and the disciples on the move again.  This time the location is not specifically named, nor is the exact spot important.  What catches our attention is Jesus’ care for his disciples.  A lot has happened.  His popularity is at its peak.  Mobs overwhelm him and them.  He has endowed the 12 with his miraculous powers, and he knows that as they cure diseases and defeat demons, crowds would come upon them just like the do on him.  “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile,” Jesus tells his friends and followers. 

            They get in the boat, a sure way to separate from the crowd that hungers for every word that falls from Jesus’ lips just as much as they long for every wonder he performs.  The thing is, when Jesus works miracles, he’s not performing.  He’s revealing God’s love and he does this through his inclusion of people who are rejected everywhere else.  He does it through a radical new understanding of the Law that sees it as a door to God and not a burden that keeps people under heel.  And he does it through his ceaseless sharing of grace and mercy.  But he gets tired.  The disciples are tired.  They need down time. 

            The mob travels faster.  When Jesus and the disciples arrive at the location of their prayer retreat, we see a throng waiting for them. What does Jesus do?  Get back in the boat?  Mark writes, “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them” (v.34).  Get the highlighter out, underline verse 34, and on your notes session in the worship bulletin, write that Mark 6:34 is one of the most important verses in the entire Gospel.  Confronted by the crowd he wanted to escape, Jesus was filled with compassion.

Someone is traumatized because they go to be entertained by the comic book violence of Batman on the screen and instead have to deal with real life, senseless violence right in their face.  Do we love them? Even when we don’t have the words or the energy, do we reach out to them and walk with as Jesus does?  Do we, as compassion literally means, “suffer with” them?

A nation, Iraq, beleaguered and broken by a decades of war and tyranny is now trying to get it together, and it’s neighbor, Syria is bringing her war onto Iraqi grounds.  And Iran and Israel are trying to fight their own battles and Iraq is right in the middle.  How does the church – you, me, churches all round – respond?  With compassion?  A compassionate response could take on many forms from care for refugees to financial contribution to Christian ministries to political advocacy.  It begins with prayer.  Do we pray for Iraq?

Or Iran?  Or Bulgaria?  Or Israel?  Or victims of drought in our own nation?  Or victims of insidious combination of drought and terrorism in Somalia?  Are we gripped by the Spirit to pray compassionately?

“As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them.”  Why?  Why did they need Jesus so much?  Mark’s narrative continues.  “They were like sheep without a shepherd.”  If I were in that crowd, I might not like being characterized that way.  Americans have self-sufficiency woven into our worldview.  The pioneer spirit and protestant work ethic on which our nation stands say that we are never meek, directionless sheep.  By our will and courage, we’ll find a way.  The truth is our nation is great, but sin has been around longer.  We as a nation and as individuals are fallen and will fall short of God’s glory just as that hungering crowd fell short in Mark 6.  We may not like it, but we are often also sheep without any guidance or protection against wolves that would use our greed, our sense of independence, and our pride to devour us. 

In describing those around Jesus in this way, Mark reaches back to the prophet Ezekiel.  He wrote,

              Ezekiel 34 New Living Translation (NLT)

34 Then this message came to me from the Lord: ² “Son of man, prophesy against the  shepherds, the leaders of Israel. Give them this message from the Sovereign Lord: What sorrow awaits you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. Shouldn’t shepherds feed their sheep? ³ You drink the milk, wear the wool, and butcher the best animals, but you let your flocks starve. ⁴ You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty. ⁵ So my sheep have been scattered without a shepherd, and they are easy prey for any wild animal. ⁶ They have wandered through all the mountains and all the hills, across the face of the earth, yet no one has gone to search for them.

⁷ “Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: ⁸ As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, you abandoned my flock and left them to be attacked by every wild animal. And though you were my shepherds, you didn’t search for my sheep when they were lost. You took care of yourselves and left the sheep to starve. ⁹ Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. ¹⁰ This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I now consider these shepherds my enemies, and I will hold them responsible for what has happened to my flock. I will take away their right to feed the flock, and I will stop them from feeding themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths; the sheep will no longer be their prey.

Jesus came to seek out and save the lost, to rescue the sheep who were being devoured.   Yes, he and the disciples were tired, but they were needed.  So compassion ruled and he welcomed the crowd and began to teach them.  Mark says he taught many things until late into the day.  The crowd, captivated by Jesus’ gentle but unquestioned authority, drank in his words without thought of provisions. 

The disciples finally had to interrupt him to say, “Hey, enough compassion for now.  It’s supper time.  We’re kind of compassioned-out.  Send them away.  They can fill up the Cracker Barrel and the Chik-Fil-A.  They can sit around and discuss your great teachings.  Send them away so they can eat and we can have some peace.” 

But Jesus wasn’t compassioned-out.  He was full of compassion.  He was driven by deep love for people who were hurting spiritually, politically, emotionally, and physically.  Jesus never runs out of compassion.  He runs on compassion.  It fuels him and comes from him.

Mark 1, Peter’s mother-in-law cannot perform hospitality her most crucial service as a first century lady of the house.  She’s down with a fever.  Jesus takes her tenderly by the hand and lifts to her feet.  By the time she’s standing, the weakness and sickness is gone and she’s 100%, ready to do her thing. 

Also in Mark 1, a leper runs to Jesus.  Lepers were, by law, to keep their distance.  In approaching, this one broke the rules, but his disease made him so desperate, he did not care.  Seeing him, Jesus was moved with pity.  He healed the leprosy (1:41).

In Mark 2, Jesus is surrounded by tax collectors, those in Israel who were treated as hated turncoats because they collected taxes for Rome.  Jesus never minimized the base sin in the crowd at the party that surely included gamblers and prostitutes.  He saw the very shepherdless sheep Ezekiel lamented.  In response to the Pharisees who complained about the company he kept, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (2:17).  Jesus saw sin as an evil disease that puts sons and daughters of God in harm’s way.  He came to cure us of what ails us because he loves us.

In Mark 5, he meets another woman, sick, bleeding, cast out from society.  The law called her untouchable, unclean, unworthy.  Jesus called her “daughter.”  This forgotten, stepped on woman was a daughter of God in the eyes of the compassionate one.

In two other healing miracles, one with a deaf mute, and another with a blind man, Jesus could see that the healing was going to be an involved process.  It included rubbing mud on the blind man’s eyes and spitting on the mute man’s tongue.  Knowing this and knowing that the diseases would be attributed to sin by some legalists; in other words, the deaf mute and the blind man would not only suffer their maladies but be blamed for them; knowing this, Jesus first took both individuals, again by the hand, away from the crowd.  Not only did he heal these illnesses.  He preserved the dignity and restored these lost souls to society. 

Jesus was driven by compassion.  Jesus we have to send the crowd away so they can eat.

No.  The teaching I give comes from God and if the people hear it and heed it they will understand that in my coming the Kingdom has arrived.  A kingdom where the rejected are welcomed and compassion and love are the rule. No.  No one is sent away.  You feed them.

We know what happens next.  The disciples protest and Jesus takes a meal of 5 pieces of pita bread and a few fish, and he feeds 5000 people and there are 12 baskets of leftovers. 

Flipping over to Mark 8, it happens again.  The circumstances there are slightly different, but again, Jesus takes the food from an individual’s meal, miraculously multiplies it, and feeds thousands.   

People were so desperate for what Jesus had they would follow him.  He was on the move, so to keep up, they had to move.  They may have meant traveling without making adequate preparation and then being caught in the wilderness with no food.  Jesus, driven by compassion as he always was, determined to teach the truths of the Kingdom of God would not allow hunger to distract his followers any more than he allowed storms at sea to consume the 12 disciples. 

I think miracles can still happen, but I don’t know when.  It’s the Holy Spirit’s call, not ours.  But, whether miracles happen our not, the body of Christ, the church, is to be driven by compassion every bit as much as he was.  Middle class Americans living high-tech, educated, affluent lives may feel like we have it all together.  But then we have a week where people die going to the movies.  That reminds us of our history of senseless violence.  Drought and heat remind us that we’ll never be more powerful than the weather and when it is dangerously bad, it can hurt us.  News from wars and terrorism from around the world remind us that the chaos of sin is all around us and no matter how independent we want to feel, in truth, we need Jesus like never before. 

Can the church command miracles with ease of Jesus?  Not every time.  I have never worked a miracle.  But you and I, we can be driven by compassion as he was.  We can show his love even it means standing with someone who is suffering. We don’t know what to do, so we stand with them as long as we need to.  In coming alongside, God shows us what forms compassion takes. 

Jesus is the compassionate one.  If we want to see Him, we go where there is pain and we love those who hurt.  When we do, we realize He is in us, working through us.  And in our compassion, which is His compassion in us, the world sees the Kingdom of God.

AMEN