“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
What if eternal life is nothing more than the principle of enough?
We are accustomed to thinking of eternal life as going to heaven when we die. This comes from the promise that are lives are kept with Christ in God until the last day, when the resurrection itself finally takes place. I certainly hope this is true, as I’m sure you do too.
But there is a bit of a problem in Jewish thought with the whole idea of a separation between body and spirit. Biblically speaking, we can distinguish between body and spirit, but we cannot actually separate them. “Soul”, biblically, is the whole person. Remove the body and the spirit dies; remove the spirit and the body dies.
Scientifically speaking, our minds are a function of our flesh. It’s one of the reasons why the idea of downloading our consciousness into machines is so problematic. How can a mind exist without a body? I think it would be a hellish nightmare.
The scandal of resurrection is that it is physical. To rise from the dead is not to rise into a different plane of existence. To rise from the dead is to rise from the plane of death back into to this plane, the plane of life. Jesus didn’t send Lazarus’ spirit to heaven. He brought Lazarus’ body out of the grave and told his sisters to give him something to eat.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he did so physically. His body left the tomb and he appeared to people in this world. In his resurrection appearances, he could be touched, he could eat and drink.
The early church struggled with Hellenistic ideas of spirit vs body duality, so much so that they put in the apostles’ creed “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”
Here Jesus likens himself to the manna that sustained God’s people in the wilderness as they made their way to freedom in the land God had prepared for them. The manna was a mysterious substance that could be baked into a bread, but it had to be eaten the same day it was harvested, or it would spoil. In other words, it couldn’t be gathered and stored, like grains. It was enough for the day, and no more.
Could Jesus be saying that eternal life is simply enough life for today?
I think about Jesus’ many instructions to his disciples in the other gospels: don’t take an extra coat; don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will wear; don’t worry about tomorrow, today is enough. Those who seek their life will lose it, and those who lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will gain it for eternal life.
There seems indeed to be a through-line in the scriptures about being satisfied with enough. The most forgotten commandment: Don’t covet.
We’ve been hearing the tawdry tale of King David’s sin over the past few weeks. David wasn’t satisfied with a harem full of the kingdom’s most beautiful wives. He had to have Bathsheba too, so much so that he raped her and arranged the murder of her faithful and heroic husband Uriah. Years later, what went around came around: David’s son Absalom rose up against his father to take his throne, forcing David to send his military to kill his own son.
Could it be that the sin of the world is wanting more than our share? Are we not like David, awash with wealth yet still chronically unsatisfied, still ever striving for more of what we actually don’t need, and angry when our efforts are blocked, even angrier if we lose anything of what we have gained?
The encounter with the Judean elites in today’s gospel reflects the encounter with Nicodemus the Pharisee in chapter 3. Jesus told Nicodemus that he couldn’t comprehend Jesus if he hadn’t been “born from above by water and the spirit.” To which Nicodemus replies, “how can one climb back into the womb and be born again?”
Here, Jesus says he has come down from heaven, and the Judeans say, “We know Joseph and your mother. You came from a womb like the rest of us.” As with Nicodemus, Jesus responds: “you can’t understand without the Father guiding you.”
This is what is meant by the old theological term “mystery.” Not a whodunit about a murder, but a truth that can only be known by a revelation from God. Of course, Jesus was born of a woman. Jesus also came down from heaven, eternally begotten of God. Both things are true.
Jesus was not made of bread, and his resurrected flesh is not available for us to eat. But we err if we are too quick to say, these are only symbols. Spirit and flesh, flesh and spirit. God in our souls, God in our bodies. The mystery of Jesus’ simple and bold declaration: “this is my body; this is my blood.”
To come to Christ, to believe in him, is to eat and drink of him, his person, his identity, his life. He defeated the devil in himself, and he can defeat the devil in you and me too. He did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, the lowest kind of person in the society he was born into.
What if eternal life was simply enough? What if eternal life is simply fully and completely living in this present moment, the only piece of eternity we can know?
In the end of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul describes what eternal life looks like when it dwells in our bodies in this world. To be eternally alive, that is, to be happy with the enough-ness of now, means to be free of all fears leading to lying or anger, to be freed to live a life of gratitude and grace. To be eternally alive is to have enough to share with those in need. To be eternally alive is to be free to be gracious and forgiving and accepting of all.
I think about Lucina Crittenden in her last days, unable to leave the bed, barely able to have a conversation, but still deeply enjoying her three meals a day and the sunshine pouring in the windows. I think of Denise James, who suffered with a painful and debilitating illness for twenty years, but who started each day on her side deck praising and thanking God.
Let us do likewise, as Paul writes in Ephesians 5: “…be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Amen.
A sermon for 12 Pentecost Year B, John 6:35, 41-51
What if eternal life is nothing more than the principle of enough?
We are accustomed to thinking of eternal life as going to heaven when we die. This comes from the promise that are lives are kept with Christ in God until the last day, when the resurrection itself finally takes place. I certainly hope this is true, as I’m sure you do too.
But there is a bit of a problem in Jewish thought with the whole idea of a separation between body and spirit. Biblically speaking, we can distinguish between body and spirit, but we cannot actually separate them. “Soul”, biblically, is the whole person. Remove the body and the spirit dies; remove the spirit and the body dies.
Scientifically speaking, our minds are a function of our flesh. It’s one of the reasons why the idea of downloading our consciousness into machines is so problematic. How can a mind exist without a body? I think it would be a hellish nightmare.
The scandal of resurrection is that it is physical. To rise from the dead is not to rise into a different plane of existence. To rise from the dead is to rise from the plane of death back into to this plane, the plane of life. Jesus didn’t send Lazarus’ spirit to heaven. He brought Lazarus’ body out of the grave and told his sisters to give him something to eat.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he did so physically. His body left the tomb and he appeared to people in this world. In his resurrection appearances, he could be touched, he could eat and drink.
The early church struggled with Hellenistic ideas of spirit vs body duality, so much so that they put in the apostles’ creed “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”
Here Jesus likens himself to the manna that sustained God’s people in the wilderness as they made their way to freedom in the land God had prepared for them. The manna was a mysterious substance that could be baked into a bread, but it had to be eaten the same day it was harvested, or it would spoil. In other words, it couldn’t be gathered and stored, like grains. It was enough for the day, and no more.
Could Jesus be saying that eternal life is simply enough life for today?
I think about Jesus’ many instructions to his disciples in the other gospels: don’t take an extra coat; don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will wear; don’t worry about tomorrow, today is enough. Those who seek their life will lose it, and those who lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will gain it for eternal life.
There seems indeed to be a through-line in the scriptures about being satisfied with enough. The most forgotten commandment: Don’t covet.
We’ve been hearing the tawdry tale of King David’s sin over the past few weeks. David wasn’t satisfied with a harem full of the kingdom’s most beautiful wives. He had to have Bathsheba too, so much so that he raped her and arranged the murder of her faithful and heroic husband Uriah. Years later, what went around came around: David’s son Absalom rose up against his father to take his throne, forcing David to send his military to kill his own son.
Could it be that the sin of the world is wanting more than our share? Are we not like David, awash with wealth yet still chronically unsatisfied, still ever striving for more of what we actually don’t need, and angry when our efforts are blocked, even angrier if we lose anything of what we have gained?
The encounter with the Judean elites in today’s gospel reflects the encounter with Nicodemus the Pharisee in chapter 3. Jesus told Nicodemus that he couldn’t comprehend Jesus if he hadn’t been “born from above by water and the spirit.” To which Nicodemus replies, “how can one climb back into the womb and be born again?”
Here, Jesus says he has come down from heaven, and the Judeans say, “We know Joseph and your mother. You came from a womb like the rest of us.” As with Nicodemus, Jesus responds: “you can’t understand without the Father guiding you.”
This is what is meant by the old theological term “mystery.” Not a whodunit about a murder, but a truth that can only be known by a revelation from God. Of course, Jesus was born of a woman. Jesus also came down from heaven, eternally begotten of God. Both things are true.
Jesus was not made of bread, and his resurrected flesh is not available for us to eat. But we err if we are too quick to say, these are only symbols. Spirit and flesh, flesh and spirit. God in our souls, God in our bodies. The mystery of Jesus’ simple and bold declaration: “this is my body; this is my blood.”
To come to Christ, to believe in him, is to eat and drink of him, his person, his identity, his life. He defeated the devil in himself, and he can defeat the devil in you and me too. He did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, the lowest kind of person in the society he was born into.
What if eternal life was simply enough? What if eternal life is simply fully and completely living in this present moment, the only piece of eternity we can know?
In the end of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul describes what eternal life looks like when it dwells in our bodies in this world. To be eternally alive, that is, to be happy with the enough-ness of now, means to be free of all fears leading to lying or anger, to be freed to live a life of gratitude and grace. To be eternally alive is to have enough to share with those in need. To be eternally alive is to be free to be gracious and forgiving and accepting of all.
I think about Lucina Crittenden in her last days, unable to leave the bed, barely able to have a conversation, but still deeply enjoying her three meals a day and the sunshine pouring in the windows. I think of Denise James, who suffered with a painful and debilitating illness for twenty years, but who started each day on her side deck praising and thanking God.
Let us do likewise, as Paul writes in Ephesians 5: “…be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Amen.
A sermon for 12 Pentecost Year B, John 6:35, 41-51
