Sunday, August 26, 2012

Things we don't like to hear (sermon preached on August 26, 2012)



Sermon preached on Sunday, Aug. 26  at Emmanuel Church, Chestertown, MD.
Proper 16: 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

We all have things we don’t like to hear, don’t we? Congregations sometimes do not always like what the preacher has to tell them – but not here of course. Children don’t always want to hear what their parents have to tell them. Husbands, and I speak only for myself of course, do not always pay attention to some of the things their wives say. I’ve just spent eleven weeks fighting, with some success, my own tendency to ‘subjective hearing.’ I have just finished my Clinical Pastoral Education, 11 weeks of hospital chaplaincy training, at Georgetown University Hospital. I did not always want to hear what the patients were telling me, especially not the bad news, their pain, their fears: I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the perfect answer or response. And I often did not want to hear everything my colleagues or supervisors had to say. My strengths were fine, but my growing edges? Do I want to be told what needs improving? Why I might have to change something; I might even have to stop doing something I like doing or start doing something new, God forbid! Thankfully that thought did not prevail and I did listen and act on the feedback I was given. Otherwise the experience would have been a waste of time!

Well, in the passage we just heard from the Gospel according to John, the last section of what is called the Bread of Life discourse, it would seem that the disciples were struggling with a very similar problem. They did not want to hear all of what Jesus had to say: ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ they said. And it’s true that they had just heard some pretty weighty messages: Jesus was the bread of life, the bread of heaven, the source of salvation, they were to eat his flesh and drink his blood, he was sent by the Father. 

These were difficult words, for some of them even offensive ones, about who Jesus really was and is. Clearly he was not just the moral teacher some had taken him for, nor was he just a prophet like Moses, for Jesus’ bread was something much greater than the manna Moses had got God to provide their ancestors with. The passage does not tell us exactly what the anonymous disciples did not like. Perhaps it was the identification with God? Perhaps they were taking the call to eat his flesh and drink his blood too literally? Or maybe it was the importance Jesus attached to the Spirit over the flesh, something some might have understood as a criticism of their being too focused on what they thought the world needed, like overthrowing the Romans and liberating Israel from their occupation. Many scholars think for example that this was Judas Ischariot’s main aim and the reason for his disappointment with Jesus that turned into his betrayal.

Whatever it was, perhaps a combination of all of the above, the result was that “because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”  In fact it seems that for a time at least Jesus was down to the Twelve, and Jesus even asks them “Do you also wish to go away?”
What about today, what about us? Do we accept everything that Jesus stands for and that he taught? Or are there parts that offend or embarrass us?  For some Jesus’ prophetic message, the call to speak against the evils of this world, is just fine. But his moral teaching? No, that’s not relevant anymore and let’s tone down Jesus’ divinity a bit shall we. That just doesn’t play well to today’s audiences.

I fear that that approach would be just as wrong as those who focus exclusively on the moral teaching, about marriage for example, especially when they do not take the context in which it was written down into account. They often ignore Jesus’ clear call to speak the truth and to work actively at bringing the kingdom of God into effect in this world.

And it would be equally one-sided to just focus on the spiritual, on worship and prayer life. What it comes down to is we cannot pick and choose, we cannot ignore what offends us or the teaching we find difficult, and we cannot put together our own personal Jesus. All of his words are words of eternal life. The Christian life is social action and example; prayer and proclamation; individual devotion and shared communion.

Paul writes in a similar vein when he tells the Christians in Ephesus and us, to “put on the whole armor of God!” He goes on to explain just what he means, put all of it on: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of proclamation, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. Without the whole armor we are not fully protected, but instead open and vulnerable to evil, and without all the equipment we are not ready to do all of what God calls us to do: to speak the truth, to act righteously, to proclaim the faith, to assist in salvation with the help of the Holy Spirit. Only the whole armor of God, all of the teaching, all of the words, guarantees success. Paul talks of needing this armor in a fight or a battle with the somewhat mysterious forces he calls the cosmic powers of this present darkness. But it seems to me that the battle is also with ourselves and our own subjectivity, with our tendency to pick the best, and leave the rest, to ignore what is difficult, offensive, or embarrassing.

I am not in any way advocating that we take everything in the Bible literally or without thinking about it first. As I said a moment ago we must always look at the context in which a particular teaching was written before we decide how – but not whether – we can apply it today. And Jesus taught people to think. That’s why so much of the teaching the Gospel authors have passed on to us is not a simple command, though we have them too, especially in the call to love one another. Instead the teaching has most often been passed down as parables or as metaphors like the metaphor of the bread of life or the armor of God. Their purpose is to make us think, to reflect, and to discuss with one another what this teaching, what this story, what this image means today, for us, and for our situation. That can be difficult, but it’s a difficulty I am glad to have to deal with.

There might not even be one single meaning for a metaphor. Earlier in chapter 6 of John’s Gospel the bread from heaven stands for the revelation or teaching of Jesus, for his words. Later, especially in the section we heard today, the bread that came down from heaven is Jesus himself: both as the incarnated Word or presence of God in the world and as the Eucharist we celebrate today at his command. And I don’t think that these two meanings contradict one another, they are complementary. The proclaimed word and the Word in the Sacrament are the two basic, complementary components of our liturgy. We believe, however difficult it may seem at times, that what we have received from God is not just words, but the Word made flesh, God made human. And just because something is described using a metaphor does not mean that it has no real meaning, no effect on us, no impact. Paul’s metaphor of God’s armor is a much stronger way of telling us what we have to do than a series of commands to speak and act truthfully and righteously. Telling us, as Jesus does in John’s Gospel, to eat and share the bread of heaven is a much more powerful way of telling us that we are to be a community of believers: a community that by sharing both the words of the Jesus, as well as the Word in the flesh and the blood of the Eucharist, is fully in relationship with one another and with God, and a community that shares one common set of beliefs and acts on them.

So, let us focus on the things we don’t like to hear. We must not ignore what is difficult, offensive, or seemingly embarrassing, instead let us embrace it. I don’t think we really want to follow a teaching that is just easy or a faith that is inoffensive. What we want is a teaching and a faith that compels us to change, to change both ourselves and the world we live in.
Amen