What is...Wolf?

Mark 9:30-37

  When Dan and I were first married - before there were smart phones and instant on demand video distractions and we had to wait through the high squeal of dial up just to check our email, we would play Scrabble. And Dan would smoke me. Every. Time. He not only had, and still has, a superior vocabulary, but he also had this knack for maximizing on the triple letter scores with the Ps and Js and Ks. One night, I’d had enough. I was getting so frustrated that Dan always beat me, and was currently trouncing me by over one hundred points. I was annoyed that I couldn’t seem to master this game like Dan had. I was discouraged at the threatening thought that Dan might be smarter, cleverer, better, than I. I was clearly spiraling. I could feel the discomfort climbing up from my stomach. My head was getting hot. My vision began to blur with irritation and resentment. And I watched him as he gently played the tiles on the board: W. O. L. F. “That’s 78 points,” he said with a triumph. And I looked at him, and I looked at the board, and looked at him and looked at the board and I kid you not, with something very near tears in my eyes I asked him, with all the seriousness and confusion and a truly, authentic, lack of comprehension, but also with this sort of triumph, as if I’d finally called him out on making this word up, I asked, “What is ‘wolf’?”

And I don’t remember exactly what Dan said or how he responded. I have a vague memory of a kind of bemused incredulity. “Uh, Jenn? W.O.L.F. Wolf. You don’t know what a wolf is?” And I swear, for some really long seconds, I honestly had no idea what what a wolf was. I was so frustrated and so angry and so wrapped up in my desire to, for once, beat Dan at Scrabble, that I pretty much completely lost my mind. I lost a certain grasp of reality. I couldn’t recognize familiar things. Words had lost their meaning. I was so swallowed up in what I wanted, what I needed to be true, that suddenly “wolf” was no longer a word in my lexicon. 

We joke about it now. Whenever one of us misunderstands something, or we miss the obvious, or we have a hard time comprehending what, to the other one of us, seems like a fairly simple concept, we’ll say, “What is wolf?" And then laugh at the situation.

John Calvin once lamented: “So great is the influence of preconceived opinion, that it brings darkness over the mind in the midst of the clearest light.” In other words, our preconceptions, our biases, our assumptions, and our versions of reality carry so much weight for us that when we are presented with opposing facts, these preconceptions, biases, and versions of reality cloud up and hide the truth. 

This was the Copernican Revolution, right? Copernicus essentially proved that the Earth and the other planets of the solar system revolved around the sun, and disproved that these planets and this sun revolved around the Earth, and this idea rocked the entire world. This concept, this idea that perhaps we humans weren’t the center and the focus around which all of creation revolved, was completely unfathomable to the Christian Church. Their preconceptions clouded their acceptance of the truth. They looked at the facts and they saw the evidence and its implications and they basically said, “what is wolf?” 

Eratothenes pretty much proved that the earth was round way back before Jesus was even born, and still, today, after geometry and explorers and photographic pictures from outer space, we have flat-earthers who cannot handle the truth of it.

We have climate change deniers who focus on the now debunked studies of a few scientists who question the negative impact that humans are having on this world, despite the hurricanes and floods and droughts and fires and pandemics and the rising tides and temperatures and the melting ice caps and the scientific consensus of 99% of climate experts that all say that human-made climate change is real, and is a serious threat to our health and the future of the human race.

A few people saw some behavior changes in their children after their first MMR vaccinations, and that inspired a quack so-called scientist to run a faulty, now debunked experiment that supposedly proved that vaccines cause autism, and now we have an entire antivaxer movement, and so now we have rising incidents of whooping cough and measles and a resurgence of polio, which was once so close to being completely eradicated.

    In all these situations, people have held on so tightly to their preconceived opinions, that they couldn't see otherwise, even when presented with facts.

What is…wolf?

This is a human condition. We all do it. It’s called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable thing that happens when we are confronted by a truth that contradicts what we previously thought. It’s when we encounter evidence that fails to meet our expectations, and we kind of flip out. And over and over again, we choose the option that meets our preconceived notions, rather than revise and adjust our worldview. 

And more information doesn’t help. In fact, it can make this cognitive dissonance worse. Studies have shown that people more easily believe the resources and the articles and the studies that already support their perspective. And we more quickly disregard any evidence that might contradict our idea of what is true. “We learn and remember agreeable information more easily. We seek it out, and we ignore, avoid, and devalue information that does not fit our view or our expectations.” We “selectively expose” ourselves to new information - that is, we tend to pick and choose the “new” information that will confirm what we already believe to be true. We surround ourselves entirely with others who agree with us. We manipulate the facts in order to fit them into our narrative. This is the “alternative fact” society, where, as an article in The Atlantic states, “There are facts and there are beliefs and there are things you want so badly to believe that they become as facts to you.”

When we’re confronted with conflicting ideas, it’s just our human nature to brush them off, forget them, devalue them, or ignore them altogether. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. It forces us out of our own little worldview and into the perspective of another, and this does not feel good. What feels good, is being right. And we will pursue that feeling of being right all the way to the end of the world. Instead of opening ourselves up to other possibilities, we double down on our previous beliefs. We do this kind of “motivated reasoning” where we do theological or sociological or even so-called "scientific" backflips in order for us to remain convinced of what we already believe. 

Now for most of us, this doesn’t happen in every situation. If we walk out the door and encounter rain after the forecast told us to expect sun, we grab our umbrellas and we go on with our day. If the bus is scheduled to come at 8:17 and it’s already 8:19, most of the time, we just wait a little longer. But when our beliefs are tied to our identities and our communities, there’s much more at stake, and that means it’s much, much more uncomfortable when we are confronted with something that might threaten to shift those beliefs. We need each other, and we think that we all have to think and believe the same things in order for us to stay connected to each other. And so, suddenly, wearing a mask to the grocery store isn’t just about doing our part to protect each other from a deadly virus, it becomes a symbol of who is on your side, it’s an expression of what group you belong to, it becomes a political and moral and sometimes even spiritual stance. Even if we are confronted with the proven evidence that masks and vaccinations save lives, we will resist that evidence, avoid masks, refuse the vaccination, because to accept those things might mean that we are no longer members of that group. And we so, so, so long to belong. And in order to belong, we start to focus more on the symbols, the rules, and the definitions rather than the relationships. 

    Relationships tend to destroy preconceived notions. They wreak havoc on static belief systems. Relationships cause us to rewind the tape and question everything we thought we knew.

What is…wolf?

So this isn’t just a thing that we are experiencing now in our information-overloaded, politically dissected, instant-gratification, social media world. This is a human thing. It’s our condition. It’s exactly what was going on here in our reading today. 

Jesus is walking along, telling the disciples, once again, about this hard thing. He’s going to be betrayed by humans, by people just like you and me, and they’re going to kill him and then three days later he’s going to rise again. 

Uh, say what now?

Over and over again, Jesus confronts them with an entirely new paradigm, a conflicting set of facts that upend everything they believed the Son of Man was supposed to do and mean and achieve. This is the disciples experiencing complete and total cognitive dissonance. This can not be what is true about the Messiah. This doesn’t match the king and the political power and the reunification of Israel that the Messiah is going to bring. This is not the belief system around which my community has defined itself. This doesn’t make sense, and this is not what we expected. And they don’t understand. And they experience fear. They have anxiety. They lose a certain sense of what is real. We can't criticize them for this because we do it all the time.

What is…wolf?

And then they, like us, double down on their previous narrative. They not only think that all of this is going to turn out great, but they also start arguing on the way about who is going to be the greatest. Jesus has told them about the fact of suffering, and the disciples have rejected that fact in order to hold on to their belief in triumph.

And Jesus calls them out on it. He basically says, “Your expectations are different from the real. Your beliefs don’t match up with the truth. You think it’s all about being the first and the greatest and the best, but really, the fact is, the truth is, whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” And he doubles down on this. He really wants to drive this home. He takes a kid, someone who has no current value or claim on being “the greatest” and he wraps this kid in his arms and he says, “if you welcome one like this, you welcome me, and if you welcome me, you welcome the One who sent me.”

This isn’t a story about a cute kid sitting on Jesus’s lap and telling him that he wants a Red Ryder bb gun for Christmas. This isn’t just a feel good story about how we should value children. (Of course we should). This is about how Jesus calls us to enter in to those spaces where we are experiencing a cognitive dissonance, those spaces where we are so very tempted to just hear what we want to hear and expect what has always been, and be open to something new. You know, like kids. Kids aren’t just cute and silly and messy. They’re a little rebellious. They ask “why” and “who says” and “so what?” They question the status quo. Kids are malleable and moldable and flexible. They’re resilient. When given a new situation or a new set of information, they’re quick to change their minds. They aren’t threatened by new ideas or new perspectives because it’s all new to them all the time. 

When Jesus calls us to be a servant to all, to welcome the child as if we are welcoming him, he is asking us to see the world outside of our limited perspectives. You can’t serve anyone if you can’t see what they need. And you can’t see what they need until you get out of your own cognitive space and try to occupy someone else’s. And that’s gonna be a little uncomfortable. We need cognitive dissonance in order to grow and change and learn and be in relationship. Kids have this in spades, but somehow, at least for awhile, they aren’t threatened by it. They take it in stride because they know that their value isn’t in what they think or what they believe or the symbols they adhere to. They know that they belong simply because of who they are. They can change their minds, they can explore, they can get uncomfortable and try something new because their belonging isn’t tied to any of those symbols of membership or expectation or how things have always been. 

Our belonging isn’t tied to the fact that we drive on the right side of the road or that we vote a certain way or fly a certain flag or whether we wear masks in the grocery store or not. Our belonging is tied to something deeper and more flexible and more malleable and more true than any of that. Our belonging is tied to the dynamic of relationship. No matter what changes all around us, no matter what new facts come to light, we can adjust, we can adapt, we can survive and even embrace the dissonance because we are moored to the One who resisted all definitions, who avoided all simplifications, who upended all expectations, and who calls us into the dynamic, terrifying, ever-changing, paradigm shifting, revolutionizing relationship with Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ: Two triple letters on a double word score plus a bingo for using all your tiles: 144 points.

Thanks be to God.

Never Have I Ever...

Mark 7:24-37

 There’s this drinking game all the cool kids used to play. We called it “Never Have I Ever” and it was quite simple. You’d take turns going around the circle, and come up with something that you’ve never done. If someone else in the circle has actually experienced that thing, that person has to take a drink. So, I’d say, “Never have I ever gotten arrested,” and my buddy across the way who got caught streaking the chapel would have to take a drink. But when it was her turn, she could say, oh, something like, “Never have I ever gone skinny dipping on the Oregon Coast,” and you’d catch me taking a swig of my apple-tini. And we’d go around the circle, trying to catch each other in various acts of embarrassment, all while creating yet another opportunity for embarrassment by getting each other to drink, and thus reveal, a little too much about our lives.

The thing is, when I first started playing this game, I was, obviously and appropriately and very prudishly, 21 --not that I’m a huge fan of underage drinking. But when I first started playing this game, I didn’t take very many sips. Because, well, I hadn’t done much. See, I’d had my life all planned out. I had strict, distinct lines drawn on things like drinking and drugs, sexuality, getting a C, skipping classes, telling people how I really feel, and even getting angry. All of these things were forbidden. Unheard of. Morally compromised. Sub par. I had a mental list of things I was never going to do. I would never have credit card debt.  I would never get a designer dog. I would never wear makeup just to prevent people from telling me that I look tired. I’d never compromise my passions just for a paycheck. I would love the sinner and hate the sin. I would have a fairytale marriage with a man of God who would be the head of my household and we would fall asleep in each other’s arms after our couples’ bible study every night. I would never doubt my Christian faith. I’d never stop trying to get my mother to pray the "Jesus Prayer” and therefore be “saved.” I’d never do drugs and I’d never get a speeding ticket and I’d never, ever, watch trashy tv or read romance novels for fun. I would always avoid big chains like Walmart and Starbucks and Amazon and always shop from the mom and pop stores down the street. And this continued on as I became a parent. I would never leave my kid in his carseat. I would never feed my baby food from a jar. Their butts would never know the feel of a disposable diaper, and I would never ever let them sleep in the bed with me or cry it out or stray from their schedule or watch too much Yo Gabba Gabba. (That was a popular show about ten years ago, just like Sesame Street, but for hipster babies.)

Needless to say, if I played the game now, 21 years later, it would be a lot more interesting. I’d probably have to pull out a second bottle of shiraz.

I had all these ideals that I wanted to keep, and to do that, I had to set up all these boundaries, draw all these lines, live in all these boxes so as to never compromise on those ideals. It’s a nice insurance policy, really. If I never take any risks, if I always draw inside the lines, then no one will get offended, I won’t step on anyone else’s shoes, and I’ll always have the confidence that comes with being right.

Now, there’s no doubt that boundaries can be really important. They keep us on track with our goals. They give us identity and perspective and a place to stand. And, most importantly, they can keep us safe. They can keep out all the scary things in life that might want to hurt us. They can keep out all the scary people in life who might want to hurt us. Most of us need boundaries. Especially in relationships. We need to be able to say, “No. That’s a little too close. Please give me some room.” We need to be able to protect ourselves from abuse and neglect and emotional manipulation, and boundaries are really important tools for doing all of that. 

But the down side to boundaries is that, just as they can protect us from the bad, they can also keep out the good. They keep us from experiencing and understanding someone unlike ourselves. They keep us from relationships that can stretch us and grow us and challenge us beyond who we thought we could be. Sometimes we claim our boundaries are for our own protection, but in reality, they’re there because we have prejudice, we have assumptions, we have judgment and ridicule. Sometimes we have boundaries, not to keep us safe, but to protect this fragile little world that we have created for ourselves. And that’s when, at least in my life, I think I’ve really missed it. I’ve missed out. I’ve stayed a little too sober. I’ve refused to participate in that dangerous game that is also fun and connecting and radically vulnerable.

That’s what I want to focus on for this really hard, really uncomfortable passage for today. 

Boundaries. 

Even Jesus had boundaries. Even Jesus lived in a box of morals and values and prejudice that was built long before he was born that defined who was in and who was out. A line that was never to be crossed. A set of expectations that was never to be questioned. They had drawn a line around the Israelites in order to protect themselves, sure, but also in order to keep anyone who might be different from them out. 

Walls to keep certain people in. Walls to keep other people out. 

Jews in. Gentiles out. 

But you have to be willing to really listen to the text, to let the words cross over the line past that world where you think you know who Jesus is, in order to discover who he really was. You have to be willing to let this account trespass into your neat orderly Jesus box. And this is hard, because in this particular encounter, at least for me, Jesus is not who I want him to be.

According to Dr. Tuell, professor emeritus at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, “It takes extraordinary eisegetical gymnastics to avoid the clear implication of this story.” And the clear implication of Jesus isn’t so flattering to our modern-day eyes.  See, Christians, for centuries, have been doing theological backflips to make this text not say what it is actually, pretty clearly, saying. Jesus calls this woman a dog. Jesus refuses to heal this woman’s daughter simply because she is a Gentile. Jesus is living according to his time and his culture and the boundaries set up for him by his Jewish faith. Dare we even say that Jesus got it wrong here? 

Gregory of Nazianzus said, “That which was not assumed is not healed. But that which is united to God is saved.” In other words, if Jesus didn’t experience it in his full humanity, then we aren’t saved in ours. 

This very human Jesus just wants a break. He just wants to go on vacation. So he enters the land of Tyre, a predominantly Gentile town, in order to get a break from his people. He just wants to be left alone. He’s drawing a boundary between himself and them just so that he can get some rest. He enters a house and doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s there. He’s got boundaries on top of walls on top of limits inside neat little boxes.  But somehow, this woman finds out about where Jesus is trying to keep himself safe, and she barges in. She trespasses. She knocks down the boundary that he has set up for himself. At least a little bit. At least enough to make him question all those lines and walls and limits and boxes.

She comes in, kneels at his feet, and begs him to cast a demon from her daughter. For something awful and oppressive has crossed through her daughter’s boundary, and that something is tormenting her. This woman challenges Jesus’s boundaries so that he might restore her daughter’s. 

And he calls her a dog.

No. Not a cute little puppy. There were no dachshunds or labradoodles or French bulldogs at this time. Only scavengers. Scavengers who roamed the streets and fed off of dead flesh. They were considered filthy animals. Unclean. Rejected. Kicked and chased away. “Let the children be fed first. It’s not right to feed you filthy dogs.” 

And the woman is not surprised at all by this abuse. In fact, she’s ready for it. She challenges his boundary once more, using his language, using his insult, in order to hold a mirror up to all these walls he’s set up for himself and reveal to him the very narrowness of his boundary. She says, “Even the dogs get the crumbs. And crumbs are all I need.” 

She walks up to Jesus’s boundary and she invites him to move it. Not far. Just enough to heal her daughter. 

So often we set up these boundaries in ourselves and we dig our heels in and we say, “This is my boundary. I will never cross it. I will always be this way. I will never change. This is my plan.”

And then life happens. 

Our kids get sick. We lose our jobs. We suffer from crippling mental illness. We get off track. Our carefully curated plans go awry. Our “never will I evers” become, “well, maybe, this one time…”

And that’s when people enter in to our spaces and leave us changed. Life happens and things get messy and our black and white worlds turn to grey.

Suddenly, all the hypothetical situations that I have protected myself against become real, and when things get real, boundaries tend to crumble.

Life happens and suddenly we find ourselves on the other side of the boundary.

We wake up one morning and we think, “How in the world did I end up here? This was not my plan.” All this time we’d been saying, “Never will I ever,” until we find ourselves right there, right in the thick of it, seeing the complexity and the muddiness and the gray that we never thought existed before. 

But “that which was not assumed is not healed; that which is united to God is saved” remember?

When we meet others who are also on the other side of the boundary, healing happens. 

When we take on each other’s burdens, we’re healed. When we are fully and completely united to Christ through his humanity, we are saved.

I think Christianity has done a really good job at creating a “bounded set.” We’ve drawn a big ol’ circle around ourselves and defined who is in and who is out. We’ve drawn a line in the sand to say Christians do “this” but they don’t do “that.” There’s a them, and there’s an us. And if you just believe the right things, and behave the right way, you, too, can stay in our circle, you, too, can belong. 

But after Jesus has this encounter with the Syrophonecian woman, after she has pulled the thread from his carefully constructed and protected worldview, Jesus is never the same again. Jesus himself steps out of his box, never to be found there again. 

After we encounter this text, this story of how Jesus steps out of himself and into more of himself, we will never find him in the circle again. He will always be with them. Outside. Out there. Beyond the bounds we have placed upon him and upon ourselves. “That which is united to God is saved.”

Jesus heals this woman’s daughter, Jesus sees this woman outside of the prejudiced box he once put her in, and that bounded circle of us and them breaks wide open. He’s not just here for the Jews. But for the Gentiles too. Now there’s just us, all of us, looking for healing and trust and community outside of that list of rules and nevers and always that we have accepted as part of life because we want them to keep us safe, to keep the unwanted out, to give us clear answers and something concrete to be moored to. 

When we meet others on the other side of the boundary, we might drink a little too much, we might get a little too vulnerable, we might embarrass ourselves or feel shame or regret. But we will also discover that we are not alone. We will meet one another outside of that bounded set, and Jesus will be there. 

Jesus unites himself to the other. 

And guys. We’re the other. 

“That which is united to God is saved.” 

But first, Jesus’s us and them paradigm has to be torn apart. This woman challenges Jesus’s predetermined boundary and Jesus leaves the encounter changed. Jesus leaves this encounter different. Jesus steps out from inside of his little box and becomes more…Jesus.

Jesus goes on to heal again, but this time in a really intimate, messy, unbounded way. 

He sticks his figures in a man’s ears.

He puts his spit on his tongue.

And the man is healed.

That night, this healed man is sitting around the fire with his buddies as they pass the bottle of wine. One of them says, “Never have I ever been deaf but now I can hear, never have I been mute but now I can speak.” And the man grabs the bottle, and takes a deep, life-giving, drink.

Thanks be to God.

"Hi Trees"

John 6:35,41-58

 When the world is falling apart, which is pretty much every day, I go out to find my trees. There are these two trees I pass by every day when I walk my dog. They’re nestled in one of my neighbor’s beautiful backyard gardens. They’re not trees, though, exactly. First of all, according to my neighbor-gardener, it’s just one tree, even as they have two “trunks” that come out of the ground to look like it’s two. They have the same root system. Also, they’re not exactly trees, at least not yet, because they’re pretty small. They’re seedlings, really, not any taller than I am, but you get the sense that they’ll be kids for a long time yet. Their line on the growth chart is a barely discernible incline, as if their x and y axis belong to the unbound set of eternity, or, at least they measure time dramatically differently from the rest of us. They’re slow. They take their time. After briefly stalking my neighbor-gardener, I finally got the chance to ask him what kind of trees they are, and that was when he told me that it was actually one tree, a brush-cone pine, or “bristlecone pine,” one of the longest living species in the world. I don’t know why I like these particular trees so much, but it’s one of those first impression things, like when you see someone from across the room for the very first time and you just know you’re going to get along. 

Anyway, I love these trees. I have this strange attachment to these trees. And every day as I walk down the sidewalk and I pass those trees I take a moment to whisper, “Hi trees.” I’ve even trained my dog to pause by them, for just a moment, so the trees and I can exchange a glance, check in on each other, exchange some oxygen for some CO2. I make my kids do it, too, “Hi trees” when we’ve actually succeeded in dragging them along for a walk. 

But our passage today is not about trees. It’s about bread. But, somehow, I hope to draw the faintest, thinnest of lines between these trees and that bread. This passage isn’t about trees. It’s about bread. Sort of. And it’s also about…trees.

This passage today is absolutely and totally about bread.  And it’s absolutely and totally not about bread.

That’s what metaphors do, isn’t it?

They point to and away from both the object and the idea behind that object. They give us a new perspective on an ordinary thing by comparing it to something surprising, maybe even a little baffling.

And here we have a metaphor of bread that is as complicated to me as actually trying to make the stuff.  It’s this complex, intricate mystery that I can’t  seem to get in on.  Wading into these waters of metaphor require balance, artistry, trial and error.

First, some context.

Like I said, this whole chapter is about bread.  And it’s also not about bread. So maybe we can try to hold each of these things at the same time.

Jesus has just fed five thousand people out of five barley loaves and two fish.

And people see this as a sign and begin to believe in him. So they plot to figure out how they can get more.

Jesus leaves, fearing for his life and freedom, and goes across the lake.

And the crowd follows him. 

And Jesus calls them out - he says, “you just want to find me because you want more bread.”

They’ve become adherents of the prosperity gospel - follow Jesus and you’ll get stuff. I mean, who can resist FREE BREAD!

But Jesus redefines “bread.” - He tells them that real bread is that which gives life.

Jesus tells them that He’s the bread.

And this gets the crowds reeling.

They say, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat? What are we, zombies or something?”

And like when we’re trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English, Jesus seems to repeat himself even louder, using more words. “For real, guys. No kidding. Amen. Amen. 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. 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.” 

“Oh great. Zombies, and now vampires, too?”

Even on a purely metaphorical level, this is difficult and haunting.  But Jesus wants more than metaphor. And. He wants more than actual bread. He wants something more real than metaphor, and more real than bread. He wants the real, living, alive, bread.

The crowd has come to him, saying, “bread bread bread!  Give us the bread!”

And the Jewish leadership has come to him, saying, “spirit spirit spirit! Give us the spirit!”

The crowd has come to him wanting physical comfort and tangible signs. And Jesus says, it’s not about eating! It’s not about bread!

The leadership has come to him wanting spiritual and ethereal guarantees. And Jesus says, it’s about eating! It’s about bread!

And they’re both completely on the wrong track.  They’ve both got it all wrong.

And yet.  They’re both…right.

Bread. Spirit.  BreadSpirit.  SpiritBread. “Brerit.” “Spread.”

But since it’s clear that no one is getting it STILL, Jesus keeps going!

He says, “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. 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.”

Now. Let’s take a pause.  Stop where your brain is going right now. ‘Cause if it’s going where my brain was going, we’re on the wrong track.  This isn’t about who gets into heaven.  And this isn’t about the end times. This isn’t about some far off other worldly realm of everlasting peace and happiness. Which yes, sounds amazing, and might actually be real, and who knows, maybe we’ll even get to experience it someday. But when Jesus talks about eternal life, yes, even in the Gospel of John, he’s not really talking about immortality or heaven, but as O’Day and Hylen tell us in their commentary, it’s more about “living now in the unending presence of God;” it’s about “nourishment in the ongoing presence of God.” Throughout the scriptures, bread has meant presence. God being here, with the people. God abiding with. Presence.  It’s about Presence. Which is this messy combination of all that we are and all that we were and all we will be. And it’s that messy combination of all that God is, and all that God was, and will be. 

Both the crowd and the Jewish leadership are there to get something from Jesus. They want the stuff. They want the exchange. The crowd has come for actual bread. The leadership has come for spiritual answers, or, at the very least, a nice juicy theological scandal.

They’re coming to “get something out of Jesus.” Not to be present with Jesus. 

Jesus is trying to get us all to understand the both/and here. It’s about the metaphor, and the food. It’s about the spiritual realm and the physical realm. And it’s about how, in God’s presence, because of the incarnation, these two realms aren’t really separate at all. 

There’s this concept that the contemplatives really like called “unitive consciousness.” Richard Rohr describes this as moving from a dualism of either/or - either spirit or bread - to overcoming all the limitations of space and time and physics and separation from each other so that bread can become a spiritual reality, and so that this unknown, hard to grasp spiritual reality comes to us in the the bread. It’s a mutuality. It’s presence. I am with you. You are with me. God is with us. We are with God. We abide in Christ and Christ abides in us. This is the material and the spiritual coming together. It’s all sacred. It’s all good. Because the one is present in the other. The subject and the object conflate. The bread is in me. And I am in the bread. Christ is in me. And I am in Christ. 

When we are truly present to someone or some thing, we sort of lose ourselves and gain ourselves at the same time. We are completely and fully ourselves, and yet we are completely and fully engaged with something other than ourselves. 

God offers us this presence.

And it’s in the form of bread and spirit.  “Berit.” “Spread.” 

God offers to be present with us and satisfy our hunger: with bread - the “real” concrete, stuff made of yeast and sugars and flour, and the “spiritual” eternal now - the moment when time stops and there’s only presence.  You and me and God. God and me and you. Here. Now. 

The desert fathers and mothers had two concepts of time. One was chronos, that everyday, mundane, trying to get stuff done and survive and make it to the next day kind of time. And the other is kairos, which is a different sort of time altogether. When we are in kairos we sort of lose track of chronos time, we enter a kind of flow, we are completely in and present to ourselves and yet we are also sort of outside of ourselves, beyond ourselves. It’s when I’m absolutely, totally present with myself, but I’m not thinking about myself at all. It’s when time falls away and we are just swept up in presence. The bread has never tasted more like bread in your whole life because you are fully present to it, fully engaged in it. It becomes a spiritual experience. And Jesus is telling us that he wants that kind of presence with us. Jesus is asking for us to enter in to this sort of “eternal now” that happens when we are exactly who we are, exactly how God made us to be, and we’ve so lost track of ourselves that we can’t tell the difference between spirit and bread, between us and Christ. 

This is the fullness of the bread metaphor. 

If we focus on just the bread or just the spirit, we miss it.

But it’s not a 50/50 combination of bread and spirit.  It’s 100% bread. 100% spirit. 100% life.

If you’ve followed me this far, I commend you, because maybe I don’t even exactly know what I’m saying. But it feels really really right. 

Jesus is telling the crowds that you can’t have the bread without the spirit.

Jesus is telling the Jewish leadership that you can’t have the spirit without the bread.

Somehow the bread becomes more than bread. And the spirit becomes more than spirit. They become present to each other. The one in the other. The other in the one. 

We get glimpses of this. We “get in the zone” and we are doing what we love and we just lose ourselves in it. Or we’re praying and we feel a sense that maybe we’re not alone. You’re talking to someone and you meet each other’s eyes and suddenly you feel completely and purely known, for just a second. Or you walk past a couple of baby trees in some random person’s backyard, and you just say, “hi.” 

Richard Rohr says that for most of us, these moments are fleeting. We can’t really live in these spaces of pure presence. But, he says, after you’ve had the experience of this kind of unitive consciousness, this kind of mutual presence that is “spiritbread,” “now…you know there is something more, and you will always long to return there.” And that longing and that returning is everything.

Maybe you’ll say “Hi trees” as you walk by in the hopes that somehow they can be in you and you can be in them. You can stop and receive their oxygen and offer them your CO2. Somehow you can participate in their wellbeing, just like they’ve participated in yours. Simply by the seeing. Simply by the noticing. Simply by the presence. Simply because Jesus is the living bread that came down from heaven. Simply because when we cross these lines of spirituality and materiality, we abide in Christ, and Christ abides in me. 

What do we do when the world is falling apart?

We go in, so we can go out.

We see mutuality.

We connect.

We find the I in the You and in the You in the I.

“Hi trees.” 

Thanks be to God.