10 Pentecost Cycle B, Proper 13 August 2, 2015
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16 John 6:24-35
Jesus said, "I am the bread of life." Did you know how the proverbial hippies, the beatniks and Valley Girls would translate this? The proverbial hippies, the beatnik and Valley Girls would have translated this as, "I am "like" the bread of life." It was a real linguistic gift to turn every metaphor into a simile with the ubiquitous word "like." It is perhaps the most important "filler preposition" for people afraid of stating exact identity and so even when it is raining, it is "like" raining outdoors. Maybe the overuse of the preposition like is an indication that the user is "like" not fully there.
The Gospel of John is full of metaphors and so the preposition word of similes, "like" is not often to be found.
But even though a metaphor compares two different things in a direct manner, there still is no exact identity. When the Gospel of John reports Jesus as saying, "I am the bread of life" it means metaphorical identity and not exact identity.
The Gospel of John is no reading for the literal minded. I would argue that the way in which the Gospel writer uses the word "sign" means that one has to make a switch in one's mind from the literal meaning of an event to its spiritual meaning. You know the optical art pictures of the duck and the rabbit. When you look intentionally in one way at the picture you see a rabbit; but when you switch internal seeing intention you see a duck. The Gospel of John uses the notion of "sign" as way to switch or convert oneself in the way in which one sees a literal event. The sign invites a conversion to see through the eyes of faith and see the spiritual or inner meaning of the story or recounted event.
We are in our second week of the Bread of Heaven discourse. Last week we looked at the method of using common stories themes in the Hebrew tradition in order to present the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ. Jesus was like Moses, David, Elijah and Elisha and so the meaning of his life had to be told using the Hebrew story themes of bread from heaven and water miracle stories. The spiritual meaning of the story motif was an announcement to all within the community that Jesus was in the spiritual lineage of Moses, David, Elijah and Elisha. He was like them but he was surpassing because he was current and relevant to a new and different time.
This week in the development of the meaning of feeding of the five thousand story, we have the presentation of another level of meaning for this story. Through the "sign" we are invited to switch and see this story of the multiplication of the loaves in a different way.
The consistent habit of the writer of the Gospel of John is to present the literal minded as those who have limited understanding of God and the life of faith. The mob of people are presented as those who are just interested in bread and circuses. The mob want to be fed and they want to be entertained. This is the lowest and most childish form of dependent faith. It is an existence of living by bread alone. The Gospel of John which begins with "In the beginning was the Word;" is a Gospel about living not by bread alone and by the needs of the body but being educated to live by the life of words to be found in the enlightening of the mind and spirit. The writer of John's Gospel is trying to move the reader from the literal to the spiritual and the use of direct metaphor is the method of communication.
Bread for bodily life is one thing. We become what we eat in that we convert the food energy forms into how our body comes to be. Jesus is presented as one who is more interested in how we feed the mind and spirit. And so Jesus said, "I am the bread of life." Life is more encompassing than just bodily life. Jesus is also the Christ who was presented as the eternal Word from the beginning. "I am the bread of life" means that you and I become the words which we consume. Our life is constituted in a direct way by the words which we consume. For a long portion of our lives we are constituted in passive ways by our word environments. We take on the words of our upbringing of our families and cultures. We easily become parroting mimics of our families and cultures until we arrive at the expression of mature freedom in our lives to begin to regulate and become gatekeepers of the words which we take into our lives.
The Gospel of John is really a program of education, the program of Christian education called repentance. Repentance or the word "metanoia" means the continual renewal of our minds. We cannot be renewed if we are the passive robots of our families and culture and fail to attain the educational freedom to renew our minds.
If we remain crassly literal and just parrot our patterns of learning imprinted upon us we can remain in the mob of people who just want "bread and circuses." But the Gospel of John invites us to another plane of existence, another plane of thinking, another plane of integration of our interior lives with the exterior world.
The work of life according to the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John is not just to seek bread for our physical existence or entertainment for the distraction and drugging of our minds. The work of life (ergon in Greek) is to believe in Jesus as the renewing Word of God. Believe is the New Testament word for faith, (pistos). Pistos is the word reused in New Testament Greek from classical Greek. Pistos was the goal of rhetoric. Pistos means persuasion. Belief expresses what one is persuaded about. The Christian ergonomic or appropriate vocation is to know Christ as the sign of God to change our minds through our life of words and come to ever new persuasions about the wider and spiritual meanings of the literal events of our lives.
The Gospel of John invites us to the experience of the Sign of Christ. With the sign of Christ we are able to convert ourselves from mere materialistic literalists and become those whose inward lives are mobilized toward hopeful and faithful actions in our world.
Let us rejoice in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John invites us to leave the mob of "bread and circuses," those who are but materialistic literalists; and converted to continuous repenting and educating Christians who are consuming the eternal word of Christ so that we can always arrive at new persuasions about new and surpassing wisdom in our lives.
In the Gospel of John, Christ is the Word of God who creates the world and us. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said that his words were spirit and life. The Gospel of John invites us to the enlightened and continuous word lift of our interior lives so that we can always be acting out in more Christ-like ways. Let us be weaned from the literal "bread and circuses" of literalism. Let us always be looking for fresh integration of our interior lives with our exterior world. This is the bread of life and word of the surpassing life of Christ to which we are invited today. Amen.
The Gospel of John is full of metaphors and so the preposition word of similes, "like" is not often to be found.
But even though a metaphor compares two different things in a direct manner, there still is no exact identity. When the Gospel of John reports Jesus as saying, "I am the bread of life" it means metaphorical identity and not exact identity.
The Gospel of John is no reading for the literal minded. I would argue that the way in which the Gospel writer uses the word "sign" means that one has to make a switch in one's mind from the literal meaning of an event to its spiritual meaning. You know the optical art pictures of the duck and the rabbit. When you look intentionally in one way at the picture you see a rabbit; but when you switch internal seeing intention you see a duck. The Gospel of John uses the notion of "sign" as way to switch or convert oneself in the way in which one sees a literal event. The sign invites a conversion to see through the eyes of faith and see the spiritual or inner meaning of the story or recounted event.
We are in our second week of the Bread of Heaven discourse. Last week we looked at the method of using common stories themes in the Hebrew tradition in order to present the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ. Jesus was like Moses, David, Elijah and Elisha and so the meaning of his life had to be told using the Hebrew story themes of bread from heaven and water miracle stories. The spiritual meaning of the story motif was an announcement to all within the community that Jesus was in the spiritual lineage of Moses, David, Elijah and Elisha. He was like them but he was surpassing because he was current and relevant to a new and different time.
This week in the development of the meaning of feeding of the five thousand story, we have the presentation of another level of meaning for this story. Through the "sign" we are invited to switch and see this story of the multiplication of the loaves in a different way.
The consistent habit of the writer of the Gospel of John is to present the literal minded as those who have limited understanding of God and the life of faith. The mob of people are presented as those who are just interested in bread and circuses. The mob want to be fed and they want to be entertained. This is the lowest and most childish form of dependent faith. It is an existence of living by bread alone. The Gospel of John which begins with "In the beginning was the Word;" is a Gospel about living not by bread alone and by the needs of the body but being educated to live by the life of words to be found in the enlightening of the mind and spirit. The writer of John's Gospel is trying to move the reader from the literal to the spiritual and the use of direct metaphor is the method of communication.
Bread for bodily life is one thing. We become what we eat in that we convert the food energy forms into how our body comes to be. Jesus is presented as one who is more interested in how we feed the mind and spirit. And so Jesus said, "I am the bread of life." Life is more encompassing than just bodily life. Jesus is also the Christ who was presented as the eternal Word from the beginning. "I am the bread of life" means that you and I become the words which we consume. Our life is constituted in a direct way by the words which we consume. For a long portion of our lives we are constituted in passive ways by our word environments. We take on the words of our upbringing of our families and cultures. We easily become parroting mimics of our families and cultures until we arrive at the expression of mature freedom in our lives to begin to regulate and become gatekeepers of the words which we take into our lives.
The Gospel of John is really a program of education, the program of Christian education called repentance. Repentance or the word "metanoia" means the continual renewal of our minds. We cannot be renewed if we are the passive robots of our families and culture and fail to attain the educational freedom to renew our minds.
If we remain crassly literal and just parrot our patterns of learning imprinted upon us we can remain in the mob of people who just want "bread and circuses." But the Gospel of John invites us to another plane of existence, another plane of thinking, another plane of integration of our interior lives with the exterior world.
The work of life according to the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John is not just to seek bread for our physical existence or entertainment for the distraction and drugging of our minds. The work of life (ergon in Greek) is to believe in Jesus as the renewing Word of God. Believe is the New Testament word for faith, (pistos). Pistos is the word reused in New Testament Greek from classical Greek. Pistos was the goal of rhetoric. Pistos means persuasion. Belief expresses what one is persuaded about. The Christian ergonomic or appropriate vocation is to know Christ as the sign of God to change our minds through our life of words and come to ever new persuasions about the wider and spiritual meanings of the literal events of our lives.
The Gospel of John invites us to the experience of the Sign of Christ. With the sign of Christ we are able to convert ourselves from mere materialistic literalists and become those whose inward lives are mobilized toward hopeful and faithful actions in our world.
Let us rejoice in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John invites us to leave the mob of "bread and circuses," those who are but materialistic literalists; and converted to continuous repenting and educating Christians who are consuming the eternal word of Christ so that we can always arrive at new persuasions about new and surpassing wisdom in our lives.
In the Gospel of John, Christ is the Word of God who creates the world and us. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said that his words were spirit and life. The Gospel of John invites us to the enlightened and continuous word lift of our interior lives so that we can always be acting out in more Christ-like ways. Let us be weaned from the literal "bread and circuses" of literalism. Let us always be looking for fresh integration of our interior lives with our exterior world. This is the bread of life and word of the surpassing life of Christ to which we are invited today. Amen.
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