2 Kings 4:42-44 Psalm 145: 10-19
Ephesians 3:14-21 John 6:1-21
Lectionary Link
For today and for the next four Sundays, we will be reading from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. This chapter centers around the multiplication of the loaves and fish story, as a set up for a long bread of heaven discourse presented in the voice of Jesus.
John's Gospel has some special features, perhaps due to the fact that it was the last Gospel to come to textual form, so it contains two or three more decades of the Christ-based communities' thinking and presentations of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of John came about within a community of Christian practice, in discipline, order and liturgy. The community of John's Gospel was a community with a Eucharistic tradition; they broke bread at the table when they gathered. Jesus of Nazareth resided within the community meal traditions of Judaism and the Gospel of John writers were interested to present Jesus as the one who originated a bread of heaven tradition which became the Eucharistic practice of the early Christ-based communities. The community of John's Gospel was also a baptismal community, who believe one was born of water and the Spirit.
John's Gospel is all about language, language users and language products, like speech and writing. John's Gospel states that Word is from the beginning of human life as we know it, in fact Word co-exists with God, and further, Word is God. And the Word which is God took human fleshly ideal form in the life of Jesus.
But we can also say that to be humans in the image of God comes from the fact that we are people with word and language. We are by our natures label makers. We cannot help but label everything. We are born into communities which provide us with the labels for everything in our existence, things exterior to us and interior labeling of what is inside us.
Jesus was a special label maker in his word use; he came to correct the mislabeling of human experience by humanity. In John's Gospel, Jesus said that his words were Spirit and his words were life. When you think about it, words are the invisible inward mysteries of each of us in how we have come to label everything in our lives, including God and ourselves.
John's Gospel is written to contrast the ways in which we use language. There is a literal way to use language which pertains to our common sense perceptions. But the purpose of John's Gospel is to convert us to another use of language, a spiritual use of language, a figurative use, a metaphorical use, a poetic use, an aesthetic use of language. Why? The writer of John's Gospel wants to get at the center of our being, at our hearts and at the place where we decide. The writer of John's Gospel wants us to change our lives and be on a path of transformation.
To do this, the writer of John's Gospel presents stories about the Signs of Jesus. The signs of Jesus are meant to shock our common sense and scientific understanding of reality and provoke a spiritual understanding of reality. They are stories about things which cannot be scientifically true. In John's Gospel, the physical world, a substantial verified world with our five senses, is used to announce that the inward world of words is a substantial world where the transformation of human life takes place.
In John's Gospel, Jesus was presented as mocking those who were limited to literal meanings of language; the signs of Christ in John are a mocking of scientific and literal use of language. Christ is shown to be one to provoke us to see the literal as a metaphor for the spiritual.
What is the spiritual meaning of walking on water, calming the sea and the multiplication of loaves? The spiritual meaning is that the Risen Christ is a water man and bread man, in the great labeling tradition found in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Moses was a water man and a bread man. He interceded, and the waters of the Red Sea were parted. He interceded, and water came forth from the rock to quench the thirst of the Israelites. Elisha, the prophet, was a bread and water man. Elisha multiplied loaves of bread so a hundred could eat. He also levitated a lost axe head to the surface of the water. He cast his mantle on the Jordan River and the waters parted. The Christ-based communities of the Gospel of John presented Jesus in this bread and water tradition. Why?
The Christ-based communities of the Gospel of John were baptismal and eucharistic communities, whose practices derived from Jesus.
Baptism is the taming of the waters of death through the re-creation of the Holy Spirit. Eucharist is the belief that as real as physical bread is, the spiritual bread of heaven of the inward presence of the Risen Christ is just as real and vital for the life of the community.
The warning of the Gospel today is this; too many people want Jesus to be just a baker-king, that is, a king who just supplies the physical needs of humanity in continuous magical supernatural ways. We can want Jesus to be such an interventionist for our physical needs alone. But he will not allow himself to be taken to be this kind of king. Jesus is a spiritual interventionist and this is more life changing than simply getting another meal.
The words of Jesus are spirit and life. They seek to do an inside job within the words which make up our interior lives and influence how we think and act. The words of Jesus enter us, like eating the Eucharistic bread from heaven. The Sign of the multiplication of loaves which takes place in us through the living word of Christ within us, is when are lives are changed so that we share the actual bread of our lives with each other so that all have enough.
Today, we receive the multiplied bread of heaven again today, symbolic of the words of Jesus which are spirit and life, enough spirit and life to transform us to be people of love, justice, kindness, hope and faith today. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment