May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, my strength and my redeemer.
This week as we read the assigned Gospel, Jesus continues to speak on the Bread of Life Discourse in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, and believe it or not, there’s more of the same to come. . . in case we are beginning to suffer from flour fatigue. Let’s take a moment to summarize and focus in on the promises Jesus has made in this Gospel discourse so far.
Jesus says, in effect, the following:
I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven.
Come to me, and you’ll never thirst or hunger again.
Come to me, and I will accept you.
Come to me, and I will raise you up.
Come to me, and I will give you eternal life.
The people standing by who heard Jesus make these promises dismissed him because they knew his mom and dad. They apparently liked him better when he was that shy, quiet little boy in Nazareth who mostly kept to himself.
Sometimes I think we hear such litanies of promises, and we very quickly, without even being aware of it, tuck them away somewhere in that too good to be true compartment in our brains.
It’s a little bit like the Far Side cartoon of a little dog named Ginger who was looking up very lovingly at her owner who is pointing a finger right at the dog’s nose and saying, Okay, Ginger! I’ve had it! You stay out of the Garbage! Understand Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!
The second frame is titled, What the Dog Really Hears. The same little dog is looking up at the same finger pointed at her nose, and coming from her owner’s mouth are the words, blah, blah Ginger blah, blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah.
Jesus comes along and promises to give away the store to everyone. But it isn’t supposed to work that way. There are no free lunches, right? How many times have we heard that one, but here comes Jesus saying, in effect, I am the Bread that came down from heaven, and everyone is welcome to partake of this bread, and it’s totally free!
In his book, The Parables of Grace, Episcopal Priest, Robert Capon, who is well known for his unorthodox illustrations, likens God’s grace and our reaction to that grace to a car salesman who whispers in your ear, just as you are about to give up on finding anything in your price range:
You really want a car? Come around to the back of the lot. Have I got a deal for you. And back there, gleaming in the sun, is a brand-new Porsche. It’s yours for free, he says. The boss just likes you; here are the keys. But rather than just jumping in the car and driving away, we start kicking the tires, slamming the doors, checking the warranty, and then, of course, we start worrying about how much insurance will cost on a sports car.
I think this is the author’s very colorful way of saying that we might have a little problem every now and then accepting the free gift of grace.
Saint John’s answer to this little problem is to repeat Jesus’ promises over and over again in the sixth chapter of his Gospel. It’s as if the author is asking us, What part of ‘freely given’ don’t you understand?
Jesus understood this resistance on our part, and that is why he says in this week’s Gospel, No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father. Now there are some very self-absorbed Christians out there who absolutely love this passage for the wrong reasons. They like to think that this statement by Jesus is their personal pass into the Country Club of the ninety-nine righteous. But any time you are tempted to interpret something Jesus says as being in any way exclusive, you need to read it again.
When Jesus says, No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father,he is describing God’s willingness and our resistance. The Greek word for drawn here implies difficulty. It is the same word used elsewhere in the Gospels to describe the difficulty the disciples have when they drawin a net filled with a huge haul of fish.
Jesus is saying that God’s arms are always wide open, but it’s like God sometimes has to use a dragnet to draw us into those arms.
Jesus didn’t say, I will raise you up only if you are worthy.
Jesus didn’t say, I will give you bread only if you can say the right words or think the right thoughts.
Jesus didn’t say, I’ll only give you eternal life if you meet a certain set of requirements.
The only requirement to be drawn to the Bread of Life is that you be hungry. Does this sound too good to be true?
There’s an old Ziggy cartoon where Ziggy is hanging on a half-broken branch coming out of the side of a cliff, and he’s yelling, Help . . . Is anybody up there?
In the next scene a booming voice comes from the clouds . . .
JUST LET GO. . . I’LL SAVE YOU!
In the third panel Ziggy yells, Is there anybody else up there?
I don’t think that the church has done a very good job of helping people to accept that they are accepted, and yet that is, I believe, one of our primary baptismal promises. When we promise to respect the dignity of every human being, we are promising to help the newly baptized to accept that they are accepted.
Norman Vincent Peale tells the story of when he was walking once through the twisted little streets of Kowloon in Hong Kong. He recounts:
I came upon a tattoo studio. In the window were displayed samples of the tattoos available. There were anchors and flags and Mermaids, but what struck me with force were three words that could be tattooed on one’s flesh. You could actually buy a taboo with the three single words, ‘Born to lose.’ I entered the shop in astonishment and pointing to those words, asked the Chinese tattoo artist, Do some people actually have ‘BORN TO LOSE’ tattooed on their body?’
He replied, ‘Yes, do often.’
‘But I just can’t believe that anyone in his right mind would do that.’
And the Chinese man simply tapped his forehead and said, ‘Before tattoo on body, tattoo on mind.’
Jesus said:
I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven.
Come to me and you’ll never thirst or hunger again.
Come to me and I will accept you.
Come to me and I will raise you up.
Come to me and I will give you eternal life.
We, the Church of Christ, need to do a far better job of helping others believe firstly, that God really does want to give away the store, and secondly, that the promises Jesus gives us in this week’s Gospel aren’t just for super-spiritual, muscular Christians. They aren’t just for righteous zealots who say with a straight face, like the Rich Young Man, that they have kept all the really important commandments from their youth. They’re not just for spiritual accountants who think salvation is all about the bottom line.
These promises are also for the bedraggled, the beat up and the burned out. They are also for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together. They are for earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay. They are for the bent and bruised who feel that their lives have been a grave disappointment to God.
We as the Church of Christ are called to be a community of Proclamation, but if we don’t want our words to come out sounding like blah blah blah, then before we begin telling others how God accepts them, we must begin to accept God’s acceptance of us.
Remember, Before tattoo on body, tattoo on mind.
Amen and Hallelujah!