B Proper 14 19 Ord
BFC 2018
John 6:35, 41-51
August 12, 2018
Theologian,
Biblical scholar, and Episcopal priest, Bishop John Shelby Spong developed the
idea that the New Testament gospels, with their strong Jewish origins, are
commentaries on Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament. In other words, the gospels would have been
written in response to and grouped with Hebrew Scriptures in the Jewish
liturgical year.
Evidence for Spong’s assertions is
in today’s reading from the gospel of John.
Spong might argue that these readings would have corresponded to
readings about the Exodus story in Hebrew Scripture or the Old Testament. For strong allusions are made in our gospel
reading today to the Exodus story with its Passover and the Wilderness
story. In Hebrew Scripture, the Hebrews
grumble or complain in the wilderness that God has led them out into the desert
to die without any bread.
The same
Greek verb used for the Hebrews complaining in the wilderness is also used to
describe the Jewish people after the feeding of the 5,000 has occurred and
Jesus declares himself to be the bread which came down from heaven.[1] In the Exodus and the Wilderness story, the
Hebrews are grumbling and complaining because they have no bread to eat in the
wilderness. And they are fed bread from
heaven. In the story of the gospel of John,
the Judeans, the city-dwellers who might turn side-eye to Galileean bumpkins, are
grumbling and complaining because Jesus declares himself bread from
heaven. In John’s gospel, Jesus declares
his life, teaching, and ministry to be the daily food the people will need to
continue their common life together.
The gospel
of John can be a dangerous gospel because it can come off as strongly
anti-Jewish. For too long the word
Judean, a reference to the people who were the city elite of Jerusalem, was
translated as “Jews.” Jesus was
therefore identified for centuries as non-Jewish and John’s gospel, identified
as a favorite among many Christians, as anti-Jewish. That was always a little bit of a stretch
when we recognize Jesus himself as a Jew with almost all of his followers as
Jewish.
And so, not unlike other passages in the gospel
of John, it is the urban elite, the Judeans, the city people who are seen as
grumblers, complainers, and malcontents over and against the gospel of
Jesus. John is setting the stage,
building in the conflict, for Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem at a later
time. I want to offer that as explanation
and caution as we talk about this Scripture passage, a passage and a whole
gospel that has been used to justify historical anti-semitism
So that is
where we are. The urban elite, the
Judeans, are grumbling and complaining, as they decide whether this Jesus is
the bread of life, is the bread from heaven, God’s daily food for them.
The
historical context for this Scripture verse is very important. Jesus proclaims himself to be the “bread of
life.” How might that sound in the ears
of someone who is physically hungry?[2] Indeed, when Jesus says I am the bread of
life or bread from heaven all of his hearers would know that bread was
life. Fifty percent of the daily
calories for non-elite people at the time of Jesus were from bread.[3]
The life,
the teaching, the ministry of Jesus was not something that was just an every
Sunday, window dressing understanding, where people believed faith was a some-time
thing. This life, teaching, and ministry
were essential to daily life. And it was
not just about head knowledge but about how one was drawn to God and expressed
that experience in every day decisions of how one lived in community, talked
with people who were not in your same social group, brought healing to people
who lived on the margins of life, and sought to distribute the bread of freedom
to people who could not rub two shekels together.
The
Passover meal in the Exodus and Wilderness stories signaled the liberation of
the Hebrew people from the fleshpots of Pharaoh’s Egypt and the freedom from
Pharaoh’s discretion with bread.
Remember that Pharaoh made his control of their bread rations clear during
the plagues. The bread from heaven in
the wilderness told the Hebrew people there was an alternative resource for
their daily bread. God would provide for
them, equally and enough. At the time of
Jesus, Rome reminded the people who was god and controlled conquered peoples by
distributing or not distributing bread at their whim.[4] The bread Jesus and his community shared and
distributed reminded the people that there was an alternative resource for
their bread that God wished and willed for them dependably, daily, in shared or
equitable fashion.
The
Passover, Wilderness, and community meals of Jesus are “freedom meals,” as
Biblical theologian Ched Myers calls them, meals that give an entire population
license to march away from the dependence on tyranny and oppressors as their
source for bread, and life, and joy.
Myers says that these freedom meals do not allow us to interpret freedom
as “license to tolerate the affluence of a few and the poverty of many.”[5] These Biblical meals are about dependable,
daily, equitable distribution so that all may be filled.
The gospel
of John, however, is just not talking about bread here. It is something much more.
While in
the other three gospels, Jesus does not spend much time discussing his own
identity, the gospel of John, a book that uses romantic, poetic, and devotional
language, has Jesus discussing his identity over and over again. Throughout John’s gospel Jesus makes the
exclusive claims found nowhere in the other gospels. These statements always begin with “I AM”
statements, in the Greek, I am
the way, the truth, and the life, I am
the resurrection and the life, I am
the good shepherd, and in today’s reading, I
am the bread of life, I am the
bread from heaven. The use of the “I AM”
statements is to remind the Jewish reader of the Exodus story all over again
where Moses asks for God’s name and God replies, “I AM.”
By
equating Jesus with God, John wants to make very clear the priorities people
should have over and against any other claims for supremacy in first century
Rome. This begins in John’s gospel in
the first chapter when John relates Jesus as the the Divine Word or Wisdom (not Caesar), the one who comes
to earth to offer food and drink to her people. The author of John wants us to know that Jesus
is that Wisdom, the Divine Being (not Caesar) come down from heaven, to reveal
God’s ways in the world.
Rome would
have us believe that the bread of life, the true god’s ways in the world are a
militarism--which says that life is sustained by those who conquer or those who
patronize the conquerors. Fall in line,
cooperate, offer something to us, and maybe there will be bread for you. Or it is sustained by a greed and materialism
which says that life is sustained by those who build cities, live in
extravagance, show off their opulence.
Our prosperity is a sign of the true god’s favor upon us. Or it is sustained by being the master race
in a form of ethnocentrism which suggests that Rome and its culture and its
gods and its lifestyle are superior to the Jews, the barbarians, the Gauls, the
Galileeans, the Greeks, the Persians, and all Empires that have gone before
them. “Jupiter has favored Roma and his
son, Octavian, with a warehouse of riches and bread, and owing to his bravery
and courage in warfare against Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, Octavian is now
the ‘revered one’, Augustus, Son of God, Prince of Peace, who may now
distribute such bread as he sees fit.”
Rome made
these claims over and against other peoples and their gods to suggest that Rome
ruled by divine right and privilege. They
were exceptional. And as Red Lodge
scholar Elli Elliott reminds us, it was Rome who sought to return to family
values over and against all those other bastard cultures to make Rome great
again. Pharaoh made the same
claims. Moses and Miriam and their God
offered an alternative bread. Jesus did
not believe Rome held its power by divine right. Jesus used a soul force to offer an
alternative.
That same
choice is before us today. Is the
Mediterranean Jewish peasant our daily bread, the one who challenged the world
with his compassion and nonviolence, acted as if God’s primary value was
distributive justice, blessed and shared what little he had with the community
around him, and welcomed those outside of his ethnic group to the banquet of
God? Or do we feel safer making war so
that we may retain our daily lifestyle, hoarding, and clutching, and grabbing
what is rightfully ours? Or declaring that others not like us do not
deserve daily bread? Is Jesus our bread
of life--the bread we meditate on, and revere, and make a part of our lives
daily?
Those are
tough questions for me and my life. I
know that daily I take advantage of those things given to me and hoard and
clutch, and grab, worrying that others might get what I think is rightfully
mine because I am more Roman and Egyptian than I am Christian. Only God’s grace allows me to keep trying,
to keep thinking that this time, some day, I might reach out to take what
Christ offers rather than what Caesar offers.
Maybe that day will be today, O God, I pray that maybe that day will be
today. And may these beautiful sisters
and brothers here at Billings First Congregational Church, who have already so
many times shared their bread with me, may they receive your bread too. Maybe that day will be today, O God, when we
all might receive your bread of life.
Amen.
[1] Brian
Stoffregen, CrossMarks, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/john6x35.htm
[2] Elizabeth
Van der Haagen, Hunger for the Word: Lectionary Reflections on Food and Justice,
Year B (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical
Press, 2005), p. 150.
[3] Bruce J. Malina and
Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science
Commentary on the Gospel of John (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), p. 133.
[4] Jennifer Barger, ELCA
World Hunger Sermon Starters, August, 9, 2009, http://archive.elca.org/hunger/sermon-starters.asp.
[5] Ched Myers, “Freedom
Bound: A Tale of Two Meals,” Cheltenham,
England, August, 29, 2004.
No comments:
Post a Comment