10 Pentecost B 09
August 9, 2009
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
5 The king ordered Joab and Abishai and Ittai, saying, "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom." And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders concerning Absalom. 6 So the army went out into the field against Israel; and the battle was fought in the forest of Ephraim. 7 The men of Israel were defeated there by the servants of David, and the slaughter there was great on that day, twenty thousand men. 8 The battle spread over the face of all the country; and the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword. 9 Absalom happened to meet the servants of David. Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak. His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on.
15 And ten young men, Joab's armor-bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him, and killed him.
31 Then the Cushite came; and the Cushite said, "Good tidings for my lord the king! For the LORD has vindicated you this day, delivering you from the power of all who rose up against you." 32 The king said to the Cushite, "Is it well with the young man Absalom?" The Cushite answered, "May the enemies of my lord the king, and all who rise up to do you harm, be like that young man."
33 « The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!"
Psalm 130
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. 2 Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! 3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? 4 But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. 5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. 7 O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. 8 It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
John 6:35, 41-51
35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
41 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42 They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" 43 Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
The Ultimate Off-Road Adventure
In my office next to my desk is a framed envelope that came to me in the mail a few years ago. Someone mailed it from Deltaville, and it went all the way to Richmond, was processed there, and it came back to Deltaville. You can see the stamps of the post offices, so you know where it’s been. It’s addressed to the Reverend Mike Cook, Somewhere Out in Left Field, Deltaville, Virginia, 23043.
A few weeks ago I did a sermon contrasting David, who accepted the power God gave him to be the king of Israel and then used it to rob and murder the poor, to Jesus, who accepted the power of God to be king of Israel and used it to feed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. On the way to talking about David and Jesus, I said a few things about the science of economics.
A few weeks further back I did a sermon about God’s covenant with David and along the way I talked about marriage as an example of a covenant.
These sermons have led to some wonderful conversations, but it’s kind of interesting to me that some of the people I talked with remembered everything about what I said about economics and nothing about what I said about Jesus. They remembered everything I said about marriage and nothing about the covenant with David.
One of the most interesting conversations I had led to one of our members laughing and saying, “You know, Mike, you come right up to the edge, and then you stop. You’re right in the middle of the road.”
I’ve heard it before, people urging me on to take a stand, usually with them, wherever they are in the road. They might be to the left, they might be to the right, they might be in the middle, but they are all saying, “Go ahead, Mike, come over with us.”
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and today’s scripture, John’s Jesus saying “I am the bread of life,” and just this morning it came to me. I’m not in the middle of the road. I’m not on the road at all.
I guess I need to temper that statement. I am on the road, but the road is not where I’m coming from.
Starting last week, and for the next several weeks, we’re going to be listening to Jesus telling us that he is the bread of life, and explaining to us what that means. There’s been some good conversation around Philippi about the Lord’s Supper, this meal we share every week, and I’m going to take the opportunity to dig into it a bit.
First off, I want to tell you what’s unique about the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Unlike almost every other denomination, we have an open table. We believe that Jesus invites everyone to share in this meal, that it is his table, and no human authority has the right to block anyone from it. Of course, the flip side of this is that excommunication, the act of blocking someone from the Lord’s Supper, is entirely self-imposed. So that’s important. You’re all welcome. Jesus himself invites you.
But we’re listening to the gospel of John and John’s version of Jesus.
Jesus in the gospel of John is a very simple figure. The language of the gospel is very simple. Simple clear words, like light and darkness, good and evil, the world and heaven, life and death. It’s what I like to call the black-and-white gospel. Almost every passage in it confronts us with a choice. It has a way of almost driving you into a corner, the way some hard-core evangelists are really pushy.
John is very forceful, very direct, very confrontative. But if you think that it has to do with church membership or assenting to some list of doctrinal statements about God, you haven’t really read it.
John’s gospel has a very simple shape. The word of God comes down from heaven, takes on human form, teaches and preaches and heals and does various miracles, is raised up on the cross, then raised from the dead, meets with his disciples, gives them the Holy Spirit, and then is raised further into heaven again, from which he will continue to send his Spirit down to earth again.
It’s a very simple pattern. Down, then up, then down again, then up again, then down again. From heaven to earth, back into heaven, back down to earth, and so on.
To eat the bread of life is to let Jesus take you on a trip to heaven and then to return you to earth. It is to be lifted off the road, from wherever you are on the road, taken into the kingdom of God, shown the history of creation and God’s desire to redeem it, shown how it’s all going to turn out, and then being dropped back down to the same place you were on the road. To eat this bread is to take the ultimate off-road adventure.
Now here is where John gets a bit annoying. Some of us are pretty happy on the road. The rich man came to Jesus and he said, “I’d like to take your off-road adventure Jesus!” And Jesus thought that was great. He loves it when people say that. The rich man said “I’ve kept the commandments since my youth.” Jesus loved that too. It’s good to keep the commandments. Jesus loves the commandments. And Jesus said, “OK, I’ll be glad to take you on my off-road adventure.” And the rich man said, “Well, hold on a minute, let me get my stuff.” And Jesus said, “You can’t take your stuff.” The rich man liked the road fine. He liked it so much he really didn’t want to leave it. He was a rich guy on the road.
Nicodemus came to Jesus and said, “I’d like to take your off-road adventure.” And Jesus thought that was great. He said “I’d be glad to.” And Nicodemus said, “Let me go get my book. I wrote this great book about religion and everyone’s reading it.” And Jesus said, “No, where we’re going is nothing like your book.” Nicodemus liked the road pretty well, because it was working for him. He was a famous religious guy on the road.
David had a few opportunities to visit heaven and come back down again, and he’d loved it. But then he’d used his power as king, power given to him by God, to rob a poor man of his wife and his life. And all of a sudden, he was cut off. No more off-road adventures for David. David’s road had become a dark and miserable place. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Let me take the trip again, I beg you. Don’t cut me off.”
It’s a lot easier to accept the invitation to the off-road adventure if the road isn’t working for you, if it’s become uncomfortable. The church in the Southern Hemisphere is booming, growing at an incredible rate. There’s one thing all these new-born Christians have in common. They’re all poor. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” I don’t like this road. I’m ready to go.
Now if you really take the trip, and I know some of you have, if you really get the view of what God has been doing all through the history of humankind, what he is doing now, and what he is going to ultimately do, if you get to see the saints who have died, the people you loved and lost, their lives kept safe in the mighty hand of the Lord, if you get to see the shining streets and the perfect love and the abundant tables and the joyful adulation, if you get to see the powers of the world arrayed around the throne of God, some of them terrible and some of them beautiful, and most of all if you get to see the wonderful day when heaven will finally come to earth and make its home here, well, you are getting a taste, and I do mean a taste, of the eternal life of God. And here’s the point: you are seeing something that isn’t on the road. It’s nothing like what’s on the road. It’s so much better than anything on the road. It’s not on the left of the road and it’s not on the right of the road and it’s not in the middle of the road. It’s nothing you know about, nothing you’ve experienced, nothing you know. It’s not on the road at all.
It’s holy. That’s what holy means. It means it’s not a part of your experience, at least not until you’ve been there. Holy means totally other, holy means totally new.
And if you eat it, if you eat Jesus, if you eat the bread of life, you are raised up, you fly up, up, up through the clouds, through the stars, out of time, out of space, into the glory of the Lord. But after you have eaten it, you are dropped back down, out of the heavenly places, down down down through the clouds and the reaches of space and time and you are plopped back down, bam, back on the road.
And you look around. And the people around you, many of them, have never made the trip. And now you have a difficulty. You have seen the glory of the Lord and now you have to describe it to people who haven’t. The bible is full of these stutterers and stammerers, trying desperately to describe something that isn’t anywhere on the road everyone is walking on, stumblers and bumblers trying to show something of the beauty of heaven as they walk among people confidently striding down the road of the world. Paul in Ephesians: “Well, it’s—how do I say this?—everybody just stop fighting and forgive each other and build each other up and don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t make room for the devil—I don’t know what to say!”
Other people are silent, they just give up. Instead of trying to describe it, they dance it with their lives. Either way, if you don’t want to take the trip, if you don’t want to take the ultimate off-road adventure, if you really don’t want to eat the bread of life, you might admire the great preachers, you might love the quiet saints, but you will have no idea where they are coming from.
But those of us who have made the trip, we know. We know just where they’re coming from. And we get together on Sunday morning and we try to tell the good news about what God is doing in Jesus Christ, and we come to the table of the Lord to take the trip again, just so we don’t forget it, just so we can keep our perspective. It’s addictive, you know, in a good way. We wouldn’t know how to live without it.
Amen.
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