Not Yet

 John 6:56-69

I can’t do this anymore. I quit.

Overflowing ICUs, wrangling about masks, a pandemic that just won’t end, Afghanistan, Haiti, that massive climate change report….it’s too much. I’ve been turning off the news as soon as I turn it on this week.

Or maybe, for you it’s been something more local – work or the return to school, a complicated relationship, a project that just keeps growing.

And you think, or you say, or just feel: 

It’s too much.

It’s too difficult.

I’m done.

That’s what people are saying about Jesus, too, in the story we hear today.

After a long discussion about bread, ranging from incomprehensible miracles to Jesus’s insistence that we need to not just believe in him, but actually eat his flesh and drink his blood because he is bread, 

many – maybe most – of those who’ve been following Jesus just…can’t anymore. 

It’s too much to ask in a relationship that you want to be living in me and me in you and that we get there by…cannibalism?

I’m tired just trying to follow the logic, and this is a lot more commitment than I’ve got right now.

Because of this, John tells us, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.

They quit.

It’s just too hard.

I mean, it is that hard to follow Jesus, a lot of the time. So much of what he invites and encourages and commands us to do is counter-cultural, a steep path of self-sacrifice and compassion and courage and re-prioritizing and giving up the lives we have for eternal life.
It’s hard to remember all his teaching, hard to figure out how something Jesus said two thousand years ago in a whole other language and culture applies to the work ethics or daily meal or relationship crisis in front of me or you right now.

And when he’s asking us – as he is today – to accept the radical messy intimacy of eating his flesh, the surrender of control so he can live in us, and we in him, it can be extra hard.

It’s basically impossible to succeed at this. Failure seems almost guaranteed.

And who wants that?

You and I – and our friends and families and most of the folks around us – are well trained to avoid failure.

We don’t want to be embarrassed at school or work or the tennis court or home or in the court of public opinion when something falls apart spectacularly (like ending a certain twenty-year war, or the messy wreck of a meal in front of guests or of a project in front of the boss).

I don’t like the shame inside my own head when I screw up something I wanted to do well, even if no one else notices.

So…

when failure seems likely, it may seem better to opt out.

Better not to join a club because the rare times you went bowling there were a lot of gutter balls.  Better not to volunteer to teach Sunday School because you don’t know the answers to your own questions about the Bible. Better not to try to make new friends because introductory conversations are so awkward and I fumble small talk. Better to avoid math classes, or literature, because they’re hard. 

A teacher friend of mine told me recently that this is common in so many of us, and maybe easier to notice in kids. Kids who start succeeding in school naturally at a young age tend to find ways to opt out when they run into an early snag, or failure. They decide that they just can’t do math, aren’t good at reading or science or art. And slip into habits that reinforce that, like not taking optional classes in that area, or (like me) not doing the homework, so that failure can be my own choice, instead of because the work is challenging for me.

This is well studied, and I’ve learned that teachers – and lots of parents, it seems – are being equipped to help kids find a “growth mindset” in those cases.

“Maybe you’re not good at math YET,” they say, “but you can be.”

They share the stories about the failures of famous scientists and other heroes. Make failure a natural part of the learning process, so that we can say, “I can’t do all of this yet, but maybe next time.”

Not yet means there’s something exciting, something powerful, about trying again.

Not yet means there’s all kinds of potential, and power, and discovery to be had by doubling down, and staying in.

And that may be Peter’s secret.

John tells us today that when almost everyone else who’s been following Jesus opts out, turns away, quits because it’s just too hard to keep up, Jesus turns to the few who are left to ask, “What about you? Are you leaving, too?”

And Simon Peter says, “Where else are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.”

I don’t think Peter is saying he’s got it all figured out. 

In fact, Peter’s got a track record of mis-steps and wrong answers and failures at this discipleship thing that become pretty famous in his community, stories still told today.

I think Peter’s saying, “We’re convinced that eternal life is worth failing, and trying again, and again, and again. We’re not there yet but we can be. We know that you will help.”

Maybe that’s our secret, too. Our secret to staying in the story.

This discipleship thing – this following of Jesus, this self-sacrifice and compassion and courage and re-prioritizing to grow so close that he’s in us and we in him, this giving up the lives we have so that we live his life and he lives ours – this discipleship is too much for us. 

We’re all but guaranteed to fail the first time we try.  Probably over and over and over again – like Peter himself.

Almost none of us are going to succeed at what Jesus is asking of us. Not yet.

And never on our own.

But we can, eventually, with God’s help. 

And to succeed at following Jesus – when we succeed at compassion and courage and generosity beyond our own expectation; succeed at self-sacrifice and justice and healing that brings us union with God’s own heart – well, that’s eternal life, divine life, living in us here and now. It’s more life, more abundant, extraordinary, expansive, joyful life than we can ever imagine or reach for by ourselves.

We’re not good at it yet – or very few of us are, and none of us right when we start – but we’re never supposed to be trying to succeed at this alone.
“You have the words of eternal life,” Peter says to Jesus. You have what we need to succeed. And Jesus wants – demands – to share it with us. Eat this food I give you, he says. Rely on me for fuel, for the resources it takes to live God’s life in this world.

When we “eat Jesus”, when we risk that weird, uncomfortable, even disturbing intimacy that lets God live in us, and us in God, we don’t face climate change or humanitarian disasters or parenting or work or daily dilemmas or the constant distresses and challenges of COVID alone. 

We don’t have to rely on our own strength and resources to face the news, to stay in challenging relationships. We can do more, face more, in fact, because each time we try something in response to the news or the challenges in front of us, even if we fail, it’s part of the whole world-transforming resources of God, the work that’s not done yet, but will be.

The same tradition that tells us about all Peter’s failures as a disciple tells us of how – trying again and again, fed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, feeling Christ living in him – Peter eventually became a model, a leader, one who could share eternal life with others.

That’s our story, too, your story and mine. Or it can be. 

We might fail spectacularly at facing the news, or solving the world, or our own problems, today.
We might not be any good at following Jesus, or being part of God today.

Not yet, maybe.

But we can be. We will be. 

And those are the words of eternal life.

The Experience

 John 6:51-58

Not once, not in early pandemic lockdown when everyone else was doing it, nor any other time, have I been tempted to bake my own bread. I’m generally just not that interested in bread. I don’t crave it; don’t choose restaurants on the quality of the breadbasket like one of my friends does. It’s just there, more or less, in a sandwich or on the table. 

Until I bite into it.

And then – sometimes – everything changes. I’m in love. Fresh baked bread, a little butter? Mmmm, heaven. Give me more.

It’s not the idea of bread that matters.
It’s the experience of it.

There’s so much talking and thinking about bread, though, in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel – the part we’re reading today, and next week, and last week, and the week before that. 

Bread Jesus gave people, bread from heaven, Jesus being bread, and us eating him as bread. It’s a lot of talking about bread and it can get a bit abstract. And confusing, if you stop and think about it, like the religious leaders who oppose Jesus do.

They argue amongst themselves, John tells us. “What does this man mean? How does he think he can give us his living flesh as bread to eat?”
It’s not just kind of a gross idea, it’s also not really possible or plausible to hand out your own flesh as bread.

Jesus hears that and doubles down.

If you don’t eat, you have no life.

Those who [do] eat my flesh have eternal life. They abide in me and I in them.

He never answers the “how” question. 

Instead, Jesus’ response to “how does this work?” is “Do it.”

He doesn’t offer explanation. He insists on experience.

Really active, full-on experience, too. He starts talking about eating his flesh with a specific verb that evokes chewy, crunchy, active eating – not easy or tidy eating.

It’s not the idea of bread that matters.
It’s the experience of it.

I suspect the reason Jesus doesn’t offer any explanation of how this bread-flesh-eternal life thing works is because it only works as an experience. You can’t explain it, you just have to do it. 

We can’t get nourishment from reading about a good meal, after all. You can’t taste the recipe video on the internet, can’t fuel a long day of work from the sizzle of breakfast sausage on TV. Food only works as an experience, by participation.

And faith turns out to be the same.
Jesus turns out to be the same.

The idea of Jesus doesn’t change the world, or my life, or yours.

The experience of Jesus does. 
It happens first when God made flesh shows up touchable, interactive, and real, in first century Palestine. The day-to-day and peak moment experience of Jesus turns a bunch of fishermen and tax guys and even some religious people into world changers themselves. 

Then it happens to us. You and me.

It’s not reciting the Creed that gives us faith.

It’s having the experience of God’s presence – as a comfort in grief, or a restlessness that drives creativity. Experiencing Jesus in the healing of a physical or emotional hurt, or the kindness of a stranger or an old friend. Experiencing the power and action of God in the experience of accomplishing some small act of justice in an unjust world, finding the power to forgive what you never thought you could, or actually finding yourself forgiven. 

There are hundreds, thousands of ways to experience Jesus, to experience the presence and power of God with our bodies and hearts and selves.
And very few ways to explain Jesus.

If you’ve ever tried to explain Jesus to a very practical teenager or preschooler, you know how quickly explanation can fail.

But that same child won’t hesitate to experience Jesus.

A two or three-year-old, coming to the altar, sees their priest put a wafer into mom or dad or granny’s hands, and reaches out because that’s food.

At eight or eighteen months, a child isn’t very interested in the promise of eternal life, and isn’t listening to any theology about the forgiveness of sin, but knows that that’s water in the font, and generally wants to get their hands into it. Baths we understand, through experience, whether we can explain what makes us “clean” or not.

A child can’t explain love. Most of us adults can’t, actually.

But we receive hugs and give them. We sacrifice our own interests for someone else of receive a gift that show great care or we become more truly ourselves in someone else’s presence and we know we’ve experienced love.

I believe that when Jesus responds to that “how could this work?” question today with “Do it; if you don’t eat, you don’t live,” he’s encouraging us – no, commanding us – to stop thinking about him and focus on experiencing him.  

Because we trust what we experience more than what we’ve been told.

We learn what we live.

And that’s what Jesus is insisting on.

The eternal life that Jesus is offering is the unshakeable certainty of God active and present here and now, in all things, starting with – but not ending with – the provision of our fundamental needs.
That’s why Jesus identifies himself with the most basic of food in his culture: bread, what we need for physical life.  Eternal life – the vivid assurance of God present and active in and with us – starts from the basic experience of receiving physical life in what we eat to fuel our bodies.

More than that, the eternal life Jesus is offering, with the bread of his flesh, is participating in Jesus, participating in God. Not watching, or explaining, but living the daily reality of taking part in the transformation, healing, and redemption of the world, knowing by that experience that evil doesn’t win.

With all this talking about bread this month, Jesus is inviting us – commanding us – not to think about his gift of faith and life, but to experience it.
We do that when we receive communion, eat the bread Jesus offers through the rituals of the church. But we also can experience Jesus in so many other ways. We can seek out that experience by looking for the power and wonder and love of God in the dailyness of life – the way your muscles move when you walk, the snuggle of a child or squeeze of your hand, the incredible network of relationships that spread out from every interaction you have at work – yes, even a reply-all meeting scheduling email. 

Just paying close attention to experience in all things will help us experience God in many things.

And sometimes, that experience of Jesus seeks us out when we are thinking about other things.

Last month, I spent two days at a retreat center because I knew I needed to renew my experience of Jesus, my assurance of God’s presence. As soon as I got there it was time for dinner and, well, I wasn’t off to a good start because I did not love the food. So I slid into my habit of eating quickly, keeping my mind on anything but the dry pork and overcooked beans. I tried to plan a calendar of reading and prayer and exercise to get this right, make a perfect retreat. 

As I mused, I bit into a very ordinary roll from the dinner tray – probably a bake-from-the-fridge mass produced type, with butter from those little frozen peel-off packets. And the deliciousness of that very ordinary taste woke me up, suddenly, to a crunchy, chewy, life-affirming experience of God’s goodness and presence and provision I hadn’t known I was looking for. That ordinary bread was a little piece of eternal life, here and now.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”

We don’t need to ask how. Because it’s not the explanation that matters.
It’s the experience that gives life.

Dancing in the Presence

 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Mark 6:14-29

Many of the preachers and scholars whose work I read or skimmed while reflecting on today’s story of David seemed eager to speculate about why we – ordinary American Sunday morning churchgoers – don’t dance ecstatically like David every time we get together in the presence of God.

This is not a thing I wonder very often myself. 

How about you?

But we could. We could wonder about what it would be like to be so full of joy in the presence of God that our bodies just move. That we find ourselves dancing in the aisles. Dancing in the streets.

And David’s story, today – as he goes dancing along the roads of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, inviting the whole world to see and share his joy in the nearness of God, felt and seen in the ark of the covenant – David’s story could make us think more intentionally about what it is like for us to respond to the presence of God.

For some of us, it might be a sense of awe and wonder that makes our minds and bodies go still – or that sparks curiosity and energy to discover more. For others, the experience of God’s closeness, presence, and power finds expression in singing, or making music with our hands, our whole bodies. Some of us find that the nearness of God changes our behavior – that we just begin to treat others and ourselves with more compassion, or we begin to speak up where we used to be silent, be silent where we used to speak. Some of us experience the presence of God and begin to pray in new ways, or laugh, or cry for what seems like no reason at all.

Several of you have commented to me how much it helps you sense God’s presence to worship here, in this building, with others around you. Others have reported your surprise at discovering God’s active, full presence in some new way of praying in the last year or so – by phone, or online, or in private prayer. 

Others of you have talked to me about how experiencing the presence of God is often harder than it looks – not just when we want it and don’t feel it, but even more when we feel it, and respond, and things get… complicated.

Take David, for one example. His ecstatic dancing is a direct response to the powerful joy of being near God’s presence manifested in the ark of the covenant. And it gets him in trouble with his wife, who finds it disgraceful and inappropriate for him to be abandoning his royal dignity.
(Michal seems to have been upset about what David was – or wasn’t – wearing in the dance, but it’s also possible David’s dancing was so enthusiastically bad as to be embarrassing in and of itself. Their already troubled marriage basically ends that day.)

Or take Herod, for another example. Herod (the son of the Herod you know from the Christmas story), is drawn to John the Baptist, and the way John manifests the presence of God. Herod, Mark tells us, felt a sense of wonder and uncertainty as he listened to John – a sense of God’s presence and work which Herod liked, and sought out. But his treating the captive John like a personal prophet and teacher irritates his wife, who doesn’t like being called out as a danger to Herod’s righteousness (for a situation that wasn't entirely up to her in the first place). And then it gets him in trouble with himself.

You or I might also find that the power of the experience of God is…awkward. Challenging.

Maybe a family member suggests your singing is embarrassing, or your tears of joy or relief at God’s presence are weird.
Maybe a friend gets uncomfortable (or makes you uncomfortable) with your desire to pray more, your choice to be at church instead of brunch.
Maybe the compassion stirred in your heart - or the passion for justice or generosity or creativity that’s stirred in your soul - by a close encounter with the presence of God makes it difficult for you to find common ground with old friends.

It’s not at all unusual that people react to the power of God’s presence by wanting to shut it down, or look away. 

Because God’s presence – that sense of the nearness of eternity and unlimited power, right among us as an act of unbounded love, demands a lot of us.
To fully experience the nearness of God requires a vast openness of heart, being wide open and vulnerable to God’s love, increasing our compassion for and love of others.
The experience of God’s eternity in our ordinary world and lives changes us.
To embrace the sense of God’s awesome presence with us often demands costly sacrifices – of our pride, our belief that we can control our own destiny, our desire to manage our environment and our own lives, and sometimes of our reputation, self-image, or the success we desire.

For Herod to keep the sense of wonder and possibility in God’s presence that he got from listening to John would have required him to sacrifice his reputation, self-image, or some political power. To admit in the presence of his political allies and enemies he’d made a foolish promise. And to publicly declare that God’s values – and the protection of an innocent life – were more important than what people would think of him.

To stay in the presence and love of God, David will have to give up the desire to build a temple that would be a monument to David’s own success.

God’s presence is everywhere, all the time – we know that, we’ve been taught it. But we may only experience it sometimes because the fullness of God’s presence is a big demand on our hearts and lives.

And sin – manifesting as the human instinct for self-preservation, and the preservation of our self-image – gets in the way of our fully experiencing and responding to the presence of God.

It interrupts, or limits, or even prevents the ecstatic joy and compelling wonder that God wants us to have as God comes close to us.

Herod’s story is a tragic example of that, today. David’s story – in just the dancing bits we read today –  is an almost comic example of the same. And many of us here have felt some loss at what we sacrifice as we open ourselves to the presence of God, or felt the loss of that powerful presence when the pressures of self-preservation and self-image pull us away.

I’m convinced, though, that God keeps coming close to us, constantly, over and over, because God wants us to experience the compelling wonder, the ecstatic joy, the expansion of ourselves in the nearness of God, that Herod and David model, briefly, in these stories. 

That God wants us to choose, over and over, to immerse ourselves in joy, in raw and uninhibited delight in God’s power and love. That God wants us to enrich ourselves, always, with the sense of wonder and awe, the mystery and challenge of God’s work and will, that expand our senses and our hearts.

So, in honor of David, and those moments in his flawed and complicated human life where he was purely filled with the ecstasy of God’s presence, maybe sing like nobody is listening. Pray as if everything is possible. Dance, if you want to. Laugh and cry and love without restraint. Risk letting go of control.

In honor of Herod, who came close to redemption in spite of himself, and of John the Baptist who was the presence of God for him, believe in miracles, and expect the unexpected. Seek out people who bring you closer to God, who can help you be more like Jesus. And risk being that person for someone else.

Because I know God wants that wonder and growth and joy for you and me.

We may never dance in the aisles here in the middle of the Eucharist, but we can be that full of the presence of God. We can accept the courage that God demands of us and gives us, dance into God’s presence, and invite others to share the wondrous joy.