“This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?”
August 27th
Jeremy Bergen
Texts:
Joshua 24:1-2a; 14-18;
Psalm 34:15-22;
John 6:56-69
The sermon today should be short and simple. Our summer series has been on the theme of being bread. The theme suggested for today is “Eat and Live.” And we are presented with some stories, and with a psalm that appear to illustrate this well. That is, if we eat the bread God gives us, then we will have abundant and everlasting life.
In the first case, we have this story of Joshua and his recommitment to God. Joshua had just led the Israelites to conquer the land which God had given them. They had been slaves in Egypt, and they cried out to the Lord. And God rescued them. They wondered for 40 years in the wilderness; they were hungry, and they cried out to the Lord. And God rescued with them by providing manna-heavenly bread. Finally, under Joshua, the people entered the land that had been long promised to Abraham and his descendants. There were battles, but God was on their side, and Joshua and the Israelites were victorious. Is this God the one to believe in? Well, for Joshua the answer is clear. Now it is time to for him to recommit himself to God, and to encourage the people also to rededicate themselves to God.
And so Joshua exhorts the people to leave behind the idols and false gods they might have once worshipped, and serve only the God who has rescued them. “If you are unwilling to make this commitment,” he says, “then go ahead and serve the gods of the local people. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” These words are familiar to many of us-we have heard them in ceremonies of commitment, such as weddings. The choice is at least clear. The people answer: “It was God who brought us out of slavery. Far be it for us to serve other gods. We too will serve the Lord, for he is our God.” The people are presented with God, the way of life, or with other gods, ways of death. Choose life.
The psalm we heard read is a psalm of assurance. It is a psalm of comfort in which God’s promises become real for us. We are assured that God’s eyes are on the righteous, and God hears their cry. We read this, and we are reminded of the fact that God heard the cry of the slaves in Egypt. When the righteous cry for help, the psalm continues, then “The Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. Not one of their bones will be broken.” What wondrous love is it, that God redeems the lives of his servants, and none of those who take refuge in him will fall.
On the other hand, God’s face is set against evil-doers. God will cut them off, and they will reap the death they deserve. Is this the God to believe in? With promises like this, why would we not say with Joshua, that we and our and households will serve the Lord? We’d be foolish not to.
So this then could be my sermon. We have choices, but the choices are clear. Choose life, not death. Choose the God of Israel, not the false gods of the nations. This God will protect the righteous and punish the wicked. Good and evil. You are either with us, or against us. This is perhaps what we hunger for: a kind of clarity that brings into focus the light and the dark. There is really only one kind of life-giving bread. Eat of it and live.
But, as the children already know from their story a few minutes ago, it is not always that simple. In fact, our texts, like our lives, start to look more complicated. What appears to us like a series of basic choices between good and evil, black and white, is more nuanced, even problematic. I cannot read the story of Joshua and the conquest of Israel without being aware of the fact that the people who were already living there were displaced. It is not only the gods of the Amorites and Canaanites who were denounced, but many of these Amorites and Canaanites were killed, and their lands taken. Certainly, the Hebrew slaves in Egypt needed a place of refuge, but did it need to be at the cost of the life and land of the people who were already living in the land? Will that not only increase the cycle of violence and be a way of death, not life?
How does this story sound to the First Nations of North America, who in many cases lost not only their land but also their spirituality? Is it so that theirs is false spirituality, and that the choice is a stark one between traditional beliefs, and the Christian God? Is this what it means to say that we will follow the Lord? How does Joshua’s conquest of Israel sound to Palestinians who have also experienced displacement and occupation and hardship at the hands of those who also needed a place of refuge? I have been greatly troubled by the recent war in southern Lebanon, as well as the prospect that the cycle of violence will continue. And I have many more questions that answers.
What do we say to the families of the Israeli soldiers who were still hostages? What do we say to the families of those in Southern Lebanon, and in Canada, whose loved ones have been killed by the Israeli army? What do we say to those in Northern Israel who have been injured or killed by Hezbollah rockets? Is the solution to send in UN troops? Perhaps it will slow the cycle of violence, or perhaps it will just add another dimension to it. Is the solution to support Israel and oppose Hezbollah as a terrorist group, as our government has done? Is it to negotiate with Hezbollah? Is it to demand an end to Israeli occupation; or an end to Iran sending arms to southern Lebanon? Is there a right answer out there somewhere, if only we could find it? Perhaps mostly I weep for the suffering that continues, and for the intractability of the conflict. When will an end be in sight? I do not know that I can have Joshua’s certainty about just what kinds of actions follow from our commitment to serve the Lord. I confess to you that when I look at our text more car
efully, the choice is not so easy, and options not so clear. And so I wonder, does Joshua live in our world, and speak to our issues, to our hunger? Can the bread which seems to nourish him, also nourish us?
So too in the Psalms. While we have words of assurance of God’s protection of the righteous, I have a nagging wonder about the harsh punishment that is promised to the wicked. I find myself wondering if it is so clear just who the righteous are and who the wicked are. Is it the difference between our group, and their group? Will we recognize the wicked when we see them? And about the sin that I know in my own heart? Do I dare to read this psalm as a judgment upon me? That I will be cut off from all remembrance on earth? This psalm begins to evoke anxiety and uncertainty.
Though I know that in my life I have benefited from many blessings, I do not know that I have been rescued from all of my troubles. I do not know if I should expect this. I have not gone through life with no broken bones-neither literally nor symbolically. Does this mean that I might not be one the righteous whom God will protect?
Just over week ago, the International AIDS Conference in Toronto came to an end. During the conference I visited the One Life exhibit that World Vision had set up. For this exhibit, I put on an MP3 player while I walked through a reconstructed African village. I heard the story and got a glimpse into the life of one young boy-Timothy-affected by HIV/AIDS. Timothy is from Malawi. When he was four his father became very sick. While away to find work in the city, he was unfaithful to his wife and contracted the virus. The family gathers together as he dies. He dies. And a few months later, family and friends again gather at the bedside to as Timothy’s mother is close to death. Timothy is just 5, and lost his parents, and is in the care of his aging grandmother. I listen in my headphones to the story unfold. I’m directed to enter a health clinic and sit and wait-wait with Timothy-as he is about to find out about his own HIV status. And so I wonder, is it true that no harm will come to the righteous, that God will hear their cry and rescue them? I get a sinking feeling when I am called up to the health clinic desk and am handed a slip of paper with Timothy’ diagnosis: positive.
What does Psalm 34 mean for Timothy? What does it mean for me as I get just the tiniest glimpse into Timothy life? The Psalm seems so black and white: the righteous will be protected, while harm befalls the unrighteous. Yet, Timothy is innocent. Even his father, who bears responsibility for introducing the disease to his family-surely he does not deserve his fate. He is also a victim of a tragedy in a larger sense. I’m not sure I can agree with the moral world of the psalmist, if indeed I understand it.
One of the most contentious issues, as I see it, is the extent to which HIV/AIDS is regarded as a moral issue, a disease which people ought to be able to avoid, and thus to which some moral judgment is attached to those who are infected. Do we do a disservice to our fight against this disease if we think that there are simple rights and simple wrongs. This issue comes out in many ways: Should education programs promote abstinence, or condom use? Should education programs work with those in the sex trade? How does cultural context and practice affect the spread of the disease? How does inequality between men and women? We know that some governments and some societies are in various degrees of denial about this disease-and this does not exclude our own. If only I had answer to these questions, but I do not.
And what is the way of life? How do we decide whether the limited resources available will be put towards drugs for those already infected, or programs to prevent new infections? Such decisions are gut-wrenching, and any option may still lead to the death and suffering of many. Where, in this situation is the bread of life, which gives abundant life?
Lebanon, HIV/AIDs-crises of such magnitude.
On a different level, I wonder and worry about my own capacity to be faithful. I am making the right choices; especially when in many respects my life does not seem all that different from the world around me? Do I treat those marginalized people I encounter as though I was meeting Jesus? Is my life of discipleship evident in all my relationships, in how I spend my time, or my money? I confess I might be neither the righteous nor the wicked, but rather occasionally well-intentioned and certainly inadequate.
These are the situations of our lives. These are the ambiguities, the hard choice, the situations in which even the lesser of two evils is not always apparent. What can it mean, in this context, for Jesus to be the living bread?
The writer of the gospel of John is transfixed by the question of belief. One of my teachers summed up the book of John as a one-word answer to the question: “Is this Jesus the one we should believe in?” But in what way does just this Jesus satisfy our hunger? When Jesus rather mysteriously says to his disciples that whoever eats of him will live forever, the disciples are surely right to respond, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?”
Jesus says to his disciples, “These who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
I believe that part of the significance here is that Jesus’ flesh, which is true food, is human flesh. It is the flesh that you have and that I have. It is the flesh in which you and I encounter all the ambiguities of our lives, the big decisions, the little decisions, and the ones where they doesn’t seem to be a good option at all. It is the flesh that it tempted; certainly with the flashy temptations of money or sex or violence, but also with apathy and taking the easy path.
After all, Jesus is the bread come down from h
eaven. He is God, but God with us. I am not going to presume to answer the hard questions I’ve raised earlier, and anyways it would be impossible to do so on my own. But I think we can be assured that in Jesus God experiences our hard dilemmas and our ambivalences with us. God takes these upon himself. God knows them, but knows them intimately because he experiences them with us. Jesus is the living bread because he is God with us precisely in the messiness of life. Just as bread is earthy, and ordinary, so God is present with us in the earthy and the ordinary.
Let us consider the word “abide.” Jesus promises that if we eat of his flesh, he will abide in us, and we in him. Abide has the sense of patience, endurance and intimacy. To abide is to be in for the long haul. To abide with someone is to stay up with them through the night. To abide is to wait with Timothy in that health clinic for his diagnosis. That Jesus abides in Timothy is the possibility that we might encounter Jesus in Timothy, and in his mother and his father. That Jesus abides in us is not the assurance that the Christian life is easy, or that we will not suffer afflictions. It is not the assurance that the choices we are forced to make are even clear, let only easy to make. It is the assurance that Jesus is with us in these shade of gray, these hard questions and afflictions, and that he suffers them too. It is the assurance that, in Jesus, God takes time for us, and is patient. No one is in for a longer haul than Jesus.
I do not know the solution to peace or justice in the middle east (although I certainly do have some personal convictions). But to abide with those in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel is to stay up with them through the night of bombing. It is to be sustained in the work for peace by the hope that God’s peaceful way will prevail, though we might not be able see the horizon in which this will be realized. Not that the long view should obscure the present suffering, or minimize it, or be an excuse for our inaction. But it also recognizes that justice and peace will not be found easily, simply, or today. The straightforward, black and white world that we thought we had encountered in the passage from Joshua and from Psalms turn out to be anything but simple.
There are, of course, Eucharistic overtones in Jesus’ words that we read in John. When we read that whoever eats of Jesus Christ will live for ever, we rightly think of our celebration of the Lord’s Supper. And I think this fact also helps us get past the idea that the life of faith is only a one-time decision (although such a choice may be an important element of it). Even though the Joshua story tells of a moment of dedication, in the big picture, faithfulness in the Old Testament and the New Testament is an ongoing struggle. But perhaps especially in the Lord’s Supper we are reminded that the Christian life is an ongoing one, because we are continually called to eat again this living bread. Perhaps our summer theme is better expressed as “becoming bread” rather than “being bread.” We know that we need Jesus to abide in us, not just one time, but in an ongoing way, precisely because the life for which Jesus sustains us is the messy and ambiguous one that we all know.
Furthermore, as we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we are reminded that Jesus sustains us through life in community. The Lord’s Supper makes us into a community. We encounter the life-giving bread in one another, as we abide in one another, through our common bond in Christ. In our discernment, in our joint action, in our prayful bearing of burdens together, in our holding one another accountable. It is only as we, as a church community, listen to what the Spirit is saying to us, as we listen to the Word and seek to understand together, that we can hold out a hope to understand what it means for Jesus to be the bread for which the world hungers, and for which we hunger. God is giving himself to us, in the messiness. Jesus Christ is the bread come down from heaven, and the bread that is here with us and for us. In him, we might have abundant and eternal life. And we might become bread to one another. Amen.