In Mark 7: 1--8,14-15,21-23  Jesus teaches that the people of God are not set apart by particular traditions or ethnicity, but by a purity that emanates from the heart, manifested by love for others. We do not need more religion, but more reflection on what proceeds from our heart. Yes, traditions can be good, and can point others to God. However, they can also send a message explicitly or implicitly, "you don't belong."

Jesus challenged the purity “laws” and turned them upside down. In their place he substituted a radically alternate social vision. The new community that Jesus announced would be characterized by interior compassion for everyone, not external compliance to a purity code, or by egalitarian inclusivity, but rather by inward transformation.

"No outcasts," writes Garry Wills in What Jesus Meant, "were cast out far enough in Jesus' world to make him shun them — not Roman collaborators, not lepers, not prostitutes, not the crazed, not the possessed. Are there people now who could possibly be outside his encompassing love?" 

“Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;
but the things that come out from within are what defile…
from within come evil thoughts and they defile.”

Who do we judge when we sanctimoniously spurn those who are not like us or not part of our group? (Bible Study Blog, Bob Reina, August, 28, 2012)

 

To Whom Can We Go?"

 

 

Are you leaving or Staying? 

In John 6: 60-69, the followers of Jesus have heard words they do not understand. They are repelled! It simply is impossible to believe that Jesus is inviting them to eat his flesh and drink his blood…so, many of those who had followed Jesus up to this point, now walk away. They have reached an obstacle in their belief which they cannot overcome.

It is not difficult to imagine Jesus sadness as he watched them leave… Fearing that he was going to be completely abandoned, he turns to the twelve apostles and asks them what they are going to do...Peter speaks for them and us when he responds “Master to whom can we go?”

We do all that we can in life to avoid being placed in position of vulnerability, yet in this gospel we have the twelve willing to be vulnerable by surrendering control and choosing complete dependency on Jesus. That dependency reveals an ultimate statement of faith: Lord, we have no options. We have no choice but to keep following you.

Faith is deepened in situations where self-reliance is no longer possible, a place in which it is difficult to rely on our intellect, reason or abilities.

The process of listening to what Jesus is saying to each of us and then asking: “am I going to leave or stay?” is part of our spiritual journey. For most of us, it can happen many times in our lifetimes. We are faced with a choice: do I accept this, or do I acknowledge that I have to grow into its meaning? And what do I do? To whom do I turn while I am growing into understanding? These are the steps we take to be totally dependent, reliant, and available to Jesus. 

This is the challenge of the Gospel and in the end our response has to be personal…to walk away…or to stay and walk further into the Mystery. ( adapted from Tuesday, August 21, 2012  Bible Study Blog by Bob Reina)

Another Bread Story

Whether we say it aloud or not, I’m sure we are thinking it: Here comes another “Bread” story. What more can we possibly say? Hasn’t John really exhausted the subject? I suppose that this was my reaction when I first saw the lectionary scheduled for this week. I asked myself, what else can I say or write. I wondered how the priests and theologians were able to continue to plumb the depths of John’s gospel and help us understand its relevance to our lives. Later I tried to put myself in the audience of John’s day and began to understand how vital these stories of Jesus, the Bread of Life, are to our faith. We need to hear them again and again until Jesus becomes our bread of life in the depths of our very being.

I wonder if we fully comprehend the theological and existential significance of approaching and “gathering” around the altar, the table of the Lord, to receive Communion. And if we don’t, is it really any wonder? Let’s face it, debate about the meaning of the sacrament continues even now in this relatively tranquil ecumenical period between and within different denominations. The sacrament holds a pivotal place in the Church, in that it is central to our life of faith and yet can also be so very confusing.

John writes (John 6:51-58), “How can this man give us his flesh to eat...Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” In their literal interpretation these phrases had quite an impact on John’s audience then as they do now. He is speaking to us in the present time as directly as he did in his time.

St. Augustine attempts to clarify the connection between sacraments and our daily lives with his use of the phrase “visible words.” I find this phrase attractive because it helps me appreciate the Eucharist as the visible, physical counterpart to the teaching of the church. The Eucharist is the embodiment of the proclaimed and heard gospel and through imagery and our ability to relate to their physical forms, they enable us to bridge the metaphorical words of John with our humanity, and God’s incarnation in Jesus…through him and with him. As we fully absorb his presence in water, bread, and wine, we become incorporated into the “trinity.” When the word of God in scripture and the sacramental rites have worked their way through our senses and penetrate to the intuitive level of our being, the immense energies of the Spirit are released and our consciousness is gradually transformed into the mind of Christ. (Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ, p2)

The liturgy does not offer us a mere seat in the bleachers, or even a ringside seat. We are invited to participate in the event itself, to absorb its meaning and to relate to Christ on every level of his being as well as our own. The main thrust of the liturgy is to develop a relationship with Christ and engage all our faculties: the will, intellect, memory, imagination, senses and body. The transmission of the personal relationships through him…with the Father. It empowers us as we celebrate the mysteries of Christ, to not only perceive them as historical events but as manifestations of Christ here and now. (Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ, p8)

 

 

 

Please give me a Sign

You are looking for me. How poignant was Jesus’ statement taken from last week’s gospel. Yes, the followers of Jesus, still not wanting to believe through the signs they were already provided, were looking to be spoon fed what they half-heartedly wanted to believe. Yet, by virtue of their human nature, found it hard to believe. Doesn’t this sound familiar to us now, here in the present? Show me please, so that I may trust.

We are taught to read literature as if it were a newspaper. Time is sequential and reality is “flat.” It’s one–dimensional, in that the words on the page are an assemblage of alphabets to communicate information in our language through our intellect in real time. What we see on the surface is what really is in black and white. This is not the case when we read the Gospel and especially John’s.

David Steindl-Rast writes in Deeper than Words: “to understand John’s gospels in the way they were meant to be understood, we must develop a sense for poetic language. These images speak to our intellect through our poetic sensibilities…Tuning in to this language means both taking it seriously and not taking it literally.” Marcus Borg tells us that John’s gospel invites his hearers to see in a radically different new way. His appeal is to the imagination, to that place within us where our images of reality and of life itself reside.

So when John begins the first chapter of his Gospel with In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God (verse 1)…And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he announces the incarnation of God in his fullest humanity as the Word became flesh in Jesus, and by extension, he also signifies that the Word becomes flesh in us.

So back to our Gospel (John6:41-51). The signs Jesus followers are asking for are signs that were prophesized in the coming of the Messiah, namely, the return of manna falling from heaven. But Jesus attempts to raise their hearts and minds to a higher level, away from manna, the perishable food: I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven…whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.

With this, Jesus makes the distinction between the perishable things of this world and the eternal life in God, lived through Jesus’ Word made flesh in us as we become the bread of life when we share our lives with compassion for one another.

When Jesus speaks about “live forever,” he is talking about eternity. When we think of eternity, we usually think of the afterlife. But eternity is timeless; it has no before or after; eternity is the “life to come” but it is the present life. We are living in eternity, now. So we look for signs and ask: how many times have we seen God acted out in the love of Christ, in the little things of life and yet, resisted or failed to make the connection? There are no coincidences; God reveals himself in the here and now.

It’s a quiet thing that happens when we are immersed or as I often like to think, marinated in the words by our sharing of his bread with one another. It all seems to happen on tip toes.

When it all comes true
Just the way you planned
It's funny but the bells don't ring
It's a quiet thing
When you hold the world
In your trembling hand
You think you'd hear a choir singing
But it's a quiet thing
There are no exploding fireworks
Where's the roaring of the crowd
Maybe it's the strange new atmosphere
Way up here among the clouds

Happiness comes in on tiptoe
Well, what do you know
It's a quiet thing
A very quiet thing.

        Kander and Ebb, Flora the Red Menace

I Am The Bread of Life

 I suppose it’s only human nature to have faith in the things we see rather the things we can’t. God knew our nature long before and better than we did. The whole purpose of his incarnation in Jesus was for him to be able to reach us through our faculties and physical senses. Yet, its’ “natural,” our nature, to center our world around those attachments in our life that serve us well and are under control and those that sometimes seem to control us. So, we place out “faith” in things we can see and touch like career, finances, family, relationships, and our own ability to control our lives. Unfortunately, life has a way of reminding us that our faith in those things may not be rewarded in the way we planned or expected.

Most of us are likely to experience a significant disruption in our careers at least once in our lives, and our finances are no more reliable. We entrust our life savings to financial institutions that engage in what is basically a sophisticated form of gambling. And people—yes, our family, and our friends—are all flawed and fallible and imminently capable of doing what humans do, and disappoint us.

In a very real sense, most of what we invest our faith in falls under the category of “perishable things.” After feeding the 5000 with five loaves and two fish, Jesus and the disciples crossed the lake, only to find that the crowd had followed them there. When they approached him, he abruptly accused them of seeking the “food that perishes.” In the dialogue that followed, it would seem that they were looking for a repeat of the miracle of manna in the wilderness.

But Jesus was constantly aware of the dangers of an enabling faith that is rooted in visible results based on spectacle. Getting what you asked for without spiritual elbow grease is not faith. Whenever we get whatever we ask for, it’s a matter of time before we begin to want more. Jesus was calling his followers to a completely different kind of faith. He called them to cast their lot with the One that God has sent (John 6:24-35). He was calling them to a faith without external props that deals with unseen things, hoped for and real. St. Augustine said “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” The only “bread” that can truly satisfy our hunger is the bread that God offers us, the Bread of Life.

And the amazing truth is that when we take the risk of “casting our lot with the one whom God sent” to carry out God’s cause in the world, we find that somehow we experience a peace, a freedom, a quality of life that none of those “perishable things” can possibly provide. When we take the risk of faith and begin to quiet our restless hearts, we find the life God offers us truly satisfies us in ways we may never have expected.

Loaves and Fishes

Over the years we have come to appreciate the unusual relationship between the synoptic gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke with John’s Gospels. While there are similarities between the four, the content in John's is somewhat unique, in that he presents a different side of Jesus that complements the other three Gospels and provides its readers insight and a clearer understanding of Jesus’ divine nature. As such, John’s relating the historical aspects of Jesus’ life are usually reserved for passages that reveal a unique aspect of Jesus’ divine nature. Marcus Borg writes that “the portrait of Jesus in John’s gospel was essentially one of the Christ of faith and not the Jesus of history…The picture of Jesus in John is quite different form the picture of Jesus in Matthew, Mark and Luke…In John, Jesus speaks as a divine person with his ‘I am’ statements: I am the bread of life, ‘the light of the world,’ and so on.” (Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time)

John does not waste any time and gets right to it in the very first chapter of his gospel:  In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning…and The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. 

How then does our gospel (John 6:1-21) in which Jesus feeds the multitude point to Jesus’ divine nature, after all this story and scene are similar to that found in the synoptic gospels? The answer resides in the distinction between Matthew, Mark and Luke’s account in which the apostles are charged with feeding the crowd. However, in John Jesus is clearly in charge when he writes with regard to the feeding: he himself knew what he was going to do. 

John deliberately diverts our attention from the “miraculous” and reveals something vital about Jesus and, in turn, about God. Here, Jesus represents the One who can satisfy every human need. In this gospel Jesus fulfilled the multitude’s material needs and, while material needs are important, this is not what Jesus came to do. Rather, Jesus came to reveal that God's essential character is love and loving (John 3) and God's essential desire is to be accessible and available to the people of God (John 1 and 2). It may not be what we want -- so convinced are we that material possessions will make us happy -- but it is what we need ( Working Preacher July 23, 2012David Lose).

Travel Light and Trust

Jesus ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics." (Mark 6:7-13)

I've often thought how I'd feel if I had to immediately leave home on a moment’s notice with no time to take anything except  the clothes I was wearing. I am reminded of some catastrophic events or acts of terror that have forced some unfortunate people to escape with nothing but the clothes on their backs and I wonder how they were able do this. Although there have been times when I have had to travel for a family emergency or for a so-called

business "crisis," and while time was of the essence, I still was able to give some thought as to what I needed to take with me. Otherwise, I was what you might call a "defensive packer." With a variety of lists in hand, covering any possible venue or destinations, I packed for a myriad of "what ifs" that rarely would ever materialize. In retrospect I often wonder why I needed to be so over-prepared, doubling up on apparel and anything else on my list. This preparedness was not necessarily limited to packing my luggage.

Jesus tells his disciples to travel light and rely on the kindness of strangers. Of course, the world in the time of Jesus was much different from our modern world today. At that time, Jewish travelers would often stay in the home of another member of their community in deference to the Jewish purity code. While Jesus’ message was offered to all, we know that it was not welcomed by everyone. After all, look at the rejection Jesus experienced earlier in this story. To that end, Jesus tells them that if they did encounter resistance, they not be discouraged or detained in their journey but rather they should “shake the dust from their sandals” and continue on.

What Jesus asked of his disciples required considerable trust, in that the disciples were “commissioned” to immediately follow his instructions, without question or reservation and begin to preach the good news. Needless to say this required implicit confidence in Jesus. 

So, how does my need to over prepare for a journey relate to this gospel? Perhaps it was a lack of confidence or trust in myself that required that my preparation was extreme? Perhaps in letting go of the trappings and the non-essentials that really got in the way, I am more open to the knowledge that all will go well…and I just needed to trust myself and others more. Think of all the unnecessary clutter in our lives that gets in the way of our relationship with one another. Richard Rohr teaches that the God in me loves the God in you. Those things in our lives that we once regarded as essential get in the way of our connectedness with one another, and therefore with God.

The disciples were given the authority by Jesus to preach the gospel, heal the sick and cast out demons.
What meaning can we apply to healing the sick and casting out demons today? Perhaps liberating those who are imprisoned by sadness and depression, or giving hope to those who think that their lives no longer have any meaning we can heal the sick and “cast out demons.” However in order for us to do this we must trust God and remain focused on what is essential. 
So while I cannot equate my learning to travel lighter with the confidence that all will go well, I'm now better prepared;  I can appreciate what it means to trust and let go of the unnecessary baggage filled with past regrets and the unrealized “what ifs” of my life that get in the way of my drawing closer to God. We know that the lives of those who welcome the gospel are transformed. It's a journey.

So, what is it that gives us a greater sense of security, or when have we had to go beyond our fears and set out with very little? 

Little boy false
In search of little boy true
Will you be ever done traveling,
Always unraveling you, you?
Running away
Could lead you further astray

And as for fishing in streams
For pieces of dreams,
Those pieces will never fit
What is the sense of it?
(Pieces of Dreams, Legrand, Bergman and Bergman)