Gospel Wisdom

Today, caught up in a world that seems to be fraying at the edges, we can certainly relate to Solomon’s plea for wisdom. There are so many decisions to make, so many ways to mess up. How should we live in our ongoing Covid nightmare? How should we live in a world bearing the weight of deadly climate change? How should we live in a world so filled with racism and injustice? How should we live as Christians when the old ways of doing church don’t seem to work anymore? It stresses me out just to read this list to you! So of course we pray, with King Solomon: Give us understanding to discern what is right, O God!

In the Bible, the “wisdom” that’s mentioned in our readings today, refers to living well in the here and now of our ordinary lives. Wisdom is practical know-how. It isn’t fancy, or theoretical, or mysterious. It is simply part of the “good life” that God desires for every creature on earth. We tend to think of learning wisdom with age, and in that case, I know that we have lots of wisdom with us in this room and on Zoom today! But children, too, can be taught wisdom. Don has friends who taught their young children to ask “Is this a wise choice, or an unwise choice?” rather than to fret over whether or not it is a “right” or a “wrong” one.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer defines wisdom as “’the gospel in daily life.’”[1] For Christians, “the gospel,” or good news, that we carry into daily life is bound up in Jesus’ death and resurrection, as well as in the way that Jesus lived. As Paul explains to the Corinthians: Christ Crucified is the wisdom of God. It is in the foolishness of the Cross that we are invited to live our ordinary lives. It is in the flesh of Jesus that we find our truth.

Being an orderly person, I love the orderly choreography of the Eucharist. I like that it follows a clear pattern, and that there is a place for everything, and everything has its place. I like the gleaming silver, the beautiful, flowing gestures, the flickering candle flames, the deep purple of the wine, and the neat way that the wafer snaps in two. But despite the words that I say about body and blood, it’s easy for us to forget that flesh and blood and death have anything to do with our beautiful ritual meal. Instead, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the “right” way to follow a rubric or the “wrong” way to interpret a phrase. Children, however, are another story. I’ll never forget the scene my young son made when he got old enough to listen to the words of the Eucharistic prayer. “Eww, gross!” he cried, holding his hand to his throat in a choking motion when the priest invited us to “take and eat” Christ’s body.

If we listen carefully to Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, they’ll help us adults grasp the magnitude what we claim each Sunday: “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh… Very truly, I tell you, unless you feed on the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” Jesus challenges us. To make Jesus’ words even more jarring, the Greek verb translated in our text by “eat” is a word often used to describe the noisy, gnawing way that animals eat. English is actually the only language I know that doesn’t commonly make a distinction between human and animal eating. I learned my lesson about the difference one day as a new French-speaker in France, when I sweetly asked guests at a fancy university dinner party if they would now like to “chaw” some delicate pastry. I didn’t realize that the slang word for “animal” eating that I had heard people use at home wasn’t acceptable for educated humans in polite company. They were horrified.

In our text, Jesus doesn’t mind at all using the Greek word for “chawing” in polite company--and on purpose: “Those who gnaw on my flesh … Those who devour my flesh will abide in me and I in them,” he says. In Christ, God became flesh that allows itself to be eaten up, a “piece of meat” to be mishandled and consumed. Instead of picturing the nice clean loaf of bread and cup of wine offered at the Last Supper, instead of picturing the silver vessels and freshly-starched fair linens of our own churches, we picture ourselves instead standing before the wooden Cross, before the battered flesh of a God who longs to give away God’s very self.

Jesus’ strong words are meant to bring us to the truth that God became flesh--bloody, suffering, mortal flesh—out of love for us, out of a profound desire for loving relationship with us. In becoming flesh with us, God is promising to be one “with us and for us forever, to stick with us and even in us no matter what.”[2] To use John’s language, God promises to abide in us, as Christ abides in God. And as Martin Copenhaver puts it, “’For those who receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from the believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can be plucked from one’s body.’”[3]

In a lecture in Kentucky, I heard the theologian Martin Smith once suggest that it’s not all that helpful for us to ask God, “Who do you want me to be today?” It is more helpful to pray, “God, who do you want to be for me today?” I think this spiritual insight applies to our search for wisdom. When it comes down to it, all of the “shoulds” that make us so anxious fade away in the shadow of the Cross. When confronted with all of the dilemmas and decisions of our lives these days, it’s OK to pray, like Solomon, for the wisdom to discern what is right. But even better is to enter into Gospel wisdom: to grasp hold of the God who longs to abide with us and in us. To grasp hold of the God who longs for us to drain from his flesh all the energy and love and courage that we need each day. To grasp hold of the God who carries us when we fail and lifts us up when we fall. To grasp hold of the God who feeds us with the powerful upside-down wisdom of the Cross, the wisdom that comes only from vulnerability and love. Gospel wisdom urges us, with wise researcher Brene Brown, to start every day of our complex lives by putting our feet on the floor and saying, “Today I will choose [the vulnerability of] courage over comfort. I can’t make any promises for tomorrow, but today I will choose to be brave.”[4]

 

 

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[1] Amy Plantinga Pauw, Church in Ordinary Time: A Wisdom Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017). 16.

[2] David Lose, “In the Meantime: Pentecost 12B, Meeting the Carnal God.” Found at http://www.davidlose.net/2015/08/pentecost-12-b-meeting-the-carnal-god/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Frances Bridges, “Five Ways to be Brave.” Found at https://www.forbes.com/sites/francesbridges/2019/04/29/5-ways-to-be-brave-according-to-brene-browns-netflix-special-the-call-to-courage/?sh=40a3c6a879f4

Give Us This Bread Always

 

We’re going to hear about bread for at least the next month in our lectionary, as the Gospel lesson for each week of August delves more and more deeply into John 6. So today’s probably a good time to ask exactly what kind of bread Jesus is.^[1] Is he the little round communion wafers that children sometimes confuse with cardboard? Is he crispy flatbread or supple pita? Or could he be a delicious French baguette or even a flaky, buttery croissant? How about cornbread made in an iron skillet, with those delightfully crisp buttermilk edges? Could he even be rich pumpkin bread, with cranberries and walnuts? Or a fresh challah loaf, slathered with sweet honey?

Mmmmm, I'm getting hungry! Well, not hungry really, since I ate a nice breakfast this morning. But my mouth sure is watering. I'm afraid that my mouth waters more readily for fresh-baked bread than it does for God. What would it be like, I wonder, to tremble for God's sweetness? What would it be like to drool over the bread that gives life to the world? Jewish Midrash tells us that the manna God gave to the Israelites in the desert might have tasted like whatever each person wanted it to taste like. Remember, in the Exodus story, the Israelites were lost and fearful out in the desert. They were hungry and wishing that they'd never left home. They bickered and whined. So God graciously rained down flakes of manna for them, just enough for each day, and it sustained them. According to the later rabbis, then, if someone had a hankering for a juicy steak, that's what they tasted in God's gift. If someone else preferred a salad, then the manna flakes tasted to them like the freshest greens. For the rabbis, God didn't just nourish the unhappy travelers—God delighted them with God's deep and abundant goodness. In our Gospel today, Jesus compares himself to this manna—the bread from heaven, the generous gift of God. Jesus compares himself to food that not only nourishes but delights. Food that satisfies our deepest, truest desires.

The difference, of course, between a croissant au chocolat and the bread of life, is that Jesus' bread doesn't go stale. Manna only lasted for the day, and if you tried to hoard it, then it would turn bad and sprout worms. Croissants get dry, cake gets stale, and real baguettes get so hard after a half-day on the counter that you can use them for baseball bats. The same thing goes for the other worldly delights with which we try to nourish ourselves in God's stead. Many years ago, at a difficult time in my life, I had a recurring dream. I was in a dark, empty room filled only with a mini-fridge right in the center. It was the kind of small fridge that you put in a college dorm room. I was hungry in my dream—really hungry--and there was no food in the house at all. Hoping to find something to eat, I knelt down in front of the little fridge. As I opened the door, bright light from inside the fridge poured out into the darkness of the room. And yet, inside, the shelves were empty, except for a couple of unappetizing containers of moldy leftovers. It was at that point—hungry and dejected, but unwilling to close the refrigerator door—that I would wake up.

It doesn’t take an expert to explain that dream: In the busy distress of my daily life, I was spiritually starving. Whatever stores of joy and meaning that I had previously packed into Tupperware containers and saved in my spiritual refrigerator, they had sat for too long uneaten and untended. I had gathered up only the food that perishes: possessions, acclaim, dreams of perfection. What I hungered for was the bread that endures—the bread of life that Jesus offers us: the food of love, forgiveness, and grace.

The Good News is that this bread of life isn't hard to find, once our mouths are watering and our eyes are open. Not only do we receive it in our hands every Sunday at the altar, we find it hidden in the most ordinary places. The kind of bread that Jesus knew—the kind of bread that Jesus used to feed the multitude in last week's Gospel—is plain peasant food. I had some once in Europe, the kind of bread that shepherds stick in their pockets to take up into the mountains for weeks while they pasture the cows. A small chunk of this bread is heavy enough to use as a paperweight. It scratches your throat going down, and when you cut it, you have to saw it like a piece of wood. It's a gray-brown color, the color of earth, the color of humble things, the color of the wooden cross. This bread might not always delight, but it can be counted on to withstand any hardship. It is, as Lauren Winner says, "bread that sustains oppressed people on their journey through dangerous terrain."[2] We need this kind of Jesus bread, too.

Yes, Jesus is both daily sustenance and extraordinary delight. But I'd like to close with just one more bread image. One year, I gathered two preschoolers and a first-grader on a Saturday morning at church to prepare them for their first Eucharist. As part of the lesson, I decided that we would make bread together to use that Sunday. I looked up a recipe and gathered the ingredients, and we got to work. The children took their task seriously. They scooped and measured flour; they tirelessly stirred and poked, shaped, and patted. And patted. And patted. The dough got dry, so I added some water. It was sticky, so I added some oil. Then it was still sticky, so I added more flour. When we finished, we had flour and doughy fingerprints everywhere. But we also had six small flat loaves of communion bread, each carefully marked with a cross right at the center. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The bakers among us can probably guess what happened during the Eucharist the next day. That bread was as hard and dry as a hockey puck. Parishioners chewed valiantly on Jesus. Even worse, when we broke it and gave it out, that bread crumbled everywhere. It went in the chalice, on the fair linen, on the kneelers, on the floor, even down the front of people's shirts and in children's hair. Everywhere! Little crumbs of eternal life, Christ's body broken to bits, scattered in messy abundance all over the sanctuary. I probably won't try that recipe again. But it did look like we'd had a party up at the Altar rail that Sunday, a party in which love was thrown around joyfully like confetti, falling from the plump hands of children into our mouths, down our shirts, and out into the world.

Can you smell the bread baking right now? You’re not imagining it. There really are some rolls in the oven for you to eat at coffee hour. But now, I want you to take a good whiff of this bread, close your eyes, and imagine what kind of bread you most desire Jesus to be…… What would delight your heart and enliven your mind? What would sustain you in the wilderness? What aroma would set you forth on a wild search for God? For what kind of bread would you exclaim, like the disciples, "Sir, give us this bread always"? If you’d like to share, shout it out! If not, tuck the image away in your heart. I think that I’m hungry for a big pot-luck of varieties of bread, a tasting table that comes from other kitchens than my own. I want to share what others have to offer, without worrying about getting viruses. What kind of bread do you long for? PAUSE FOR THEIR RESPONSES.

 When you come forward to the altar at the Eucharist, hold out your hands for the bread that you most desire from God. Taste and see, trust and delight, in the goodness of the Lord.

 

 

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[1] The following riff, and much of the sermon, is inspired by Lauren Winner's work in Wearing God and the class that I took with her in 2018 at the School of Theology, The University of the South. See Lauren Winner, Wearing God (New York: HarperOne, 2015) 94f.

[2] Ibid.,113.