Emerging Appetites in the 21st Century Church

John 6:1-15, 23-35, 53, 55-57, 60, 63

"After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six month's wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world." When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

(v. 23-36 -- the following day) "Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, 'Rabbi, when did you come here?'

Jesus answered them, 'Very truly, I tell you , you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.'

"Then they said to him, 'What must we do to perform the works of God?' Jesus answered them, 'This is the work of God, that you trust in him whom he has sent.' So they said to him, 'What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and trust you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' Then Jesus said to them, 'Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.'

They said to him "Sir, give us this bread always."

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever trusts in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not trust."

(v. 53) Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (v. 55-57) 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. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me." (v. 60) When many of his disciples heard it, they said "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" (v. 63) It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

So often the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 is told in a way that leaves out what, in my view, is the most interesting part: the real tension in the story, between:

What the crowd wants & What Jesus wants

Jesus to offer them to offer the crowd

That's where the real action happens in this story.

WHAT DO THE PEOPLE WANT FROM JESUS ????

Well, they want bread.

They want something that makes their hunger, their malaise, go away... at least for a while. It's not that complicated.

And what they really want is a King who gives out bread every day.

Often, we stop there in the text. This is where the story ends in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And that perhaps makes it seem like it's only a story about social justice -- it's only about the hungry of the world being fed. …which of course is imperative.

But that is not the end of the story in John's gospel. That's just the first scene. For John, the story is primarily about the great spiritual tension between what the people want Jesus to offer them (just daily bread / nothing complicated)...

...and what Jesus wants to offer the people -- which is a whole lot more than just their daily bread.

WHAT DOES JESUS WANT FOR THE PEOPLE ???

Jesus is offering them something more subtle... and so mysterious that it can only be spoken of in symbols... and also more difficult... so it must have to do with real life.

He's offering them the Eucharistic experience... that experience in which Divine Love transforms our lives from being all about "me" and "mine" to being all about "Thee" and "Thine".

He is offering to teach them the Spiritual Path, the Way that transforms our hearts, so that our deepest desire becomes "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

He is offering them a very special kind of spiritual relationship in which deep change happens, in which this crowd would lose certain false aspects of themselves and their lives, and find a new kind of life.

A life of being fully present... in ourselves, in our relationships with others, a life of prayer, a life focused on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

He is offering them practical training in how to develop the kind of life, which revolves around the Mystery we call "God." The kind of life in which neither they themselves, nor Caesar, nor some more benevolent dictator, are occupying the center.

He's offering to train them in the Good Life, as he understands it.

So, as you can see, he is offering them much more than just a light lunch.

But the great tension in this story is that the people don't want all That. That's more than they can digest, at least right now. So, in effect they are saying: "Keep your Eucharistic stuff, whatever that is; we're just here for the bread."

They want Jesus as their King, the one who will guarantee their daily rations, but Jesus wants to be their spiritual leader, the one who will teach them how to grow up spiritually. Big difference. (They must not have had J.N.A.C. reports in those days.)

Jesus is offering them the deeper blessing of discipleship. He offers himself to them, not as a baker, or a King, but as a spiritual grownup, one who had the know-how to help them grow up spiritually as well. That was, after all, the great mission he had received from the One he called 'Father.'

So in this story we have this tremendous conflict of interests between want the people want to receive from Jesus, and what Jesus is actually offering the people.

Just playing the devil's advocate for a moment.... doesn't it sound a bit like false advertizing, the old "bait and switch" game? You know, he is handing out free bread, so naturally the people are going to come back, but when they come back all he is offering is the heavy stuff -- the Eucharist, spiritual formation, discipleship.... which, let's face it, is not as appealing for many people. It might indeed seem a bit 'fishy.'

But, everything we know about Jesus tells us that he didn't operate that way. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, were not some kind of "bait;" such acts were an integral part of how he understood and carried out the mission of God.

So it seems that the tension here is not so much in Jesus, but in the crowd. Jesus doesn't experience any incongruity between offering them bread on Monday night, and discipleship on Tuesday morning. But they do. They experience conflict because the focus of their desire is only on the surface of the tangible goods. That's all they want.

What about us?

Do we, in our context, experience this kind of dramatic tension?

What is it that we want from Jesus?

@@@...

Well, of course, these are not easy times.

There are the obvious "bottom line" things that we want.

We want to keep the doors of the church open.

We want to fill the pews.

We want to pay the bills.

But what kind of offerings do we want from this thing we call 'church' -- this community which Jesus started and which we think of as the Body of Christ in our context?

There are so many things being offered these days in the church. There is so much that we want: Coffee, cookies, & conversation. Beautiful music. Good sermons (hopefully good and short). Interesting programming during the week. Opportunities for service. Some denominations add smells & bells & candles & chanting. And on & on. The menu can keep growing and growing.

These can all be good things. But still, from time to time, we have to ask ourselves: Are these the kinds of things that we want? Are these the kinds of things that people in the surrounding neighborhood and community want? And if not.... how can we change so that we are getting the kinds of things that we want, and offering the kinds of things that the community wants? Because you have to give the people what they want, right? Otherwise you can't fill the pews, and if you can't fill the pews, you can't pay the bills, and if you can't pay the bills you can't keep the doors open. And then there's no church at all, right?

No, actually that's not right in my view, although there is a certain logic to it.

Is this thing called 'church' just about getting what we want, and giving people in the community what they want?

If they want bread, give them bread.

If they want Bible studies, give them Bible studies.

If they want padded pews, or wing-back chairs, or Buddhist meditation, or Sufi line dancing, give them what they want, because if you give them what they want, they'll come back for more.

That is the path, the Way, of the Insatiable Consumer. That is the air that we breathe in our society these days. It's popular, because it works. If you give people what they want, they will indeed come back. That is what Jesus discovered with the 5000. They came back for more bread. They even wanted to forcibly make him King, so that they could get what they wanted every day, not just once in a while.

Now, if he had only capitalized on this...he could have had the largest congregation on earth. After all, he was able to produce the bread at virtually no cost, right? -- and even faster than a Star Trek replicator. It was the perfect business opportunity. People would kill for that nowadays.

But he said "no." He had another vision, a higher calling, a deeper aim. The mission of God. And so, just pleasing the consumer was not a desirable outcome for him. He could not with integrity pursue such an aim, because he knew all too well that what God was offering, though it was the most rewarding of all goods, was not always pleasant.

Maybe this is one way that we, in our context, experience the tension of today's gospel story. Just like the 5000, we can all very easily get focused on only the surface of things. We can all see the bread, but miss the deeper Eucharistic training experience that this great wisdom tradition is offering us, in which we take in the Christ and experience our lives being transformed from the inside out. We can all fall into the trap of just drinking the coffee, eating the cookies, singing the songs, hearing the sermons, doing the Sufi line dancing, and whatever else we may come up with... but missing the deeper offering that is being extended, the offering to us of God's very Self in Christ.

Of course, it doesn't have to be that way. The coffee, and cookies and conversation, maybe even the Sufi line dancing, could become a Eucharistic experience, a form of prayer, a way of consciously responding to God's loving self being offered to us in Jesus.

But when we come to church, do we really want something that weighty? Something that contemplative and counter-cultural and transforming?

What kind of Jesus do we want? Do we want the Jesus of today's gospel story, the one who was disappointed with the crowd, because all they wanted was the bread? Do we want that one who is always ready to give himself away to us, so that we too can learn his Way of life, and really grow up into more simple, loving, and wise human beings?

III

It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. Why can't we have both? Enjoy the cookies and the conversation and also grow in the Way of Christ? After all Jesus ffered the people more than spiritual formation alone. He offered himself to them, he offered to take them under his formative wing and turn them into disciples, but he also offered them good physical bread.

We learn from that story, though, that saying "yes" to the bread is the easy part. Saying yes to discipleship is a weightier matter, and one that is quite easily ignored in our busyness with the affairs of the church.

If we want both, we can surely have both. But that will not happen by accident. That will only happen if, in conscious cooperation with the Mystery we call God, we set out to create a culture, an ethos, in our church, both locally and nationally, which is about not just about coffee and cookies, and other delightful offerings, but also about practical training in living the Way of Christ.

In fact, when these delightful little things become surrounded by a rich, deep, spiritual culture they become enriched by their surroundings. They themselves become forms of prayer. Just like that one little line in the Lord's Prayer -- "Give us this day our daily bread" -- takes on a different significance when it's surrounded by feelings like "thy kingdom come, thy will be done," "Forgive us our tresspasses" and "Hallowed be Thy Name."

There are so very many different appetites in this Emerging 21st Century Church of ours.

Let us pray that it will be a church that, however different it may appear, is emerging from the very same Mission of God that inspired Jesus. Let us pray that it, that we, will have an appetite not for bread alone, but for becoming faithful disciples of The Way.

Amen.

Comments

WaterBuoy

Posted on: 07/16/2009 11:26

Rishi,

Makes me think of Robin Williams in The Fisher King. Can't you see him after feeding on a second-hand Big Mac (ham mere in old Celt/salt) taking his protaginist out into Central Park to moon bathe naqad as a Jay burred ... introducing the night Skye a infinite? Ohhhh shadowy thoughts to a mortal light ... they don't like to hear about ether side of the unknown ... Janus (J'nous is I'n old soul) in Roman myth. Now some powers make great use of this option ... fear!

Recall the pyramid has 5 points, 5 obvious ax's to float like a Myers-Briggs profile. Then a thou-san in Hebrew is fullness and the Roman thought couldn't get beyond that space, a thousand except in multiples ... legends, myths ... beyond common thinking? Now there is fear, anger, joy, curiousity and observation! Is there room for a blind ole man making a hidden decision? How many would chose the fifth point on top of the pyramid so they could know a bit before even beginning the treck in fear? That's why A'd'm probably named this place earth ... the dirt on how the majority choses their emotions ... without a quest'n ora thought about the way things were before ... the gods turn slowly in the dance Dan ... until you cook'm a byte! Fry dais girl ... Black in heh byte ... fall of Shabba?

Could God's chosen people have forgotten meaning for roues of law that inhibit processing thought? It has to stir the fogs, hazes of the brae'n that hidden organ, mostly water a wee bit of fat ... ad-rein-aL material. One must keep it healthy --- Amon! It needs dirt, water, Eire and plasma ... bloody humours of activity in unknown spaces ... do I hear the trill of a highland thistle burred? Prickly sensation walking into a cave without light -- Plateau ... unless of course you know where your goan!

Perhaps it is all a lie on the surface of the earth, elle mud'ur just waiting for the horde to cut loose and find their own space ... the hole population spilled out of the heavens? Quantum flash of Levantine winds, a light God ... reflecting prior to the alter Egost! Many only consider the super ego without a care ... cos-moe-logiccal mind Anna Karen in cons-exect-Ute've space ... vas differentials ... integrating forces!