I was privileged to worship with the congregation of St. John the Baptist (Mission Church) & St. Clement in Saint John, NB this morning. The audio and text are available after the jump.
The scripture referenced is John 6:51-58; 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Psalm 111; and Ephesians 5:15-20.
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Good morning. Thanks to the church and to Paul for inviting me to share in the service this morning. Paul and I have known each other since elementary school, which means I know a lot of embarrassing stories about him. He made me promise not to tell any of these stories during the sermon. I will keep this promise. He did not, however, make me give any such promise about what I can and cannot say during the coffee time downstairs after the morning service. So stick around.
I am Baptist by birth and upbringing. You are taking a big risk. This is the first time a church that is not Baptist has invited me to speak. When I asked Paul if there was anything special I should speak about, he directed me to the weekly readings page on your website for the morning’s scripture. This is also the first time I have spoken at a church while using a predetermined text. Baptists do not typically follow the lectionary, which I think is our loss. It is unifying to know that Christians who are not in the same room as us – whether somewhere else in Saint John or somewhere else in the world – are sharing, contemplating, and praying over the same bits of The Bible.
So, I opened my Bible and began reading the passages from 1 Kings, The Psalms, Ephesians, and The Gospel of John. I immediately noticed that three of these passages are about wisdom. In the passage in 1 Kings God offers to give Solomon anything that he wants. Solomon is a young man and feels a bit overwhelmed by his new responsibilities as King of Israel. He asks God for wisdom.
In the Psalm, the Psalmist begins by praising God and considers the goodness of God throughout the passage. He closes by offering some advice about how to find wisdom: respect this good God and obey his commandments. In Ephesians, Paul tells his readers to be careful and not to be foolish. Instead of being foolish, they should imitate the lives of people who are wise.
That leaves us with the gospel reading from John. My first reaction was that this passage had nothing to do with wisdom. I read it again, trying to understand why it was grouped with these three other passages. I still didn’t get it.
By coincidence, I began reading the book After You Believe by N. T. Wright around this time. In this book, N. T. Wright argues that the best way to understand our lives as Christians is to understand our present lives as preparing us for our future lives in the fulfilled Kingdom of God. In these future lives, we will have a properly human state.
God made humans to function in a certain way. This is “The Creation.” We told God that we want to function in a different way. This is sin or “The Fall.” God began bringing us back to him, which we see in the story of Noah and the history of Israel. God’s plan to bring us back to him culminates in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. God uses the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to invite people into a new life. This is “Redemption.” After redemption is “the Christian life.” N. T. Wright proposes that the Christian life should be shaped by understanding what our future properly human state will look like. As Christians, we shouldn’t look for a set of rules or a list of ethical behaviours as our ultimate guide in how to live. Instead, our lives should reflect how people living in the fulfilled kingdom will live. The Christian life is a preparation. It prepares us for what it will be like when we return completely to our properly human state. We will perfectly reflect God’s image once again.
What does this have to do with the wisdom not being the topic of the gospel reading? Wright uses three words to describe the preparation for our properly human state: character, virtue, and wisdom.
I read the passage in John for a third time. In this passage, Jesus explains how to live a life following him. Let’s use N. T. Wright’s explanation of what wisdom is – the hard work of preparing to live a properly human life. Understanding wisdom this way, means that the gospel reading gives us the clearest explanation of how to gain wisdom. Let’s review what Jesus says.
Jesus explains two different types of bread. First is physical bread, the kind of thing that you buy at Sobeys. What God gave to Israel during the Exodus. What you can bake when you feel ambitious. Jesus says nothing bad about this type of bread. It is good bread. It has rewards. If I eat a meal today, I can be nourished and continue my life. It is fairly straight-forward logic. Keep on getting the nourishment from food. Keep on living. The problem with physical bread isn’t that it is bad. The problem is that it is finite. Eventually, I am going to eat my last meal of physical bread. Its nourishment will be good but it will not be enough to sustain me until the next day. Something will be so wrong with my health that food or medicine can’t heal me. I may have an accident. I may grow to a ripe old age and pass away peacefully in my sleep. I don’t know how it will happen, but eventually I will die. That is the problem with the first type of bread that Jesus describes. It can only fend off death so long. Fending off death is important. Death was not part of the equation when God looked down at his creation on Day 6 and called it “very good.”
For lack of a better term, I will call the second type of bread “spiritual bread.” This bread is King Jesus. When we eat this bread, we no longer worry about the finite usefulness of physical bread. Eating and drinking Jesus will give eternal life. Jesus says that there are eternal rewards if you will eat his flesh and drink his blood. You will become part of Jesus and Jesus will become part of you. Having this close of a relationship with Jesus is the only way to live a real and complete life. It is the only way to gain wisdom. Bring a big appetite to the table. The more of Jesus that you eat, the better off you are. Yes, you will still need to eat physical bread when you eat Jesus, and yes, people who eat Jesus’ flesh and drink Jesus’ blood will come to a physical death. This death is not the end, however. If we have consumed Jesus, he will raise us from death when his Kingdom is here completely. Jesus himself physically resurrected from the dead. One day he will physically resurrect his followers of the dead. As we eat the spiritual bread of Jesus, life is no longer temporary. Death is what is temporary. God can again look down on his creation, echo his thoughts on the sixth day, and say that it is “very good.”
So, we ate Jesus’ flesh and we drank his blood. We are part of the gospel story. We witnessed the creation. We experienced the fall. We are saved by the redemption. We are now living as the body of Jesus. We are part of it. Jesus says to us quite bluntly, “You have eternal life within you.” When we consume Jesus, we are readying ourselves for eternal life. We remain in Jesus and Jesus remains in us. Like our body grows when we eat physical bread, our relationship with Jesus grows when we consume him. As we continue to consume Jesus, we will continue to grow as his followers and reflect him better.
We are still left with the idea of “consuming Jesus.” How do we eat this man? We do this by seeking wisdom, practicing virtue, growing in character. Consuming Jesus now brings us closer and closer to what it will be like when we live in the fulfilled kingdom.
Let’s look quickly at the other passages to find out how to “consume Jesus.”
The account of Solomon teaches us where to find wisdom. If we want wisdom, we need to look to God. We won’t get it on our own. Eating Jesus means we need to be an active participant in a relationship with God.
The psalmist tells us how to ask for wisdom. We need to respect God if we are going to have wisdom. It is no coincidence that this advice comes in a song of praise. Praising God shows that we respect God. Eating Jesus is an act of praise. When we consume Jesus, we give him his rightful place.
In Ephesians, the apostle Paul tells us how to respond to receiving wisdom. Wisdom is not something for our own gain. We need to be careful. We need to discern what God wants from us. When we eat Jesus, we will begin to reflect him. Consuming Jesus is hard. We are surrounded by alternatives to Jesus.
Where does this leave us? When we are Christians, wisdom, character, and virtue become available to us, but they are not automatic. God used the death and resurrection of his son to redeem us. That work is done by God. Redemption is not our responsibility. It is a gift God that gives to us. We are not off the hook. If we want wisdom, if we want to be people of character, if we want to be virtuous, we need to take the redeemed lives that God gave us and consume Jesus. When we do this, we will begin to reflect him. The old cliché “You are what you eat,” is true. If we only eat physical bread, our lives will reflect something finite. If we eat the bread that is Jesus, our lives will reflect him.
Our lives will reflect mercy.
Our lives will reflect faith.
Our lives will reflect justice.
Our lives will reflect hope.
Our lives will reflect humility.
Our lives will reflect love.
In short, our lives will be everything that God created them to be. There is only one way to get there. Make Jesus your next meal.
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