Choosing to move past division
Proper 15B | John 6:51-58
Good morning, Friends! It’s been a minute. Anything happen while I was gone? A few things, I’m guessing. I don’t watch the news for hours these days, but we heard things in northern Michigan.
Politics is always in season, but this is when it is all inescapable, isn’t it? And there is a thing we do with our politics that is a little less than helpful. But it starts before we think about parties and bills and platforms and elections. It has to do with the way we address the material of our world.
Notice that I said material of this world. My first thought was to say it differently. I originally planned to say problems. That it has to do with the way we address our problems. But even that falls for the trap in our thinking.
And that trap is to reflect on the world with binary thinking: that everything is a choice between only two things.
Binary Thinking
There is something elementary and true about binary thinking. Computers are famously binary processors. Everything is ones and zeros and yet they run international commerce, space travel, and Roblox. But just as binary thinking is foundational, it is not the material of complex argumentation. If I have five things to do when I get home, like mow the lawn, make dinner, write a paper, read a book, and go grocery shopping, binary thinking doesn’t help me decide whether to stop at Starbucks on the way home.
Those binary decisions are not the whole of the matter. And when we use Google Maps to find directions or Duck Duck Go to search for Detroit-style pizza recipes, these aren’t binary decisions, but a web of connecting pieces that are far greater than any one choice.
Even on our drive home last weekend, there was a traffic jam on I-75 north of Flint. Our decision to zigzag through Flushing, Flint, and Swartz Creek to get to I-69 was not a simple choice between two options. It was built on familiarity, time, and a desire to keep moving.
So what does all of this mean for the gospel today? It starts by helping us see why we miss the forest for the trees.
Context
Let’s all take a minute to remember some context. I’m sure everyone was here the last few weeks, so this is just a reminder. But we’re in chapter six of the gospel of John. And it famously begins with the feeding of the multitudes—when over five thousand people are fed on two fish and five loaves of bread. It is the only miracle described in all four gospels.
This miracle has a serious side effect. No, the food doesn’t go bad, nobody gets sick. But in John’s telling, it makes people excited about Jesus for the wrong reasons. They want to follow him to get more bread.
Contrast this with following Jesus for what he teaches them about what the bread means. He wants people to follow him as The Way to God, to embody the blessed community, fulfilling God’s dream for all creation. It isn’t about personal salvation. Oops! Which is no more popular a thing to say with those followers than it is for today’s evangelicals.
Also, in the middle of this are some critics who push back at Jesus for all of this. And it is they who question him about this image he uses. Jesus says,
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”
And how do they respond to this? There’s a word for it: they take him literally. They respond to him as if he thinks he’s bread.
At this point, we should do some interrogating of our own response to this moment.
- Do they actually believe he’s speaking literally?
- Is it reasonable to assume the average person would take this literally?
- Are these critics actually taking him literally?
I suspect the true answer to all three questions is no. They don’t believe he’s speaking literally. They’re playing dumb. It’s a gotcha moment. And further, it is ridiculous to assume most anyone would take this literally. And besides, they aren’t even taking him literally. At least entirely literally.
They don’t think he’s calling himself bread
They don’t suggest that they think Jesus is himself bread. They mock the suggestion that his body is edible. They haven’t taken the material of Jesus’s form literally—just the image’s implied action of eating him. This demonstrates that they understand the metaphor but only honor half of its meaning.
In other words, they get what’s going on and choose to be jerks about it. I bet they’d share some snarky memes online. Can you believe this guy! He wants people to be cannibals!
Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He doesn’t bite at it. He doubles down on the talk of flesh eating and blood drinking. Not to be a jerk, but because he isn’t going to be dissuaded from using an image he knows is working just because some people are being dishonest in their hearing.
Our False Binary
I started out by talking about how we use the binary to blind our thinking and miscommunicate with one another. And our passage from John shows a moment when people tried to use the binary to discredit Jesus. And this is an important teaching for us, too. That our own binaries can limit our understanding.
We often frame our ability to listen to the gospel as a binary choice between taking the words literally or metaphorically. That we are either taking them as direct or indirect, fact or fiction. This is naive, dangerous, and often just as insincere a practice as Jesus’s critics employ.
There is no gap between literal and metaphor when they are both present here. When Jesus speaks of metaphorical consumption of flesh and literal consumption of bread. Of eating together, feeding each other, serving the world and imbibing the Spirit, filling ourselves with what fuels our work in the world.
Binaries refuse to acknowledge when both truths are present. And they make us horribly obtuse readers of Scripture, relationships, and our common good.
Real Presence
This passage should not only bring the feeding of the multitudes to mind but also the Eucharist. And therefore, by extension the story that is to come: the Last Supper. And if we listen to Jesus with a mind of gratitude, generosity, and love, we can begin to see how a theological binary has diminished our relationships with one another as much as it has increased our relationships to God.
Is the Eucharist an image? Yes! Is it literal? Yes! Do we bless bread and wine? Yes! Are they flesh and blood? Yes! Is it real? Yes! Is it something to warm our hearts? Yes! Is it a personal meeting with the divine? Yes! Is it a communal act of common feeding that ensures every person is welcome to the table and is fed from it? Yes! All of this!
The Eucharist is as much our greatest mystery as it is the greatest revealer of God’s presence. It is both frustratingly confusing and wonderfully clear. It is something adults must spend their whole lives studying and children prehend intuitively.
Eucharist is a sacrament. As our catechism teaches:
“The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.”
The binary wants to solve problems that aren’t problems. It seeks to categorize what resists categories. It longs to make easy the things we need wisdom to understand.
And Jesus ignores the critics’ rejection of his love and conviction and invites us to eat anyway. That was our work this summer, wasn’t it? To go eat. To celebrate and enjoy and eat good food, preferably with people. To find joy in meals, in relationships, and in community.
We ate out and cooked for each other and let others cook for us. And we ate loads of ice cream up north. I hope you all had some too. We seemed to plan our days around eating. Because we wanted to explore and also come home. We had macarons from Biggby, bowls from the Hungry Hippy, and my mom made three different shepherd’s pies including a vegetarian one with chickpeas that was outstanding because she wanted to cook something special for my daughter.
Let us feast together because faith and feeding go together. Because sharing the love of Christ and eating food go together. There is no choosing. One is no greater than the other. It is both. Always. All of it given in the grace of God.