August 9, 2009 Sermon

About another World John 6:35,41-51 Lawrence Jackman

A week ago last Wednesday was July 29. It is a date remarkable to me, but probably not to many others. It would have been my brother’s birthday. You may know he died a year ago next month. Butch passed from a cerebral trauma following a fall. He was younger than me by enough years for me to have had a sort of almost parental role in his life. Lots of long stories are there for the telling, but the real content is that the anniversary of Butch’s birthday causes me to think about all this ultimate stuff that we refer to as “life and death”.

Then comes along today’s lectionary passage. It is filled with more of this “life and death” discussion and content. So I tell you the personal part of this in order to let you know this is a very personal piece of thinking that I am trying to do.

John’s Gospel portrays Jesus in a very different way than the others. The other Gospels are similar in pattern and content though each has a differing emphasis. Mark tells a quick impact tale that perhaps took less than a year to complete the entire ministry. Matthew tells a story of a Jesus who was totally consumed with teaching about the Kingdom of God. Luke’s special emphasis is a Jesus who burns with compassion for the outcasts and the damaged members of society.

John, on the other hand, has not a single parable in it. The discourses are long teachings about this world and another world. There is a profound interest in knowledge and in what is almost a route from this veil of wrath and tears to another and higher plane of existence. Knowing is saving for John. John is mystical, in a broad sense Gnostic, and filled with content fixed for something other than our normal Christian thought. Parts of it are more like Star Trek than they are like biography.

Take this passage from the sixth Chapter that we read today. It is clear in the thought process that there are two levels of reality being discussed. Bread starts as a physical and tangible reality and quickly moves. First it becomes some sort of special or ultra-substance and then goes even further to be an almost metaphysical reality. Jesus himself is first discussed as an ordinary human being. “Is this not the son of Joseph? Are those people over there not his family? We know his people, how can he make these exaggerated claims?”

Step two, Jesus is claiming a unique role and proximity to God. “God alone directs and draws people to me”, Jesus says. And again the quantum move onward toward the truly metaphysical, Jesus says, “I am the living bread from heaven come down. Anyone who eats will never die.”

The promise is eternal life. The promise is, however, really not so clear. The Bible does not spell out the particulars of eternal life very clearly at all. Instead it settles for this promise. Our images of the afterlife are all born of strange times and images that are no longer part of our lives. Many are born of mythology and of the fantasy of medieval poets like Dante who have about as much authority as you or me. One of the problems is, I believe, the fact that we have evolved our understanding of the total context of Christianity without, at least sometimes, evolving our appreciation of the faith itself. For instance, once a long while back Elizabeth Ross was just starting to become known. I had some dealings with her and was convinced that we could bring her to our Presbytery in the Saint Louis area to help us understand this great mystery. My colleagues puffed their pipes and pontificated about how Doctor Kubler-Ross had unusual theological concepts. Well yes she did, and so we kept our middle ages theology in tact rather than try to work with a new thought.

The new thought may actually be not so new. I want to focus you on several words and thoughts this passage from John 6. The words are life, death, belief and world. Each one of those words enlightens for me an understanding of the promise—though the promise itself is still far from clear. I find for myself that the more I understand even the words of the promise, the more I can actually live like a person who claims the promise.

Taking those words backwards from how I just said them and the first word to lift up is the word “world”, in Greek “Kosmos”. It is the word from which we get terms like cosmic. For the Gospel of John the target consumer for all this saving activity is “the world”. All by itself and even in English that is a massively inclusive thought. The promise says “the world” and not nice folks, people who go to church, people who pray, people who are pious, or people who don’t swear, or people who are conventional in their lifestyle. None of that is the Godly target, the “world” is.

And when you go to the Greek the word has an even more inclusive meaning. “Kosmos” in New Testament meant the “worldly world”. It referenced the underbelly of life and of society. It referenced the things we would rather not be associated with. That means my Unitarian brother, it means my non religious Grandfather, it means all people of any stripe or conviction. It also means all the people I do not like and anyone I might actually happen to like. God loves them all—the goal is to save them all. Now can God accomplish the goal? I am betting yes.

I find comfort in the notion of universal salvation. I also know in every fiber of my being that the core issue of life is that of “trust” which brings me to the second word. I need to go and count the actual times that the Greek word “pistis” or some form of it is changed from its core meaning in the New Testament. The word means “trust” and we always change that to “belief”. And we make belief into an intellectual work. If I believe something that is hard to believe, then I have accomplished my part of the saving drama. So ideas become more important than anything else. Well baloney!

Jesus actually addressed this misunderstanding. You remember when he said, “You believe? Big deal ! The devils believe and tremble”. Now here is the issue – that we trust. Indiana Jones (in the movie The Last Crusade) must make his way across a chasm armed with only a clue about what to do. In desperate action he steps out to walk an invisible bridge across a perilous drop. It works.

Now you could say that the person who sat down and read the clue and agreed that it was true as a statement “had faith”. But the person who steps out and places their foot where there may or may not be support—that person has trust. It doesn’t matter a lick what is going on in the head—it is the feet that express trust. I find great comfort in that notion that I do not need to bend my brain to live in the promise. I need instead to move my feet.

The passage also includes the terms death and life. Here is a fundamental fact of New Testament study. There are a couple of words for life that point to a basic thought contrast and even point of misunderstanding. One word is the one we normally think about when it comes to the concept of dead and alive. The word is “bios” from which we get things like Biology. This means basically, “having vital signs”—a pulse, breathing, brain activity etc. That word is used I think, three times in the New Testament.

The other word in the New Testament and used most often used (and used here in John 6) is the word, “zoe”. It means life but life with spirit, quality, gusto, meaning. It is ironic that in the church we so often focus on “bios” and so little focus on “zoe”. There are parallel concepts about death. One could be said to be “clinically dead” and the other “spiritually dead”. The New Testament is most concerned with the spiritual—both life and death.

The more I focus there, on qualitative life, the more I can live like a person of the promise. And the less I worry about the physical realities.

There are, at least, two levels of reality. There is the tangible and the spiritual. Beneath every tangible reality are spiritual realities. This is not about wispy and sentimental. It is all so very practical.

There is a man in Taylorsville who use to work sometimes on my mower for me. I forget how old he told me he was, but it starts with an 8. He has pretty well given up working on mowers for the time being because his wife had a stroke and needs more constant care. I saw him the other day and stopped to ask how his family was. He explained the very tangible problems and issues. He explained those with clear love and devotion toward his ailing wife.

He points me toward the dual level of reality. You know he has a mate. That is tangible and it means very little. The way he explains and talks tells me he has a “soul mate” for all time. That means everything.

The promise is spiritual and lies in all things spiritual. Life and death are incredibly complex and beyond understanding. There is a promise out there that life does not end when we can no longer see. Understanding that promise is impossible.

Claiming life in that promise, living as a person of the promise, that is fully achievable.