Proverbs 9:1-6
Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.
2She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.
3She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, 4“You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says, 5“Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”
Jesus’ somewhat confusing, disturbing, mystical discussion on bread continues:
John 6:51-58
51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53So Jesus said to them, “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. 54Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”
When the verses of a single, short chapter are spread over 5 weeks you can imagine that the commentators are talking about every, single, word – like sports commentators filling air space while a play is being studied by the officials. For example, while the word translated as “eat” earlier in the chapter refers to a general kind of consuming, in these sentences Jesus (or John) changes it, and chose instead a voracious, munching, chomping kind of eating word in Greek. That word choice raises the scandal meter to the breaking point – it’s bad enough that Jesus is saying people must eat his flesh and drink his blood to accomplish eternal life, but he is now describing that eating in graphic terms. It’s disgusting and absolutely against the commandments given by Moses where eating any meat/flesh with the blood still in it is forbidden. Next week we’ll hear the disciples say, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” Indeed.
There is also the constant swirling, repetition of phrases changing a single word that subtly alters the meaning or emphasis, so that the teaching is doubly difficult to understand.
“He gave them bread from heaven to eat”, in verse 31 is referring to God giving manna to the Israelites through Moses.
“My father gives you the true bread from heaven,” (verse 32) shifts from manna to the gift of Jesus’ incarnation.
“The bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Verse 51 is now not referring to Jesus’ being, but to his body. He is not the host of the meal, but the meal itself.
The message seems designed to drive people away…and as we will hear next week, it did.
Why do this? Why make these difficult statements that were absolutely sure to create conflict? Why not, instead, double down on the gracious invitation of Woman Wisdom inviting everyone to a feast?
Wisdom invites the young and the foolish to her table so they might gain understanding and live the good life, in the best sense of that term. But, maybe that graciousness needs a counterpoint – needed it then and needs it now. Jesus fed a lot of people miraculous bread and fish, and we are told they followed after him, not for the teaching of God’s Word, but for the good life of free bread and fish.
Wisdom was extolling the good life of integrity and wisdom. Today, the good life stands for material prosperity and leisure and plenty. There’s an advertisement, a full-page spread of a gleaming black sports car and, across the top, the words “The key to an extraordinary life is quite literally a key.” At the bottom of the ad is a key fob for a Maserati.
With a base price equivalent to twice the annual income of the average American worker, that Maserati sports car is a lure of the good life. The advertising industry and social media platforms home in on the universal desire to lead a life that is above average. While most of us would not put an Italian sports car on our bucket list of the good life, we do, as a culture at least, admire the trappings of wealth and power over lives of virtue, integrity, honesty, hard work, and faithfulness.
Jesus’ circular teaching started with free bread, and with each round, he shaves away the more straightforward meaning to get to the core, to the meat of the matter – the way that eating and drinking incorporates food into our beings. “You are what you eat”, the old adage goes. If you eat Christ, you become Christlike. If you eat his body and blood, he becomes one with you and you with him. It’s a strange, visceral entry point to talking about abiding in God. Later in the gospel, he assures his disciples saying, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’ That’s a bit easier to hear.
So, happily leaving behind a discussion of flesh and blood, I turned my attention to thoughts of abiding. What does it mean to abide? We abide in abodes – and they come in all sizes and degrees of permanence. One room studio apartments, mobile homes, tiny homes, hand-made homes, single family homes, town homes, inherited homes, estates. Some people stay in tents or boxes.
Because I’m in the process of moving, houses and the stuff we live with comes up a lot in the conversations I’ve been having. I’ve also helped two of our children move their things into new spaces this summer. Finding a home, a place to abide, is a huge part of our adult work. Housing ourselves and our families. We look for safety, convenience, affordability, then comfort, aesthetics, and style. If we have the ability, the luxury to be choosy, we look for the right “feel”, and know it almost immediately when we step into a new space. We outfit our abiding place with furniture, decorations, and mementos that help us feel at home, that bring a sense of sanctuary, of peace and belonging. We use our homes to say “I belong in this place. The things around me speak of my values, my interests, my people.” For most of us, our abodes offer a view, an outer extension or interpretation of who we are. It’s a different, but related concept to, “You are what you eat.”
The church building, this sanctuary, gives an immediate sense of what this congregation is about. Scandinavian culture is evident in the clean, open lines, in the sanctuary ship; the clear glass tells its own story of the appreciation of natural beauty, transparency, a valuing of present life. There was discussion before the grand piano was purchased about whether it would be too grand, too ostentatious or too big. Would it detract or distract from worship? That conversation was important and interesting. Now, we can’t imagine abiding for worship in this space without it. And yet, I’m sure everyone felt the same way about the furnishings and building of the church that burned. But you did. You did continue gathering for worship, you did move into a different space while this one was designed and built. Because it wasn’t the building you worshiped, and it wasn’t the building that defined the relationships. Churches house faithfulness, but don’t create or contain it.
Housing is temporary – war, flooding, fires, economics – these things can and do alter our address. What is at the core of your abiding place, what do you cherish? I think about the people who live in wildfire and flood zones and have an evacuation kit. What would be in there? If you have a plan, I suppose it is the important household paperwork – insurance policies, bank account information, passports, a few photos, the family jewels….. In each of the parsonages we’ve moved into – especially when the children were small – I would rehearse the fire evacuation plan in my head before I’d go to sleep. How would I get to everyone, how would we get out if the stairway was blocked? I didn’t want to wake up disoriented by a new house, I needed to know the plan. My evacuation plan didn’t consider any paperwork, no family records or documents, no precious knick knacks – only what really mattered. Only the children, Mike and me, and the pets if we could.
That is what this passage in John leads us to. The thing that really matters is the abiding relationship not the abode. It’s the body of Christ incorporated into our bodies, Jesus’ life into our lives, the Word of God that we take into us so often, so deeply that it becomes part of us, like protein.
It’s significant that the sacramental language of the Eucharist occurs here, early in the gospel, and not at the end as it does in the other gospels.
“To share in the meal is not to remember or commemorate one particular event, but is to share in all of Jesus’ life, including, ultimately, his death,” writes Gail O’Day. “Participation in the meal creates a relationship between Jesus and the believer that contains within it the promise of new life.” And it is that new life that we are to find compelling, that we are to be drawn toward and into. A new life now, in Christ’s presence now, that leads, eventually, to life in God’s eternity of being.
Isaac Watts’ beautiful hymn is an interpretation of Psalm 23, but the final verse surely comes from John. He writes, “The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days; oh, may your house be my abode and all my work be praise. Here would I find a settled rest, while others go and come; no more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.