Yesterday, I ended by saying: I love cookbooks. One of my favorite features of cookbooks is the trouble shooting guide, that way if your recipe doesn’t turn out, you can look at the trouble shooting guide and figure out what to do different next time. …
I’m sure by now many of you have seen this video of “Hot Cheetos and Takis” by the YNRich Kids at the North Community YMCA here in Minneapolis. Kids all over Minneapolis (and probably all over the country) can’t get enough of these crunchy, spicy, …
John 6 is a dense chapter with lots of little episodes. The chapter starts with Jesus feeding a crowd of 5000 men, (plus likely an equal number of women and additional children), with 2 fish and five loaves. There are 12 baskets of leftovers. The people get super excited about this and want to make Jesus king by force. That’s not what Jesus wants to see happen, so he withdraws into the mountain.
While he is hanging out on the mountain, his disciples get in a boat, and start rowing to the other side. The winds come up and as the disciples look over the water they see Jesus. “Don’t be afraid, it’s me.”
Jesus gets in the boat and they arrive at the other side of the lake.
Meanwhile on the original side of the lake, the crowd realizes that Jesus and the disciples aren’t there anymore. So they go looking for him. Eventually they find him. “What does God want from us?” they ask.
“The work God calls us to is to believe in the one God has sent.”
The people then ask for a sign. As if they have forgotten that Jesus fed thousands of people, (themselves as a matter of fact), the night before. They bring up Manna, and Moses. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.”
Here’s how John 6:48-59 read:
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ So 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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 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. This 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 for ever.’ He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
It’s probably not true, but when I first started preaching I used joke that I get assigned the most obscure or difficult passages of scripture when it’s my turn to preach.
This time I have validation – Knowing that this was a tricky passage I borrowed some reference books from Pastor D’s office this week.
As I worked through my writing process this, I laughed when I came across this line in the New Interpreter’s Bible, describing Jn. chapter 6:51-58 says these are “the most controversial and hotly debated verses in the fourth gospel.”
It really centers on verse 53 – unless you eat the flesh of the Son of the Man – you have no life in you.
First of all, it’s a pretty disturbing image, the word translated as eat, is a little more descriptive than “eat” it’s closer to gnaw, chew or devour. Sort of gross.
So we hope that Jesus doesn’t mean he actually wants us to walk up and tear off a chunk of his forearm. So we have to work out what the deeper significance of eating his flesh is. There are basically 2 major camps.
1- Because John doesn’t have a last supper narrative, this first group argues that this is John’s equivalent of instituting the Eucharist or Holy Communion. Participating in the sacrament of communion therefore leads to life.
2- The second group argues that Jesus is God revealed, but God is also revealed by the word of God and by the presence of the Holy Spirit. God is revealed as we believe in the one he sent, the one who does what the Father says. Therefore, Jesus isn’t telling us to having a wafer and juice on the first Sunday of the month, but is instead telling us to abide in Christ, believe in the Father, know God’s word and live by the Spirit.
Which is it Katie? Is this about communion or about belief?
My humble prayerful and researched opinion is that the answer is – YES. Eating his flesh is both participating in Holy Communion and by spending time in God’s revelation, Jesus, the word, the spirit, making a choice to live as though Jesus is true.
Last year I heard a speaker, Sara Miles, at Hamline University. Ms. Miles is a left-wing journalist, raised by agressively aetheist parents. One Sunday morning when she was 46, while her spouse and child were asleep. She went for a walk and ended up in an Anglican church near her home in San Francisco. She tasted the bread and drank the wine and met God. This act of feeding, and sacrifice was so powerful to her that she was baptized, started preaching and started a food pantry in the sanctuary of her church. Wanting the food pantry to be as much like communion as possible, it is open to all, participants don’t need to show proof of residency, income. They just come and get good food, around the same altar that Christ’s body and blood are broken and poured out upon each Sunday.
Her story is told in her bookTake This Bread
My story is different. It wasn’t communion that brought me to Jesus. It was two Old Testament stories, the word of God that brought me to Jesus.
But scripture and communion continue to feed me.
Communion and scripture continue to feed Sara Miles.
Jesus’ command is fairly straightforward – eat my flesh. It’s a simple recipe. But somehow we don’t seem to be able to get it
I love cookbooks. One of my favorite features of cookbooks is the trouble shooting guide, that way if your recipe doesn’t turn out, you can look at the trouble shooting guide and figure out what to do different next time. So if your muffins are too pointy you over mixed, or added too much leavening, or if they are pale, your oven wasn’t hot enough.
So for your consideration tomorrow I would like to offer:
The Bread of Heaven – Flesh Eaters Troubleshooting Guide.
Stay tuned.
Disclosure: The links for movies, dvds and books will take you to my Amazon affiliate page. You pay the same price that you would elsewhere, but I get a very small percentage of the money that Amazon takes. Don’t feel any pressure to buy, I just like these things.
This is the introduction to a sermon that I preached this morning at Park Avenue UMC in Minneapolis. It is a little long to post as one blog post, so I’m breaking it into a couple of parts. Enjoy. Yesterday, as soon as I got …
So having worked around 50 hours the past three weeks, I haven’t quite regained the work life balance of being able to do arts or crafts or even exercise. This changes this week, but in the mean time, here are some creative projects that I’ve …
It has taken awhile to get back into the blogging routine, but I’m hopeful that this week will change that. I’ve started to work a new second job, and am loving it. I’ll be writing about it soon.
In January I happened upon a documentary that followed Béla Fleck around Africa – Uganda, Tanzania, The Gambia and Mali. He collaborated with local musicians in each country and made the most extraordinary album that brings the banjo back to its ancestral home on the continent of Africa.
The CD (or MP3 downloads) and DVD are both available from Amazon. The music is lovely, melodic and emotionally rich. It highlights the multi-cultural diversity of the continent, as none of the songs on the album sound alike, although there is gorgeous sound in all of them.
Check out the youtube video for a little background, then check out the Amazon links for the album and DVD. And for more music that I’m digging this year check out the “What I’m Listening” To Tab.
*Full disclosure – the links above are linked to my Amazon associate account and if you order from these links I will receive a small percentage of your final cost in my account.
29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. …
Galatians What are We Saved Into
Atonement is essentially reconciliation with God, but Christ’s work on the cross also saves us into the community of God. Galatians 3:28 gives a great description of our reality as a reconciled people, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” . Stanley Grenz and Denise Muir Kjesbo point out that this verse may have been a subversion of a popular prayer at the time, “Thank you that I am not a Gentile, a slave or a woman.” Paul, who is consistently concerned with the unity between Jewish and gentile believers, sees a connection between the divide between Jews and Gentiles and the divide between male and female. Just as gentiles are not required to become Jews to become a member of the church, neither are women required to become male, nor be attached to a particular male, before becoming a full member of the church. In Christ, the dissonance between male and female, the curse of the garden is brought back into harmony and unity. Accordingly, relationships between men and women must change.[1]
An example of this change in the dynamics between the genders is the narrative of Mary and Martha when Jesus visits the house. While Martha prepares the meal, Mary sits in the position that a disciple of a rabbi would take at Jesus’ feet. This is a cultural signal, that Mary was an equal with the other disciples under the teaching of Jesus.[2]
What then should be our practices in youth ministry? Given the research on self-esteem and young adolescent girls, and the dynamics of sin and atonement for women and girls, what are effective ways to both help girls develop a healthy sense of self, as well as to present the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ. Here are my suggestions:
Teaching on Self-Esteem in Christian Education:
Christian parents do not want their children to grow up to be self-centered and prideful. However, we do a disservice to children and parents when we equate healthy self-esteem with hubris. We must teach parents as well as our youth that a Godly self-esteem comes from knowing our worth as children of God, created in his image, but also that we have faults, sins, and failures; none the less, in Christ we are a new creation. Therefore, lessons on Godly healthy self-esteem ought to be a part of the curriculum in children’s, youth and adult education. Furthermore, Christian education leaders ought to receive training on the confidence gap and the hidden curriculum.
Christian Unity
The teachings of Galatians 3:28, must become an ongoing rally cry of our ministries. Multi-cultural churches and racial reconciliation are popular movements in the Evangelical church today. Our teaching must include the cultural and racial dynamics of our unity, but must also highlight the economic and gender dimensions as well. A common error that is made in working towards Christian unity is to think of it as a goal for its own sake. However by looking closely at the passage, we can see that there is more to what Paul is writing, Galatians 3:29 says: “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” As a heirs of the promise of Abraham, our role is to be a blessing to the entire world (Gen 12 and 22).
Rosemary Reuther argues that ministry must be seen as mutual empowerment.[1] “Clericalism…disempowers the people and turns them into ‘laity’ dependent on the clergy…people have no direct access to the divine.” As heirs of Abraham we must encourage our youth to take a role in the blessing of all the nations and expect them to grow. It is true that as adults in the church we may have more wisdom or experience, and therefore ought to be the ones to teach or lead, but we must as Reuther says, “teach to overcome the gap between those who know and those who do not…gradually [creating] fellow teachers who can teach others.[2]
Bring Boys and Men into the Conversation
It was the man and the woman who were corrupted by the fall. The man was corrupted by becoming the master, the woman by becoming the servant. Man made himself Lord, woman allowed first the serpent and then the man to be Lord. If our work to bring the good news to girls and correct the injustice to women focuses only on girls, we will never see the change that we hope for. Orenstein rightly points out that the hidden curriculum teaches boys to be self-centered (rather than having a healthy self-esteem) as well as teaching them not to respect women or their female classmates.[3]
In order to see change for girls and women, we must teach both boys and girls what it means to treat one another with respect. Unfortunately even the definitions of respect and disrespect need to be taught. Akon and David Guetta’s song caught my ear last year. “I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful.” So far, sounds good, parents, teachers, pastors, all desire respectful descriptions of women and girls. This song reached number five in the United States, and received considerable air time in the Twin Cities. My delight in a song trying to describe a beautiful woman respectfully though was short lived as I heard more of the lyrics:
She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before / Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood whore/ Damn Girl / You’se a sexy bitch / damn girl
Middle School boys and girls need to be taught explicitly that even though Akon is claiming to not be disrespectful, setting up a comparison to prostitutes (even if the woman in question comes out ahead of the prostitute), saying “damn girl,” and calling someone a “sexy bitch” are not respectful ways to talk to people.
Our young men and young women still are not sure if being a girl or a woman is a good thing. As leaders and teachers that believe each girl and each boy is made in the image of God, we have an awesome responsibility to teach, to empower and to call out the nonsense.
[1] Grenz and Kjesbo 106
Grenz and Kjesbo: Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry
[2] Clifford 77
I have four different nativity scenes. As I set them up I noticed something: all four of my sets had the Holy Family (Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus) which is good, Jesus is central to this CHRISTmas thing. Three of my sets had the …
