Gospel test for 2 August 2015

John 6:24-35        The next day, when the people who remained after the feeding of the five thousand saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal." Then they said to him, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." So they said to him, "What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, `He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" Then Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Reflection         “Dear God, I know that you are with me but still, would you please give me a sign, preferably in neon with fireworks. You know me, the thick hearted one who is never quite sure it really is You.” I have prayed that and similar prayers more times than I like to admit. What I am really asking is, how can I be sure, be sure that God is with me when I run out of bread and my stomach is growling? How can I be sure when I wake up in the morning and “neither Jesus nor his disciples (are) there?” 

It all boils down to wanting certainty, confidence with evidence that does not require faith. That is where miracles come in. The problem is, there can never be enough miracles to really convince me. We never know when we’ve seen the last one. I suspect that is why the disciples keep asking Jesus for more signs. Vats of fine wine, healing a child, feeding five thousand people, walking on water, all those signs are not enough to convince the disciples (and me)  so the disciples ask Jesus, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you?” Can you give us something we can really hold onto? Something we can see and feel and taste, like manna?

Jesus tries to explain. If you receive manna one day you will still be hungry the next… the same way it works with miracles. You can never have enough. But if you would just believe that you already have what you are looking for in me, you would never be hungry again. Apparently Jesus’ words fell on hard hearts. If we fast forward through John’s gospel we experience Jesus giving the disciples and us three more signs so that we would “believe in him whom God has sent;”healing a man born blind and a  paralytic and raising his friend from the dead. Still, when Jesus asks, “Who do the people say that I am…” but I am leaping ahead. 

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I will be taking next week off for vacation. 

Gospel text for Sunday 2 June 2013

                                         Luke 7:11-17        Soon after healing the centurion's slave, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

Reflection      If ever I wondered what Jesus’ position was regarding women this story about the widow and her dead son clinches it for me. When Jesus looked at the woman walking next to her son’s body in a funeral procession what he saw was a person with no status, no home, and no way to survive. In an instant Jesus  assessed the situation, decided the widow’s presumptive fate was not good enough and he was roused to action. Nothing would prevent him, not even death, from subverting the assumptions that would seal the woman’s fate. If it meant doing a miracle, raising her son from the dead, so be it. Nothing could seperate the widow ( every woman, every person) from the love of God through Jesus. Not even first century cultural assumptions that an unmarried woman with no son was essentially worthless and had no place in society could steal life from her.

Which brings us to the subject of miracles.  Miracle stories are problemmatic no matter how I sit with them. But the more I hung out with Jesus and the widow the more I realized the real problem is - we don’t expect miracles. We are willing to capitulate to circumstances. We accept social conventions as if they were inevitable (ie. a woman has no place in the world without a man). We allow our lives to be guided by probabilities and jaundiced assumptions. We are willing to succumb to a reasoned or likely outcome. We don’t expect miracles!

But reasonable or likely outcomes were not good enough for Jesus and should not be good enough for us. Jesus intervened to right a fundamental socio-cultural flaw of his time. Jesus acted without restraint to excavate the assumption that women have no worth or rights without men.  Jesus intervened to reverse the widow’s status. 

Now just in case you imagine Jesus’ miraculous intervention with the widow of Nain set the world of believers straight regarding the worth of single women, not so fast. On two occasions in the 21st century I personally have been told by a person set in authority over me that I was less credible (and presumably of less value) because I am a single woman. I refuse to accept the assumption. And therein lies the miracle. As soon as we ally ourselves with Jesus, unveil oppressive social conventions and refuse to accept ‘inevitable’ outcomes, the game is changed. The world is turned upside down and life is restored to the dead. It is a miracle!

Gospel text for Sunday 29 July 2012

John 6.1-20
Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

 Reflection

Two paragraphs, two miracles. Oh my. The Jesus we meet in this text is extraordinary. His very presence transforms reality in unimaginable ways. I believe that is the point of these miracle tales; to make it crystal clear that being in the presence of Jesus changes everything. Being in relationship with Jesus gives us access to dimensions of reality that are truly beyond reason – in other words - miraculous. For who can reasonably explain satisfying five thousand people’s hunger with a mere five loaves and two fishes? And even a four year old knows that people do not walk on water.  So what is going on here?

 I believe these miracle stories are examples of God working through created nature to reveal a dimension of non-ordinary experience that is aligned with God’s own true and unlimited nature.  And I believe that every human person has access to this non-ordinary experience of reality in relationship with God.  And yes, it is astonishing.

 The thing is when it comes to being in relationship with God we are talking about a kind of experience that surpasses human understanding. We are talking about a kind of experience that is not bound by the laws of general relativity and quantum mechanics, not constrained by the fundamental properties of matter and motion, not explained by the principles of reason and logic. We are talking about astonishing, radical, life changing, consciousness expanding experiences.

 Regardless of whether you read the miracle stories as literally true, as signs, as prophetic revelations or as allegories, the bottom line is this; reason is not sufficient to describe the experience of being in relationship with God.  That said, it is not surprising that the great religious traditions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism all use miracle stories to describe non-ordinary experiences aligned with DIvinity. All of these religious traditions use miracle stories to describe that which reason cannot grasp because at the root of all of these great traditions there is the experience of knowing that which cannot be known.

 ++ The image from the Hubbell Telescope is described:  “Colliding galaxies make love not war.”