Sermon Notes for August 13th

August 13, 2006
John 6:35, 41-51
“Do not complain among yourselves”

1. Of the four gospels, the gospel of John is the last to be written.

Mark is thought to be the first – probably written less than 40
Years after Jesus. Mark writes this gospel at the time of the failure of the Jewish revolt and the Roman destruction of the temple.

Most striking are Jesus word’s about how the “temple will not be left standing.” Thus, according to Mark, Jesus was supposed to have predicted the destruction of the temple. It was a monumental event in the life of the Jewish people – almost unimaginable.

Mathew’s Gospel comes next and it addresses the growing problem of the split between Christians and Jews … and the development of rabbinic Judaism after the fall of the Temple.

Mathew is the first to use the word “church” in opposition to Synagogue. However, in Mathew the followers of Jesus still consider themselves to be Jews and they still believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.

2. Luke/Acts (which is really one book) comes next. It begins to include characters from the Roman world and tries to come to terms with the fact that Jesus, as the expected Jewish Messiah, did not bring about the end of the world – which must now to be put forward into the future.

And lastly, we come to the Gospel of John. Except, first, we must mention another Gospel, recently in the news = the Gospel of Thomas. This writing was excluded from the Bible by the later church because of its Gnostic emphasis and docetic theology.

Now, until recently, nobody paid any attention to docetism and Gnosticism. But now, with the discovery in Egypt in 1945 of numerous manuscripts which had been hidden in a cave, the Nag Hammadi Library (as it is called) has provided a large amount of material about Gnostics and docetism including the controversial Gospel of Thomas.


In addition, there is also the Gospel of Judas which was also discovered in Egypt and was written about recently in the National Geographic. And suddenly, these ancient ideas are making big news and everyone is curious especially after the book The DaVinci Code came out.

3. So what is docetism? In Christianity, Docetism (from the Greek δοκέω [dokeō], or "to seem") is the belief that Jesus' physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion; that is, Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die. This belief has historically been regarded as heretical by most Christian theologians.

This belief is most commonly attributed to the Gnostics, who believed that matter was evil, and hence that God would not take on a material body. This statement is rooted in the idea that a divine spark is imprisoned within the material body, and that the material body is in itself an obstacle, deliberately created by an evil lesser god (the demiurge) to prevent man from seeing his divine origin. Humanity is, in essence, asleep.

Docetism could be further explained as the view that, because the human body is temporary and the spirit is eternal, the body of Jesus therefore must have been an illusion and his crucifixion as well. Even so, saying that the human body is temporary has a tendency to undercut the importance of the belief in resurrection of the dead and the goodness of created matter, and is in opposition to this orthodox view. Docetism was rejected by the ecumenical councils and mainstream Christianity, and largely died out during the first millennium A.D.

3. Now if we consider the fact that docetism was a popular concept at the time the Gospel of John was written and in fact was in competition with the beliefs of early Christian about who Jesus was – we will understand better what our scripture reading today is all about when Jesus says “I am the bread of life” etc.
But secondly, we must also be aware that when John wrote his Gospel the conflict between Christians and Jews had become even more divisive and Christians were now being thrown out of the synagogues.

In short, the community of faith in which the Gospel of John and the First Letter were written was being seriously challenged by both rabbinical or Pharisiacal Judaism on the one hand and by Gnostic Christianity on the other.
And what is at the heart of it is just who Jesus is and what his relationship to God is.

For the Jews were saying that he was only human and could not be the son of God or Divine and the Gnostics were saying that he was not human at all but rather only seemed to be human.

And what these ideas represent, of course, even today are two of the standard objections or misunderstandings about Jesus.

4. Therefore, in writing his Gospel, John has to try to present Jesus as being both divine and at the same time as a physical person.
This is why Jesus seems to go around, specifically in John (and not the other Gospels) handing out the so-called “I AM” statements such as “I am the Bread of Life, I am the living water, etc.

In the other Gospels Jesus doesn’t talk that way. In fact, he is very careful not to make any statements to anyone about his spiritual nature (except his disciples). But in John he clearly defines himself in saying, “I have come down from heaven.”
But notice further that it says: “Then the Jews began to complain about him…”
This seems a bit odd, because, of course Jesus himself was a Jew and so were the disciples and many others … but, of course we are reading something written about Jesus not at the time it actually happened but 70 some years later when the church had split off and now there were, in fact, Christians and Jews – something that did not exist when Jesus was alive.

For, in the earlier gospels, Jesus is not in conflict with “the Jews.” Instead he is in conflict with specific Jewish groups such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, and so on. But the Jews, as a whole, were not against Jesus and in fact many welcomed into their homes. Which is why it is not fair to say that the Jews killed Christ as many believed for centuries? The more accurate answer is that certain specific Jewish leaders had the Romans kill him because he challenged those who were in authority. It is only later on, when the split widened between followers of Jesus and the Jewish community that John refers to “the Jews.”

5. Clearly, John wants to make the point that God is a big part of who Jesus is … and that Jesus truely speaks for God. In other words, Jesus is of Divine origin. Otherwise, if Jesus is only a man, as the Jews believed, why would anyone want to follow him?

And since this passage comes after the famous feeding of the five thousand (which occurs in all four Gospels) it provides John with the opportunity to expand on the metaphor of “bread from heaven.”

And so, just before these passages the disciples ask Jesus:

"What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'[c]"
32Jesus says to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
34"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."
35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry,

6. Now imagine that you have been thrown out of the Jewish synagogues and are rejected by them … many of whom who are your own relatives and townspeople … for this is a small place … and you can see what is really going on here. For this is a very decisive and troubled situation.

John is clearly saying to his own faith community that … Jesus is the Divine truth … God was in him and it is through him that we will have eternal life.
And it is clear that John is no dummy. He is very knowledgeable in the Hebrew scriptures and has definitely struggled with this question for his Gospel is one of the most sophisticated theological writings we have.

Does this help to explain some of the strange language about “the bread of life” which also refers to the communion as well?

And yet, today we still may be puzzled … for it is one thing to say I believe that Jesus was Divine … but what does that mean. How can someone be divine and yet human?

7. The Methodist commentary on this passage asks how can we comprehend someone who is Divine when we are not divine ourselves. And this is where the image of the spiritual bread comes in because if we ask what bread is … since we all have experienced bread … we know that it is something we eat, we know that it nourishes us, we know that it sustains us, and it even makes us grow. So, maybe that is who Jesus is …for in Jesus God has come to us to nourish us, to sustain us, and to make us grow.

But, like bread, first we have to eat it … or, rather, to take it inside of us for it to do any good. In other words, if we don’t have Jesus inside us … we are going to go around being hungry all the time. And there is a lot of that in the world – for sure – lot’s of hungry people!

So, we are here today … to feed our spiritual selves. We come hungry … and hopefully we go away fed. And then, we need to come again, and again, all our lives to be nourished, sustained, and to grow spiritually.

8. But now, having said all this, we have another problem. If Jesus is the Divine Word of God … come down from heaven, how is it that he was also very human? Because everyone knew that he had a humble birth, grew up, walked around Galilee, and was beaten, scourged, and physically crucified and died a very human death. And, in fact, for him to be the suffering Messiah, it was necessary for him to be human as many people believe.

For many, in Jesus’ time, this was a little too much to take. It didn’t fit with their idea of human life … and of God, either. For it was rather common in Jesus day to believe that the world was totally bad and that even the body was evil and that, therefore, Jesus merely appeared to suffer physically – but it was an illusion. And, in fact, this idea still persists in our paintings and images of him where he is portrayed serene and other-worldly and unapproachable when he was the exact opposite. For Jesus, as we know, ate with tax collectors and sinners and mixed with outcasts and the common people – bringing to them the idea that God loved and accepted and forgave them – on a personal basis.

So, this very human Jesus flies in the fact of the much disputed Gospel of Thomas (or that part which we have), for there is no mention at all in Thomas of Jesus crucifixion and death, and resurrection. For this Gospel consists entirely of parables and sayings by Jesus some of which are similar to those in the other Gospels and many are very different. All of which are quite difficult to understand, and this is because it was believed that only by being initiated into the secret knowledge or Gnosis would one understand the hidden truth which is the inner spiritual reality essential to Gnosticism. And yet today, many are apt to totally spiritualize Jesus to the point where he seems in human. And even the controversial Mel Gibson movie about the passion of Jesus at times made Jesus seem rather superhuman.

But John’s Gospel refutes these ideas by saying at the very beginning that Jesus is the word of God made flesh … and in the 1st Letter of John it goes even further to say:

1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.

And at the very end of John’s Gospel it is the unbelieving disciple called Thomas (obviously a reference to the Gospel of Thomas) who actually puts in finger in Jesus side and therefore is convinced that Jesus is for real.

9. So, I hope this is of some help in understanding what the Gospel of John is all about and why Jesus acts and speaks the way he does. For what we have been doing is engaging in what is called historical critical analysis of the scripture in order to understand, first of all, the actual context in which it was written.
Historical critical analysis developed in the last 2 to 300 hundred ever since the Bible first began to be translated into the every day language of ordinary people. Because, remember that for much of the first 1000 years of the church, very few read the bible because (a) it was all in Latin and (b) most everyone was illiterate.

The Reformation changed all that and Martin Luther’s success in challenging the power of the Medieval Church was based on the primacy of the Bible over and against the authority of the Church.

As a result of the Reformation this emphasis on Scripture has been the cornerstone of the Protestant Church and yet it has some serious pitfalls. Particularly, the fact that the Bible can easily be misinterpreted and misunderstood and even distorted for various purposes. Secondly, the ability of all people to understand the Bible is limited by time and education and access to biblical studies.
For instance, it is not without some considerable study, as we have attempted to do today, that we are able to understand the actual context of the struggles that John and his community were facing at the time he wrote his Gospel and how these concerns are very much a part of what Jesus says and does and who he is. Is this clear?

10. In other words, the Bible and the Gospels in particular, did not just drop down out of the sky from God – as some people think. For the truth is that the gospels were actually written by real people … who were nevertheless inspired by the Christian faith and who believed that Jesus was Divine and yet who in their writing told the story in different ways for different people. Which is why the Gospels are not all alike.

Some people don’t like to believe this. Some say the Bible is the literal word of God and is infallible. But this flies in the face of the facts and in the face of many many devoted and faithful biblical scholars from Luther on down who have struggled to understand what the Bible really says in light of what we now know about the early church and its struggles.

The problem for us today is that for a long time people have been led to believe that the Bible is infallible. Because if it is not, then there is the fear that we won’t know what is true and what is not.

But, the idea that we must take literally everything in the Bible is a rather modern idea coming after the rise of modern science. For, as we tend to think in most things today, it is only facts which are really true, so many people want to regard the Bible also as a literal fact. But many things like hope, and love, and much more are not merely facts but states of being. And God, too, is more than a fact.
What happens in this more fundamentalist view of the Bible is the tendency to make the Scriptures into a Golden calf and to worship the Book rather than the God who inspired it to be written.

11. When I worked for the Red Cross I spoke to many different groups who were organizing bloodmobiles. I talked to high school kids, American Legion volunteers, church women, business leaders, and the list goes on. And I had the same goal and the same message, but I didn’t use exactly the same words, images, and raise the same concerns because each group was different.

I learned this by trial and error. One morning I was talking to a group from a large hospital. They were a great group and were very responsive. I told jokes and they laughed. Everybody was on board. Then, a few hours later, I was in a Board room of a large bank talking to a group of business managers and department heads, I told the same jokes and nobody laughed! Well, I got serious pretty quickly. I still don’t know if they were having a bad day or the company was in trouble or what. But, we got the job done. But it was a whole different story which I ended up telling!
So, what I am saying is that in the Gospels the core message is the same, but the words are different, the writers are different, the audiences are different, and the concerns are different. And when we know this, we can appreciate better what is going on and why the stories of how Jesus acted and spoke the way he did are different and yet are all about the same basic thing.

12. And it’s not just about the Gospels, because, in fact, in my class on the Old Testament (or the Hebrew Bible) this past month, I was reminded about how we should be careful in taking the Bible literally because, in fact, it turns out that the Bible is very much against usury. Anybody know what usury is? Usury comes from the Latin word usura which means to charge interest on a loan.

How many of you have borrowed money on your house or car or for you business or college education.

Did you know that the Bible forbids this?

For instance in Psalm 15:5 Those who do not charge interest on the money they lend, and who refuse to accept bribes to testify against the innocent. Such people will stand firm forever.

In fact there are about 15 other references to this practice … and in Exodus 22:25 It says … If you lend money to a fellow Hebrew in need, do not be like a money lender, charging interest.

In fact, as late as the high middle ages the Catholic church forbid user and St. Thomas Aquinas, the leading theologian of the Catholic Church, argued that charging of interest is wrong because it amounts to "double charging", charging for both the thing and the use of the thing. Aquinas said this would be morally wrong in the same way as if one sold a bottle of wine, charged for the bottle of wine, and then charged for the person using the wine to actually drink it. Similarly, one cannot charge for a piece of cake and for the eating of the piece of cake. Yet this, said Aquinas, is what usury does.

Along these lines I thought maybe we should write to the bank and ask if we could just pay back our church loan without interest charges because it is unbiblical … but I don’t think it will work.

And of course, all of modern capitalism would fall apart and there would be little progress if people could not borrow money at interest – isn’t that right? And yet the Bible is against it.

So, my point is, that sometimes what made sense to people in the Bible … doesn’t always make sense today. Which means we have to interpret the Bible not take it literally.

13. Now it says in John’s gospel (Chapter six) that God seeks to draw us to Christ. And so believing, those who are drawn will have eternal life.
What is this eternal life all about?

The Methodist commentary states it this way:

The capacity of believing in Jesus Christ is God’s gift of faith. Eternal life is the transforming quality of life that has its beginning in this world and yet is so different that it cannot be exhausted and continues into the next life. This is because God’s love is infinite, and when it is rooted in us… we become rooted in God through our belief in Jesus Christ.

Eternal life is therefore the same as the bread of life which nourishes, sustains, and makes us grow spiritually.

14. The other day a fellow pastor me called to complain that one of his churches is all in an uproar. People are divided and threatening to leave the church. Others just like to argue. In short, a contentious bunch.

This is not the way it is supposed to be – is it? Are churches supposed to be filled with angry and argumentative people?

In John 6 – it says the people “murmured.” In the Revised Standard Version it says they “ complained” among themselves. Complained, murmured – you get the picture.
And Jesus says … stop the murmuring … stop the complaining.

For Jesus says I have come to bring you new life … life eternal … I am the bread of life … I am God’s love … coming to you in person.

And if this is true, then I ask you here today, what reason is there to murmur, to complain, when we have received God’s gift of life eternal? What reason is there?
Instead, shouldn’t we give thanks and rejoice and be of good cheer for God has, indeed, come to us all in Christ Jesus!

Let us pray.