Community Church Sermons
Year B
August 19, 2012
Twelfth Sunday
after Pentecost
A Healthy Diet of Fear
John
6:48-58
Rev. Martin
C. Singley, III
Senior
Pastor
The people of the early first century thought Christians were a danger to society. One accusation commonly hurled at the Christian community was a charge of cannibalism. Cannibalism! And the reason they thought Christians engaged in cannibalism was precisely because of the passage just read to us from John 6.
Imagine yourself as a non-Christian person living in that time and place and hearing some of the wild things these Christians were saying Jesus taught, “I am the bread of life…which people may eat and not die…If anyone eats of this bread, she or he will live forever…this bread is my flesh…I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…”
I think this almost sounds like a movie trailer for a vampire film!
What would YOU think was going on among those early Christians who were reported to be eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus?
Personally, I prefer lobster.
Up in New Hampshire this past month, lobster was selling for $3.99/lb. We ate some lobster!
But even better than lobster, I love fried whole belly clams. Sandy and I stopped by Billy’s Chowder House on the causeway out to Wells Beach, Maine and started with some of Billy’s famous clam chowder. Fantastic! Chock full of whole clams in a thick creamy sauce that was just delicious! Mmmmhmmm!
But even better than lobster and clams, I love hot dogs! There’s nothing better than a couple of grilled Schonland’s hot dogs in a split-top roll and loaded with Gulden’s spicy mustard, sweet relish and onions. Oh baby! I could eat hot dogs three meals a day, 7 days a week. I love hot dogs!
But I have to say that after eating all those hot dogs, clams and lobsters this summer I desperately need to go on a diet!
But here’s the good news! Right here in John 6 is the Christian counterpart to the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Dukan Diet, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and all the others. We might call it “the Jesus diet.”
“Eat my flesh, drink my blood.”
Are you in?
Whenever I meet an amateur Bible scholar (and churches are full of amateur Bible scholars who insist that every passage in the Bible is literally true), I like to bring up that passage from John 6. And after repeating what Jesus said about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, here’s what those literalists say about it: “Well, Jesus didn’t really MEAN that! Jesus was not really saying he was an actual loaf of bread! Jesus didn’t literally mean people are to eat his literal flesh and drink his literal blood…”
So much for literalism.
And all of a sudden we are face-to-face with an important moment in the process of our spiritual growth. And that is discovering that some parts of the Bible are indeed intended to be read literally. But other parts are to be understood as metaphor, or allegory, or sometimes even hyperbole. And a healthy spiritual journey is one in which we let go of our preconceived ideas and notions and let the Holy Spirit take us to places that are much deeper than the words on the page.
Did you happen to notice the opening line of today’s first reading from Psalm 34? Here it is: “Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.” (verse 9)
We hear a lot in the church about the fear of God. But many people don’t know what it means! They read that word “fear” literally, interpreting it through a 21st century filter, and miss out on its meaning.
When I was a child, I thought to fear God meant to be afraid of what God was going to do to me and my best friend Dennis Astrella if he ever caught us doing the stuff we were doing! My sister Karen enforced that understanding by pointing out that every bad thing that happened to me was a direct result of the bad things Dennis and I must’ve done. “God gotcha!” Karen used to say! And the point was further reinforced when I went to Catholic church once with my cousin Jimmy who poked me in the ribs when I spoke out loud. “SHHHH!” Jimmy said, pointing upwards as if we were about to catch holy…heck.
In some ways, the church has always loved teaching us to be afraid of God because fear can be used to control people. That’s a common human trick, you know. Have you ever seen a political ad? But the politicians learned this from our mothers. How well I remember my mother saying, “You’d better stop doing that or I’LL TELL YOUR FATHER WHEN HE GETS HOME!” Now that was something to fear!
A little bit of parental fear-mongering has made many a child choose a better path!
But our modern understanding of fear is not what the Bible means when it calls us to fear God.
Fearing God, in the Bible, means to be in awe of God. It means to understand that God is so much bigger, so much more than our minds can fathom, so much more than our hearts can comprehend, so much more than we can even imagine – and to respect that – to reverence that – and to stand in the presence of One who is greater than we are.
I experienced some of this “fear” last Sunday night up in New Hampshire when my son Peter and I went outside to see the Perseid meteor showers. It was about 10 o’clock and the sky was pitch black and the stars were really bright, and I found myself looking up and thinking about how big the universe is. It really is! Who can count the planets, and stars, and galaxies? I found myself thinking about the Curiosity Rover that had recently landed on Mars after its 350 million mile journey from earth. Then Peter said, “Dad, do you realize that the light from the stars we see tonight left those stars millions of years ago to reach our eyes tonight?” And just as the magnificence of my son’s words started to sink in, a huge and extraordinarily bright shooting star sped across the sky from horizon to horizon.
And I was…AWESTRUCK!
That’s what it means to fear the Lord. It is to stand in awe of God’s majesty and glory and power. It is to stand in awe of God’s limitless love, and unending mercy. It is to live in a way that recognizes that God is so much bigger than we are. It is Isaiah saying that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and God’s ways are higher than our ways.
And it is Jesus saying, “I am the bread of life – eat my flesh, drink my blood – and you will find eternal, abundant life!”
You can try to be a literalist with those words, and you will get nowhere – except maybe to cannibalism. But if you can let yourself relinquish your thoughts, and let the Holy Spirit bring you God’s thoughts, what might you discover?
I discover Jesus as the spiritual food I need for living life each day.
Jesus loved people with an unconditional love, and I need that in my life. I encounter people every day who are as unlovable to me as I probably am to them. But I need to learn to love as Jesus loved. I need to be fed with the love of Jesus. Maybe you do, too.
Jesus brought healing to broken lives, and I need that in my life. So many of the people I love are fighting illnesses like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s. Others are struggling with brokenness in their marriages, with their kids and grandkids. You know what I mean. There’s a lot of hurt all around us, and the need for healing is great. I need to learn how to bring God’s healing touch into the lives of others – perhaps to bring about a miracle, I believe miracles still happen! – perhaps to help with healing – perhaps to give someone strength for living through the challenges of a condition that will not change, or even for facing the time of death. I need to be fed with the healing power of Jesus. Maybe you do, too.
And Jesus was brave. Think of all the scary stuff he faced from the time he was born until the day he died on the cross. And yet he never wavered from his trust in God. And he never gave in to returning evil with evil. I’m not that brave. My faith is not that strong. But I want it to be. I need to be fed with the courage of Jesus to trust God in all things. Maybe you do, too.
You know, each day this week, you will run into situations where you need Jesus. And I hope in those moments you’ll recall his promise in John 6 that he will be like bread for you, and I pray that you will let the Holy Spirit take your imagination to places where you can see how the bread of life can help you and others find your way.
Remember this week that our God is an awesome God….
So eat Jesus. Drink Jesus. Be filled with Jesus as you live each day through whatever circumstances come your way.
A healthy diet of fear – of appreciating and trusting in the awesomeness of God – will fill you with the bread of heaven.