Reading scripture is like going on an archeological dig. As Christian disciples – students of the Christ – we seek that deepest level, to know the real Jesus, to know what he actually said, and did, and what it meant to those who walked the dusty roads with him. It is the deepest yearning of our hearts; this search for the historical Jesus. And that search must go deeper than the black leatherette King James Bible I grew up with, with Jesus’ words printed in Red.
The second level, closer to the surface, is that of discerning how the gospel writers shaped stories about Jesus for their times and places. It is helpful to think of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John not as writers – though obviously they were – but more like editors, who took both written and oral fragments about Jesus and shaped them into narratives. But they were not reporters. These are not true biographies or history remembered but rather they are propaganda; proclamation of news that is good. The word is this: gospel. They were writing for particular audiences and those audiences shaped how the stories were written. Mark’s gospel was written to the Christian community in Rome sometime in the 70’s. Like St. Paul earlier – the letters preceded the gospels – Mark was writing to Hellenistic Jews. These were Jews who spoke and read Greek, not Hebrew, and who were open to a new sect of Judaism which was a cultural alternative to Palestinian Orthodoxy.
Matthew wrote around the year 80 to Jews in Damascus and is the most Jewish of the four gospels. Luke wrote around the year 90 to Gentile converts in Antioch.
These three gospels are called “synoptic” gospels. “Syn” think of the word “synonym” meaning same. And “optic” – to see, vision. Although there are differences between the three – for example, the birth stories in Luke and Matthew are quite different, though we harmonize them well to pull off children’s Christmas pageants – they are of a different order than John.
Writing around the year 100 or so, to the cosmopolitan trading center of Ephesus, John was writing to a church that had experienced a break with Judaism. It is a church which is experiencing a competition with the cult to John the Baptist, with the religious philosophy of Gnosticism and with various “mystery religions.” In this cultural context, John is writing to theologians and philosophers, arguing, for example, that the beginning of the Jesus story is not in an animals’ feeding trough in a stable/cave near backwater Bethlehem, but was, in fact, before space and time. Jesus was “logos” – the plan, the agenda – of God, through whom all things came to be.
Could writing for – at least in part – a gnostic audience, explain why there is no talk of bread/flesh and wine/blood at the Last Supper in John’s gospel but rather we find the humility of foot washing? In part, the justification for the persecution of Gentile Christians was the suspicion that they sacrificed infants and practiced cannibalism in their hidden rites, as Jesus directed them to do in saying “eat my body” and “drink my blood.” Could awareness of this audience explain displacing the bread and wine / body and blood talk from the Last Supper and placing it much earlier, at a synagogue in Galilee? And this teaching is so controversial that it signals an ending of the Galilean ministry and the loss of most of his disciples.
Today’s gospel reading: It is the season of Passover. The reading would have been the Exodus story and about desert manna – the bread-like substance which fell daily from the heavens and sustained the fleeing Hebrew slaves. Jesus’ sermon – a midrash or an imaginative interpretation of scripture – claimed that he is like bread from heaven – but unlike manna of old, those who partake of him will live.
What’s going on here? In Jewish folk tradition, it was believed that when the Messiah came, manna would come again – for the Messiah is a second Moses. A liberator who would deliver God’s people from their oppression under the Romans. How powerful was this hope for a people living lives of desperation and chronic hunger. Droughts and famine, plague and disease would be no more. Implements of war would be refashioned into tools for an eternal harvest.
Was Jesus really claiming that he is the fulfillment of these hopes?
Many of the disciples left Jesus now. This was not the idle and curious crowd from the feeding of the multitude earlier in chapter six. These are disciples – men and women who had left hearth and home, farms and fisheries, to learn Jesus’ teaching – but this was all too much. They left because this talk was just too bizarre. Torah clearly forbade the consumption of blood. Genesis 9:4 “You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” Had Jesus finally lost his damn mind?
As many of his Galilean disciples melt away, Jesus turns to the 12 and asks, “Are you going to leave me too?” I imagine these words asked in a whisper, as if Jesus is afraid of the answer he will receive. All that Jesus had struggled to build threatens to come crashing down around his shoulders as he awaits their response. A vulnerable moment that could leave him broken and alone. (pause)
Would the 12 break his heart? (pause)
Peter – impetuous, passionate and bold – speaks for the 12: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” When John quotes Jesus’ talk of eternal life, he is not talking about life after death but about new life before death.
The Greek is literally translated: “the life of the Age to come.”
John 5:24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” Present tense – has, not will have.
John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Present tense – this is, not will be.
It is in dying to our old life that we live. As Jesus told Nicodemus way back in chapter 3, you must be born from above.
The invitation is to a life transformed. As Irenaeus (130-202 CE) said: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” (pause)
As manna sustained the Hebrew tribes in their journey from slavery to freedom, so Jesus, really present, in the bread and wine of Eucharist, sustains us in our journey from exile and captivity to freedom and new life. Mary Oliver captures this in her poem, “The Eucharist.” I’ll conclude with her poem this morning.
“The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist”
“Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.
They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward
to receive the gift
from the priest’s hand,
then the chalice.
They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.
I want
to see Jesus,
maybe in the clouds
or on the shore,
just walking,
beautiful man
and clearly
someone else
besides.
On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.
Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.”
- Mary Oliver