Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13): 6 August 2006.

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a or Exodus 16:2-4, 9-14

Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm 78:23-29

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 6:35, 41-51

Some years ago, while visiting Istanbul, my wife and I bought a lovely, hand-woven carpet. Even from the back, one can make out the basic design and get a sense of the colors. But only by seeing and touching the top side of the carpet is it possible to know fully the carpet's design, its rich dyes, and especially its depth of texture.

Something of the same kind occurs when we move from last week's Gospel lesson to this week's. Last week we heard of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand and of his walking on the sea. The multiplication of the loaves and fishes clearly played a major role in the earliest Christian understandings of Jesus, as it is the only miracle to find a place in all four canonical Gospels. But only John's Gospel follows up by "connecting the dots" with the discourse on bread that follows. The result is a magnificent view of Jesus not merely as provider of the staff of life but as the very bread of life himself. John shows us the top of the carpet.

The form of the Gospel reading is a function of the culture in which Jesus lived (and which continues in the Middle East even today). As opposed to a matrix of status and values based on guilt (as in the West), the culture of Palestine is based on honor and shame. Characteristic of honor/shame cultures is the "honor challenge," which often takes the form of a verbal exchange in which each side seeks to demonstrate its credentials within that culture (and simultaneously to expose the pretense of the other). John's Gospel is full of such challenges, and they are not unknown in the Synoptics, either. (A particularly fascinating example is the only one that Jesus "lost": his conversation with the Canaanite/Syrophoenician woman in Mt 15:21-28//Mk 7: 24-30.) In today's specimen, by its end the conversation has moved from yesterday's bellies full of bread, through a duel over status linked to ancestors, to the crowd's request for the "true bread from heaven ... which [or who] ... gives life to the world." At that point Jesus is able to make the climactic claim of the chapter: "I am ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) the bread of life." Voila, the carpet!

Here, briefly, is another particularly fruitful entree into the text: It is fascinating to lay this Sunday's conversation alongside that between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. The elements of the two challenges are in almost exact parallel, except that the latter does not conclude with an explicit statement by Jesus, "I am the water of life." Actually, another difference is that the Samaritan woman does not demand a sign. The Samaritan woman (two strikes) comes off better than Jesus' Jewish, presumably male interlocutors in chap. 6.

At the pivot point of the conversation in today's text is a discussion of "manna in the wilderness," the bread that was both physical bread and "spiritual food" (1 Cor 10:3). The crowd quotes from today's Old Testament lesson (Exod 16:2-4, 9-15) to point to the bread sign in the wilderness non pareil, and they connect themselves with it via their ancestors: "He gave them bread from heaven to eat" (Exod 16:4 and 15, conflated). Jesus cleverly shifts the emphasis to the identity of "He" (left ambiguous by the crowd): not Moses, but "my Father"--an ancestor whom they did not share with him. Game, set, match.

Several points from the Old Testament lesson bear additional explication, given the importance of bread from heaven as the aforementioned pivot point in the Gospel. The text is one of the "murmuring traditions," but, as was uniformly the case before Israel bound itself in covenant at Sinai, God responded without punishments but with a gift to relieve the people's complaint. God is even present in visible form, the "glory of the LORD" (kebod YHWH), as he presents what he calls "bread from heaven" but the people name "manna" (v. 31, from Heb. man hu', "What [is] it?"). There is a certain grim humor to the situation: for the next forty years Israel survives on this visible (yea, sacramental) gift of God's grace, but all Israel can think to call it is (in effect) "What's that stuff?"

Tempting as it is to rush headlong into the Eucharistic allusions to be found already at this point in John 6, the preacher is advised to hold off. Two Sundays hence (Pentecost 11/Proper 15), the Gospel lesson will be Jn 6:51-58, complete with "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life" (v. 54a). This day is well spent in the spirit of the Gospel lesson, in transition from Jesus' gift of bread in the wilderness to Jesus as the bread of life, via manna, the ancient bread from heaven.

One issue that begs emphasis is the ease with which the crowd (and we today!) confuse the signs of God's grace--including bread from whatever source--with that which they signify: God's immortal love for us in the mortal Christ. For what do we truly hunger and seek?

Second, with the crowd, we assume that the key question in response to divine encounter is "What must we do to perform the works of God?" (and "When is enough enough?" we add out of our guilt culture). Jesus responds to us as to the crowd: "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." Dietrich Bonhoeffer figured out what that means: so defined, the work of God requires nothing and costs everything.

Ephesians 4 also represents a transition, betrayed by the little Greek word [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "therefore." For three chapters Paul has rung the changes on how God has in Christ replaced death with life, hostility with peace, and hidden plan with revealed glory. With "therefore" Paul gets down to business with the implications for the lives of his hearers. As the old line has it, "he's quit preaching and gone to meddling." With eight versions of the word "one" in four verses (vv. 3-6) Paul makes his agenda abundantly clear: God has made you one in Christ, so "maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

"But" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), he goes on to say in v. 7, unity does not mean identity. The risen and ascended Christ has showered his people with gifts as various as apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor/teachers, all to equip and build up the saints into a united, mature body. The metaphor is one of human growth and development, very much like a baby who must "grow into" a head that is proportionally too large for the rest of the body (v. 15).

Neither Paul nor anyone else in the NT era knew anything of "denominations" within the church, but he was well enough acquainted with the scandal of division. From prison Paul "begs" his hearers "to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called," characterized by humility, gentleness, patience, love, and, above all, unity. Paul would yield to no one as a "defender of the faith," but his bottom line was a passion for the oneness that Christ died to effect. Translating Paul's passion into modern (and postmodern) terms is necessarily done with fear and trembling, but it is safe to assert that he would be equally uncomfortable with "least common denominator" ecumenism and with a concession that unity is a given in the church, but one that can seldom if ever be manifested for the sake of the truth. (Having given a tug on the beam in my own tradition's eye, I leave to others how best to judge the mote of "reconciled diversity.")

T. S. Eliot wrote in "Little Gidding":

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

After ten weeks of wrestling with texts and how best to hear and proclaim them, we find ourselves in today's church where we began on Pentecost, standing alongside Ezekiel among disarticulated, dry bones on the valley-plain floor. Paul envisions "the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself in love." God, we wonder, can these bones live? "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause Spirit to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put Spirit in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD" (Ezek 37:4-6). Fed by such words of promise and by the meal of the bread from heaven, we can preach and live in the hope that doesn't just wish, but knows. GCH