A
grade school aged boy figured out the whole Sunday School thing when he
realized the answer to every question the teacher asked is “Jesus.” “Who is the Good Shepherd?” While his peers sat in ponderous
silence, the boy shot his hand in the air and blurted out “Jesus.” The next Sunday: “Who walked on the
water?” “Jesus.” The Sunday after that: “Who was born in
a manger?” “Jesus.” You can see how this little boy was
starting to build some confidence, so imagine his confusion when the teacher
said, “Who can tell me what is gray and furry, has a bushy tail, lives in a
tree, and gathers nuts for the winter?”
The little boy raised his hand and said sheepishly, “Well, I know the
answer has to be ‘Jesus,’ but that sure sounds like a squirrel to me.”
That
old story came to me this week as I sat in the church’s resource room leafing
through some old Sunday School curriculum. I happened across a book titled Instant Bible Lessons, which are aimed at children ages 5-10. Checking the table of contents, I noted
lessons with such titles as “Don’t Pout–Pray!,” “The Path of the Proud,”
“Cheerful Chores,” and (my favorite) “Pin the Hair on Samson.” And then, at the bottom of the page,
was this line that caught my eye: “Answer Key…….page 95.”
Why,
I thought, does life not come with an answer key; a page to which you can turn
and have everything you want to know laid out right there before you? Why do good people suffer? Or, I want to have faith that
everything will be OK, but how do I let go and simply trust? Or, what exactly am I supposed to do to
be a good person and what does God think when I do not do it? It sure would be nice to have a page 95
to give us the answers to these and other questions.
Over
the last four Sundays we have been reading from the 6th chapter of
John’s Gospel. It begins with the
account of Jesus feeding the 5,000 with just a few fish and a couple of loaves
of bread. As the chapter unfolds
it chronicles an on-going discussion between Jesus and those who at the meal,
between Jesus and local religious authorities, and between Jesus and his own
disciples. Each conversation is a
kind of search for an answer key: Why does the food have stop? Where does Jesus get the power and
authority to do these things? What
does this miraculous event mean?
And with each interaction, the conversation grows more tense until we
find at the end of today’s reading most of the people who had been chasing
Jesus around the lakeside decide following him is not worth the effort. Getting a free meal was nice. Not getting easy answers is frustrating
as frustrating can be. His
audience wants everything wrapped up in a nice, tidy package with a little gold
bow on top, but life doesn’t fit neatly into a box and the bows we tie always
seem to come undone in the face of our experiences.
More
and more I am convinced that we begin our religious life on a quest for
certainty but over time develop the spiritual capacity to live with ambiguity,
nuance, and mystery.
There
are two different ways people try to find certainty through religion. One involves manipulating the
bible. This approach takes a verse
from this Gospel, and phrase from that letter, and a bit of a psalm, and a dash
of a proverb, and a healthy smattering of Paul, strings it all together, and
holds that it then proclaims God’s truth through a sequential unfolding of a
logical progression that is clean, clear, concise, and certain.
I
warm to this approach like I would warm to a person who takes a handful of
shells, stings them on necklace, holds them up, and says, “Here is everything
you need to know about the beach.”
Well, not really. Where is
the sound of the waves, the smell of the salt water, the feel of the sand, the
warmth of the sun, etc.? When
confronted with the absurdity of certainty, this person will say, “How dare you
attack my string of shells? Can’t
you see that every one of these shells came right from the beach itself? How can you not see the entirety of the
beach in what I have created? You
must not be a true beach person and you certainly will not get to spend eternity
at the beach after you die.” Have
you ever met a person who uses the bible in a similar fashion?
There
is another way a person might try to achieve certainty through religion. It does not involve the bible, but
rather what I call ‘soft, cheesy theology.’ This approach draws upon statements of belief that sound
nice and offer comfort, but when thought through are fraught with
problems. Do you want some
examples? “God always answers
pray, but sometimes we don’t like what God says.” “God never gives you more than you can handle.” “When God closes one door, God always
opens another.” I could go on, but
you get the idea. You may even use
some of them yourself. We like
these sayings because they are sure and safe. They give us confidence and certainty in uncertain times and
situations. But in their own way
they reflect reality about as well as the string of shells reflects the
beach.
For
many religion is a safe harbor of self-made certainty – a certainty that either
has to be defended at all costs or kept out of the light of thorough
examination. But there comes a
time when we let go of the need for certainty and begin to embrace the notion that
we find God best as we let God be God – a Holy Being beyond explanation.
The
lead character in Lucy Montgomery’s book Emily of New Moon understood well how to do this. Montgomery writes this about her:
It
had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very,
very near to a world of wonderful beauty.
Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw
the curtain aside – but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and
then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond – only a
glimpse – and heard a note of unearthly music… And always when the flash came
to her Emily felt her life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent
beauty.”
Whenever
I think of this passage I think that I want what Emily had… a belief that
beauty is everywhere and very near to us all the time, an ability to wait on
mystery to reveal itself to us, and – most important of all – the absence of
need to quantify and explain it all.
She was comfortable simply to let life be what it is and not to demand
it be what it is not.
St.
Peter was a great deal like Emily, at least as far as he accounts in today’s
reading. After the masses pack
their bags and leave, Jesus turns to his small band of committed followers and
inquires if they too are going to walk away. Peter speaks for all of them: “To whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life and
we have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” Notice that Peter does not say, “Who
else is going to give us free food?
Notice he does not say, “Why would we go someplace else when you hold
the Answer Key from page 95?” He
says, “You have the words of eternal life.” In what Jesus has done and through what Jesus has said,
Peter has caught a glimpse of the ‘enchanting realm beyond.’ He does not need to have it explained
to him. He does not need to
describe it to others. He merely
needs to abide in it and with it.
We
begin our religious journey in life looking for certainty and over time develop
the capacity to live with ambiguity, nuance, and mystery. We learn that finding God is not so
much about finding answers as it is discerning a persistent Presence who is
always with us. We learn to trust
in this Presence and to depend on it.
This, I think is, what Jesus offers in the bread and the wine.
