Our numbed butts are going to hurt

We can be told of Jesus by a host of folks we meet, read two millennia of witnesses and believers, experience innumerable moments of sacrament and grace, and still sit upon the fence between belief and disbelief.

And for us, for those of us with crusted hearts and numb butts upon our worn fence posts — we wonder about the Bread of Life and the Word of God, and sit confused, waffled wonder in our minds, worried more about mixed metaphors than the truth — God allowed one more gospel.

John’s gospel purposely asks us to allow the words of Jesus to enter into our heart. John insists that belief in the divinity of Jesus comes from knowing who Jesus is. John takes the history and messaging of the three synoptics, the other gospels, and he explains why God made a decision to join the human race as one of us. God loves life, enough to create us and feed us with himself. In Word and in Bread. Not metaphorically. Really, he feeds us.

Why there is a fourth gospel


http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041618.cfm
Acts 6:8-15
John 6:22-29


John’s Chapter six explains why there is a fourth gospel. 

The three synoptic gospels give us a running series of stories, miracles, events, teachings and consequences. Matthew, Mark, and Luke capture the life and works of Jesus and place them into Jewish and Gentile perspective. But do we believe because of these reports? Are they convincing? For many, perhaps. Even one gospel message can open the heart for the Holy Spirit to lead us, for the Comforter will invoke our conversion.

Others of us, however, can hear all three synoptic versions of Jesus’ life, know fully about his death and resurrection, and still be doubtful, awash in a continuum of skeptic waves. We can be told of Jesus by a host of folks we meet, read two millennia of witnesses and believers, experience innumerable moments of sacrament and grace, and still sit upon the fence between belief and disbelief.

And for us, for those of us with crusted hearts and numb butts upon our worn fence posts — we wonder about the Bread of Life and the Word of God, and sit confused, waffled wonder in our minds, worried more about mixed metaphors than the truth — God allowed one more gospel.

John’s gospel purposely asks us to allow the words of Jesus to enter into our heart. John insists that belief in the divinity of Jesus comes from knowing who Jesus is. John takes the history and messaging of the three synoptics, the other gospels, and he explains why God made a decision to join the human race as one of us. God loves life, enough to create us and feed us with himself. In Word and in Bread. Not metaphorically. Really, he feeds us.

John’s gospel starts out telling us that Jesus is like no other, not created like us. Jesus is the very Word of God. A word is a written thing, a sound thing, and a picture thing. A word is a testimony. Jesus is the Word of God. He is God testified in both physical and divine form. Jesus is not just one of us, because he has always been with God. Reading John’s gospel, and hearing it, we allow the Word of God and the Bread of life to penetrate us through our ingesting of it.

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
(John 1:1)

Thus begins John’s gospel. Three very important things to know about Jesus. Jesus is the testimony and communication of God, which is what any word would do, especially one Word capitalized as God himself. John then repeats himself.

He was in the beginning with God.

That “he” is Jesus. He was there in the beginning with God. Before anything else had begun, the person of God we call Jesus was there. Before there was time. Don't try too hard to figure out the "before" before time. It's rather like imagining a place where this is no space. Somewhere in there, or out there, I suppose, is the abode of divinity. 

All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.

“Things” includes every atom of creation. No thing existed before Jesus existed. And things came into existence through the one that was sent then, and later, and to come, by the Father. Then, we are told of an order and purpose of our part in all of existence.

What came to be
through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.

Humanity was created as the light of the universe. We’re not just more specs of atoms. We’re the lights of life. But do we believe it? I don’t think we grasp the importance of our job as the light of life, because so many still do not believe.

John doesn’t mess around with innuendo. He is very specific. And he remains so throughout his gospel. In the three synoptics we are told what happened in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. In John we are told what it all means. In Chapter six John explains the Bread of Life in the miracle, the sign, of the feeding of the 5,000.

When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do.
(John 6:5-6)

John zeroes in on the prescience, the vision not just of what was going to happen, but insists that Jesus personally decided to pull off a major miracle of his ministry. Jesus isn’t toying with Philip, but preparing him to realize there is miraculous authority about to happen. In the other three gospels the feeding of the 5,000 people is “reported” by the writers. Some writers explain that the disciples first brought up the people’s hunger. John knows the details already written in the other gospels. John concentrates on the recognition of Jesus’ divinity in this miracle with a clarification that Jesus raised the issue of feeding the people. This was in order to fulfill his identification as the Messiah. 

Jesus knew what he was going to do. John concentrates on the “why” of Jesus’ miraculous activities. He performed the miracle in readiness for the Last Supper. Remember, this miracle happened a year before Jesus was to be crucified. Listen to how Mark reports the feeding of the 5,000: “He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food and broke the loaves and He kept giving them to the disciples to set before them …” In John’s gospel, he makes sure we know that Jesus, “himself knew what he was going to do.”

In Chapter six, like everywhere else in this gospel, John lines up the scenes of Jesus’ conversations about bread in order to convince us that Jesus wants everyone to know that he is God. After the miracle of feeding the 5,000 the people are obsessed with Jesus’ abilities. They do not quite understand who he is. They are enamored with what he has done. After a crowd of them, a rather large group, comes and finds him in Capernaum John dials in on Jesus divinity again. Listen how he explains who he is.

Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
(John 6:26-27)

Jesus explains that there is another importance in the miracles he does. They are signs. Yeah, the food is great, but it perishes. There is another eternal relationship in the eating of the divine word, the divine bread, that Jesus will give them. They do not hear him, though. They are thinking still about the food.

So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”

They want to also perform miracles that feed people. They are missing the signs and concentrating on the food that perishes. They realize that food perishes, and they want to be able to keep it coming. They want to accomplish, to create food out of the air like he did.

Jesus then explains that the sign of the loaves and fishes was to see that God does this work. Why? “That you believe in the one he sent.”  Sure, they are all hungry, but the miracle was for them to see Jesus, not just the food.

So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?”  Are they serious? He has already performed the sign. They are like us. “Show us God that you are real. Give us a sign.” What is wrong with us? What else must he do?

They then return to the food that perishes because Moses gave them “bread” from heaven. They’re stuck on the sustenance of food from God as a regular deal. They really just want Jesus to repeat the feeding of the 5,000. Everyday. About 3:00 p.m. would great. They want to know how to win the lottery.

And Jesus explains the point of the sign. The “sign” of the bread from heaven, the manna, is that “life” is given to the world. 

So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” They’re getting closer, but again, they’re focused on their need to eat each day. They’re focused on their lives on earth. Their struggle to live masks their need for eternal life.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen [me], you do not believe.” (John 6:34-36)

Jesus knows us well. We do not believe, because we’re sitting on the fence, sorting through the synoptic gospels for clues. John’s gospel is too good to be true. 

John carefully crafts his gospel because he feared what Jesus said would remain a problem for a long time. The signs are all around us, graced moments unable to be eliminated, even by pain and misery. Everywhere, signs stack up behind us in piles of testimony and witness. 

Still, we do not believe. “Give us another sign, Jesus.” Sheesh. But that’s good. The numbness abates. The fence posts where we sit are stacks of witnessed fibers, and they are beginning to hurt.

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