1 Kings 19: 4-8 (New Jerusalem Bible)
John 6: 41-51 (Common English Bible)
Over the past couple of weeks, we have eaten our fill of bread from the scriptures. First there were five loaves and two fish, which Jesus multiplied in order to feed the hungry crowds. This reading is a continuation from the gospel story from last Sunday. And now the reading from the Hebrew Bible shows cakes of bread and water appearing in the wilderness.
When we study the gospel of John, we must read it carefully. It was the last of the four gospels added to the New Testament at the end of the 1st century around 100 AD. By that time there was hostility between the Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and the Jews who rejected him. Jews who accepted Jesus as the Christ were cast out from the Jewish synagogues. This animosity is shown by the writer of John’s gospel who pictured the anti-Jesus Jews in a negative light. This was the background of the beginning of anti-semitism.
In 2004, Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” was released. I watched it only once because I wanted to hear the actual Aramaic language of Jesus. Other than that I thought the movie was terrible and without any inspiration. But it was full of sado-masochism and anti-semitism. In one news broadcast, a woman exiting the theater told the reporter, “Now we know who killed Jesus, the Jews.” That is so historically inaccurate!. It was the Romans who killed Jesus in collaboration with the religious hierarchy the Sadducees. And for an inspirational Jesus movie, I would recommend “The Robe” and not “Passion of the Christ.”
Some would say some of the bias that was created by early Christian leaders against the Jewish people still exists today. In 2017 white nationalists rallied at the University of Virginia under the theme, “Unite the Right.” They chanted the racist mantra, “Jews will not replace us” as they marched with torches similar to the Nazi rallies in Germany under Hitler. And tragically, a young woman was killed, purposely ran over and killed by a white nationalist. When we read John’s gospel with its words, “the Jews began to complain about Jesus,” we hear with a sad heart and a tragic history of the beginning of mistreatment of the Jewish people throughout history. Read the Bible carefully and the historical context of every book within it. There can be bad consequences if that is ignored.
Now what are my current beliefs on this. Well I am pro-Jewish but I’m also pro-Palestinian. I believe in justice, peace and not war. And I’m glad the Presbyterian Church USA has taken a balanced approach to the current crisis in the Middle East. Unfortunately, too many churches in the US have only taken a one-sided approach to the violence in the Middle East.
We are living in the midst of one of the greatest mind walks in how we seek, see and think about the One we call “God.” Our human understanding and knowledge of reality has expanded our ability to access information to incredible heights, just during the past 40 to 30 years. The Internet has changed the world. It’s like more information is leading us down a wilderness that is both exciting and frightening. It has already changed how we can work from home for many and that is a very good thing. No daycare to worry about or even a vehicle needed. And now it’s even possible to worship from home when the occasion arises.
There is a lot of stale bread in our religious past and present, but there is also some really nourishing bread. Spirituality and religion does not mean opposites. It is possible to be both spiritual and religious. Religion without spirituality is like hard bread. We are human beings and by our own nature we should be curious about anything new.
By definition the word “religion” means re-connection. Religion at its best is about reconnecting us to creation and our Creator. And just as important, reconnecting us to one another.
Our hunger and emptiness are real. Jesus knows that. He also knows there are more important things than satisfying the stomach. “I am the bread of life” as Jesus said.
When we think about the “bread of life,” it is much more than thinking about the Eucharist as symbolic. Our existence depended on Christ’s mission on earth as a real flesh and blood person. It is also important to remember some of the early Christians believed Jesus was a spirit and not a physical person. This was the real purpose for John’s gospel, to counter that false thinking and not to stir up anti-semitism. Some of the most important words in the Bible are from John chapter one, verses one through four, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into through the Word was life, and life was the light for all people.”
And the “Word” was not the Bible as some people still believe. It was Christ, Christ’s spoken words and action while on earth. We accept Christ’s offering of himself in our participation in the Communion meal, shed by his real body, flesh and blood on the Cross of Calvary.
When we meet Elijah in today’s passage from the book of Kings, he is very depressed. Elijah is on the run, fleeing one of the most notorious female villains in biblical history, Queen Jezebel of Israel. But to be honest, there are few female villains in the Bible. That dishonor goes to the male species.
Since Elijah began his ministry, he has been at odds with the powers that be. That is what good prophets do. They are not seers who see the future but critics of the status-quo. Elijah criticizes King Ahab and his wife Jezebel for worshiping pagan gods like Baal. Jezebel was from Sidon, an area that worshiped pagan gods.
As this reading opens, Queen Jezebel orders the execution of Elijah for condemning her priests of Baal to death. God had worked through Elijah in a contest that challenged God’s power against the power of the pagan god Baal, and Baal lost. For that example, the people of Israel were turning back to Yahweh and rejecting Baal.
Now, it’s not proper protocol for any prophet of God to order the execution of anyone. If Jesus is like God and God is like Jesus, that is the wrong action to take. Elijah struggled with many things, but nothing more than himself. In 1st Kings, it clearly shows that Elijah’s ego overtook him after God sent God’s power to show that God is superior to any pagan god like Baal. BTW, Baal was later called Beelzebub in the New Testament. But Elijah had overdone the miracle by ordering the death of the pagan priests.
Elijah’s former courage seemed to melt once he read the execution notice composed by Queen Jezebel. In fact, he is so frightened he escapes into the wilderness, under a tree and begs God to end his life, just like Ahab and Jezebel plan to do.
Perhaps like Elijah, you’ve found yourself in the wilderness, feeling overwhelmed and desperate. It could be the wilderness of grief after the death of a loved one. Maybe it’s the wilderness of an illness that cannot be cured. Or it could be the wilderness after losing a long time job that you thought was secure. Whichever wilderness you have wandered in, most of us will reach a point where the journey is too much. And like Elijah, we come to a solitary tree in the wilderness, and sit down and cry out to the Almighty in despair and say, “Enough God, it’s too much for me to bear.”
We can see Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham’s first son, wandering the wilderness of Beersheba. Abraham had cast out his slave woman, Hagar and her son, sending them away with just bread and a leather skin of water. And when the water ran out, Hagar put her son beneath a bush and wept. And we see the Israelites come to their breaking point soon after the parting of the Sea of Reeds which saved them from the Egyptian chariots. They became hungry and angry with even some wanting to return to slavery in Egypt.
But thankfully, it was not their complaining that prevailed. When Hagar lifts up her voice and weeps, God hears her and sends an angel to open her eyes to see a spring with flowing water. Then she was able to fill her leather skin with a continuous flow of water. And when the Israelites complain about their stomachs being empty, God sends them manna from heaven and quail to eat in the wilderness.
God continues to be present in unexpected ways. The Spirit of God makes sure we have bread, in whatever form for the journey we travel. Sometimes it looks like a prayer at someone’s bedside, or helping with someone’s rent or cooking squid with calamari. Whatever form it takes, God continues to give bread for our journey. Like the physical bread we eat every time we gather for the Eucharist, it sustains us for the journey for the ultimate reunion with God.
AMEN
