Stay on the Road

The scriptures referred to are James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

When driving on US-1 I have seen people who were obviously having trouble staying in their lane. They would drift over the line on the right which separates the road from the shoulder and which is sometimes the bike lane. Or they might drift to the left over the line marking the boundary of the northbound and southbound lanes. If the person does this too often, causing me to suspect they are impaired, I call 911 and report their reckless driving, hoping a patrol car would come and pull them over and see if they were drunk or high or just sleepy. Or playing with their phone. But you would think it odd if I said it was okay to drive over either the line on the right or the line on the left. That's a good way to end up in the mangroves or in the water. Or hit someone head-on. The correct way to drive is to stay between the lines. That's why they are there.

The Bible says that what is morally good lies between two sinful or foolish alternatives. Right after restating the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, Moses says,“So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.” (Deuteronomy 5:32) And this instruction that in following God you can err by going too far to one side or the opposite is repeated several times. (Deuteronomy 17: 11, 20; 28:14; Joshua 1:7; 23:6; Proverbs 4:27) Yet people seem to have trouble with the concept that in most things the morally correct answer lies between the two extreme versions. They see everything as binary. If you are not right wing, you are left wing. If you are not left wing, you are right wing. If you support the police, you must be against Black Lives Matter. If you Support Black Lives Matter, you must be against the police. If you support science, you must be against religion. If you support religion, you must be against science. For some people, you can't possibly support both or see some truth on both sides and thus find an balanced view. No, one must be absolutely wrong and the other unquestionably right. One is 100% pure and the other utterly impure.

This idea that everything is black and white is Mickey Mouse! That is, like the original Mickey Mouse who was drawn in black and white with no shading. If you think reality is like a 1928 cartoon, then you will have trouble seeing the world as it is: with color and depth. That's why God gave us 2 eyes so we can see depth and gave us the ability to distinguish at least 1 million colors. That allows us to see threats, like venomous snakes given away by their colors and patterns, but also useful things, like a fruit that is ripe and ready to eat. God also gave us more visual acuity than, say, the rat or the horse or anything with compound eyes. So we can distinguish between wild cherries and poisonous buckthorn fruit or the leaves of a grapevine and those of a Virginia Creeper. Our eyes also allow us to see all the beauty of God's creation, something not possible if you see only in black and white.

This is not to say that there aren't things that are good and things that are bad. It just means you need to really observe and analyze things which are submitted as unalloyed examples of one or the other. You need to remember that going too far in one direction can make something good into something bad. Eating is good. Eating too much is not but neither is eating too little. It is important to make these distinctions. And in today's lectionary Jesus and his brother James make some important distinctions in matters of morality.

The letter of James is the closest thing the New Testament has to wisdom literature. Like the book of Proverbs, James is full of good advice. And in today's passage he says something that is very relevant to Christians today. “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” Then as now there were churchgoers who talked a good game—knew the scriptures, knew the gospel, knew all the right words—but weren't putting what they knew into practice. They were orthodox in their beliefs but not in their behavior.

We've all seen people whose words express one set of values and whose deeds express a different set. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and are given by their Creator rights that can't be taken away. Yet he owned slaves and even fathered 6 children on one, Sally Hemmings, herself the offspring of Jefferson's father-in-law and a slave, making her the half-sister of Jefferson's late wife. Jefferson only freed 2 slaves during his life, both brothers of Sally. In his will he freed all of her children but not the hundreds of other slaves he owned. He didn't even free Sally. That fell to Jefferson's daughter, Sally's niece. Why didn't Jefferson put his principles into action?

Ravi Zacharias was a brilliant apologist for the Christian faith. After his death in 2020, it came out that that he had sexually abused multiple women. His ministry hired a law firm which verified the women's claims, including finding numerous explicit photos on his computer. The ministry apologized to the women and said it would remove his name from their organization. His denomination posthumously revoked his ordination. His publisher will no longer offer his books. And so the actions of this apologist now give unbelievers a reason to scoff at his words.

But I don't think that James is talking only about hypocrisy, saying one thing and doing the opposite. I think he is also addressing the problem of Christians who say they approve of things like love and justice and grace and generosity but who are not actually manifesting these things. James famously said that faith, unaccompanied by actions, is dead, lying motionless like a corpse. (James 2:17) For Christians there needs to be consistency between what you believe, what you say and what you actually do.

A survey in 2007 by the Barna Group found that while born again Christians were more likely to volunteer at their church they were no more likely than the average American to help the poor or homeless. This despite the hundreds of times the Bible mentions our duty to the poor. And as a group, born again Christians were the least likely to recycle. This despite their supposed love of Genesis 1 and 2 where God creates the earth. He also creates humanity to garden it, not to turn it into a big landfill.

As James sees it, there are two hallmarks of truly religious Christians: that they take care of widows and orphans and that they keep themselves uncontaminated by the world. In other words, Christian morality has 2 parts: helping others and keeping one's ethical integrity, rather than following the way of the world. Let's look at these in more detail.

Widows and orphans (or more commonly, the fatherless) are Biblical shorthand for those occupying the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder in society. In a patriarchal culture, women without men and children without fathers were most likely to be poor. And that's still true today. The group most likely to be poor in America is children under 18, followed by women, especially women who are single parents. The Bible also talks of treating the blind, the deaf and the lame properly. Yet more than a quarter of people with disabilities are living in poverty, more than twice the percentage of those without disabilities who are poor. Speaking to Israel, God says, “There should not be any poor among you...” (Deuteronomy 15:4) But God is a realist and allows that there will be poor among his people. So he says, “If a fellow Israelite from one of your villages in the land the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive to his impoverished condition. Instead, you must be sure to open your hand to him and generously lend him whatever he needs.” (Deuteronomy 15:7-8, NET) Later James has some choice words about favoring the rich over the poor and about those who live in luxury while cheating the working man. It's odd how many people think that the US is a Christian nation and yet feel that we shouldn't do too much to help the poor!

But if those people veer too far to the right of the road, others veer too far to the left. James not only supports what we call social justice but also personal morality. We need to be unstained by the world. And while he doesn't spell out exactly what he means by this, reading his letter gives you a good picture. The world is place where the powerful prey on the powerless. (5:1-6) It's a place of quarreling and fighting motivated by desires and greed and envy and selfish ambition. (3:14; 4:1-3) The world is full of harmful talk (3:1-13) and boasting (4:16) and arrogance (4:6). The Christian should live according to God's wisdom, which is “first pure, then peace-loving, discerning, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” (3:17, my translation) That helps others, too. Just as maintaining my car can prevent me from being a hazard to others on the road, a Christian needs to keep himself or herself in good moral and spiritual condition.

But this means more than just washing your car and getting it detailed. The internal problems are what will cause you trouble. In our passage from Mark, Jesus is dealing with critics who fault his disciples for not following their rituals, like elaborate hand washing. I don't think that Jesus is saying that clean hands are bad but rather he is pointing out that it is not the external things that defile someone spiritually. And, though he doesn't put it this way, you wouldn't excuse a serial killer because he washed up after dismembering his victims, would you? Jesus draws a distinction between ritual purity and moral purity. For example, being able to conduct a mass properly doesn't exclude someone from being a sexual predator.

Unfortunately, people often fixate on how things appear to them. They think that if something looks good it must be good. This applies even to how people look. In studies little kids were shown pictures of people they had never met and asked what kind of people they thought they were. Good looking people were judged to be more trustworthy, more competent and nicer than people with average or below average looks. And sadly, many adults do not learn what Shakespeare said 400 years ago: “There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.” (Macbeth, Act 1, scene 4) Con artists rely on that. Ted Bundy relied on that. Again, as Shakespeare said, “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5)

That's why Jesus said, “You will recognize them by their fruit.” (Matthew 7:16) What a person does is a truer reflection of who they are than their looks or their words. The right or wrong they do in private is more important than the religious rituals or societal niceties they observe in public in order to look good.

So to sum up, James tells us that on the one hand mere words are not enough. Again one of Shakespeare's villains, trying to pray, says, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to heaven go.” (Hamlet, Act 3, scene 3) And the Bard pointed out, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” (The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, scene 3) On the other hand, James' brother Jesus observes that mere religious correctness is not enough. Clean hands don't indicate a clean heart.

If we leave it there, that's the opposite of good news. Who can clean up a heart mucked up by sin? As Jesus says, “This is impossible for mere humans, but not for God; all things are possible for God.” (Mark 10:27) We need to open up the hood and let God's Spirit get to work on overhauling our engine. He needs to clean out the gunk and maybe even replace some old parts with newer better ones. As Paul says, “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away—look, what is new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) God wants to turn our conch cruiser of a self into something reliable.

He especially wants to fix the alignment and the steering, so that we don't veer off of his path to either the left or the right. He doesn't want us so focused on personal responsibility that we neglect social justice, nor be so intent on social justice that we let personal morality slide. He doesn't want us to neglect our religious duties but he doesn't want us to think they are a substitute for doing what is right for others or for ourselves. As Jesus said, how are we to get the speck out of our sibling's eye if we ignore the 2 by 4 in our own? (Matthew 7:3)

The truth is found between the distortions and lies that sprout up on either side of it. The right thing to do is found between the extremes of too much and too little. The road to courage is between cowardice on the one hand and recklessness on the other. The road to faith is found between distrust and complacent familiarity. The road to hope avoids the pitfalls of both despair and unsupported optimism. And the road to love veers neither into neglect nor into uncritical obsession. Ultimately what is not the high road falls away on either side as we follow the path Jesus has trod, which leads us to God, from whose height we can see everything clearly.

The PPE of God

The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 6:10-20 and John 6:56-69.

I have had to wear the full complement of what we now call Personal Protective Equipment or PPE only a few times in my 40 years as a nurse. And it didn't look like the space suit they now use as PPE. We didn't have a hood and visor, just a cap and mask. The paper gown tied in back and we had nothing special on our legs, just disposable foot coverings. And this was mostly when we were in surgery or the delivery room. So the idea was to protect the patient. I did have a patient with TB and then the PPE was to protect me. And patient was in a negative pressure room, so that when we went through the door, no room air escaped. Either way, the idea is to protect people from germs, threats you can't see but which are very real and very dangerous.

Which brings us to our unusual passage from Ephesians. Now the Old Testament uses military imagery often. God is called the “Lord of hosts,” which the NET translates as “the Lord who commands armies.” But this is under the Old Covenant with the kingdom of Israel, a tiny country always situated between much larger empires. The kingdom of God which Jesus inaugurates with his New Covenant is not an earthly one with a border that needs an army. And Jesus told us to turn the other cheek and to love our enemies, so there is a lot less use of military metaphors in the New Testament.

It does occur a handful of times, though. Paul calls certain Christian coworkers “fellow soldiers” in Philippians 2:25 and in Philemon 1:2. In 2 Timothy 2:3-6, he uses 3 metaphors for Christians, a soldier, an athlete and a farmer, to emphasize dedication, discipline and hard work. In 1 Corinthians 9:7, he uses a soldier, a vinedresser and a shepherd as examples of people who get paid for their work. Only in our passage today, from Ephesians, does Paul draw an extended analogy between aspects of Christian life and the basic equipment of a soldier. But considering how often the imagery is used in hymns and on Sunday School posters and even on accessories Christians wear, you would think that the New Testament was filled with martial imagery. Not so.

Using the imagery of armor probably occurred to Paul because he was a prisoner at the time he wrote this letter (Ephesians 3:1; 4:1), most likely in Rome with imperial soldiers guarding him. Yet his picture of a soldier's gear is incomplete. He doesn't mention the lance or dagger every Roman soldier had, just the sword. In fact, with that one exception, he doesn't really look much at weaponry but concentrates on what a soldier wore to protect himself. Which is why, if Paul were around today, I wonder if he wouldn't be tempted to talk instead about the PPE of God.

And indeed his concern is not killing or taking new ground but holding one's ground and standing firm. If the enemy knocks you off your feet, and you are on your back or on your face, you are vulnerable. This is about still being on your feet when the attack is over. It's about protection, not aggression.

So Paul starts with the belt of truth. Now a belt's not a very exciting part of the armor, is it? But it holds everything else together. And that's why he uses it as a metaphor for the truth. Truth is essential to keeping everything else in place. When people, including some prominent Christians, get loose with the truth, they get caught with their pants down, metaphorically and sometimes literally. What truth are we talking about? The good news about God's love and grace in Jesus Christ. That's what holds everything together for us. We cannot defend it with lies. Christians are to be honest and committed to the truth.

Next Paul talks about the breastplate of righteousness. Let me say two things about this. First, the breastplate of a Roman soldier covered his entire upper torso including his back. So all of the vital organs in that area were protected, from frontal attacks as well as from backstabbing. 

Second, just like a soldier's equipment is not cobbled together by him but supplied to him, the righteousness Paul refers to here, like the righteousness he talks about at length in Romans, comes from God. None of us are righteous in ourselves. God justifies us when we trust him and so he puts us right with him. Being in the right relationship with him enables us, through his Spirit, to act in righteousness like God. But we must not mistake that for self-righteousness, nor, because it doesn't come from us, are we take it for an excuse not to behave morally. Like a soldier, your armor needs to become a part of you. So must God's righteousness. But ultimately what protects us is knowing that the right relationship we have with God comes from him.

Next Paul compares the soldier's footwear to a readiness to proclaim the gospel of peace. Good boots not only protect your feet from things dropped on them or thrown at them but they also give you a good grip on the terrain. Again if you are going to stand your ground, you need to have good traction. But why does Paul say we should be shod with a readiness to proclaim the gospel of peace? The gospel or good news is that in Jesus Christ we can have peace with God. (Romans 5:1) God is not our enemy. And if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31) We don't have to worry about losing the support of God, nor do we fear friendly fire from him. The good news is that we are at peace with him.

And in Christ, God has broken down the wall of hostility between different peoples. (Ephesians 2:14) Everyone we encounter is either our sibling in Christ or a potential sibling in Christ. That why we are to love even our enemies. (Matthew 5:44) If you lose your head to hatred and rage, you will lose your footing and slip up. Because this isn't about fighting but peace.

Just why does Paul bring the word “peace” into a description of battle gear? Because despite the military imagery, this is not really about war. War is about forcing people to do the will of the aggressor. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus is the king who brings about peace by shedding not the blood of his enemy but his own blood. Then he offers that peace to all. He doesn't force anyone into his kingdom. He wants to turn enemies into allies and friends. They are free to reject his offer and keep fighting with others and with themselves. If they wish, they can do that forever. Or they can accept the love and forgiveness of the Prince of Peace.

Remember: this is a spiritual battle. We are not talking sticks and stones breaking our bones but harmful words and thoughts and feelings that are seeking chinks in our armor, so as to mess with our minds and our spirits and get us to doubt God or his love for us or the grace he extends to us. Doubt breeds uncertainty, uncertainty breeds fear and fear causes soldiers to retreat. We can be certain of the truth of the gospel and of God's righteousness and of the peace he offers us. And like a battle cry, we should always be ready to proclaim the gospel of the peace we have with God in Christ.

Paul next says we must take the shield of faith. And faith always has an object; it is always faith in something or someone. Paul is talking about faith in God. We are not to trust in ourselves but in God and in his trustworthiness. The amount of trust in a relationship ultimately depends on our history with that person. And we need only remember what Jesus has done for us to know we can trust him. That trust will shield us from the fiery arrows of doubt and despair and adversity and affliction and temptations.

Nor need we do this alone. Romans soldiers had a smart tactic called the tortoise. When being fired upon by arrows, the men in the front line of a unit dropped to one knee, took their rectangular shields, more than 3 feet long and more than 2 feet wide, and put them in front of them, tight against one another, forming a wall. And the men in the lines behind them would hold their shields overhead, tight against one another, forming a roof. The arrows would bounce off. Thus working together, they protected one another. And using our mutual faith, we can shield each other when a concentrated spiritual assault threatens to pick us off.

Paul then says we must take the helmet of salvation. He probably got this from Isaiah 59:17, which may be the seed that this passage grew from. But what does it mean in this context? We need to have our head in the game to be effective. We mustn't let things like doubts about our salvation mess with our heads, as we said before. Our salvation comes from God and depends on God. It is not anything we can earn or achieve. It is his gracious gift to us. (Ephesians 2:8-9) Remember that and you will keep your head straight whenever you are struggling spiritually.

Finally Paul gets to our only weapon: the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. But for a sword to be effective the soldier needs to know how to wield it properly. No one issues soldiers weapons and then just lets them figure out how to use them. They instruct them. And the soldiers practice daily. They get to know them well.

You also want to have a firm grip on your weapon so it isn't wrested from your hand and used against you. That happens a lot with Christians when they are fumbling around, trying to use scripture to justify their personal points of view. They don't have a good grip on what the Bible really says or what it is all about. Like a bad swordsman, they can do a lot of damage, some of it unintentionally, and some even to themselves.

Just as a sword has a point so does the Bible. And the point of the whole saga of scripture is God's love for us and what he has done through his Son to rescue us from the evil we have unleashed upon our world and on ourselves. God created us to love, Jesus came to show us that love and the Spirit comes to put that love in us and put it to work through us. So we are relying not on our word on the Word of God, but on the Word of God used in the right Spirit, the Spirit of truth (John 16:13), the Spirit of the God who is love. (1 John 4:8)

And we are not to use the word of God as a weapon against other human beings, created in the image of God. Paul says “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but...against the spiritual forces of evil...” We are all too eager to go on crusades against other people because they are visible and we can trust in our own strength to fight them. But our struggle is spiritual. It is internal.

Right now we are fighting a virus, a foe invisible to the naked eye. And the fact that it has to be fought in a different way than you would a visible opponent is just not getting through to some people. You can't punch it or shoot it. You have to protect your body and keep it from getting in if possible. And the chinks in our armor, our PPE, is, as we've seen, a disregard for the truth and a lack of faith in the people who are dedicating their lives and in some cases literally dying to rescue us from the practices that are damaging and killing us. But instead of a sword they have a syringe that helps our immune systems see and surgically strike at the virus. However, just as a sword increases your protection against injury or death but never achieves 100% protection, so also the vaccine reduces your risk of getting seriously ill but not all the way to 0. Nothing physical does that.

So it's not a perfect analogy and I don't think the PPE of God will replace the image of the armor of God. But the point is that we are not engaged in a conventional fight. Our enemy is not conventional. Neither viruses nor spiritual forces are flesh and blood.

In one case we are dealing with a non-cellular submicroscopic infectious agent that can only replicate in our cells. Some scientists even argue that viruses are not really alive but are very much like the viruses that infect computer software and cause it to glitch and slow down and even crash. A physical virus is like a malicious code that infects our body's software and perverts it to spread the virus. And even if you don't crash or die, a post-viral infection, like long Covid, can slow you down, inflicting a crippling fatigue and brain fog and pain very much like ME/CFS.

In the other case we are also dealing with things we can't see, that are spiritually harmful and that infect us with crippling thoughts and ideas and feelings that can sap us of our spiritual vitality. They can even drive us to despair, the opposite of hope. We need to protect ourselves from these insidious invaders that seek to exploit our weaknesses and chip away at our peace with God. Just as viruses hijack our own bodies, including the immune system at times, to replicate and spread to others, so malicious spiritual ideas can pervert the functioning of churches and organizations. Thus people get too caught up in the “Onward Christian Soldier” metaphors and think the enemy is other people and that destroying the enemy is our mission, rather than saving people. 

And just as viruses cause our cells to attack each other, such as happens in a cytokine storm, so harmful spiritual ideas and destructive emotions, like hate and paranoia, can cause Christians to attack other Christians. You see this when Christians fight over nonessential issues that they have let displace the essential ones, like who Jesus is, what he has done for us and how we should respond to him with faith, hope and love. Many churches die not from external threats but spiritual autoimmune diseases, members of the body of Christ attacking other members.

So Paul is taking this military metaphor and subverting it. He says we are up against things we cannot hope to defeat by force or on our own. Only God can triumph over the spiritually destructive forces out there. Our job, therefore, is to stand firm and protect ourselves with truth, by being in the right relationship with God, by proclaiming the good news of peace with God, by trusting in him, by thinking clearly about the source of our salvation, and by expertly wielding the word of God, guided by the Spirit of God.

One last thing. They say an army travels on its stomach. In our passage from John, Jesus is finishing up his metaphor of being the living bread of heaven. He is saying to his audience that he is as vital to their spiritual lives as bread and wine were to their physical lives. They just didn't get it. I hope we do. It is vital to have the written word of God in your head but you also need the living Word of God, Jesus, in your heart. If you have one but not the other, it's like only getting one dose of the vaccine. And like the annual flu shot you need regular doses of both God's written word and of Jesus if you are going to stay healthy and fend off the evil and foolishness that are circulating in this world.

And just as we healthcare professionals are always encouraging people to get their shots and wear their masks, despite opposition, we Christians are to stand firm and encourage others to get Jesus in them and put on the PPE of God.

Although the armor of God does sound cooler, doesn't it?

Nobody's Fool

The scriptures referred to are 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14, Psalm 111, Ephesians 5:15-20 and John 6:51-58.

If a person does the wrong thing, specifically something harmful, there are broadly 3 possible reasons they do it. One is a lack of empathy, one is a lack of knowledge, and one is a lack of using the knowledge they have. The first reason—knowing better but not caring that what you do will or probably will cause harm—we call evil. For instance, in 1998, a respected scientist published a paper in the British medical journal The Lancet, showing a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. It turns out he faked patients' medical records and was paid more than $600,000 by lawyers who wanted to sue the vaccine companies. His fraud was eventually exposed but his lie has for the foreseeable future harmed many people, especially children whose parents believe that vaccines are a terrible idea.

The second reason—not knowing better and truly not understanding that what you do will or could cause harm—we call ignorance. This is why we educate our children. This is why we teach them not to approach a hot stove or play with matches. They don't know the harm they can do. The good news is they usually can and will learn these things.

The third—where you really ought to know better than to do something wrong but for some reason do it anyway—we call stupidity. In the Bible it's called foolishness.

And while we think the Bible is primarily concerned with good and evil, it has quite a lot to say about foolishness. In fact, there are several books in the Bible we call the Wisdom literature, including the books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Wisdom is not merely about acquiring knowledge but knowing how to weigh its value and how to use it properly. And there is a difference between having knowledge and having wisdom. It is not hard to look at history or even the news and readily find examples of knowledgeable people doing stupid things. Elizabeth Fleishman-Aschhheim opened the first X-ray laboratory in California, making her a pioneer in the use of radiography. Unfortunately she ignored the information coming out that prolonged X-ray exposure can be dangerous. She didn't wear protective gear, afraid it would scare off patients. She died at the age of 46 of radiation poisoning.

It is sometimes hard to figure out to what extent a person's actions were evil and to what extent they were stupid. Often it is both. For example, sexually assaulting employees is evil. Thinking it will never come out is stupid. Especially in the age of the internet.

According to a study, cited in the howstuffworks.com article from which I got these examples, smart people actually make more mistakes in doing logic problems than people of average intelligence do. Smart folks tend to take shortcuts and make assumptions out of overconfidence. It reminds me of how often we hear people say that someone couldn't have drowned because they were an experienced scuba diver, or that they couldn't have accidentally crashed a plane into a mountain because they were an experienced pilot. Sometimes when people have a lot of experience they feel they can skip steps or they assume certain things are working well rather than do the checklist as all beginners are taught to. Excessive self-confidence is responsible for a lot of foolish behavior.

As our Psalm says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...” People often have one of two objections to this verse. The first is they think that fear is antithetical to good thinking. And, yes, if you are speaking of either panic or anxiety or paralyzing fear. Those kinds of fear do cause us to bypass the frontal lobe of the brain, where judgment resides. But since we are talking about wisdom, it can't mean this kind of fear is something that shuts down good thinking. In this context and in the vast majority of places it is used in the Bible, the Hebrew word means “reverence.” Think of it as a healthy respect. Again a sailor would be stupid not to have a healthy respect for the power of the sea. And I would not want to get on a plane if I knew the pilot arrogantly thought that after all these years flying was no big deal. How many people trying to get awesome selfies would not fall off of buildings or into the Grand Canyon if they only had a healthy respect for the power of gravity?

The other objection comes from the verse in 1 John that says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear...” (1 John 4:18) So if we love God, how can we also fear him? Again context is key. The verse goes on to say, “...because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love.” So it is not a healthy respect for God that is being talked about but a fear of punishment. The previous verse is “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world.” (v.17) The author is talking about the last judgment and saying that if we love and follow Jesus we have nothing to fear in that regard. In the same way, death holds no fear for the person who trusts God. (Psalm 23:4) Besides, 1 John says, “We love because he loved us first.” (v.19) Our salvation is not dependent on us but upon God and his grace given to us.

If we have a healthy respect for God, if we acknowledge him as Creator of all that is, we will live according to the principles built into his creation. It is foolish to try to use something while ignoring the instructions provided by the manufacturer. As it says in Proverbs, “The wise person accepts instructions, but the one who speaks foolishness will come to ruin.” (Proverbs 10:8) And “The way of a fool is right in his own opinion, but the one who listens to advice is wise.” (Proverbs 12:15) Wisdom is about being receptive to new information and viewpoints and to rethinking one's previous opinions when they come up against reality. Arrogant fools ignore such things. As the titular hero in Doctor Who said, back in 1977, “You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.” That's what being a fool is in a nutshell.

That's not to say that the wise don't use their own brains and just do what others have told them. They use new data but they also apply timeless principles.

After all human nature has not changed. Today's knowledge doesn't make people either wiser or more foolish than they were in the past. There have always been people who used what they did know about the world to make the best decisions they could, as well as those who ignored what was inconvenient or unpleasant to them.

In the same way, the world today is not morally superior to what it was in the past nor is it more evil. Wars and torture and slavery and rape and child abuse are still with us. Incidents of them may have increased but that's because the population has increased. And because of technology, the stakes are higher. The only reason we haven't had a nuclear war is that those with nuclear weapons seem to realize that the situation is analogous to folks locked in a basement threatening each other with fragmentation grenades. Once you start throwing those things around, nobody is safe. Even people who do not fear the Lord fear fallout. And, hopefully, this pandemic has people contemplating biological warfare re-evaluating the wisdom of opening that Pandora's box.

Nevertheless, there are, by the last accounting, around 40 wars going on around the world. And again, as the Doctor points out, the only difference between wars is how many people have to die before the two sides do what is inevitable: sit down at a table and negotiate the peace. Wise persons would skip the bloodshed, especially since you never know whose loved ones will die before each side realizes it's time to talk.

And while the word “war” appears in the Bible 225 times, “peace” is in there 429 times, almost twice as often. That is God's priority: that “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4)

On a local level, God's wisdom is shown in maintaining peace through justice and mercy. And justice is not upheld through indifference. God tells us to help others, especially those who do not often see justice. As Paul says, “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4) Proverbs says, “He who despises his neighbor sins, but he who is kind to the needy is blessed.” (Proverbs 14:21) And “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” (Proverbs 14:31) And “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done.” (Proverbs 19:17)

And the Bible is not merely encouraging personal charity. Taking care of the poor was built into the laws that governed Israel. (Exodus 22:25; 23:11; Leviticus 23:22; 25:35; Deuteronomy 15:9; 24:14) And this goes right to the top of society. “If a king judges the poor with fairness, his throne will always be secure.” (Proverbs 29:14) But “Like a roaring lion and a charging bear is a wicked ruler over poor people.” (Proverbs 28:15) Rulers are to imitate God. “The Lord hears the poor and does not despise his imprisoned people.” (Psalm 69:33) In Psalm 82, God says to those in power, “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” (Psalm 82:3-4) Only the foolish would ignore God on our duty to the destitute, the disabled, the despised and the disadvantaged.

But God's wisdom guides us not only in how to live with others but also how to live with ourselves. It's like how keeping your car in good working order, such as maintaining your brakes and steering, protects others on the road as well as yourself. So God's wisdom is manifested in living a life of integrity and holiness. And again “holy” basically means “set apart” for God's purposes. Paul says, “...do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19) We are, like the elements of communion, set apart for God's purposes. So we are to remain spiritually and morally clean.

But not just outwardly. When faced with people harping on ritual impurity, Jesus said, “What comes out of a person defiles him. For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from within and defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23) People pursuing holiness tend to get hung up on rituals and external displays. True holiness comes from within. So to reverse-engineer Jesus' statement, what comes out of the heart of a spiritually clean person are good ideas, sexual behavior that's moral, respect for the property of others, respect for their right not to be physically harmed, faithfulness to your partner, being content with enough, good intentions and actions, telling the truth, self-control, rejoicing in the good fortune of others, control of one's tongue when speaking of others, humility and wisdom. None of which we can achieve on our own. We must let God's Holy Spirit work in us to enable us and empower us to live a holy life.

A lot of God's wisdom is just plain common sense. But some of it is deeper. We see an example of that in today's passage from John's gospel in which Jesus is developing the metaphor of being the bread of life. The crowd could not easily grasp it and most of them, we are told, stopped following Jesus. As I said before, the Twelve stuck with him, despite not quite understanding this teaching. They knew that Jesus said things that did not track with the world's wisdom but revealed the depths of God's wisdom. Like “If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25) Jesus said this right after Peter objected to Jesus saying he would be betrayed, killed and rise on the third day.

Indeed, Paul says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God...For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 22-24) Jesus gave his life for us and to us. We in turn must give him our life and in exchange take and live his life. This is the deep wisdom of God.

We said that stupidity, or foolishness, was not quite the same as evil. But both do damage to ourselves, to others and to the world. What you sow you eventually reap, even if it takes a while. And to live a morally good life is also to live wisely and avoid many of the sorrows the foolish and the evil bring upon themselves.

Wise or foolish, we all die. But philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal calculated that trusting in God was ultimately a wiser choice than not believing in him. If you are wrong, you will never know that, just as an atheist would never know that he was right. But if the one who believes and trusts in God is right, his rewards are incalculable, as are the losses of the one who doesn't believe. We call it Pascal's Wager. While gambling is rarely smart, this bet is a wise one. Admittedly the stakes are high. You bet your life—as you conceived it and scripted it in your head. You bet instead on a life in which you go where the the Spirit of God leads, often in challenging and unfamiliar directions. But again, if you lose, you are no worse off than any other corpse in the cemetery. Win, however, and you get a new life in a new world, full of infinite wonders and all the pleasures of living forever with the God who created all pleasure, the God whose wisdom is found in surrendering to the love that made and moves the universe.

The Seven Fs

The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 4:25-5:2 and John 15:13-15.

There is a picture circulating on the internet of a passage someone has highlighted in a psychology textbook. It reads: “The hypothalamus plays a major role in the regulation of basic biological drives related to survival, including the so-called 'four Fs': fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating.” And people on the internet have been having a field day commenting on the author's chosen euphemism in what they see as a feeble attempt to maintain decorum in his textbook. Some suggest other words beginning with F. The most popular is “fornicating.” Unfortunately, this refers specifically to unmarried people having sex and wouldn't apply to other animals. I prefer the biological term “fertilizing.”

I don't know why but there are a plethora of mnemonic devices involving 4 Fs. There are the 4 Fs of creating a business (forming, founding, forging and fruiting), business success (focus, follow-up, failure and friends), employee experience (form, flow, feeling, function), crisis communication (factual, frequent, fast and flexible) and many more. As a nurse and chaplain I find the list of 4 Fs relating to people's reactions to trauma helpful. They are: fight, flight, freeze and fawn.

I first came across the original 4 Fs, which were formulated in the 1950s and 60s, some time ago as a description of the 4 ways that organisms can relate to each other. But I've always felt they were incomplete. They limit our interactions to aggression and competition (fighting), fear and avoidance (fleeing), consumption and exploitation (feeding, if we take it as a metaphor and not as cannibalism) and sex. That's a bleak and almost psychopathic summary of human relationships. But if you consider that we are social animals, another F arises. And taking a term from social media, we can calling that “friending.” Which I like less than “befriending” but better than “fraternization.”

So there are at least 5 ways starting with F in which we can relate to one another. And while not everyone excluded from the first 4 Fs fits into the category of friend, we usually try to act friendly towards the average person we encounter. I may not expect the person serving me at a restaurant or a store or on the phone to become my bestie, I do expect them to be helpful and nice. In other words, friendly.

The early Quakers called themselves “Friends of Christ.” And indeed their official name is the Religious Society of Friends. I like that. Because at the last supper, Jesus called his disciples friends (John 15:15) He said it was because he shared with them everything he learned from his Father. And of course, friends do share with each other.

Friends also treat each other well. And that's not always something people associate with Christians. In fact, while we call each other brothers and sisters, sometimes that's because we treat each other a bit too familiarly. And sometimes we fight like family. Not all families are friendly to each other. But Christians should be. Maybe we need to look at the way true friends act toward each other.

In our passage from Ephesians, though he never uses the word friends, what Paul says would be good advice for how to maintain a friendship.

First he says, “So, then, putting away falsehood, let us all speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” Friends tell each other the truth. But they do it with love because they feel connected to one another. Sometimes churches are either too polite to tell someone who is disruptive the truth of how they are negatively affecting the community. Or they throw the truth in each other's faces, like a dysfunctional family. We need to learn to say, “Hey, can we talk?” And then together explore the truth of a situation in a beneficial way. And weirdly, we will often accept the truth from a friend before we will from a family member. But the important thing is, as Paul says a little earlier in the chapter, “speaking the truth in love.” (Ephesians 4:15)

Even friends get mad at each other. Paul says, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” Ever see a kid fight with a friend? They will blow up at each other and an hour or two later be playing together and be best friends again. They realize that whatever irritant triggered the anger was not worth destroying the friendship. Paul knows that to get angry is natural. The main thing is not to let it ruin the relationship. Cool down, sit down together, settle things, apologize and forgive.

Deal with it as soon as possible, preferably the same day, as Paul says. Don't hold a grudge, as we've seen aunts or cousins do in families. The longer the grudge is held, the bigger the incident becomes in the mind of the people involved. I think that's what Paul means about making room for the devil. The Greek word he uses, diabolos, literally means the “slanderer, the false accuser.” As time goes on, the person we were angry with gets more and more evil in our recollection. Get the splinter of the argument out before it festers and poisons the relationship.

Paul then says, “Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.” This is more about members of a church community than friends, but it is hard to stay friends with someone who is dishonest and doesn't respect the personal property of others. I have met inmates who no longer had a relationship with anyone in their family, usually because of past betrayals and sometimes theft to maintain a substance disorder. Rebuilding trust is possible but it is hard. Friends don't rip off friends.

By the way, Paul reflects the Bible's consistent position on work: it should be honest and the person should be generous with the poor and needy. Nothing we have is really ours; it is on loan from God and we are to be good stewards of his gifts, sharing them with those in need. It is not a sin to be rich, provided you made your wealth honestly. It is a sin to be miserly and not help out the less fortunate.

Paul says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.” The Greek word translated “evil” here means “rotten.” Rot causes things to go bad and decay. Rot can spread. You can poison a relationship with certain words and ways of talking. Instead, we should use our speech to build up each other and the relationship, especially when we realize that the other person needs to hear such things. Our words should give grace—blessing and kindness—to those who hear them.

Paul says, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.” The word translated “grieve” has the connotation of causing distress or pain. How can we possibly do that to God's Spirit? The same way you can make your friend feel sorry for what you did to yourself. A real friend doesn't want to see you do self-destructive things. Neither does the Spirit of the God who loves you. Sin is destructive to oneself and to others and to our relationships with God and other people. Don't bring sorrow upon the Spirit by bringing unnecessary trouble upon yourself.

There is a meme out there about a real friend not being the one who tries to stop you from doing something foolish and risky but who is sitting beside you in the holding cell, saying, “Man, that was fun!” Nope. A real friend tries to talk you out of ruining your life and is not in the jail with you but the one who bails you out. And then says, “Dude, we need to talk.”

Paul then says, “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice...” Those are all things that will poison a friendship or any relationship. All relationships go through rough patches but to continue to harbor resentment about them will make you bitter. Slander and insults will certainly harm your relationship with somebody. And malice—wishing evil upon someone—is the opposite of being a friend.

Paul continues, “...and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” The Greek word translated “tenderhearted” can also be rendered “compassionate.” Friends feel for one another and empathize with the pain one of them is feeling. As someone said, friendship halves our sorrows and doubles our joys.

And, as usual, our forgiveness of others is linked to God's forgiveness of us. In the Lord's Prayer, we say, “Forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4) Jesus explains, “For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you.” (Matthew 6:14-15) Paul puts it in a different way, saying we should forgive others because God forgives us. But why should forgiving someone else what they've done have anything to do with God forgiving me for what I've done? Aren't they two different things?

Not really. The problem with humans is that we have marred the image of God within us. That's what the God who is love wishes to restore. And we see that image most clearly in Jesus. (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15) So God wants us to “be conformed to the image of his Son.” (Romans 8:29) The whole point of what God is doing is for us to become more Christlike each day, until one day we will be like Jesus. (1 John 3:2) So therefore as Jesus forgives us, we are to forgive others.

Which is why Paul says, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children...” It is natural for little kids to mimic their parents. As they get older they often rebel and try to be as different as possible. Stories are rife of PKs, or preacher's kids, who are holy terrors. Paul is encouraging us to return to imitating our heavenly Father.

Which leads to a 6^th F: following. And this is also a part of friendship. One friend is always the leader. The others follow. This can be bad when it results in a group doing stupid or terrible things. But sometimes the leader of a group of friends says, “My neighbor's house needs some repairs but he's too old to do them. Let's help him,” Or “The Run For Life needs volunteers. Who wants to join me?” Or “I've been driving a coworker to her cancer treatments but something has come up this week. Can any of you help me out?” Jesus is that kind of leader. And we should follow his lead.

Our passage concludes, “...and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” As Jesus said on the night he was betrayed, “No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) You see this in war. 7^th Day Adventist and Army medic Desmond Doss saved 75 men at the Battle of Okinawa by running into a fire zone time and again and carrying the wounded out. He was shot 4 times and was hit by 17 pieces of shrapnel when he tried to kick a grenade away from him and his men. He is the only conscientious objector to receive a medal of honor for his actions during the war. He was willing to give his life for his friends.

You see this in Corrie Ten Boom and her family, who hid Jews from the Nazis and were thrown into a concentration camp where her father and sister died. They did it for the persecuted minority they befriended.

You see it in Florence Nightingale, who saved the lives of sick and wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, and came home with an illness an awful lot like ME/CFS which plagued her for the rest of her 90 years of life. Yet she continued to revolutionize nursing from her sickbed, working through friends.

And while we may never find ourselves in a situation where we must give up our physical lives, we are expected to imitate Jesus' life of self-sacrificial love. We can give up parts of our lives—our time, our talents, our money—to show people how God in Christ loves them. Because actions speak louder than words. And the world is weary of Christians who don't back up their fine words with equally fine works.

Our life is not confined to fighting, fleeing, feeding and fertilizing. We can become friends with Jesus and with each other. And we can follow him into a much larger and more interesting and ultimately more fulfilling life. And that the 7^th F: fulfillment. Fulfillment of who we were created to be: reflections of the God who is love, who is light, who is life in all its abundance.

Living Bread

The scriptures referred to are John 6:24-35.

We have 4 gospels. The first three, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are called the synoptic gospels, from the Greek word meaning “seeing together.” They have their differences but they largely cover the same events and teachings. John's gospel is different. Believed to be the last canonical gospel written, John seems to assume you have read the synoptics and doesn't seek to repeat what they have already said. Thus it starts with John the Baptist but doesn't mention him actually baptizing Jesus. And a good portion of it takes place at the last supper but it doesn't narrate Jesus instituting the Eucharist.

That's not to say it ignores communion. It just talks about it after the miracle all 4 gospels tell us about, the feeding of the 5000. And it places it within the intricate framework of this unique gospel.

The first 12 chapters of John have been called the Book of Signs, because they enumerate 7 miracles or signs of Jesus' identity. They are, by one reckoning, changing water into wine, healing the official's son, the healing at the pool of Bethseda, the feeding of the 5000, walking on water, healing the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus. Jesus also speaks of 4 witnesses that testify to who he is: John the Baptist, Jesus' works, God the Father and the Scriptures. There are 7 statements where Jesus says, “I am...” followed by a metaphor. John's gospel is also built around the Jewish festivals, especially 3 Passovers, which allow us to deduce his ministry lasted at least 3 years. And he dates the feeding of the 5000 to taking place just before the 2^nd of the Passovers he mentions.

If you remember last Sunday, Jesus realized the people he fed want to forcibly make him king. So he sends off the disciples and joins them later. Now it is the next day and the crowd tracks Jesus down at Capernaum, his base in Galilee. They ask Jesus how he got there but he cuts to the chase, essentially saying, “Look, I know you were looking for me because I fed you physically; what you should be looking for is to be fed spiritually.” Since Passover is near, the people, looking for some miraculous sign, seize upon the manna the Israelites were provided in the wilderness before getting to the promised land. So they say, “Yeah, give us miracle bread from heaven.” And Jesus takes this idea and uses it to make his point. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Notice the difference between what the people are asking and what Jesus is offering. They want a thing—magic bread. Jesus is saying, what you really need is not a thing but a person: me. And this misplaced priority is a problem that people have had throughout history.

When you have a real need, such as for food or water or medicine, nothing else will do. But humans have the habit of thinking that the answer to all their troubles is to be found in things. And we have stories that go way back in time about people seeking things that will magically solve their problems: the horn of plenty, Aladdin's lamp, Excalibur, the holy grail, the ring of the Nibelungen, the bezoar, the spear of destiny, the fountain of youth, sampo, the silver bullet, the Philosopher's stone, the Book of Thoth, the true cross and a whole storehouse of others. Today we keep looking for technology that will solve all our problems. It can help. But some issues simply cannot be resolved by stuff.

And that's true even if the stuff is abstract. Freedom cannot solve all problems. For some situations, you need certain restrictions. Positive thinking alone will not fix all problems. Sometimes you have to face the ugly truth. Logic is not enough to resolve all issues that humans have. Sorry, Spock and Sherlock! Emotional intelligence is often required. And Jesus is not the answer if the questions have to do with math or engineering or science.

But Jesus is the answer if the problem is moral or spiritual. Although it may not be as easy as “What Would Jesus Do?” For instance, as God, Jesus had the right to make a whip and clear out his temple. We don't, as evidenced by Jesus telling Peter to put away his sword (Matthew 26:52) and telling us all to turn the other cheek. (Matthew 5:39) Often the more pertinent question is “What would Jesus want me to to do?” And since it may be a situation we don't find addressed in the gospels, or even in the entire Bible, we may need to do a lot of praying and a lot of research and then follow the lead of the Spirit of God in Christ.

And I think that touches on what Jesus is saying in this chapter of John. This crowd that wants bread is the same mob that wanted to forcibly make Jesus king. In this case both magic food and a political leader are external solutions to what is really an internal problem. They don't need manna in them or a person over them. They need Jesus in them. Now that's gonna be hard for Jesus to make them understand. But he has to try.

People understood the idea of the Spirit of God coming upon people. But they thought the people involved had to be special: prophets and leaders. As Samuel says to the newly anointed King Saul, “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you in power, and you will prophesy with them [the prophets]; and you will be changed into a different person.” (1 Samuel 10:6) Jesus, the person they want to make king, obviously has the Spirit so that would make sense to them. But the idea that the average person could have God's Spirit in them was foreign to them.

Also they saw the Spirit as enabling military leaders like Samson to kill enemies of Israel. (Judges 14:19; 16:21-30) That was under the old covenant, having to do with the nation of Israel. That's the paradigm the crowd is familiar with. But Jesus is doing something different. Jesus is initiating the kingdom of God, where, among other things, we are to love our enemies. (Matthew 5:44) In fact Jesus will inaugurate the new covenant by letting his blood be shed by his enemies. (Luke 22:20) So he is trying to change old ways of thinking. God is doing something new in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

After all, Jesus is unique in that he is not a man upon whom the Spirit of God has come; he is God made man. Humans were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) but that image has been marred by our sins. Jesus is the very image of God. (Hebrews 1:3) We are to be like him. (1 John 3:2) And to do that, we must be changed from the inside out. Jesus must get into us.

How does Jesus get that through to a very literal minded crowd? He takes their idea of the “bread from heaven” and says, “Yeah, that's me.” Why would he do that?

For one thing, bread was the basic food for everyone. It was considered the staff of life. At the feeding of the 5000 John tells us the 5 loaves the boy has and which Jesus uses were barley loaves. It was cheap bread, the food of the poor. Bread, wine and olive oil were the staples of what they ate, supplemented by nuts, dates, figs, vegetables, dairy products from goats and sheep, and honey. They rarely ate meat and then mostly on religious holidays, like the Passover. But bread was eaten at every meal. So Jesus chooses something they know and need. He is saying, “I am as necessary to you as the daily bread that keeps you alive.”

Later he gets more graphic, telling them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. (John 6:53-57) Eating or drinking blood was not only forbidden in the Torah (Leviticus 7:26), it was repugnant to Jews. Why would Jesus say that?

The book of Sirach would have been known to Jews at that time, though it was not considered part of the canon of the Hebrew Bible. In it, the author personifies God's Wisdom, as was done in the 8^th and 9^th chapters of the book of Proverbs. But whereas in Proverbs, Wisdom prepares a feast and says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed,” (Proverbs 9:5), in Sirach, Wisdom says, “Like the vine I bud forth delights, and my blossoms become glorious and abundant fruit.... Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more.” (Sirach 24:17, 21) Jesus seems to be playing on that idea of eating of the Wisdom of God, because he is the Word of God. (John 1:14) However, unlike the way Sirach portrays Wisdom leaving people wanting more, the person who has Jesus in him will never go hungry and never be thirsty. This recalls what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well: “...whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) And at the well, Jesus spoke of “living water.” A little later in this chapter, Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” (John 6:51)

Unfortunately, the crowd cannot get past this metaphor and find it repulsive. Even though they were about to celebrate a religious holiday in which a lamb is sacrificed and eaten and, in which its blood was used as a sign that death should pass over them, they couldn't grasp what Jesus meant. Jesus even says about his metaphor, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” (John 6:63) They still don't get it. And we are told, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” (John 6:66)

We're not even sure the Twelve get it. Yet when Jesus asks if they too are going to leave, Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) They trust him, even though they may not completely understand him. We know even they were thinking of Jesus as something more like a king. (Matthew 20:21) Things really didn't change until his resurrection. Then these words, and the words Jesus said about his body and blood at the last supper, made sense, as did Jesus' talk about giving his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45) They had wanted another earthly sovereign; what they needed was a unique heavenly sacrifice.

We still search for that one thing that will make us happy, solve our problems, and give us the life we want. There is no such thing. And even the best fantasies, despite all their magical items, realize that. In The Lord of the Rings, the one ring of power isn't the answer; it must be destroyed at great cost to Frodo who bears it into Mt. Doom. In the Harry Potter series, the villain is trying to live forever by putting bits of his soul into things. Voldemort's name means “flight from death.” But he is defeated by a boy who willingly lets himself be killed. Because of his voluntary sacrifice, Harry can return to life. Ultimately Voldemort's faith in the Elder Wand leads to his death. It is interesting that the authors of these two influential series are both Christians. They know that things cannot save us and that putting your faith in them is a curse rather than a blessing.

And it is sad that there are some Christians who put their faith in things, like prayer cloths, scapulars, relics, prayers of Jabez and the like. It is even sadder that they put their faith in the things of this world, like wealth, fame and political power. Billy Graham actually considered running for president himself at one point. Thank God he turned from that temptation. All those things are idols. What we need to put our faith in is Jesus himself.

Just as we need to consume food and fluids to sustain our physical lives, we need to feed on Jesus. We need to take him into us on a regular basis to sustain our spiritual lives. “Man shall not live on bread alone,” Jesus reminded us, “but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) The Bible is God's written word but Jesus is the living Word of God. If you don't have Jesus living in you—the Word of Spirit and life—you won't understand the written word, any better than this crowd understood Jesus' words. Indeed, that is how people can twist the written word of God; they are not reading it through the lens of Jesus, the incarnate, crucified and risen expression of who God is. When you see that the power of God is in his healing and his forgiveness and his self-sacrificial love, lived out in the person of his son Jesus Christ, you see the world differently. And you realize you don't need stuff; you need Jesus.

As the spiritual goes,

In the morning when I rise,

In the morning when I rise,

In the morning when I rise,

Give me Jesus.

Give me Jesus,

Give me Jesus,

You may have all this world,

Give me Jesus.

And when I come to die,

Oh, when I come to die,

Oh, when I come to die,

Give me Jesus.

Give me Jesus,

Give me Jesus,

You may have all this world,

Give me Jesus.