Speaker 1: Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2: So good to be in the room. And to those of you joining us in the livestream, hello. We love that you're there. Or you may also find us on the podcast or on YouTube at really all hours of the night. We're everywhere all the time.
My name is Bobby and I am one of the pastors here. You may know that, but maybe you don't. Now you do. Recently, a pastor friend of mine in Edmonton and I were texting about how much we really love pastoring, that when it's good, it's so good. I'll spare you about when it's less good.
And that conversation got me digging around in an old Eugene Peterson book on pastoring. He wrote several of them. I've read so much Eugene Peterson over the years that in my mind, I affectionately call him huge. Just like he's like my pal. Here's a line huge wrote about pastoring.
He said, pastors are assigned the task of helping persons develop their everyday relationships in such a way that they discover, they discover God's will and love at the center of every encounter. And Peterson says that pastoral work refuses to specialize in earthly or heavenly. Pastoral work is both, earthly and heavenly. Now today, not only am I wrapping up our summer series both and, but I also want to say a few things about pastoral work here at Commons. Number one, we really hope that you have felt loved and cared for in this really strange year and five months.
But if you have felt disconnected or maybe like we haven't shown up for you, we are really sorry about that. And we would love for you to reach out because we can't read your minds and just let us in on your story. Now, the second thing is not everyone knows it, knows this, but you can book a coffee, a walk, a Zoom meeting, or a simple just swing by the church to say hello visit. You don't even have to be in crisis. You can just be up for connecting.
So start by emailing anyone from our team to connect. And number three, this seems so basic, but I really wanna say it, we pray for you. We hold you and your families and your stories and your worries and your crises, your celebrations, your deconstruction, your huge theological questions, your tears, your losses, your sickness, your joys. We hold all of that in our big old pastoral hearts. And I hope you feel some of that love and incredible respect just by way of me naming that.
Again, reach out if you would like a little more pastoral care in the days, the weeks, the months, or even the years to come. We are here. Okay. So far in the bothand series, we have talked about faith as both loud and quiet, both strong and weak, both alone and together. And you can catch all those sermons if you miss them on YouTube or, of course, our podcast feed.
Today, we talk about the sacred and the secular sides of faith. And I am super into this one as I hope you'll see. We are in John chapter six starting in verse 25 and your outline is this number one, trouble with borders. Number two, deep dialogue. Number three, sacred bread.
And number four, for the love of secular. Before we dive in, let's take a moment and pray. Loving God. In this quiet space, will you lead us inward to check-in with the week that we carried to this moment and wonder for just a moment where we felt most alive in this past week. Maybe it was a visit, a connection with a friend.
Maybe it was a moment to ourselves. Maybe it was getting out of town seeing something so beautiful. So we say thank you for that. And now God, will you lead our imagination outward to think about one part of the world's worry, the groaning of creation? Maybe it's the lack of vaccines in other parts of the world that kind of stresses us out.
Maybe it's the places of conflict in our cities or social media feeds or far off places. Maybe it's a fight for justice or freedom and that can get so messy sometimes. So we extend our love and our grace to those places, to those people we may or may not know. Jesus, you are present in struggle. Spirit, you invite us to heal with your help.
And for all of this, again, we say thank you. Amen. All right. Are you ready? Let's dive in.
We begin in John six verse 25. When they found Jesus on the other side of the lake, they asked him, Rabbi, when did you get here? And Jesus answered, very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you. For on him, God the father has placed his seal of approval.
Okay. We are missing some pieces of the story, so let's just back it up. The two stories from earlier in the chapter include Jesus feeding thousands and Jesus walking on water after the disciples crossed the lake in a boat without him. And in between all of that, Jesus seems to maybe take a nap. Verse 15 says he withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
So the savior's got a gold star self care practice. High fives. But really, Jesus retreats because the crowds want him to be king. There's so much hype that they're chasing Jesus around the Sea Of Galileo. Jesus, where are you?
Because you got nothing. Hello? It's kinda silly that I'm saying this. Come be our king. And in their pursuit, the crowds find Jesus where they don't expect him.
And Jesus' surprise arrival might seem kind of strange to us for a second until you realize that we know something the crowds don't. We know because we've read the story that Jesus walked on water to get to the boat that took him to shore. But the crowds in the story, they don't know that that happened. And Jesus actually feels no need to tell them. And I love that, by the way, that a profound encounter with God might be just for you.
Now, if you were meeting Jesus for the first time, it wouldn't take long for you to realize that this guy doesn't play by our rules. Jesus makes feasts out of food scraps. Jesus brings calm to a chaotic storm and dodges direct questions to get to more meaningful details. We draw lines and limits around what we think is normal and expected, but Jesus blows right past those borders. So Jesus says, I get it.
I get that you're looking for me, but you're only looking for like a section of me, a part of me. You want the part of me that gives you bread to eat. You think you want piles and piles of sourdough, but I can give you so much more an update for anyone following along. I am still going strong with my pandemic sourdough still happening. Embarrassingly, I have way more pictures than that of just a loaf of sourdough bread, but they look good.
Right? They look good. And just like symbolic sourdough, Jesus goes on to say, there is so much more to bread than getting your fill. I am the one who gave you bread to fill your stomach. But do you realize I am also the one who satisfies your soul's hunger?
Now, we don't read the world as symbolically as John's gospel. And the writer sets up sign after sign to lead readers to Jesus through so much symbol. And in chapter six, Jesus feeds thousands and then turns out to be the living Passover bread. And it's okay if that's kinda hard for us to catch up to. The symbols of bread and water and the temple find their home in Jesus.
Jesus isn't just one thing. Jesus is somehow many. And that makes him really hard to pin down. Out in the field feeding thousands, walking on the sea towards disciples, speaking to the crowds by the lake, Jesus has in the words of John, the seal of approval of God. I'm like, what is that?
The rabbis would say that the seal of God is truth. And if you're like me, the harder I try to put limits around where I find truth, that I can hear from God in one book but not another, that there is a certain kind of music for worship but another that has nothing to do with God, that certain people can teach the lessons of faith but not others. The more we draw those boundaries, the more we get ourselves into trouble. And in modern history, the term secularization refers to a time when every facet of society, political, sociological, economic, and religious, made the move from being deeply tied to religious institutions to having ties to having no ties to religious institutions. And at its height in the nineteenth century, writes religious scholars Jonathan Tran and Dana Vinesh, secularization spoke of a cultural optimism that enlightenment reason, natural science, liberal democracy, market capitalism, and religious tolerance would finally replace sectarian religion's stranglehold on western civilization.
It was what they call the disenchantment of the world. And I can understand that a correction was needed. Religious institutions can be, as we know, corrupt and oppressive. But even those new nineteenth century borders are a bit pretend. We might need some of those borders, but I just don't think God plays like that.
There's so much to love about Jesus's respect for those borders. Because you know what? He has none. And speaking of the work of the spirit in making art, Mako Fujimura writes, the word Christian used as a mere label does not mean anything to the holy spirit who hovers near people who authentically and earnestly wrestle with truth, beauty, and goodness. So let's go deeper into the dialogue Jesus has with the crowd about where truth actually shows up.
So after Jesus mentions this mystery food that lasts forever, the people ask, what kind of work does God want us to do so that we can obtain this food that lasts forever? And Jesus answers the work of God is this, believe in the one God sent. And I imagine Jesus doing this like thumb pointing, wink. I'm a terrible winker, but this is me trying. Wink, wink, gesture.
And I mean, that's it. That's the answer Jesus is giving them. Believe in the one standing right in front of you. But instead of hearing the invitation to believe, they ask, well, what sign will you give that when we see it, we'll really believe you? What will you do to prove it?
Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness. As it says in the scriptures, God gave them bread from heaven to eat. And as the dialogue flows, the crowd gets further and further away from the answers to their questions. Jesus is the food that endures. And so Jesus says, truly I tell you, it is not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Now what is going on in this dialogue? Because as I read it, Jesus is not clearing things up. He's making things more confusing. And that is kinda the point.
The author of John loves irony like he's thinking loves it. And as you, the reader, begin to see what is going on, the people standing in front of Jesus see things like less clearly. And Luke Timothy Johnson says that this kind of irony would have been highly enjoyable to the reader. And when I stopped to think about this impulse, that something confusing to one crowd could be so enjoyable to another. It kind of delights me.
Do you ever stop to think about the Bible just being there for delight? Not because it's simple, but because it's kind of perplexing. Delight doesn't mean that the stories of John are here to answer all of your challenging questions or to put a tiny bow on who you think God is or tell you in three easy steps how to live your life. These stories delight because they are imaginative, confounding, and like great conversations, they take you to places you were not even planning to go. Like you might be the person in the crowd who hears Jesus answer the question about lasting bread and thinks, bro, what are you even talking about?
That's totally fine. And you might be the person outside of the story hearing it for the first time and think, right, right, right. Jesus does give my life meaning. And you might be listening to my voice in the year 2021 and think there is something to this bread metaphor, and I want more because carbs. There is room for confusion and renewal and mystery in the deep dialogue of faith.
And what if we were to think about the conversations in our lives like deep dialogue? And instead of assuming that sameness or agreement are the markers of closeness, we see confusion and mystery is opportunities for closeness. My husband and I, we have very different ways of seeing the world and different views on politics. And I could see those differences as threats to our intimacy. Or I could choose to inch my way toward him with curiosity and the belief that I never have all the facts on Jonathan Bateman.
That there is always more for me to learn. We miss the point of being here in the world if we assume God isn't in deep dialogue with us through our differences, through TV like Ted Lasso, through the straight up awe that we feel towards those we love. God, like, is not shutting up in those places. Deep dialogue will provoke more questions than answers. Deep dialogue won't yell over your story and rush you before you're ready.
Deep dialogue will offer you the support you need in a world that will break your heart a 100 times over. When the world confuses you, lean in. Breathe it in. Maybe the confusion is more sacred than you think. Next, Jesus brings the dialogue home with the truth about sacred bread.
Sir, they said, always give us this bread. Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. And now we're back in the role of irony in the story. The people reading John's gospel know that Jesus is referring to himself.
They're a community formed around the resurrected Christ. But the crowd betrays this understanding when they say, okay, we hear you, but can you just give us the bread? As if it comes from somewhere else. After all, something so holy can't be standing right in front of them with those dark brown eyes and dusty feet and that tunic made by Tom, the Galilean tailor who made everyone's tunic. He's a busy guy.
In another step of revelation, Jesus actually switches pronouns to say, not only you have the bread, but I am the bread. Now John's gospel expresses a very particular eschatology. And eschatology refers to the ultimate climax of the story of God. It's about the end times, judgment, and eternity. Only in John, eschatology is realized.
In other words, the end time is a present reality. And that doesn't mean that early Christians were living heaven on earth. Far from it. Life in the empire was always challenging, but it does mean that the divine life as the gospel explains it is accessible to everyone now. Jesus's presence on earth shows us that shalom, the peace of God where nothing is missing and everything is whole can be the center of what we value.
You aren't hungry, you're full. You don't like anything. You have it all. Don't believe me? The sacred bread is right there.
It's in your hands. Now of course we're playing. We're playing with metaphors here. Jesus says you can have bread. Why I'll give it to you myself.
But are you aware of the hunger inside of your soul? The lesson for us is this. There's hunger and then there's hunger. There's hunger to be comfortable in your own skin. There's hunger to make sense of a situation that has knocked you to your knees.
There's hunger to be seen, to be allowed, to have warts and cruel impulses and lasting imperfections and to be loved anyway. There's hunger to know what's true in a world full of bald faced lies. There's hunger to hope that our collective sadness and sacrifice can somehow make us more whole. There's hunger for a steady peace and a quiet calm and a loosening of the tensions that throw knots up and down our collective spine. Where do you find food that meets that kind of hunger?
Another way to ask the question is, where is the bread of life for you and for me? Any of this lasting bread is truly within your reach. There are places and spaces and cultural moments and conversations and gatherings and contemplations that will remind you how close you are to the bread of life. I went to divinity school. I don't know if you know that.
I spent tens and tens of thousands of dollars on divinity school. I have an MDiv, you guys, and nobody cares about that. But I loved, I loved the training that I got in divinity school. Like it helped me to ask big philosophical questions and it brought incredible people into my life. It introduced me to brilliant Christian thinkers of the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox branches of all of this.
It taught me a complicated history of a religion that has always been my home, and I still love it. I love reading about God. I love podcasts about God. I love communities centered around God. I love the work of the sacred.
I love everything that's dedicated to the divine. And you don't have to go to divinity school for all of that. I mean, you can, but you do not have to. You can access great theology, the kind that makes you sit up and say, yes, that is what is true. And you can keep learning about the Bible in a way that leads you to Jesus and doesn't terrify you.
And you can find contemplative practices that honestly feel like they are saving you. I love the sacred. There is so much ritual and Christian practice that continues to evolve and ground me. It feels like a feast sometimes. Sacred encounters, they fill you up.
The feast isn't just for me. It's not just for you. The feast is for the world. Go ahead and call it the secular if you want. Jesus says he brings it all to life.
So skipping ahead to John chapter six verse 51 to finish. Jesus says, I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. And Jesus stretches this bread metaphor further.
He stretches it so far that commentators say that Jesus's argument goes from persuasion to pain. Because now the metaphor, it hurts. It rips, it tears, it's of our bodies. Jesus isn't making life easy for this crowd and the readers who heard the gospel and followed Jesus after he died know this. Jesus gave his flesh for them, bled without fighting back, and that nonviolence inspired their love for each other and the world.
Love that resisted the evil of an empire, love that brought Jewish and Gentile folks together even when it was so awkward, love that showed up in courtyards and on roadways and on night visions on rooftops. Christians are meant to love the secular knowing really, I mean, is there such thing? As if you could stop the spirit's work in the world because you declare separation of the spiritual from the physical, the sacred from the secular. I know you can't stop it because there is far too much culture and beauty out there that has saved and encouraged me. I would not be myself without Kathleen Edwards music or Zadie Smith novels or La Bamba, the movie, which I watched over and over and over again as a kid.
Still stands up, by the way. I would not be myself without my undying love for You've Got Mail, This American Life, the podcast, and San Francisco, the city where I lived for a few years in my twenties. I would not be me without live music and fine art and online dating, though not anymore people because because I'm married. I didn't know that all of that stuff could be everywhere until it was. These secular places and cultural artifacts have been my scriptures too.
The word of God in creation for me. The bread of life on which I feast. Maybe for you, your secular love list includes a fashion label or fly fishing or a favorite TikTok account. I don't know. But I do know that Jesus crosses borders to satisfy you.
So then why do we need the word of God in the bible or church on Sundays if the sacred can be everywhere? In part, I don't wanna answer that question for you. That's your question. You need to answer it. But let me say, I think the best of this place, church, helps us to see the sacred in all places.
And the scriptures, the bible help us to hear the sacred in all the words we hear. To encounter the sacred while our feet walk this planet, that's always been human longing. So in some ways we're all pastors to each other. Helping each other to sense as Eugene Peterson says, God's will and love at the center of every encounter. So if you wonder where God is, look around.
Everywhere. Please join me as we pray. Loving God, as we prepare to get up from this place or the places we are and head out into the world that you love, Give us a sense of where we might encounter you. Maybe it's in the words of a writer, a book we've been meaning to pick up. Maybe it's in the smile of a neighbor, someone we haven't met yet.
It's in the joy of a child just lost in play. If there's work in our hearts that needs to surface this week, help us to be ready. Help us to face ourselves and seek to love others. Jesus, you sustain us even when we aren't looking for you, even when we feel like we're far away. So spirit of the living God present with us now.
Enter the places of our confusion, our pain, and our longing and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.