Tag: life of Christ

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Bread of Life

It’s really an astounding thing to say. “I am the bread of life” is the first of seven pivotal “I am” statements in the gospel of John, all of which identify the Son of Man with God himself. By this point in John’s gospel (chapter 6) the Jewish leaders clearly understand what Jesus is saying (John 5:18)—and of course, if any other man were saying it, he would be subject to execution under Jewish law.

“I am the bread of life” goes one step further: it disturbs not only Jesus’ enemies but also his friends.

The immediate context is feeding 5000 in the wilderness, an echo of what his Father did for the children of Israel during their 40 years of wandering. John’s gospel, incidentally, is the only account that includes that Sunday-school staple, the little boy with his little lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish. (He must have had a most conscientious mother.)

Wouldn’t it be great if Jesus could establish Israel as the bread capital of the world?

After this amazing event, the great crowds who have taken to following Jesus intend to follow him right to the throne of a restored kingdom—they’ll even force him onto that throne, if necessary. He escapes into the hills, walks on water to the other side of the sea of Galilee, and meets some of his most persistent followers at Capernaum. They’re frustrated; can’t he see that they have big plans for him? “You are seeking me because I gave you what you wanted”—i.e, a big meal. No doubt they believe he can duplicate that sign at any time. Wouldn’t it be great if he could establish Israel as the bread capital of the world, and make the Imperial powers come crawling to them for favors?

He has another plan:

I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Got that? Unlike manna coming down from heaven to sustain mortal life, he himself is the living bread that will sustain eternal life. And it gets weirder:

. . . unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” That’s how many of his disciples respond, not his enemies. They find the teaching so hard they can’t stick around for more. The radical content might have driven us away, too—it’s lost the original shock for those of us who are accustomed to nibbling matzo crackers and sipping grape juice during communion services.

In the pagan culture that surrounded Israel, the gods were not accustomed to being devoured—it was usually the other way around. Literally, in earlier times, when petitioners fed their children to Moloch and Baal. In the more sophisticated Greek and Roman culture child sacrifice didn’t happen, unless it was on the outskirts of the empire. But gods demanded and devoured lesser offerings.

Israel’s God demanded offerings not to consume, but to propitiate: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” It’s such a dramatic contrast even some of the Jews missed it and imagined that Yahweh was somehow satisfied with the meat. Even though he laughed away the thought: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and everything in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” (Psalm 50:12-13)

Rather than devour us with his demands, he gives himself for us to devour

Being satisfied in himself, he is never hungry. But since his people, and all people everywhere, are born hungry, he’s a giver. Summer and winter, springtime and harvest, he gives and gives.

And once on earth, he continues to give, multiplying loaves and fishes, reversing maladies, eventually offering up his own body and blood. Rather than devour us with his demands, he gives himself for us to devour: true food, and true drink.

True, because there is no other source. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.” And not just the words, but the very body.

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Bible Challenge 41: Messiah – The Lamb of God

It’s been a roller-coaster week.  After whining and complaining about his triumphant entry into the city, Jesus’ enemies have been trying to catch him in a verbal stumble, but he’s always a step ahead of them. They are almost in despair until an opportunity opens: unbeknownst to them, a greater enemy has entered on the scene, and the supposed Messiah now has a new struggle to face.  The greatest one of his life.

To find out who it was, and to download the free .pdf, with scripture passages, discussion/though questions, and family-centered activities click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 41: Messiah – The Lamb of God

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

Next: Week 42: The Church – He’s Alive!

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Bible Challenge Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

Jesus is still rock-star famous: that splashy entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey signals that something BIG is about to happen.  The inner circle knows it, the followers know it, the casual observers know it, and what’s more–his enemies know it.  You can almost sympathize with them, at least looking at it from their point of view.  To them it looks like the relative political stability that allows their Roman overlords to leave them in peace is about to be overturned, with serious consequences not only for them, but for the nation.  (Think of the opposition party’s response to the election of 2016 and you may get an idea of what that felt like.)  Personal animus aside (of which they had plenty), for the good of the nation, the man must be stopped.

But when the ruling class and the crowds expected Jesus to upset the political order, they were thinking way too small.  He was out to upset the cosmic order, and by Thursday night there would be no turning back.

For a one-page printable of this week’s challenge, including scripture passages to read, questions to think about, and activities for the family, click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 39: The Road to Jerusalem

Next: Week 41: The Lamb of God

 

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Bible Challenge 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

 

What was Messiah about?  His contemporaries thought he was all about restoring the Kingdom to Israel, in political terms, and it seems they were half right.  Because as soon as he began his ministry, he kept mentioning the “kingdom”: a phenomenon right around the corner that demanded repentance.  But too much of what he said didn’t make sense.  The kingdom was here, but it was secret.  Its essence was not exaltation, but humility.  One had to go down in order to go up.  And it seemed whenever anyone had a pointed question, he answered with a story.  What sort of kingdom was this?

And what sort of king?

For a free download of this week’s challenge, including scripture passages to read, questions to think about, and activities for the family, click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 36: Messiah – Baptism & Temptation

Next: Week 38: Messiah – Signs & Wonders

 

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The Father’s Delight

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on.  For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.  Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.  Of how much more value are you than the birds!”  Luke 12:23-24

Having dropped this bombshell on “the crowd,” he turns to “the disciples.”  They’re probably scratching their heads about his definition of “foolish” and “wise” and what’s worth worrying about.

It’s a matter of heart.  The rich fool’s heart was in his storehouses, ours should be in the Kingdom of God.  We’re living there now—if we could only see the solid walls around us, the sheltering roof over our heads, the rich robes of christ’s righteousness that we wear, the nourishment of doing God’s will (for, “I have food to eat that you know not of” Jn. 4:32)—if we could only live in that reality, our present concerns about this day-to-day reality would melt away.

Easy for you to say, Jesus—you’ve charmed the world into caring for you.  Look how these women follow you around, making sure your clothes are washed and your bread baked or bought.  You live off contributions, but nobody’s going to pay me to make speeches or hold seminars.

And yet . . . we have the same Father.  Isn’t that his point?  The Father knows what we need.  He provides what we need, just as he feeds the birds and decks out the wildflowers.  But not always, right?  Birds occasionally starve, and wildflowers shrivel up and meet the mowing machine. Even people starve sometimes—in page ages, they starved pretty often. What’s the answer to that?

This: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  Some translations read “delight.”  It is his delight to make us heirs of riches beyond our imagination.  It pleases him, like it pleased your mom and dad to put special presents under the tree on Christmas Eve—they wanted to see your face when you found those things in the morning.  The difference is that we asked for those presents.  We chose them and cut out pictures of them and dreamed of them and cleared space in our rooms for them.

The Father is planning to give us something we do not have the imagination or expansiveness of soul to mystery-giftask for.  It’s wrapped in plain brown paper, all but hidden among the other shiny things we think we want.  People have been asking Jesus about present concerns: touch me, heal me, show me a sign, tell my brother to share.  He often grants present concerns, too, for “Your Father knows you need them.”  Our Father made us to need food and clothes—of course he knows.  But the present day is a threshold, like childhood.  Beyond it is the Kingdom in full, where our food will be the will of God and our clothing the righteousness of Christ.  How does that sound?  If we want that, or even if we want to want that, we are in a sense already there.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Turning Point

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans . . . But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.  Luke 9:51-53

“How long must I put up with you?”

The literal answer is, not very.  The days are coming to an end, rounding off to a period.  He sets his face (ESV) toward Jerusalem.  The NKJV adds “steadfastly.”  NIV: “resolutely set out.”  HCSB: “determined to journey.”  The sense of the Hebrew is something like “stiffened his face,” as if pushing against the force of a hurricane.  From now on, the narrative will be about this journey to Jerusalem and what happened there: a wandering teacher and his little band of disciples on their way to . .  . not change the world, but realign it.

road-to-Jerusalem

The world responds as it always does, in two basic ways.  First, outright opposition, as demonstrated in Samaria.  We don’t like you and we don’t like where you’re going; all Jerusalem-bound pilgrims need to choose another route.  Bible commentators comment on the socio-political backstory of the hostility between Jews and Samaritans, but there’s always a backstory.  My mama was a Christian fanatic, my dad was a drunk, my wife stole everything I had, God dealt me a rotten hand and I don’t need your Jesus.  Or perhaps: my life has been a dazzling success and I have everything anyone could want, so I don’t need your Jesus.  Go away.

He goes away, brushing aside the generous offer of the sons of Zebedee to call down fire on the transgressors.  That fire will be for next time—this isn’t the Judgment.

Then there are those who are attracted to him, but not enough.  They find something else that needs to be done first, whether family obligations, social duties, work or play.  They don’t get it—all those things can be accommodated if one first takes up residence in the Kingdom.  But half-baked plans to move there sometime won’t do.  All in, or all out.  That’s what he demands, and that’s what he is.  He has set his face, and will not look back until . . . Well, not ever.  Not. Ever.

(Neither will the twelve, though they don’t know it yet.  They don’t know they will scatter like sheep and despair of life itself, but they are all in because he called them, and he will see this through.)

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For the original post in this series, go here.

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Take Care How You Listen

Then his mother and his brothers came to him but they could not reach him because of the crowd.  And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.”  But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”  Luke 8:19-21

Everyone hears, but who really listens?  His own family hears selectively.  Mark tells us that they had decided Jesus was mad.  It’s easy to imagine the older brother James calling a family conference, as he is evidently a take-charge kind of guy.  What’s going on with Jesus?  Is this Messiah business starting to get out of hand?  After all, there is a lot of madness going around: plenty of demons freeloading on human hosts, and one of them may even have hitched a ride on big brother.  He was always pretty intense, you know.  We’d better to check it out, because he could get into serious trouble . . .

Whatever the family decided to do was doubtless “for his own good.” Let’s suppose that Mary, James, and Joseph Junior set out to find him.  Perhaps they only wanted to check out the situation first: compare the crowd-sensation Jesus to the everyday-carpenter Jesus they had known in Nazareth, then make an evaluation and determine what to do from there.

Finding him is the easy part—everybody knows where he was last seen, and where he might be headed.  Getting to him is another matter.  He’s like a rock star barricaded by his entourage (though that analogy would not have occurred to them, of course).  The house where he’s staying is not only filled, but packed five or six deep around the doors and windows.  Let us through—we’re family!

Somebody agrees to pass on the message.  After a while, word comes back: the Master says there’s a new definition of “family.”  What I said about hearing?  This applies.  The family has been reorganized, with Jesus at its head.  You become a part of it by first using your ears, then your hands and heart.  Listen and do.  His biological mother brothers never got a chance to speak to him.  Because from now on, he does all the speaking, and eventually they will hear.

the storm

We are called to hear, even (or especially) when the interference is so loud it drowns out everything else.  Like, for instance, we are tossed on the waves or circumstance, with a howling wind in our ears.  Grief is like that, or shock, or unforeseen tragedy.  Master! Master! We cry, barely able to hear our own voices.  “Can you see what we’re going through?  Don’t you care?”  He’s right there.  Though we hear no response, though he may seem to be asleep, he right there.  In the boat.  With us.  When the time is right, he will get up and rebuke the circumstances as he rebuked that storm on the Sea of Galilee:

“PEACE!  Be still.”

Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea, or demons or men or whatever it be, no waters can swallow the ship where lies the master of ocean and earth and skies.*  All creation hears him.  Sometimes even before his family and followers do.

*”Master, the Tempest is Raging,” by Mary A. Baker

For the original post in this series, go here.

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