What Do You Believe?

Have you found Jesus?

 

August 8, 2021—The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 14

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51 

© 2021 Seth Olson

Perhaps you have seen the signs when driving along the interstate. In bold text, an even bolder question, “If you died tonight, where would you go? Heaven or Hell?!!!” When I see such billboards, I get lost in anger—I wonder, how can someone short-change the message of God’s love in this way? Reducing the beauty, the complexity, and the immensity of Jesus’ Way of Love into an either-or question leaves me feeling frustrated.

Memories from my youth emerge: Walking through Southside Birmingham and seeing well-meaning Christians wrapped in fear trying to scare others into believing. Their shouts of “Have you been saved?” or “Do you believe?” crackling from a cheap bullhorn.

Of course, my favorite question along these lines is “Have you found Jesus?” It reminds me of a Far Side Cartoon in which two white men dressed in khakis, short-sleeved button up shirts, and ties are standing at a woman’s front door. They ask her, “Have you found Jesus?” In the living room of the home barely visible are Jesus’ sandal-clad feet, hiding behind a curtain for a big picture window.

With all joking aside, the yelling of Christians into megaphones has caused a great mess within our society. Or, maybe their shouting has merely revealed this mess. Belief has become such an empty word. Does it mean anything at all?

For many of our friends in other parts of the Church belief simply means to give ascent to something—to check off a certain list of criteria about God and ourselves. For many believing means to think the way others do, the way the pastor says to think, or to accept things in the right way as to avoid Hell. Sure, this is what believing means to some, but how did Jesus use this word? What did Jesus mean when he said that believing leads to eternal life?

This morning we heard Jesus in the continuation of a larger story from John’s Gospel account. The “Bread of Life Discourse” as some refer to it. (Are you sick of bread yet? Got any Gluten-free believers now?) Well, in this passage Jesus described himself as the Bread of Life and the Bread of Heaven—using the Hebrew story of the manna from heaven to elaborate on what he came to do in the world. When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” this was the first “I Am” statement in this Gospel account. He would later say I am the Light of the World; the Gate; the Good Shepherd; the Resurrection and the Life; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and the Vine. But if we are to walk into eternity with Jesus, do we have to believe Jesus literally? Was Jesus really bread or a vine? Is that believing?

You may be shocked to hear this, but when we go to the altar rail we are not participating in gruesome cannibalism. Jesus spoke in expansive language with many layers. When we meet him in Communion we do truly take hold of Christ, but there is more happening than we will ever know or we can even imagine. And so, we cannot take in all that is going on there.

When we come together as a community we sometimes say that we are re-membering, as in putting back together, the Body of Christ. We are constituting the Body of Christ right now. And, at the same time the words that we hear as we stretch out our hands at the altar rail are “The Body of Christ.” The Body of Christ is meeting the Body of Christ during Communion. Talk about “You are what you eat!” There’s even more though to this whole believing thing.

Thomas Merton put it more eloquently than I ever could:

The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers [and sisters], we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

We have to be the Body of Christ—that we are already are!

The organist where I used to serve would ask me what my favorite hymn was. The richness of our hymnody is too much for me to narrow it down, so I change constantly. Usually whatever I would tell him, would make him roll his eyes. Today though my favorite hymn might just be “The Church’s One Foundation.” The last stanza refers to the sort of strange Body of Christ meeting Body of Christ nature that is happening during Communion. “Yet she [the Church] on earth hath union with God the Three in One, and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won; O happy ones and holy! Lord give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee.” I can’t help but get misty eyed when I sing those words, for I know and we know that there are those who have joined the great cloud of witnesses who still commune with us. But, is that what Jesus meant by believing and entering into eternal life? Do we just think that we will float around invisible during Communion? Sounds scary.

And, if we are not careful we will let all the fear from other parts of society and the Church soak into us too. The bullhorn shouting about going to heaven or hell distracts us from hearing Jesus say, “I will raise them up on the last day.” We miss this as we wonder, Do I get to be part of the exclusive club? What if I believe in the wrong way? What if I mess this whole thing up? We worry about what Jesus said when he talked about belief, but what he meant was not doing a certain set of things or thinking a certain way or consenting to what the preacher tells you to do. Jesus pointed to the non-permanent nature of the manna in the wilderness to drive home the truth of believing.

To believe—to really eat the bread of life, to be transformed by what happens in mystic sweet communion—to believe is to trust God. To give over our lives to the Creator of the Universe to be blessed and transformed. This might be harder than checking off a few things a leader says to do. That was the case with Israelites.

Way back when, manna was not the problem. The trouble was that those who were in the desert with Moses did not trust God. They grumbled. They pleaded for more than just the bread that was keeping them alive. And, sadly we often do the same.

When problems arise, we doubt. Which is actually the natural response, and it is okay! God still believes in us, even when we don’t believe in God. But, when we forget our true identity as God’s beloveds, and that God is holding us up, and that God is with us (all of us, all that time)—well, when we forget this, we tend to turn our religion into a weapon. When we disconnect from God we wield Christianity as a sword to beat disbelief or the unbelievers away. This is not what Jesus was calling us into when he spoke of believing. This is not what leads to eternal life.

Jesus showed us a way that was different. He was not talking about thinking a certain way so we can eat bread that would never get moldy. No, he was showing us the way through which we might recover our original unity with God. Jesus showed us the way into the eternal life. It is not through accenting to what a fear-filled preacher says, so that you can think that your group is better than others. Instead, we are called into a radical practice of trusting that God’s love for us and for all is infinite. It is eternally expansive and completely comprehensive. God’s love has the power to even defeat death. And it has the power to make us one.

We are called to trust God. That is believing. When we eat the bread of trusting God we realize that we are already part of the Body of Christ. What we have to be is what we already are.

What do you believe?