Gracious God, help us to learn and grow deeper into
your love for us. Amen.
You
might even say that education is the mission of the Church. Jesus’ final words
in Matthew are “Go and make disciples of all peoples.” The word “disciple” is
best translated as “pupil, learner, or student.” To be a Christian, to be a follower
of Jesus is to be, first and foremost, a student. The opportunity to learn is a
sacred gift and blessing – which is why it is so horrendous when groups of people
are denied access to good education, whether that be the Taliban forbidding
girls to go to school in Pakistan, the laws across the South in the 1800s which
forbid Blacks from learning to read or write, or the current state of public
education in our community which might well be described as separate and
unequal.
Education is a blessing
because God has wonderfully created all things – human thoughts which lead to
poetry and prose or physical properties that can be observed in astronomy,
biology, and chemistry. Because God is all in all, whether it’s physics,
history, or art class, students are learning about the handiwork of God. So to
deny someone an education is to deny them knowledge of God, it is to ignore
Jesus’ commission of making students of all people.
As
Malala put it, education is also a necessity. Though he is not likely the originator
of the quote, Winston Churchill is remembered for cautioning Parliament that “Those
who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” If we want an economy that
flourishes, if we hope for greater harmony among people, if we long for a more
beloved community, education is as necessary as oxygen is to breathing.
Today
is Back to School Sunday – the day we particularly remember and pray for our
students and educators. Theirs is holy work, so please keep them in prayer
throughout the year. Ask them how the year is going, not just today, but
throughout the year – let them know that you’re rooting for them. And while the
focus this morning might be on those in schools, discipleship and learning are
a part of what it means to follow Jesus.
How
are you a student of faith? We are blessed with so many ways to learn – there are
some fantastic podcasts that you can listen to, there are so many books that I
can recommend, we have a great lineup of speakers for our Formation Hour, there
are classes that you can audit at Hood, and we’ll have some opportunities coming
up on Wednesday evenings for time to take up the holy work of learning from and
with one another. The call to discipleship is for us all.
At
the very foundation of education is one of the most important virtues –
humility. Education and discipleship are rooted in the recognition that we do
not and cannot know it all. That’s not even the right goal – that’s like trying
to measure electricity with a ruler. One person has put it this way, “The mind
is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” We learn not for the
purpose of mastery, but for growing in the infinity of love and the limitless wonder
at the world God has made.
A Greek philosopher said,
“It is impossible to learn what you think you already know.” And that’s where
all of this talk about education touches today’s reading from John. Over the
past few Sundays, we’ve been reading through chapter six of John, often called
the “Bread of Life discourse” which follows the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus
said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and
whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” And then the crowd begins to
complain because they aren’t prepared to be students, they aren’t ready to
learn something new.
They thought they knew
how God worked. They are familiar with the story from Moses’ day when God fed
the people in the wilderness with manna. They assumed that Jesus was speaking
heresy instead of truth. And they can be forgiven for those assumptions, we’d probably
do the same. For one, when Jesus says “I am the bread of life” he is making a
tremendous claim. As CS Lewis famously put it, there are three interpretations
of such a statement – that Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. As non-Jewish
English speakers, it has to be explained to us, but it would have been obvious
to everyone there who heard it. “I am” isn’t simply a first-person conjugation of
the verb “to be.” That’s hardly offensive. No, the issue is that “I am” is an
unspeakable word in the Jewish faith because that is the name that God gave to
Moses at the burning bush. It is a name so holy that it is not to be
pronounced. And here is Jesus, not only saying that name, but claiming that he
is the “I” towards which the “I am” is referring. Jesus is saying that he is
the One who spoke to Moses out of that bush, that he is the One who separated
the waters in the Exodus, that he is the One who said, “let there be light” and
to whom Creation responded with brightness.
For Jesus to make that
claim, either he’s lying and committing willful heresy, or he’s a lunatic who
should be locked up somewhere, or he is who he says that he is. We have come to
learn that the third option is true, but we can appreciate why this would be
such a hard truth to learn.
The
other issue is that Jesus has been teaching them that they need to eat his
flesh. Today, if someone says, “bite me” it’s not really a polite thing. Plus,
cannibalism is repulsive. A few weeks ago, Tyler and I went to see Sweeney
Todd at the Meroney and at one point I heard someone behind me say, “This
is disgusting.” That reaction is the same Jesus’ audience would have had. So we
can understand why this would be hard teaching for people.
And
not only is it disturbing to have a rabbi say, “eat my flesh,” but it is also expressly
prohibited in Scripture. There is a prohibition against eating any meat that
still has blood in it, for the life and essence of a living thing is found in
the blood. And since life is a gift from God, it is seen as unholy and immoral
to consume meat without first draining the blood from the animal. We’ll hear
more about this next week, but later in this passage, Jesus will double down
and say “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
When
we hear things that challenge our assumptions, that strike us as contrary to
what we thought we knew, that don’t fit with the narrative we’ve been telling
ourselves, what do we do? Do we immediately reject that person and what they
are saying? Do we start to question ourselves and always assume that we are
wrong? Neither of those extremes is ideal, as being full of conceit or
self-doubt is not what it means to be a student. Rather, the question is “Can
we be open?” Can we recognize that truth is never something that we possess
fully? Do we see ourselves as students or masters, knowers or learners?
The
crowd struggled to learn what Jesus was saying. They weren’t curious, they didn’t
ask questions, they didn’t wrestle with what they were being taught. Instead,
they complained, rejected, and ridiculed. Part of what plagues our politics and
society right now is that we don’t see ourselves as students. We aren’t
curious. We know how it is and don’t need to have someone explain it to us. We
aren’t great at trying to see things from other’s perspective. We’re so busy
and distracted that we aren’t often observant or contemplative. The call to
discipleship is a call to value education, learning, humility, and openness.
One
of the interesting features of John’s recording of the Gospel is that there is
no Last Supper in John. Instead, we have this teaching about Jesus being the Bread
of Lfe as the description of what the Eucharist is all about. As a lesson,
briefly, let’s consider what the Eucharist has to teach, because when Jesus
says that he is the “true bread,” we have much to learn.
The
Eucharist teaches us that we are to be involved with Creation. Last Sunday, we considered
the Creation Care Covenant that we’ve adopted at St. Luke’s. The simple truth
is that the Eucharist is inseparable from agriculture – as it involves bread
and wine, wheat and grapes. The Eucharist teaches us that the earth is a participant
in the Sacrament as much as we are.
The
Eucharist also teaches us to gather. The Eucharist is a communal meal,
reminding us that faith isn’t between me and Jesus, rather faith is about us.
It’s why the doctrine of the Trinity is so essential – community and
relationship are essential to what we mean by the word “God.” Beloved community
is challenging work, and it is our sacred priority.
The
Eucharist teaches us the importance of remembrance. Throughout the prayers at
Communion, we hear the word “remember.” Remembering though takes time to learn and
reflect on the story of faith. One of the refrains throughout the Bible used to
explain how the people get into trouble is “They forgot the Lord their God.”
The Eucharist teaches us to remember God’s mercy and love.
The
Eucharist teaches us about grace – namely in the way that we all come forward
with empty hands to receive the gifts of God as the people of God. In John, we
heard Jesus say “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” Notice that Jesus
teaches us that he comes down; he’s not pulled down nor do we climb our way up.
Jesus comes to us as an act of grace. We are fed by him not because we’ve done anything
to earn or deserve it, but because God is love.
The
Eucharist teaches us that faith is about the fullness and totality of our
lives. Jesus could have taught any lesson he wanted, but he chose to speak in
terms of bread – something very tangible and essential to our basic human need
for nutrition. Jesus is teaching us that faith is something we participate in
with our bodies, not just our minds. Bread, as you know, is something we eat, something
that gets inside of us and nourishes us. And by getting into us, we are made
holy vessels.
As
you’ve likely noticed, when we have unconsumed bread or wine, we don’t just
stick it on a shelf somewhere or dump it in the sink. No, we reserve it very reverently
in the tabernacle – the special cabinet that sits as the very central focus
point of this entire building. We do this because we recognize that this
Sacrament is the Body and Blood of Jesus which he has promised to feed us with.
In receiving the Eucharist, each of us becomes a tabernacle of sorts, because
we carry the Bread of Life with us out into the world. The Eucharist teaches us
that we are living and breathing tabernacles, signs of Jesus’ presence in the
world.
Education
is a blessing and a necessity. Thanks be to God that our teacher is Jesus
Christ and he is the Bread of Life come down from heaven for us and for our
salvation.
