Jesus has recently fed over 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread. Using bread as a metaphor, he speaks with them about God. He recalls the old desert story of ancient ancestors who believed God gave them “bread from heaven.” Jesus reminds his listeners those ancestors died. Jesus then applies the Divine metaphor of bread and its living nourishment to himself saying, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Some of the people are astonished by Jesus. Others become angry with him. They understand Jesus is linking their old image of God with being dead. Jesus is linking them with a new embodiment of God as living.
A present-day group of people are concerned about their image of God being dead. They are the makers and supporters of a movie series, God Is Not Dead, the third of which was recently released. The group asserts those rendering God dead include academics, liberals, and scientists – all of whom reject the Bible; and, more so, reject the god of the Old Testament. A cartoon plays to their perspective. The first panel reads, “God is dead,” signed Nietzsche; the second, “Nietzsche is dead,” signed God. It is Nietzsche who first tells of a madman among unbelievers who seeks God though he knows “God is dead.” He knows because, as he exclaims to the crowd, “We have killed him, – you and I! … (the people) were silent and looked at him in surprise. … “I come too early,” he said. “I am not yet at the right time. …lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time.” It is not however Nietzsche, his fictional madman, nor the movie’s many antagonists who render this old god dead – it is Jesus. Jesus is the person with whom these present day believers in a dead god are actually angry. Jesus puts in the grave their old god and ‘his’ deadly control over our imaginations. He enlivens humanity with a living God. God is not a phylactery or talisman, an external antiquated object like a charm on a bracelet, to be superstitiously obeyed and defended as supporters of the movie series would have us believe. God, all that is Mystery, is alive; evolving, growing, becoming, astonishing always – within, between, among. Did Jesus come too early? Was it not yet the right time? Some would argue that still, like lightning and thunder, like the light of the stars, still, the truth of a living God is on its journey and not yet touching our lives, not yet here. But no, we are touched by the living Mystery always; always here. The lightning, the thunder, the light of a star 2,000 years ago that glows still is fired by an eternal WOW. WOW fires every unfolding ingredient of a great cosmic vitality and a beautifully intimate aliveness. WOW fires every incarnation – including our own.
“god is dead,” signed Jesus. “Jesus is dead,” signed the gods. “In Christ, we are all alive,” signed WOW.
Prayer: Spirit Alive, help us co-create WOW.
Question: Who or what is my god – dead, old, distant – or alive, becoming, here?
August 12, 2018 Gospel John 6:41-51 Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time