The Normal Becomes Extraordinary

 August 8, 2021

John 6:35;41-51

 

John’s Gospel has a tendency to be confusing and hard to follow.

And it certainly is true of this one here.

 

I’m really bad at math, Specifically Algebra.

I took it three times in college before I could pass it.

Now whenever I took it, I went to every class.

I paid attention, I was determined,

I studied and did the homework

and at the beginning of each class I thought I understood

what was going on, but inevitably, somewhere in the middle of it,

the professor added something that I just didn’t understand,

and after that point, the whole rest of the class

was kind of a mysterious blur for me.

 

I think that’s what’s happening with the people

that are following Jesus. This conversation is a mysterious blur.

They just don’t understand what Jesus is saying

Jesus lost them somewhere along the way.

 

To give them some slack,

Jesus has just been giving them glimpse

of information, a little at a time.

He hasn’t been spelling it out for them until this week.

 

In the part of the conversation we read last week,

The people following Jesus asked him

how they could do what he just did.

Could they too feed 5000 people from five loaves and two fish?

They see Jesus as an equal who has learned

to do something that they could learn too.

They don’t yet know that Jesus is who he is.

 

Jesus tells them that having faith

is the work that they should be doing.

They ask what they should have faith in.

 

Jesus says believe in God,

and believe that God is the one who sent Jesus.

He says if you have faith in that then

you’ll already have the bread that never goes stale.

 

Not understanding that Jesus is the

answer to all their questions, they ask,

“How do we get this bread that never goes stale?

Where can we buy it or find the recipe?”

 

Then, finally, in this week’s portion, Jesus gets a little clearer.
He says “I am the bread. I am the bread of life.”

He spells it out for them.

Basically, they should have faith in him.

 

Now the religious leaders and the church people

have apparently come to listen in on this conversation

by now, and they get offended at this direct statement.

they’re like:  “He’s the bread of life?

How dare he say that. He’s just Joseph’s son.

We should have faith in him?”

 

We have to remember that Jesus

wasn’t a big deal then.

He looked like everyone else.

He came from the same place.

They didn’t know who he was or what he would do.

He was, by all appearances, so normal.

 

“He’s the bread of life?”

But he’s one of us.

We watched him grow up.

We knew his father,

he did the same things my kids did

and he knows the same people I know.

He’s so normal.”

 

And yet he knows God?

God is working through him?

He is God?

He’s the bread of life?

 

We can understand their confusion

and maybe even their offense.

 

God is great and amazing and powerful

God is the creator of the universe, the galaxies,

the oceans and mountains

We worship God, we fear God, we are humbled before God.

What is God doing with Joseph’s son.

What’s God doing with normal?

 

Now we have the benefit of hind sight and scripture.

And thousands of years of theology.

We know that Jesus was human and God.

 

We know that God chooses over and over again

to use and work through things that we consider ordinary.

We know how God has a habit of

using the normal things of this earth

to carry out God’s great and awe inspiring plans.

 

To be honest, at times we might rather have

the great and powerful creator of the

universe come down and make everything right.

  

Like these people gathered around Jesus,

we might rather have God come to us

an other-worldly Messiah, who doesn’t get his

hands dirty, who is removed from

the riff raff of this world.

 

Because we know how humans  are.

We have prejudices and fears,

greed, selfish pride, shame and disappointments.

To sum it up, humanity can often stink.

Why would God use something like us?

 

Sometimes it seems like

the best course of action might be to

bring in something different, an improved model.

Humanity 2.0 the updated version of ourselves

a newer and better model

without all the issues and problems.

But then, What would we do?

What about us?

That’s not how our God works.

Our God won’t replace us.

Our God uses us as we are.

God redeems the world by working

through the world, not around it.

God redeems a flawed humanity

by working through a flawed humanity.

 

That’s what the sacraments are.

God takes these ordinary things of this world:

Breaking of the Bread
Siger Koder

food and water and uses them to bring his infinite love to us.

Sacraments are the promise that God can use everything.

  

This is just normal tap water.

This water came out of our faucet here.

Water that we all see and use every day.

 

But, in our baptism, this water God makes us God’s children,

God unites us, God forgives us, and God calls us.

Normal people, normal people like us,

God calls to do great things in this world.

God calls us to care, to work for justice and peace,

to change the world.

 

And the bread we eat every week is

just normal bread, just flour and water

and oil and a few other ingredients.

This was made by John Prange in his kitchen.

But it is the body of Christ.

 

And the wine we drink is just the kind

you get from the liquor store

down the block, the same wine

made from grapes and fermentation.

 

Normal things. Bread and wine.

The same things that have been sitting on dinner tables

for thousands of years.

 

And yet, they are the presence, strength

and forgiveness of God.

 

Jesus is the bread of life.

Jesus, a normal human -- biologically speaking.

But he was infested with God’s Spirit,

was one with God’s love and will.

So then, by being born and dying

like we all do, he was able to save the world.

 

In using the normal, God blesses the normal.

God makes the average wonderful.

In the life of Jesus and In the water, bread, wine.

When we come to this normal table,

we see and feel and taste God’s

acceptance of us, love of us, and forgiveness of us.

 

God doesn’t want to replace this world

with something better or more functional.

God doesn’t want the newer model of humanity

without flaws and scrapes and bumps and bruises.

God wants us.

The normal ones.

 

Jesus is the bread of life.

In Jesus, God comes to us to

be at one with this fallen humanity,

this flawed world.

 

Jesus is God showing us that

We are God’s whole plan.