Year B, Third Week of Easter: Tuesday Eucharist
Seminary of the Southwest | Austin, TX
Jonathan Hanneman
April 17, 2018
I am not often a socially perceptive person. I can find the patterns and structures in writing and numbers pretty easily, but when it comes to interacting with another person, to understand how someone else is feeling (especially why they’re feeling a certain way), I feel completely lost. For those times I get it right, it’s either blind luck or truly a work of God. So when Shannon and I were starting to date, my friend’s wife, Lisa, must have been either highly amused or highly annoyed by my constant stream of questions.
Me: “Hey, Lisa, I met this lady at Community Group, and we’ve been hanging out on and off. On Tuesday I told the group I had an extra ticket to Brandi Carlisle’s concert next week, and she volunteered right away. Do you think this is a date?”
Lisa: “Yes.”
Me (a week or two later): “Shannon and I have been texting quite a bit. Do you think I should ask her out again?”
Lisa: “Yes!”
Me (a month or two later): “Thanks for letting me invite Shannon over to watch Cars with your kids. I really like her, but I’m not sure how she feels about me. I did notice that she chose to sit close to me on the couch. Do you think she might like me?”
Lisa (throwing up her arms): “Jonathan, she just spent a Saturday afternoon at a stranger’s house eating kids’ snacks and watching a children’s movie. YES!”
(I’m still not sure if she was frustrated or just thought I was funny.)
Since we’ve been married, I can’t say that I’ve improved a whole lot. Often when Shannon’s upset I’ll busy about trying to relieve her anxiety. After watching my blind bumbling for a while, she’ll stop me and, somewhat exasperatedly, say, “Jonathan, the thing is not the thing!”
I’ll stare at her in confusion for a few moments and then say, “OH!!! You aren’t upset because [fill in the blank]. You’re upset because a few days ago I [fill in the blank]! Again! Shoot, I do that a lot. I am so sorry—I will try to do better!”
I feel like that’s some of what’s going on in our Gospel text today. Throughout John, we find Jesus talking to people, the people not getting it, and Jesus finally saying, “The thing is not the thing!” Just the day before today’s passage, Jesus had fed 5,000 people using two fish and five buns a little kid gave him. Afterwards, everybody’s so excited that Jesus had to hide so they don’t try to make him king. That night he sneaks across the Sea of Galilee to catch up with the disciples’ boat and avoid the people’s royal ambitions for him. In the morning, the crowd scatters around the lake trying to find him, and when they do, they want some answers. “Why did you leave us?” “How do we do the works of God?”
Jesus tells them that the work of God is to “believe into” God’s messenger. Although Jesus isn’t specific about who that is here, the crowd clearly understands that he is that messenger. But instead of listening, and with their tummies rumbling again after their long hunt for Jesus, they say, “Well, if we’re going to trust you, you need to show us a miracle like Moses did with the manna for our ancestors!”
Jesus says, “Look, manna wasn’t the real bread from God. The real bread from God comes down from heaven and gives life to everything.”
“That would be a great sign!” the crowd responds. “Yeah—keep giving us that kind of bread!”
And here’s where Jesus, like Lisa, Shannon, and undoubtedly a whole lot of other people I’ve known, throws up his hands and says, “People, the thing is not the thing! C’mon already—I AM the bread of life!”
It’s a short passage, and I don’t have a whole lot more to say today. But I do wonder, how often are we, even as believers, like the hungry crowd? How often do we, as students, faculty, and staff at a seminary, overreact to, and then completely forget about, a sign God has already given us? How many times do we have to keep asking for confirmation of a choice or some sort of miraculous hint that shows we’re doing the right thing? How often are we just blindly ignorant, completely missing the signs God is already doing among us? How often do we need God to keep on telling us, “the thing is not the thing!”
*****
Let’s pray.
Almighty God, who like a Father, gives nourishing bread to your children: Grant that we may always feast upon the true bread that comes down from heaven so that, having come to your Son our Savior, we may never again go hungry, and having believed, we may never again know thirst; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.