MORE THAN LITERAL

August 30, 2015

Pentecost 13

Ephesians 6:10-20

John 6:63-69

(prayer)

My New Testament Professor at theological college had a tradition of telling a Friday Joke.

One week, he claimed that through his habit of telling parables, Jesus, like Obi Wan Kenobi (of Star Wars fame), espoused a Jedi Theology:  Metaphors be with you!

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Jesus made his teaching points by telling memorable stories that emphasized the lesson.

We use the word ‘parable’ when talking about Jesus’ teaching stories.  Parable, as a word, has greek roots meaning ‘comparison’.  It does not need to be limited to Jesus, but that is where we hear it most often.

When we read in the gospels that “Jesus told the crowd a parable...”, we can understand that to mean Jesus used a metaphorical story to speak of a wider truth.

I think, we can get ourselves into an unnecessary mess, when we only look at the surface of what is said and not try to understand Jesus underlying point.

In fact, that is good advice, not only for Bible Study in general - but for healthy communications in our lives today.

I mean, how many times have you heard (or said) but that’s not what I meant when you’re talking with someone. 

What we mean is infinitely more crucial than what me might say.

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And, as people, we generally have greater respect for people whose words match the meanings.  We might even stoop to calling someone a hypocrite who says one thing and means another.

[Don’t get me going on the Mike Duffy trial.]

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One of the challenges we have as we read the Bible and try to understand its impact for us today is that we are removed from its original context and time.  Not only are we a couple thousand of years away from new testament times... we (well most of us, I assume) speak different languages that new testament greek, we live in a very different culture, and we might have a world view quite foreign to that of our first century storytellers.

Sometimes, the old metaphors do not apply to us as easily as they might have to their original audience.

And so we dig deeper and try to understand what teaching point the author wanted that original audience to get out of the parable or story.

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Both of our scripture passages this morning (from Ephesians and from John) were written to the early Christians in the latter half of the first century.  These are people who have grown to believe in Jesus as a great teacher from several decades earlier.  This same Jesus was professed to be (by his disciples at the time) the Messiah and Son of God.

Each of our readings today use the language of metaphor.

Ephesians mentions a soldier’s armour.  John speaks of useless flesh.

Let’s look at John first... the wider context of this passage is an instruction on the early Christian practice of sharing a ritual meal as a means of communing with Christ - the Lord’s Supper or Communion.  It is ironic that the book of John is the only one of the four gospels to NOT relay an account of Jesus last supper, but it has some of the deepest teachings about communion.  John’s author sneaks this theology in to teachings of Jesus in the early chapters of the gospel.  John chapter six, is where we have Jesus say, I Am the bread of life.  Before that, in chapter six, we can read the story of a miraculous feeding of a large crowd with only a few fish and a couple loaves of bread.

John makes the point that some of the opponents of Jesus challenged the statement that Jesus was living bread from heaven that would curb people’s hunger - the pharisees took the phrase literally.  How can this man give people his own flesh to eat?

Then (in the verses just before what we read this morning) the gospel author plays with this misinterpretation (we can hear communion language, but some of the audience were grossed out by the literal alternative):  unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

It’s either a metaphor or cannibalistic.

Without getting into high-ecclesiastical debates about transubstantiation or consubstantiation, I will say that most active Christians see only metaphors in the flesh and blood language of communion.  And I suspect that a lot of you like me find it kind of a less-than-appetizing image.

But it was new image for the church of the first century and people struggled with its meaning.  So much so, that John’s gospel admits (as we heard this morning) that some of the followers left the movement.

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I will profess today that I believe that the metaphor of the bread and juice of our communion services (first Sunday’s usually) are NOT made up of literal flesh and blood - it’s not even a representative of Jesus’ flesh and blood that just tastes like palatable food and drink to us.

The metaphor is not that we physically each bits of our Lord at his table, but that - in the heart and mind - we are taught and feel that we can have what we need through a reciprocal loving relationship with our God.  Jesus feeds our souls (so to speak).

I like to use a parallel metaphor:  In communion, we dine with our Christ - we share a common story (meal) that feeds us all.  It unites us in body and spirit.

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The metaphors are a vehicle for the teaching - they are not the teaching.

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In the Ephesians letter, we were told to put on the Whole Armour of God.  How many of us have ever put on armour?  Now, even for those who are members of a modern military, the armour from the 1^st century does not apply to the 21^st century.

Some people find it quite easy to speak of faith as a battle, but I also know that there are others who are pacifists and peacekeepers who do not always relate well to military imagery when it comes to matters of the spirit.

But that’s what Ephesians gives us: a soldier’s belt, a protective breastplate, armoured shoes, a shield, a helmet and a sword.

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But it’s a metaphor, so our task as modern interpreters of these scriptures is to find the meaning beyond the metaphor - to take it beyond the literal.

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The first thing I notice is that (with the exception of the sword, the rest of the armour mentioned in Ephesians are defensive - they are meant to protect - they are vehicles of endurance and preservation than they are of violent outburst.

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So... when we seek more than the literal, we can hear Ephesians in a fresh way.

One of things in the passage that might be easy to miss is the adjective the author uses to describe the armour.  The church is told to put on the whole armour of God.  The different parts each offer only partial protection - they have a value - in the sum total - that is beyond what any part might be able to do on its own.  We can imagine that it doesn’t matter how strong the breastplate is if the blow comes to our head.  So, more important that any of the individual aspects of faith spoken of in the passage, is the value of the totality of what is needed.

More than literal.

Literally, a belt is designed (primarily) to hold things up.  It can also be used to make carrying things easier.

Metaphorically, this belt in Ephesians is ‘truth’: honesty, authenticity.  One of the aspects of a faith than can endure - Ephesians is telling us - is that we begin with being authentic, truthful and honest about what we hold dear and what we believe.  Without this - the rest of what we seek to do and how we live might just fall around our feet.  Next week, I will focus on this topic in a bit more detail, but suffice it to say - hypocrisy makes an enduring faith very difficult.

Our bodies’ most vulnerable parts are our heads and the vital organs located in the core of our body.  So, literally, a wise solider utilizes a helmet and a breastplate.

Metaphorically, this section of Ephesians is similar to the image used in 1^st Corinthians 12, where the Apostle Paul speaks of the people of God as the body of Christ.  In that scripture Paul writes that

²²... the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect.

Metaphorically, we might conclude that faith involves a protection of the vulnerable - within us and beyond us.  Ephesians calls the breastplate, ‘righteousness’ and the helmet, ‘salvation’. 

We can consider the shield here as well.  It is the one piece of the armour that Ephesians doesn’t ascribe a metaphoric label to:  the shield is the first line of protection.  It can remind us of our ‘shelter’ - that place of retreat, where we can ‘hold fort’ so to speak.

Protecting us at our most vulnerable is the comfort and safety of living in God’s Way - a way that Jesus summed up by quoting two old commandments:

1.    love God with all you heart, soul and strength; and

2.    love your neighbour as yourself.

At the heart of our lives of faith is an assertion that ‘we are not alone’.  We are not isolated from each other and we are not distant from the source of our existence.  And the instruction is to respond to this proximity with a deep compassion - a care and concern for the value of good and right relations.

I think that one of the most significant messages we can find in Ephesians six is that our spirits are most vulnerable when we try to live in isolation - when we think that all this life needs is for us to ‘look out for number one’.  And to extend that, I would say that one of the harshest threats to a life of comforting faith is to fall prey to selfishness: to think we do not need or benefit from community.

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The other parts of the armour kind of go together:  the shoes of ‘proclamation’; and the sword of the ‘spirit’ and the ‘word of God’.

As we dig deeper that the literal, we can see a metaphor of moving beyond our place of retreat.

Ephesians speaks of the soldier’s shoes as a means of moving beyond where we are right now.  The shoes allow us to be ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.  There is wonderful irony in that phrase - the author of Ephesians speaks with military imagery while at the same time asserting that the goal is peaceful good news.

Let’s consider the context of the first century church.  It is the time of the Roman Empire - for the most part it was a time of peace: the pax romanus.  It was peaceful because the Empire’s military occupation of lands discouraged wide-sweeping wars - in a funny way the Roman might ensured peace.

The peace of Jesus stands in stark contrast to that.  The pax jesus is a peace (not through might) but through compassion:  it is a peace sought by extending the arm of welcome to the outcast and the vulnerable, even when the societal norm might have discouraged the full inclusion of children and women and roman collaborators (tax collectors) and all those labeled ‘sinners’ by established religion. 

It is not fear and force, but compassion and welcome that creates the peaceful table in the Way of Jesus.  To echo the old psalmist - it is a peace expressed in a banquet table prepared in the presence of (both those we might have labelled) friend and enemy.

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Back to Ephesians, what we carry with us on the peace-focused proclamation is not a sword for slicing or killing, but a spirit founded in the Word of God - the tradition of the faithful; the teachings and action examples of Jesus.

We move away from our places of inner retreats out into a world that hungry for the compassion and peace that our God has shown us in Jesus.

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And so it makes sense, that even as we come together in this space for times of inner retreat among others seeking to live in God’s way, we also regular move beyond these walls and take the inner strength and confidence that we are not alone in to the rest of our lives.

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And that might just be enough.  It might be all that we need to face the challenges to authentic, faithful living.

There is a powerful thread of thought moving through our scripture texts this morning: a call to find value in our being part of a community; to be grounded in the love and presence of God and to live truth-expressing lives.

We may couch these concepts in a metaphor or two from time to time, but we seek to be faithful in real and meaningful ways.

Thanks be to God. 

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Let us pray:

Loving God, we have made the bold choice to live our lives as your people. We thank you that you are with us as we equip ourselves for this life.  Amen.

#578VU

“As a Fire is Meant For Burning”