11th Pentecost
John 6: 51-58
The controversy is on. Newsweek reports that A new book will soon be out by Luanne Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist, called "The Female Brain". She contends that women's brains are wired differently than men's brains. That different physiology makes for a different way of seeing things, of understanding the world. It's a new perspective but then again it's an old one come around again.
The Old Testament Reading today is from Proverbs and describes Lady Wisdom It's not an accident that Wisdom is a she for the writer of Proverbs is describing SOPHIA--A different kind of wisdom--A feminine way of knowing--
Most of the time we think of wisdom in masculine terms-- concentrating knowledge, data, on logical explanations--universal answers--absolutes.
Our image of that way of thinking is the person on the mountaintop The person who ascends above the mundane to some great abstract truth.
But Sophia is different. Sophia is a wisdom that focuses on particulars A wisdom that is able to dwell in the confusing contradictory world in which we live.
An example: After Jesus' birth--the shepherds are visited by the angels and they are told of the miraculous birth that is to occur. They go to Bethlehem and tell Mary about the angels and Luke writes " Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. "
That's SOPHIA--not to jump to any global answers--any universal propositions But to ponder the mystery in her heart and let what is seep into our souls.
Robert Frost once wrote:
We dance round in a ring and suppose
But the secret sits in the middle and knows
Sophia is the wisdom that enables us to sit in the middle and know to treasure events instead of analyze them--
It's what John Keats described as negative capability--A willingness to be with complexity, to allow a certain messiness-- to live the questions , as Rilke says --Or--as Jesus says-- abide with me.
Now, let's link this to the gospel and see why SOPHIA is important:
Jesus speaks to the disciples but he doesn't use any warm and fuzzy images here He doesn't say "I am the good shepherd "or "I am the vine " "I am the way " and so on
His language actually takes them aback: Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.
They probably want to say-- What about a metaphor here Jesus? Flesh--Blood-- those are too graphic--too explicit--
And there is an underlying religious problem with his words. The Law forbids Jews from consuming any blood whatsoever. The life principle or nephesh is in the blood, so it is a sin for a human being--a being filled with nephesh-- to consume the nephesh of beasts--much less the nephesh of another person--That's why the Orthodox soak meat in water for 30 minutes, salt it, let it stand for an hour and then wash it again to draw out all the residual blood before it is cooked.
So when Jesus gives such concrete imagery He makes it hard for the disciples--who were Jews--and hard for us.
We don't want to eat flesh--We don't want to drink blood--We want our religion neat and logical and abstract.
It is so tempting to keep Christianity as a mental activity. We'd prefer to think about the Cosmic Christ as a sort of Life Force--An anonymous energy field--
Another temptation is just to make Christianity into a set of rules, a list of causes and prohibited behaviors.
Over and over we see the temptation to have the Church give simple solutions for complex problems.
But--look at the gospels--
The Pharisees are always asking Jesus to give them yes/no answers, And Jesus is always telling them parables.
And the word parable means-- thrown together It's when both sides are knotted together to preserve the mess of the world.
If we just focus on abstractions--Or if we just focus on rules--we can just stay in our heads about Jesus and never get down to the radical implications of the Incarnation.
Never have to eat the gospel--Never have to take the good news inside us so it is part of the mess our lives And--therefore--never know what faith -- real faith is;
That's why we have so much religion --and so little faith.
Faith is not about being certain--faith is about surrendering to a God who is moving in our lives Moving in surprising--astonishing ways--Ways that lead us further into the mess of the world.
Christianity is not a mental activity.
It's an encounter with the Word made Flesh.
Jesus didn't say: " Think nice thoughts and I'll be with you" He didn't say " Just memorize these rules" No, he said: You must eat my flesh and drink my blood-- That's the scandal of the incarnation--
If the Word became flesh and dwells among us It means that to get Jesus we must encounter the world--All the world--Even the messy parts Eat the flesh and drink the blood--
There is always part of us that wants a privatized Jesus that is sanitized--We want a Jesus made in our image of what is holy That nice man with the beard who is always sweet And spouts off universal truths while sitting on a mountain top But SOPHIA pushes us into the world SOPHIA makes us deal with the Incarnate Christ--the living Christ You must eat my flesh and drink my blood.
That means we have to deal with mess--and ponder it in our hearts--Because the banquet that Christ lays--the banquet that Sophia lays is not only in our souls It's found in relation to other people.
It's found in the messiness of the world--It's found when someone hurts us and we have to resist our temptation to run away and instead go and work it out.
It's found when we don't label "those people" and instead see all people as children of God.
It's found when we keep faith even in the face of suffering--When we finally tear up our scripts for how we want the world to work and embrace the mess that is--
It's found in the adventure of being embraced by a living God for our world--our complicated illogical lives--our mess all of that is the flesh and blood of Christ--
And if we want him, we must grab hold of our messy lives
And eat.
Amen
Thanks to The Rev. Porter Taylor