Proper 14: John 6:35, 41-51 (Understanding and Love)
Jesus said everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me - John 6:45b
The Olympics this past week provided an opportunity to watch sports that I would normally pass, if given the choice. Women's Beach volleyball, for instance, was in great demand, if the focus by NBC on this sport was to be trusted. And then there was diving. Watching the divers, i found myself admiring their skill as they launched themselves into the air. The commentators on NBC were also paying a great deal of attention to the skill of the divers. But whereas I used terms like "lovely", "marvelous" and other expressions of value, the commentators used a whole other set of descriptions, like: diving flight, riding the board, crow hop, armstand, and rip entry; expressions more accurate to what the divers had actually done, or not done.
While I, the ignorant amateur, used the only descriptions I could - descriptions that expressed some general appreciation of the diver's activity - the commentators expressed something closer to what we might call, knowledge or understanding, judgments that the divers themselves would recognize as giving account of their actions: from the smallest detail to the largest. My opinion might have been welcomed, but the commentator's description would have been trusted. They have a better idea of what is actually going on. So, when they said a dive was good or a dive was bad, I might disagree in how it made me feel, but I would need a lot more training in the art of diving to disagree as to the goodness or truth of the dive itself. In other words, I would need to acquire a great deal more understanding.
I am no diver, obviously, but I know that if i was to ever acquire a true understanding of diving that I would need something more than a Google search on diving terms. For this is what I did after watching the diving one evening. To dive well, to understand diving as a skill and craft, I would need training, not Wikipedia. Whenever we come to a new arena of learning, be it diving or algebra or pottery, we may begin with training manuals and teachers, but we do not acquire the skills we need by reading books or listening to the teachers, but by practicing in accordance with their teaching. Practicing has a twofold effect on our understanding: we acquire a sensitivity and insight into the demands of the activity at hand, and, simultaneously, become more attracted to dealing with it in the best way. As you get better at diving or algebra or pottery you become more enthusiastic about the activity. We become as it were, closely aligned with what we are doing, knowing better than before, how to do it well. We may even come to love what we do.
I should add here that teaching and training go along with learning the activity for oneself. The point I wish to stress is this: as the skill of diving or pottery becomes ours, and not simply that of the teachers, the understanding of what is be done, and how to do it, becomes an expression of our freedom to seek and strive for what is best, what is good and true. This is the stuff of knowledge.
I mentioned earlier that my initial response to watching the diving was expressions of value, like 'marvelous', amazing' and the like. My use of such terms demonstrate that while I know how such terms function in the English language, my understanding of the activity and the people involved was pretty paltry. I lacked knowledge. Now i suppose it is good to be self-aware of such things, especially when we consider how much easier it is to make judgments about activities or people with only value expressions at our use. We see images via the news, and we deem it "wonderful' or 'awful', depending on the kind of images; we hear politicians define policy, and we declare, 'now that's good for the middle class', or 'God protect us from this so-and-so'. We do this all the time, so much that it seems as though our interpretation of events or people is really the same - in our our estimation - as proper knowledge and understanding. Which, for the most part, it isn’t. It is common place in our culture to miss the difference between expressing an opinion, and speaking from within understanding.
Politics is not the only place where what passes as value expressions and what constitutes something closer to knowledge is at stake. For instance, questions of understanding are central to the developing argument in John's gospel regarding the identity of Jesus. What might it mean for us to know Jesus, to have the kind of understanding - the skill, if you will - to follow him? The crowds in the reading are quite offended by Jesus, stating that the local boy cannot be anything more than just that, the wonder-working neighbor from down the street. In our own day, if Jesus is considered at all it is often as an exemplar of a type of spiritual guru whom we safety interpret against our own lives, and take what we like about him, and ignore the rest. We might, for example, find that his life and death expresses our deepest religious convictions that then we announce through the language of sacrifice or humility or whatever. But what happens when we find a better way of expressing ourselves, better, that is, than what we find interesting in Jesus? Do we simply move on to some other source of personal conviction, some other source to match our spiritual needs?
When Jesus replies to the crowd with the words of the prophet, 'And they shall all be taught by God', and then later, 'I am the bread of life', he was essentially making the same point. The point being: that he is not the best way we have of expressing our convictions or judgments about ourselves and the world; rather, he is the way God expresses himself to us. In other words, it is not enough that we throw around terms like 'wonderful' or 'savior' or 'healer' when it comes to our understanding of Jesus, for the tables have been turned, and what matters is not that we have Jesus all figured out, but that we figure ourselves out - wonder who we are - in light of his identity as the source of life - as God in the flesh, God incarnate.
The implication of such a table-turning becomes clear when we consider how we come to understand, or better yet, learn Jesus. As rational, human animals, we learn in a particular way, through what i mentioned earlier, in practice and training and eventually, knowledge of what is to be done, and how to it well. Following Jesus - learning him - is, at one level, no different than any other kind of knowledge. We study his ways, we find ourselves in the places he said we could find him (in the bread and wine of communion, in the face of the stranger, in the care of the poor and dispossessed), and we speak with language shaped by his ministry of healing and thanksgiving. We can get enthused by studying and following the way of Jesus, the more we find that our lives become increasingly patterned on his. Yet, at a deeper level, learning Jesus is about receiving knowledge, knowledge from a source outside our understanding, knowledge that is light in a darkened room that illumines the mystery of us and our world. This is what Jesus is talking about when he speaks of being taught by God: it is to see with eyes trained by trust and faith in the God who gives us vision to recognize - albeit faintly sometimes - that Christ's life, death and resurrection overcome sin and death, and gives life to the world.
"I am the living bread", Jesus boldly claims. He might well have said, "I am the source of human life; I am wisdom to be feasted on". We are not asked to suspend the human task of learning or understanding in light of Christ's claim; rather, we are being offered, freely, a kind of divine knowledge that will re-orient our understanding, indeed our very existence, towards a path for living that leads to friendship with God and each other. Jesus' life is to be our unity with God, even as it is how we express our unity with each other. He is the body in which we shall all be interrelated members. For it takes such a sharing of a life to know the depth of love and friendship that is a result of a God who is already at the heart of our being. In learning Jesus, we engage personally and in equality with the personal love that is at the centre of thing, and this is engagement and knowledge of God living in us. It is knowledge we can rest in.
Jesus said everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me - John 6:45b
The Olympics this past week provided an opportunity to watch sports that I would normally pass, if given the choice. Women's Beach volleyball, for instance, was in great demand, if the focus by NBC on this sport was to be trusted. And then there was diving. Watching the divers, i found myself admiring their skill as they launched themselves into the air. The commentators on NBC were also paying a great deal of attention to the skill of the divers. But whereas I used terms like "lovely", "marvelous" and other expressions of value, the commentators used a whole other set of descriptions, like: diving flight, riding the board, crow hop, armstand, and rip entry; expressions more accurate to what the divers had actually done, or not done.
While I, the ignorant amateur, used the only descriptions I could - descriptions that expressed some general appreciation of the diver's activity - the commentators expressed something closer to what we might call, knowledge or understanding, judgments that the divers themselves would recognize as giving account of their actions: from the smallest detail to the largest. My opinion might have been welcomed, but the commentator's description would have been trusted. They have a better idea of what is actually going on. So, when they said a dive was good or a dive was bad, I might disagree in how it made me feel, but I would need a lot more training in the art of diving to disagree as to the goodness or truth of the dive itself. In other words, I would need to acquire a great deal more understanding.
I am no diver, obviously, but I know that if i was to ever acquire a true understanding of diving that I would need something more than a Google search on diving terms. For this is what I did after watching the diving one evening. To dive well, to understand diving as a skill and craft, I would need training, not Wikipedia. Whenever we come to a new arena of learning, be it diving or algebra or pottery, we may begin with training manuals and teachers, but we do not acquire the skills we need by reading books or listening to the teachers, but by practicing in accordance with their teaching. Practicing has a twofold effect on our understanding: we acquire a sensitivity and insight into the demands of the activity at hand, and, simultaneously, become more attracted to dealing with it in the best way. As you get better at diving or algebra or pottery you become more enthusiastic about the activity. We become as it were, closely aligned with what we are doing, knowing better than before, how to do it well. We may even come to love what we do.
I should add here that teaching and training go along with learning the activity for oneself. The point I wish to stress is this: as the skill of diving or pottery becomes ours, and not simply that of the teachers, the understanding of what is be done, and how to do it, becomes an expression of our freedom to seek and strive for what is best, what is good and true. This is the stuff of knowledge.
I mentioned earlier that my initial response to watching the diving was expressions of value, like 'marvelous', amazing' and the like. My use of such terms demonstrate that while I know how such terms function in the English language, my understanding of the activity and the people involved was pretty paltry. I lacked knowledge. Now i suppose it is good to be self-aware of such things, especially when we consider how much easier it is to make judgments about activities or people with only value expressions at our use. We see images via the news, and we deem it "wonderful' or 'awful', depending on the kind of images; we hear politicians define policy, and we declare, 'now that's good for the middle class', or 'God protect us from this so-and-so'. We do this all the time, so much that it seems as though our interpretation of events or people is really the same - in our our estimation - as proper knowledge and understanding. Which, for the most part, it isn’t. It is common place in our culture to miss the difference between expressing an opinion, and speaking from within understanding.
Politics is not the only place where what passes as value expressions and what constitutes something closer to knowledge is at stake. For instance, questions of understanding are central to the developing argument in John's gospel regarding the identity of Jesus. What might it mean for us to know Jesus, to have the kind of understanding - the skill, if you will - to follow him? The crowds in the reading are quite offended by Jesus, stating that the local boy cannot be anything more than just that, the wonder-working neighbor from down the street. In our own day, if Jesus is considered at all it is often as an exemplar of a type of spiritual guru whom we safety interpret against our own lives, and take what we like about him, and ignore the rest. We might, for example, find that his life and death expresses our deepest religious convictions that then we announce through the language of sacrifice or humility or whatever. But what happens when we find a better way of expressing ourselves, better, that is, than what we find interesting in Jesus? Do we simply move on to some other source of personal conviction, some other source to match our spiritual needs?
When Jesus replies to the crowd with the words of the prophet, 'And they shall all be taught by God', and then later, 'I am the bread of life', he was essentially making the same point. The point being: that he is not the best way we have of expressing our convictions or judgments about ourselves and the world; rather, he is the way God expresses himself to us. In other words, it is not enough that we throw around terms like 'wonderful' or 'savior' or 'healer' when it comes to our understanding of Jesus, for the tables have been turned, and what matters is not that we have Jesus all figured out, but that we figure ourselves out - wonder who we are - in light of his identity as the source of life - as God in the flesh, God incarnate.
The implication of such a table-turning becomes clear when we consider how we come to understand, or better yet, learn Jesus. As rational, human animals, we learn in a particular way, through what i mentioned earlier, in practice and training and eventually, knowledge of what is to be done, and how to it well. Following Jesus - learning him - is, at one level, no different than any other kind of knowledge. We study his ways, we find ourselves in the places he said we could find him (in the bread and wine of communion, in the face of the stranger, in the care of the poor and dispossessed), and we speak with language shaped by his ministry of healing and thanksgiving. We can get enthused by studying and following the way of Jesus, the more we find that our lives become increasingly patterned on his. Yet, at a deeper level, learning Jesus is about receiving knowledge, knowledge from a source outside our understanding, knowledge that is light in a darkened room that illumines the mystery of us and our world. This is what Jesus is talking about when he speaks of being taught by God: it is to see with eyes trained by trust and faith in the God who gives us vision to recognize - albeit faintly sometimes - that Christ's life, death and resurrection overcome sin and death, and gives life to the world.
"I am the living bread", Jesus boldly claims. He might well have said, "I am the source of human life; I am wisdom to be feasted on". We are not asked to suspend the human task of learning or understanding in light of Christ's claim; rather, we are being offered, freely, a kind of divine knowledge that will re-orient our understanding, indeed our very existence, towards a path for living that leads to friendship with God and each other. Jesus' life is to be our unity with God, even as it is how we express our unity with each other. He is the body in which we shall all be interrelated members. For it takes such a sharing of a life to know the depth of love and friendship that is a result of a God who is already at the heart of our being. In learning Jesus, we engage personally and in equality with the personal love that is at the centre of thing, and this is engagement and knowledge of God living in us. It is knowledge we can rest in.
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