Sunday, August 23, 2015

Following Jesus Through Disappointment

Proper 16, Year B
John 6:56-69
The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez-Hobbs

Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Typically, Simon Peter’s words in this morning’s Gospel reading are taken as a triumphant confession of faith. In my seminary chapel, we’d sing them in a cheerful, major key as the Gospel Acclamation during Eastertide. But honestly, I’m not convinced that that’s how they sounded when Peter first spoke them.

Peter says these words in the immediate aftermath of the first great disappointment Jesus’ disciples experience in John’s Gospel. Ever since Jesus fed the five thousand men (and who knows how many more women and children there were) with five loaves of bread and two small fish—an amount of food roughly equal to two and a half Filet-O-Fish sandwiches—the crowd has been following Jesus around. Overnight, he went from twelve disciples to being the rabbi of a megasynagogue. And just as easily has he gained all these followers, he lost them.

Simon Peter and the others had all expected Jesus to fulfill the popular messianic expectations: to raise an army, defeat the Romans, and restore the Kingdom of Israel on earth. Jesus just raised an army and proved that God had given him the supernatural ability to feed it. Now it’s gone. Now what are the remaining disciples supposed to do? This is their first great disappointment, and it looks toward the second: the crucifixion. Jesus begins predicting his death at this point in John’s Gospel, because he has promised that the bread he will give for the life of the world is his flesh.

In Peter’s words this morning, I hear desperation, not triumph. Peter doesn’t say, “Why would we go anywhere else, Jesus?” He says, “This is the only place we have left.” In Jesus, the disciple’s despair and joy meet. And that paradox rings true in my own life. What about yours? It’s like Arianne said last week: for many people, the most powerful experience of God’s presence comes at some of the lowest points in their life, when they are caring for a dying loved one or trying to make sense of a tragic loss. The Book of Common Prayer puts it this way: “Yet even at the grave we make our song. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

In the September issue of GQ magazine, there is an amazing interview with Stephen Colbert, the soon-to-be host of The Late Show. In this most unexpected of places, Colbert talks candidly about his faith, and especially how he made sense of his father's death in a plane crash when he was ten. Toward the end of the interview, there’s this wonderful passage:
[Colbert] said, “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that's why. Maybe, I don't know. That might be why you don't see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It's that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.” [. . .] I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from [J. R. R.] Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears.  “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”
What punishments of God are not gifts? I find that quote both compelling and disturbing. I’m hesitant to attribute the vagaries of life to either God’s punishment or God’s favor, but I have learned, and am continually learning, that God is present in times of disappointment and loss.

Just as Jesus abides with the twelve as they decide to abide with him in the face of their disappointment. In John’s Gospel, the word “abide” occurs repeatedly, and it’s at the heart of John’s concept of what it means to be a disciple. Jesus’ disciples are the ones who abide with Jesus, the ones who remain with him in the face of disappointment.

Jesus promises us that he will abide with us, too. This first disappointment points to the second. This promise of death points to the crucifixion.  But that, as we know, is not the end of the story. Jesus abides with the twelve, and with us, even after death. Jesus abides with us in disappointment, in despair. Jesus abides with us as we learn to sense God’s presence in the midst of the things we most wish had not happened.

Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. Amen.

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