if I pray really hard?

Tuesday of the

Third Week of Easter

April 28th

READING: John 6: 30-35

So they said to him, ‘What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

 REFLECTION

Believe. It’s a huge theme in John’s gospel-account. What does he mean by it?

My previous post reflected on the same question. What does Jesus mean by this? I hinted, though not directly stated, that I believe that “believing” (that’s a complex sentence!) is the great gift of God’s Spirit. Too much Christian speech speaks (complex again!) as if belief, and faith too, where commodities which, if we screwed down our pressure valves really, really tightly, would be sufficient to get us through the day or over the next hurdle. If I believe really, really hard, then my prayers will be answered, Covid-19 will go away, and all shall be most well.

But what if “believing” isn’t our job at all? As soon as we speak of trying really hard to overcome niggling doubts we turn belief and faith into works, jobs. The whole Reformation was fought over that. Mind you, I’m not altogether a fan of Luther and his mates and followers. The Catholic Church of the day had things horribly wrong, but few Reformers did much better. Pope was kicked out of bed, Emperor or King got in, and we continued to believe, however much we denied it, that some sort of work would earn our way to God and God’s gift of redemption. If I believe really hard, if I pray really hard, if I read the scriptures, polish the brass, mow the lawns, endure the meetings …

What though if it’s not our job but the job of the Spirit of God to “believe really hard”? What if our job is simply to immerse ourselves in the belief, joy, love, hope that the Spirit-of-Grace wraps around us when we surrender to God? Maybe that’s why Jesus gave us “bread-as-Body” and “wine-as-Blood” as our sacred encounter with resurrection life.

As kai goes the Eucharist is pretty flimsy. Even more so now we can’t share it – and will possibly never share the “wine-as-Blood” again. But maybe it’s just an anamnesis (an incredibly important Greek word conveying a Hebrew concept that means a whole universe more than “remember”[1]) a tiny little action with which the Spirit, the “Comforter” predicted by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, wraps us up in divine grace, love, joy, hope …?

Then indeed we will never be thirsty – even if we die of thirst.

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[1] As I’ve noted elsewhere, “anamnesis,” normally translated as “remember” when it appears in liturgy, means so much more than what we normally mean when we remember. I remember when David Kirk lifted the first Rugby World Cup … but that event sure ain’t present in my living room when I do so. But anamnesis? Events are made present. ANZAC Day comes close to that, and did so especially this poignant, broken year, but still falls a million miles short. “Re-member” … “member-together-again,” as one day all life will be membered together again in the New Heavens and Earth (Rev. 21:1). And for that matter, when I use the word “remind” as I did above, it becomes “re-mind” in much the same way that the poet did when he wrote “reclothe us in our rightful mind” (though the original Whittier poem had something more colourful than Eucharist in mind!).