John 6

Monday, February 18, 2013

John 6

Today has been pretty miserable, as I am very sick - and that kind of active sick that makes you think about it all the time.  I was about to start going on at length, but then I stopped myself.

This is my excuse for what I do not doubt will be to one degree or another missing the meat of this long and dense chapter.  There's the feeding of the five thousand, the brief version of walking on water, the passage we always talk about when we explain and defend Transubstantiation, and this little gem:

³⁹ Now the will of him who sent me is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, but that I should raise it up on the last day.

Which, even given its placement beside verses that spell out the belief requirement (although not in such clear cut language as other translations), gives additional comfort and reassurance about the Gospel of Inclusion.

But what I also want to talk about today is that the end of the chapter talks about people leaving because Jesus's words are too strongly worded or strange or just hard to accept and process.

It put me in mind of a lot of my Fundamentalist Atheist friends on Facebook.  One in particular is always posting memes pointing out the more ridiculous elements of religion or juxtaposing two teachings in a humorous and supposedly discrediting way.

And I've always said that sacred stories always sound crazy.  Religion always sounds like nonsense and gobbledegook from the outside.  Early Christians were reported as cannibals.  Our sacred story is no less outlandish, really, than the Scientology alien Thetans (in fact, energy beings roaming the universe sounds downright credible in a way - we all know there's SOME kind of spark of that separates the sentient from the intelligent animals.  We all know there's something that can die while a person still technically lives).

You have to be able to handle that, to reap the rewards of faith.  You can't be frightened off at the crazy-sounding doctrines, at the hoops you have to jump through for RCIA (for example), you have to be willing to stay the course.  That's what faith is - an abiding trust in God that all the nonsense is part of a plan we just can't see all of.

The blessings of the sacraments is a reassurance of that fact.

We have to be able to handle the crazy-sounding things, because we have felt the words of everlasting life, as Peter said.  We know their truth deep down in our souls.  We are the followers of Christ and the people of faith.  Where else would we go?