Believing
Commentary
The lessons for this Sunday call our attention to believing, which is the fundamental characteristic of religion. Yet, the stories are very honest in showing that believing may not be easy.
Elijah's predicament may be the most readily understood. When his sincere beliefs got him into trouble, he wanted to give up. He didn't give up his faith in God. Rather, he lost his confidence that faith could bring any benefit. Or more specifically, he could not perceive that faith would any longer contribute to the purpose for his life.
If we have not had such experiences of our own, we probably have known acquaintances who have. Would that everyone could learn, Elijah did, that God cares and then receive renewed purpose! Needless to say, the church's ministry is blessed when it helps people to find the meaning and usefulness that come from new goals and new associations.
While John's gospel never uses the noun "faith," the verb "believe" occurs very frequently, nine times in chapter 6.
The topic of believing was introduced in the lesson for last Sunday, when the crowd was manifesting its desire for personal benefit. Not like Elijah, the people craved physical satisfaction rather than power for service. So, like Jesus, the church faces the challenge to turn people from concentrating upon ephemeral objectives and toward fulfilling their transcendent potential.
Although the people wanted to see evidence on which they could base their believing, they were very limited in what they could perceive as adequate evidence. They might defend themselves by thinking that seeing is believing, but they failed to grasp how the reverse is also true. Believing is seeing.
Believing in the scientific method provides motivation for applying it. Believing in democracy helps to see greater merit in it than do those who believe in one-party government with a centrally planned economy.
Jesus was calling people to believe in him as the way to see God and receive eternal life. Believing was not primarily an intellectual exercise, not even the acceptance of knowledge about Jesus, so much as a dynamic personal relationship of trust. Hence the use of the verb rather than the noun.
Later Jesus would say that his words were spirit and life (6:63). Believing in Jesus could seem threatening because it brought a new personal identity.
OUTLINE I
Tangible transcendence
1 Kings 19:4-8
A. v. 4. Futility and transcendence. Elijah had courageously fought against the Baal prophets and believed he had won for Yahweh, until Queen Jezebel threatened revenge (19:1-3). Now in hasty flight, he despaired, though he recognized the transcendent God was in control. He prayed to God for death. He felt his work and usefulness were finished.
B. vv. 5-7. Persistence from God. After Elijah tried to escape his depression in sleep, God gave him no rest. In the typical manner of ancient stories about the prophets, especially Moses, Elijah and Elisha, the distinction between history and dreams, visions, or ecstatic experiences is not important. God wakes the prophet and insists he eat, and does it twice! The meal is the typical fare of flat unleavened bread for pilgrims at the famous oasis of Kadesh on the regular route from Beersheba in southern Israel to Mount Horeb-Sinai. Both the oasis and the mountain were associated with precious traditions about encounters with God in the early formative years for the people of special revelation and purpose.
C. v. 8. Survival for renewal. Though the food seemed tangible, it had a transcendent quality to sustain the prophet for his whole journey of 200 to 300 miles or even for 40 days. The story really means to teach God's personal concern for the faithful believer who suffers from all too tangible opposition from without and despair within. God offers transcendent resources to live and serve another day (19:9-18).
OUTLINE II
New motivation for ethics
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
A. vv. 25-29. Christian ethical motivation arises from more than ordinary human concerns. (1) The community of believers, being the body of Christ, gives a special reason for honesty. (2) If anger is unavoidable, it must be quashed lest it assume demonic proprotions. (3) Honest hard work is preferable to thievery in order to enable sharing with the needy. (4) Speech is governed by the desire to impart grace to others and build them up.
B. 4:30--5:2. Motivation from God is here a trinitarian ordering. Having received the mark of baptism, believers have a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit that has implications for behavior. God's Spirit is dynamically caring, not distantly unimpassioned. Because God in Christ is forgiving toward all Christians, they are to be forgiving toward each other. Unabashedly, God is held up as a model to be imitated. Yet the practice need not be entirely self-conscious. Rather, when living with God, as closely as children with a parent, the divine attitudes should be catching. Especially when the revelation is as clear as Christ's sacrifice, Christians should recognize the nature of love and the special quality expected in their lives. Recalling the quaint ancient anthropomorphism about God enjoying the smell of roast beef in the burntoffering, the author speaks of the goal, rather than the method, of the ethical life, that is, God's pleasure. "To him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ ..." (3:21).
OUTLINE III
Help for believing
John 6:41-51
A. vv. 41-42. The incredibly unique nature of Jesus continues as the topic, but dialogue turns to complaint and the crowd is replaced by one contentious segment. Now the question is not open-ended, but encased with disbelief. John uses it to summarize the truth about Jesus. He is from heaven as well as from an earthly family.
B. vv. 43-45. How to believe? Exaggerating every difficulty would not help. As for the Israelites between the Exodus from Egypt and settlement in the promised land, complaining solved nothing. Only God could help. God was the source of salvation in both instances and the people needed to be open to God's action.
To believe, people needed to be taught by God as promised in Isaiah 54:13. Jesus was teaching that the time of fulfillment had arrived.
C. vv. 46-51. Admittedly, it would be easier to believe if a person could see God. No one ever had, however, not even Moses, who had to be satisfied with looking out from a crevice in the mountainside to behold the glory of God after it had passed by (Exodus 33:20-23). Only Jesus had seen God (1:18). People who came to him were as close to seeing God as they ever could be (14:9).
They had the best chance to believe when Jesus was present. Believers could expect not only resurrection in the eschaton (v. 44), but they could expect eternal life right now. The life of faith carried its own self-evident proof. Although he had ascended by the time the gospel was written, Christ was still present as the bread of life in the Eucharist.
Elijah's predicament may be the most readily understood. When his sincere beliefs got him into trouble, he wanted to give up. He didn't give up his faith in God. Rather, he lost his confidence that faith could bring any benefit. Or more specifically, he could not perceive that faith would any longer contribute to the purpose for his life.
If we have not had such experiences of our own, we probably have known acquaintances who have. Would that everyone could learn, Elijah did, that God cares and then receive renewed purpose! Needless to say, the church's ministry is blessed when it helps people to find the meaning and usefulness that come from new goals and new associations.
While John's gospel never uses the noun "faith," the verb "believe" occurs very frequently, nine times in chapter 6.
The topic of believing was introduced in the lesson for last Sunday, when the crowd was manifesting its desire for personal benefit. Not like Elijah, the people craved physical satisfaction rather than power for service. So, like Jesus, the church faces the challenge to turn people from concentrating upon ephemeral objectives and toward fulfilling their transcendent potential.
Although the people wanted to see evidence on which they could base their believing, they were very limited in what they could perceive as adequate evidence. They might defend themselves by thinking that seeing is believing, but they failed to grasp how the reverse is also true. Believing is seeing.
Believing in the scientific method provides motivation for applying it. Believing in democracy helps to see greater merit in it than do those who believe in one-party government with a centrally planned economy.
Jesus was calling people to believe in him as the way to see God and receive eternal life. Believing was not primarily an intellectual exercise, not even the acceptance of knowledge about Jesus, so much as a dynamic personal relationship of trust. Hence the use of the verb rather than the noun.
Later Jesus would say that his words were spirit and life (6:63). Believing in Jesus could seem threatening because it brought a new personal identity.
OUTLINE I
Tangible transcendence
1 Kings 19:4-8
A. v. 4. Futility and transcendence. Elijah had courageously fought against the Baal prophets and believed he had won for Yahweh, until Queen Jezebel threatened revenge (19:1-3). Now in hasty flight, he despaired, though he recognized the transcendent God was in control. He prayed to God for death. He felt his work and usefulness were finished.
B. vv. 5-7. Persistence from God. After Elijah tried to escape his depression in sleep, God gave him no rest. In the typical manner of ancient stories about the prophets, especially Moses, Elijah and Elisha, the distinction between history and dreams, visions, or ecstatic experiences is not important. God wakes the prophet and insists he eat, and does it twice! The meal is the typical fare of flat unleavened bread for pilgrims at the famous oasis of Kadesh on the regular route from Beersheba in southern Israel to Mount Horeb-Sinai. Both the oasis and the mountain were associated with precious traditions about encounters with God in the early formative years for the people of special revelation and purpose.
C. v. 8. Survival for renewal. Though the food seemed tangible, it had a transcendent quality to sustain the prophet for his whole journey of 200 to 300 miles or even for 40 days. The story really means to teach God's personal concern for the faithful believer who suffers from all too tangible opposition from without and despair within. God offers transcendent resources to live and serve another day (19:9-18).
OUTLINE II
New motivation for ethics
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
A. vv. 25-29. Christian ethical motivation arises from more than ordinary human concerns. (1) The community of believers, being the body of Christ, gives a special reason for honesty. (2) If anger is unavoidable, it must be quashed lest it assume demonic proprotions. (3) Honest hard work is preferable to thievery in order to enable sharing with the needy. (4) Speech is governed by the desire to impart grace to others and build them up.
B. 4:30--5:2. Motivation from God is here a trinitarian ordering. Having received the mark of baptism, believers have a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit that has implications for behavior. God's Spirit is dynamically caring, not distantly unimpassioned. Because God in Christ is forgiving toward all Christians, they are to be forgiving toward each other. Unabashedly, God is held up as a model to be imitated. Yet the practice need not be entirely self-conscious. Rather, when living with God, as closely as children with a parent, the divine attitudes should be catching. Especially when the revelation is as clear as Christ's sacrifice, Christians should recognize the nature of love and the special quality expected in their lives. Recalling the quaint ancient anthropomorphism about God enjoying the smell of roast beef in the burntoffering, the author speaks of the goal, rather than the method, of the ethical life, that is, God's pleasure. "To him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ ..." (3:21).
OUTLINE III
Help for believing
John 6:41-51
A. vv. 41-42. The incredibly unique nature of Jesus continues as the topic, but dialogue turns to complaint and the crowd is replaced by one contentious segment. Now the question is not open-ended, but encased with disbelief. John uses it to summarize the truth about Jesus. He is from heaven as well as from an earthly family.
B. vv. 43-45. How to believe? Exaggerating every difficulty would not help. As for the Israelites between the Exodus from Egypt and settlement in the promised land, complaining solved nothing. Only God could help. God was the source of salvation in both instances and the people needed to be open to God's action.
To believe, people needed to be taught by God as promised in Isaiah 54:13. Jesus was teaching that the time of fulfillment had arrived.
C. vv. 46-51. Admittedly, it would be easier to believe if a person could see God. No one ever had, however, not even Moses, who had to be satisfied with looking out from a crevice in the mountainside to behold the glory of God after it had passed by (Exodus 33:20-23). Only Jesus had seen God (1:18). People who came to him were as close to seeing God as they ever could be (14:9).
They had the best chance to believe when Jesus was present. Believers could expect not only resurrection in the eschaton (v. 44), but they could expect eternal life right now. The life of faith carried its own self-evident proof. Although he had ascended by the time the gospel was written, Christ was still present as the bread of life in the Eucharist.
