Eternal Life

Last Sunday I spoke to you about my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. We go on pilgrimage because we are looking for something less. Less, in that we are given the opportunity to set aside much of the baggage of our daily lives. Literally, that means that we travel with a small pack, just five or six kilograms – one change of clothes, some toiletries, a sleeping bag, rain gear, a guide book, a notebook, and a pen. That’s about it. But less also means fewer distractions. No job, no home to look after, no computer. More time spent in the present, less in the past or future. You wake, you walk, you stop, you eat, you walk, you think, you stop, you eat, you talk, you wash, you write, you look after your feet, you sleep. A pilgrimage provides the opportunity for less.

But most of the pilgrims that I walked with were also looking for something more. That elusive, sought-after something more was expressed in a wide variety of ways. There were the concrete expressions: what career should I pursue, should I embark on this new relationship, should I leave home and family to start over in a new corner of the world? There were people at a crossroads in life: where do I go now that my loved one has died, my spouse has left me, my children are grown up, my job has ended. Then there were people whose articulation of the something more was less concrete: how can I live a life that’s more meaningful, more peaceful, more joyful? How can I leave behind a life that’s become a bore, stuck in a rut? For some, a minority, the quest for something more was clothed in explicitly religious terms; for many, it was a yearning to lead a more spiritual life. Their own intuition told them that the craving they experienced for meaning and purpose in their lives could be satisfied neither by human invention nor social convention. That there must be something more.

Today’s gospel, the continuation of Jesus’ reflections on the bread of life, is a response to this human longing. It is intended to move us from where we are to that elusive something more.

It works by way of analogy. We all know what it is to be hungry. We know in a visceral way that in order to live we have to eat. So that’s where Jesus begins. He feeds a hungry crowd with bread, the staple food of his culture. It’s what they need to survive. Feeding people is good. It’s what God did in the wilderness in ancient times. He provided manna, bread to the people, and they ate, and they survived. For a time.

Feeding people with bread is good, but it’s not enough. It’s foundational, sure, but we want something more. Our longings go way beyond just living in a biological sense, way beyond mere survival. As human beings, we crave meaning, purpose and relationship. We long for beauty and justice. We have stories to tell. We want to be fully alive, not just to live but to really live.

Which is why Jesus tries to move the crowd to this level by way of analogy. We know that we need to eat to live. If you eat bread, you have physical life, and then you will die.

But I am the bread of life. If you believe in me, you have eternal life, and you will live forever.

Last Sunday we talked about what it means to believe in someone, to believe in Jesus. We talked about the sense of the word believe which is relational, which means to trust, to have faith in, to place your confidence in, to hold dear, to love. And now that we have an idea of what Jesus means by ‘believe’, it seems to me that today we need to talk about what Jesus means by “eternal life”.

Because this is the something more that we seek. Jesus calls it zOEn aiOnion, the life of the eons, which we usually translate as “eternal life”.  Curiously enough, when Jesus talks about eternal life, he always talks about it in the present tense, as something that we can have here and now.

Do you know what it means?

You know, sometimes I find it frustrating that Jesus uses certain expressions without actually telling us exactly what they mean. But this isn’t one of those times. Because in John 17.3, Jesus tells us exactly what eternal life means, he pretty much gives us a definition:

“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

To know God is to have eternal life. And though no one has ever seen God, we can know God because it is Jesus who has made God known.

Which is why Jesus is the bread of life. And which is why if we believe in him, trust him, abide in him and he in us, we come to know God, which is eternal life.

Eat bread and you have physical life.

Believe in Jesus and you have eternal life. Because he’s the one who has made God known.

In my experience, the thing that always surprises people about eternal life is the “now-ness” of it. That it happens in the present. But that’s how the analogy works. When you eat bread, you are alive. It’s not like you are somehow lifeless, and you eat bread and then at some point in the future you get to have biological life. No, the whole point of eating is to be alive now.

That, according to Jesus, is how eternal life works too. You believe in Jesus, the bread of life, not so that at some point in the future you will be rewarded with eternal life. No, the whole point of believing in Jesus is to be alive, fully alive, now.  That’s why I was sent, Jesus tells us in chapter 10 of John. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

This is the something more that so many of us are longing for, this is life in all its abundance, life so full of meaning and purpose and joy and beauty and love and grace that it will burst the bonds of time and space as we know them. Jesus says that it’s the life that will last forever, that he will raise us up on the last day, and that we have to take on trust. But the fullness of it all, the aliveness of knowing and being in relationship and harmony with the one who created the universe and all that is in it, this we can get a taste of now.

“I am the bread of life. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me has eternal life. And this is eternal life: that you may know God, and God the only Son, who has made God known.”

Amen.

Homily. Yr B Proper 19. August 11 2024. Trinity

1 Kings 19.4-8; Psalm 34.1-8; Ephesians 4.25-5.2; John 6.35, 41-51