John 6

Jesus and Elisha perform great miracles. What do we modern westerners do with this?

It’s possible you come from a church background in which the obvious takeaway is to pray for God to do the same thing in our lives here and now. Or maybe you believe such events are still possible, but less probable.

In any case, most of us preachers want to avoid suggesting that the difference between then and now is our lack of faith.

Reconciliation requires relocation. To see the effects of our food choices, we have to get close to the land.

“There is the danger of protecting ourselves from God by striving to be passive. The ‘I’ is very active in its attempt to surrender.”

The symbol of the fish resounds throughout scripture, and it splashes well beyond the pages.

Which would you rather do, contemplate belief or consume the flesh and blood of Jesus?

It made a lot of sense for Jesus to use the metaphor of animal sacrifice—at least, it did in the first century.

What is manna? Is it a Hebrew pun on mah hu, or as Everett Fox suggests, “Whaddayacallit”? Is it mountains of sweet insect excrement, as proposed by some scholars, or the stuff of legend?

For decades, my students have failed to grasp the resurrection of the body as an article of faith.

Jesus and a little boy vs. the voices of common sense

Who is Jesus really? The answers are almost as varied as the believers.

When my daughter was in grade school, her teacher included a unit on table manners. The rule that amused me was, “When served food, you should never ask, ‘What is this?’” I don’t think I’ve asked that question aloud, but I’ve certainly thought it, especially at potlucks.

It is the day after Jesus fed the 5,000. The picnic is over and Jesus has taken his disciples to the other side of the lake. But the crowds of people who shared the meal with him yesterday and who then tried to turn him into their king are not about to let him go.

The church of my youth majored in a miserly view of God’s grace. Its message was grim. Life had no edge, no elegance and no joy, but was only a bitter temporal existence largely limited to preparations for the sweet hereafter. Our bleak church building reflected the theology: it was aptly situated in the Pacific Northwest with its endless days of dreary, overcast weather.

Thou shalt not be ridiculous. Paul says, "See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." When Paul wrote that wonderful sentence he probably was sitting in an upper room in Athens. It was late at night, quiet, and all the fools were asleep.

Jesus called the Twelve together and put the question to them with unsettling directness: Do you also wish to go away? I wonder sometimes how I would have responded to the question. Because at times the truth is I do wish to go away.

God has become clear in the person of Jesus.