Pentecost 11 L19 B

Christians say that Jesus is the Son of God, and our savior and Lord. And sometimes we treat that ‘our’ word to mean that Jesus is our savior and that he belongs to us. But Jesus does not belong to us, it’s the reverse. And Jesus is always pulling us ahead and challenging our understanding. If you have more answers about Jesus than you have questions, you probably haven’t yet begun to understand who Jesus really is.

By reading through the sixth chapter of John, we have been refreshing our questions and answers about Jesus. Over the last two weeks and through about 30 verses of scripture or so, we’ve heard that:

• Jesus is known in abundance, not scarcity…faith, not fear
• Jesus is the Bread of Life, the Word of God, the I AM
• Jesus is God-with-us, somehow human and divine

That’s what we’ve heard today, that somehow Jesus himself, in his flesh and humanness, is this ‘forever bread’ that connects us with God, that gives life to the world in a way that other things can’t.

Jesus is talking about two things that don’t normally go together. Eating, food, bread, earthly stuff — and the forever stuff of God, whom we normally think of us ‘up there,’ beyond earth.

Jesus, in claiming to be the Bread of Life, connects eternal life with life in this world, right now.

So here’s a question, actually, it’s right there in the text: how can a human person, born of a woman named Mary (who has almost zero status even among humans) claim things that only God can do. The crowd asks about Jesus…don’t we know his father and mother? What gives him the ability to talk about ‘forever’ and everlasting life?

Or, to connect the same question to something that we continue to practice as Christians…how can the presence of an infinite God actually be contained in something so small and insignificant as a wafer of bread? Did you ever wonder that during Communion?

Or, to connect the question at a personal level…how can the presence of an infinite God actually be found in something as insignificant … as me?

For all the talk about eternal life, what I see are limits. We humans hit the limits. Constantly.

The limit is our life. No matter what we do, we cannot exceed that limit. Maybe if we’re clean-living and healthy we can extend the limit a little bit. A few years. Even that is not guaranteed.

And we know it. We dread it. We buy age-defying cream for our faces and keep our minds busy and generally avoid too much thinking about the fact that our limit is always approaching. But we know it’s there and we end up stressing over a lot of things and making some bad decisions because we know it’s there. Underneath the armor that we wear, the power and privilege that we wrap ourselves in, we are all fragile inside. Our life is precious and we are vulnerable.

We may only ever think about it during funerals, but it’s always true: there is nothing that we can do we change the fact that we each have a limit. We are finite.

The way we use religion hits some limits, too. And so much of what we call religion is directed from the ground up. It’s aimed at overcoming the limits we pretend we don’t have. A lot of what passes as Christianity is something like: ‘getting our act cleaned up’ and elevating our morals to some new height where maybe we can be closer to God.

Maybe you’ve tried religion in that direction, trying to get up to God. It usually doesn’t end well. It has never worked for me.

God works in the opposite way. Jesus said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and that is the way that God works.

Jesus is God-with-us, God-down-to-us. Downward is always the direction in which God works. God breaks down our limits from the other side.

God does this thing which you’d think would be the least expected thing for an infinite and almighty God to do which is to give up power, give up privilege, give up infinitude and become vulnerable and fragile like we are.

God committed to coming down to us, and living with us, and within our limits, within our struggles as humans. And this is why for ages, Christians have made seemingly outrageous claims like Jesus is God’s Son, but also God. That Jesus Christ was not like half human and half God, but was fully (100%) human, and also fully (100%) God. If you’re a math person, that equation will make you angry.

But even math has a limit. God does not.

What it means for us is that despite the math, despite the odds, Jesus is God’s Good News for those of us who have hit the limit anywhere in life. Those of us who have felt despair over the evil in the world, the evil around us, the limits of medicine to heal us. Jesus is God’s answer to the odds. Jesus is God’s answer to the limits of life that we face.

Jesus is God’s commitment to standing and suffering with us as we hit the limits of this world. Jesus is God’s commitment to us in our frailty and vulnerability. And Jesus is God’s commitment to each of us as a beloved, limited person of God.

If you suffer because of what you believe, Jesus suffers with you. If you suffer because of your age or health condition, Jesus suffers with you. If you suffer because of the color of your skin, Jesus suffers with you. If you suffer because of your gender, or the gender of the person you love, Jesus suffers with you.

By joining in our suffering, Jesus joins us in the redemption that God is working in this world that wherever the limits of our understanding, love, and life are reached … God breaks through, comes down to us, and fills our limited selves with a love that is limitless. With a love that knows no bounds.

We follow Jesus in the same way that God came to us by giving up power, giving up privilege, becoming vulnerable and fragile for our sisters and brothers. That’s the direction by which Jesus came to us and that’s that direction in which Jesus sends us.

When we give, spend, and live for others, we join Jesus who also gave, spent, and lived his life with us and for us. In joining us, in dying with us, Jesus destroyed death, and brought God into our world, into our lives — even our fragile, limited lives. Jesus shares with us one thing that has no limit: God’s love.

For God, who is limitless, to walk beside us in our frailty and weakness — it makes no sense. For the person named Jesus and called God’s Son to also be God walking with us — it makes no sense.

But then again, Love doesn’t ever make sense, does it?

Each of us is already loved, not because we have made our way closer to heaven, but because God has come down to us in Jesus who gave us God’s own limitless self in the middle of our limited lives.

In whatever ways that life has limited you, Jesus has broken through those barriers to share with you one thing that has no limit: God’s love.