The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
August 22nd, 2021
Proper 16 (B): 1 Kings 8: 1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43; Ps 84; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69
St. Peter’s confession of faith is such an important moment in the Gospel narrative, that it gets its own feast day on the church calendar. But the reading on that day is always taken from Matthew. That’s the version (mirrored in the Mark and Luke as well) where Peter, when confronted with Jesus’s question “Who do you say that I am?” boldly and unequivocally proclaims: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And for his faithful assertion, Peter is rewarded with the keys to the Kingdom and is established as the rock upon which the church is to be built.
Interestingly, we never hear the version of Peter’s confession of faith that comes from John on that feast day. Perhaps that is because, while we get to the same statement of faith, the tone is not nearly so triumphant. Jesus has come to the end of his lengthy soliloquy about the Bread of Life. And as we explored last week, it ends with a bizarrely cannibalistic metaphor that has everyone a little queasy and more than a little confused. “This teaching is difficult,” they say. It’s dry, hard, tough to chew on, the original Greek implies. This bread is stale in their mouths. It turns a lot of them off. And so they turn away, we are told. Up until this point Jesus’s movement had been gathering momentum, things were rolling, people were flocking to him. But all this talk of bread has really put a damper on things. That’s the mood when he turns to his twelve closest disciples and says, “Do you also wish to go away?” “Lord, to whom can we go?” Peter responds. Not exactly the ringing endorsement we expect. And yet, I find this confession of faith even more compelling than the one in the synoptic Gospels. The disciples may not have understood what Jesus was getting at with all this talk of living bread. And it may have been an unpalatable teaching to swallow, but there remains something that keeps them there. They can’t go away, because, as Peter says, “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to know and believe that you are the Holy One of God.”
I find this version of Peter’s confession of faith so compelling because it is much more commensurate with my own relationship with Jesus. There’s some hard stuff to understand, some things I don’t want to do, and frequent temptations to turn away. And yet somehow, even when I feel like I want to, I can’t. Something keeps me there. If the synoptic Gospels portray Peter’s faith in Jesus, the Messiah, as a rock, this version in John is more like a bungy cord. A faith that stretches and pulls but doesn’t snap; a faith that is always tugging on us, drawing us back, drawing us in. Like Peter, something ineffable has drawn me to Jesus and, despite the difficulties of discipleship, that invisible tether remains.
What is that tether–that invisible bungy cord that keeps me tied to Jesus? It is the Holy Spirit. We are, you might say, “drawn in the Spirit” to Jesus. When Peter says, “We can’t leave because you have the words of eternal life,” Jesus says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life…It is the spirit that gives life.”
The New Testament uses two Greek words for “life.” One is bios, from which we derive words like biology or biography. The other word, the one both Peter and Jesus use in this exchange, is zoe. In his book The Gift, author Lewis Hyde describes the difference between these two types of life in this way: “Bios is limited life, characterized life, life that dies. Zoe is the life that endures; it is the thread that runs through bios-life and is not broken when the particular perishes.”[1] C.S. Lewis picked up on the importance of this distinction when he wrote in Mere Christianity, “Bios is the sort of life which is always tending to run down and decay…[Zoe is] The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe.”[2] Bios is life in the flesh. Zoe is life in the Spirit to use the New Testament dichotomy. And if this bread of life language has taught us anything, it is that zoe is the kind of life Jesus nourishes, the kind of life he is calling us to, the kind of life that Peter and the disciples experience in his presence. “You have the words of eternal zoe,” Peter says. That’s why they can’t go away. Because Jesus, through the Spirit, draws them, draws us, from the bios plane of life to the zoe.
According to C.S. Lewis this is the entire purpose of Christianity, to move us from a bios-based existence to a zoe-based one. Because while bios is not bad, it is not all. We know this. We have had moments in our lives where we experience something that warms our hearts or steals our breath or boggles our minds. Moments when we are touched by or in touch with something greater than the biological reality that stimulated such a response. Moments when the muted gray scale of our functional existence bursts into a rainbow of technicolor like Dorothy when she lands in Oz. Moments when life appears so much more exciting, so much more appealing, so much bigger than you. That is the zoe shining through the bios. And it is those moments of transcendence that serve as the tether which keeps us bound to Jesus, and keeps drawing us back to him because that is the kind of life he offers us. In those moments we are tasting the bread of life that has come down from heaven, and it makes us hungry for more.
One of our principle purposes as a church, as a community of people drawn together in the Spirit, is to try and provide opportunities for people to experience these moments of transcendence; to bring us in touch with the living God; to nourish our zoe and open the possibility for it to shine through. To accomplish this task, we have been passed on some helpful tools: bread and wine, prayer and scripture, music and art. It is why we try to foster deep, honest relationships between people through fellowship and pastoral care because, as Jesus showed us, God often speaks most clearly in our connections and conversation. It is also why we provide opportunities to serve others and work for justice and equality because in doing so we experience the paradox that in giving of our bios for those in need, we receive nourishment for our zoe. It is also why we provide so many opportunities for study and discussion, because for many of us, the process of learning, of using our marvelous, mysterious minds stimulates and sustains our souls. That is our work and that is why we do it.
Some of this work has been able to continue through this pandemic. Much of it has been forced to find new forms. And some of it has been suspended. But the longer this pandemic goes on, while I continue to be concerned for our biological existences, I am increasingly concerned about the health of our souls; our individual and collective zoe. When our bios is under such sustained attack it becomes harder and harder to access our zoe. When we are simply trying to get by, to hold it together, to figure it out as we go along, the ability to break into that plane of spiritual existence gets increasingly challenging. I’ve noticed an evolution in myself over the course of this pandemic. There was the acute sense of fear and confusion that confronted the early days. Then there was a profound sense of solidarity, connection with others as we all suffered through common frustrations and dangers in our daily lives. Then there was hope, excitement for a return. But now, as we confront another wave of cases and go through the painful shift from pandemic to endemic, I notice an encroaching feeling of stony, stoic resignation. I can feel a steeling of my nerves, a hardening of my heart, a drying up of my soul; the kind of survival mode that you enter when you know you need to push through something really difficult. Fear, anger, compassion, hope those were all colorful emotions. What worries me now is the gray that is settling in. Existing in such a state is to live functionally, not abundantly. And while functional may be all we can muster at this moment, living that way is to live more and more locked in the bios with less and less access to the passion and excitement and vitality of the zoe. And the zoe is where God meets us, and where we meet God.
I’m not implying that you all need to come back to church right now in order for your zoe to survive. I am deeply grateful for those who have joined us recently for worship in person, and I realize many of us still aren’t quite ready to come back. But what I am saying is that, whoever we are, wherever we are, however long this goes on, we need to find ways to tend to our zoe. Because ultimately that is the source of life that will see us through this. And the best way I know to nourish that kind of life is the same way that St. Peter knows to do it: stick close to Jesus. That is why we, your clergy, staff and parish leaders, though we are as worn out and frustrated as the rest of you, are preparing a host of opportunities this fall for us to tend to our zoe and let it shine through our increasingly strained bios. Make a point to join us, however you can. Not just because we need you which we do, but because you need to. We want you to be “Drawn in the Spirit” so that no matter what, you still feel tethered to us, your church community, your family of faith, and most importantly to Jesus, the Christ, the Holy One of God. For that which binds you to God, and which holds together our community is made of stronger stuff than even a virus. It can stretch across any distance and it will not break. It will be the thing that nourishes and sustains our starving souls. Jesus, the bread of life, the bread of zoe, given for you. Take. Eat. Amen.
[1] Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World. Third Edition, Vintage Books, Penguin Random House, New York, NY (2019) p. 41
[2] Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity, HarperOne, New York, NY (1952) p. 159