What are we feeding our souls? - John 6:51-58
Have you ever wondered why some people when in a drunken state can act out in sometimes violent and angry ways that are often completely out of character? That is an extreme example, but there are times when we all act out of character, and we don’t always understand why, unable to offer an adequate explanation to others or even to ourselves? The German spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle in two of his books: The Power of Now, and A New Earth provides an explanation that is worth reflecting on. In both of these books he explores the concept of what he calls the "pain body". He describes the pain body as an accumulation of old emotional pain, unprocessed trauma and unresolved negative and painful experiences. This pain, instead of being fully acknowledged and healed, because it feels too painful or overwhelming, gets suppressed and stored within us, forming a semi-autonomous entity in our unconscious mind which Eckhart Tolle refers to as the pain body. For some this pain body is small. For others the pain body of stored up unprocessed emotional pain is large and heavy. Over time, he suggests that this unprocessed pain begins to take on a life of its own controlling us and affecting us from the shadows of our unconscious. He suggests that it is not just a passive presence within us; it actively seeks to manifest itself and perpetuate its existence. The pain body thrives on negativity, and it becomes stronger when we experience or engage in painful situations, conflict, or suffering. A lot of the time he suggests that we use large amounts of energy in keeping these painful, unacknowledged parts of ourselves in check. The pain body is most easily recognized when we are triggered into emotional reactivity. When this happens, and the pain body erupts from our unconscious to the surface of our lives we may suddenly feel an overwhelming wave of anger, sadness, or fear that seems disproportionate to the situation at hand. This reaction is often the pain body "coming to life," seizing the opportunity to express itself and feed on the negative energy. One of the most vivid examples of the pain body erupting to the surface and taking control is when a person gets into a drunken rage. Alcohol lowers our inhibitions and diminishes the conscious mind's ability to maintain control. In such a state, the pain body can emerge unchecked, expressing itself with a force that can seem almost demonic. In a drunken rage, a person might say or do things that are completely out of character. They may lash out verbally or physically, driven by the pain body’s need to release pent-up negativity. The person may feel a strange, perverse satisfaction or relief in this release, even though it is destructive. This is because the pain body feeds on the energy of pain and suffering, both in themselves and others. For those with a particularly strong pain body, there can be a constant undercurrent of negativity in their lives, sabotaging situations that could bring happiness or peace and thus creating a cycle where the pain body feeds on further negativity, creating more situations that generate pain. Eckhart Tolle teaches that the key to healing and ultimately dissolving the pain body lies in growing our awareness. The first step is to recognize when the pain body is active within us. This requires us to be perceptive, present and mindful, to observe our emotional reactions without getting lost in them. The Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh expresses this process beautifully encouraging us to hold our pain, our negativity, and our anger with love and compassion like a mother holding and comforting her crying baby. Another way of saying this is to hold our pain and negativity with the compassion and kindness of Christ. And so when we become aware of the pain body, and hold it with awareness and compassion, we can begin to dis-identify from it. By compassionately observing the pain body without feeding it with further negativity, we start to weaken its grip on our lives and in its place we experience our true spiritual nature the divine light within, experienced as a deeper sense of peace and presence. In today’s Gospel reading from John 6:51-58, Jesus presents a challenging and profound teaching: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." What could these words mean? In the reading, the crowds take Jesus literally once again. They do not see that this isn’t about physical consumption but a deep, spiritual engagement. John’s Gospel which is filled with symbolism that invites us to understand these words at a deeper symbolic level. And I believe that what they point to is an ongoing, life-long engagement and meditation of the stories and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. Birch and Rasmussen, in their book “The Bible and Christian Ethics”, remind us that this kind continuous reflection and meditation on the life of Jesus begins to shape our characters. By constantly returning to the Gospel stories of Jesus, we allow the stories of Jesus’ life and teachings to permeate our being, seeping into our unconscious, influencing our thoughts, our values, and actions. This spiritual feeding transforms our character, aligning us more closely with Christ's own character—compassionate, just, and self-giving. In contrast to a life of feeding on and meditating deeply on the life of Jesus, Eckhart Tolle believes that the pain body feeds on negative emotions—anger, resentment, and fear—and grows stronger the more we indulge these feelings. If we feed our pain body, it begins to dominate our inner life, distorting our perceptions and behaviours. In light of Jesus’ teaching, we must ask ourselves: Are we feeding on Christ, or are we feeding the negativity of our pain body? To feed on Christ is to meditate on His love, peace, and forgiveness, allowing these to become the dominant forces within us. But if we neglect this spiritual nourishment, we may find ourselves unwittingly feeding our pain body, allowing bitterness and division and hatred to take root. This dynamic is beautifully illustrated in the Native American parable of the two wolves. A man had a dream in which he saw there were of two wolves fighting within him—one good and one evil. When he woke from sleep, disturbed by the dream, he shared it with a wise and trusted person. The wise person listened intently and then asked a penetrating question. Which one wins in the end? To which the man replied, "The one I feed the most." This parable underscores the reality that our character is shaped by what we consistently choose to dwell on and nurture. If we feed the negativity and pain in our lives, those qualities will grow stronger within us. But if we feed on the life and teachings of Jesus, nurturing virtues like love, patience, and kindness, these will prevail. Our Old Testament passage today comes from Proverbs 9:1-6 and personifies wisdom as a woman who invites us to her banquet, to feed on her bread and her wine, to feed on the ways of wisdom urging us to leave behind our "folly" and to find life by walking in the ways of perception. This echoes Jesus’ invitation in John 6 to partake of His life-giving flesh and blood. To accept this invitation of Christ is to choose the path of wisdom—a path that leads to true, eternal life which in John’s Gospel is not so much about living forever, but rather finding a life flowing with an inner abundance and expansiveness within. In conclusion it needs to be said that ‘feeding on Jesus’ is about more than a single act of faith; it is a lifelong process of character formation. It requires us to consistently meditate on the life, teachings, and personhood of Jesus, allowing His compassionate example to become a living presence within us that transforms us from within. And in doing so equipping us with the capacity to hold our own and others pain, anger and negativity with the kind of loving, compassionate awareness that can heal instead of harm. Amen.
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Love - The Bread from Heaven - John 6:41-51
I have spoken before of a book that I found in a charity shop a few years ago. It is entitled: “Why love matters, how affection shapes a baby’s brain.” From research that has been done, it outlines how important love and affection are in the development of children and baby’s. Love, care and affection are like a hidden food that nourishes a baby’s emotional and physical development, even shaping the wiring of the brain. And when the receiving of this love and affection is somehow interrupted, perhaps due to some family trauma or separation, and in other instances due to neglect, the implications can be quite far reaching and include: • Emotional and Behavioural Issues – • Mental Health Disorders - anxiety depression, low self esteem • Cognitive and Academic challenges • Social Relationship difficulties • Physical Health Issues. • Long term unhealthy Behavioural patterns – which includes an inability to make good and healthy decisions in life. • Trans-generational effects – these struggles and dysfunctions in turn get passed on to further generations. These issues in turn have enormous implications for society – including increased healthcare, higher rates of mental health issues, greater social services needed. I think we must be clear: It doesn’t mean that all mental health issues are the failure of parents. Some people are born with a predisposition towards mental health issues – mental health issues are complex. But the book is a reminder of just how important love is. Love is our spiritual food. It is not an optional extra. It is absolutely essential. Without it our humanity becomes dysfunctional and our societies become fractured. In lasts weeks sermon entitled “Satisfaction” we explored how Jesus can be the bread of life for us. Because he had awakened to the timeless, eternal I-Am within, he is able to help us to awaken to the eternal I-Am presence within us too – thus deep spiritual nourishment that leads to true satisfaction. Today, we continue on from last weeks Gospel passage from John 6:41-51. The passage begins with the reaction of the crowds to Jesus' claim: “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” Firstly I want to explore the idea of Jesus being the Bread that has come down from Heaven. In the original Greek, the word for Heaven is ‘ouranou’ which comes from the word ‘ouranos’ meaning sky or starry heavens. (It is where the planet Uranus gets it name – named after the god of the sky – the god of the heavens.) In the ancient world, the sky and the starry heavens were the most expansive things they knew stretched out above them. From the perspective of the inner world of the spirit, or consciousness, to say that Jesus is the bread that comes from heaven, suggests that Jesus lives from a place of spaciousness and expansiveness. To live from a place of openness and spaciousness like the sky, is to live in Love, for the way of Love is the way of the open and spacious heart. By contrast the crowds in the story grumble and question, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” The reaction of the crowds highlights a common struggle: the difficulty of seeing beyond the literal and familiar to grasp the spiritual and divine. The crowd's scepticism mirrors our own tendencies. Often, we are confined by our limited understanding and our habitual way of seeing things which leads to a frustration and inner grumbling which represents the heart that is narrowed, contracted and closed. Whenever we feel our hearts narrowed, contracted and closed, it is a sign that we are not living in the spaciousness and expansiveness of love. Secondly in this passage we see that Jesus responds to their grumbling by saying, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.” Here, Jesus speaks of what some might call ‘the Divine Draw’, the magnetism of the divine, the grace that initiates our spiritual journey. It is God who awakens in us the very desire to seek deeper meaning and fulfilment in life. The sense of discontentment and dissatisfaction with with the surface things of life is already the Divine within us drawing us back to God-self. This divine attraction is a fundamental concept in many spiritual traditions. It is the pull of the soul back towards its source, the divine reality. In the Tao Te Ching, the little book of Ancient Chinese Wisdom we read: “Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. And Jesus assures us that this journey of return to the Source, is initiated by the one he calls Abba (the Loving Heart of Wisdom), The One who is Love itself. Lastly Jesus concludes the passage with a profound statement: “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” It points to the selfless love of Christ which is expressed most profoundly in the archetypal image of crucifixion. To awaken to the timeless, I-Am Presence at the heart of life, that nourishes our deeper inner hunger, is ultimately to awaken to Love. And so it makes sense that it is through acts of selfless love, as we see in Jesus, and all the holy people who have ever walked this earth, God draws us back to God’s Self and awakens us to the Divine Love (that spaciousness of the heart and mind) that is our very essence as those made in the Divine Image. I close with a story that is often attributed to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. It expresses how the selfless love which we see expressed in Jesus is able to break open our hearts to that we can begin to feed on a deeper spiritual nourishment that transforms us. It is a story of a young man who was travelling around Europe with a group of friends. He was challenged by the friends to go into one of the confessionals of a cathedral and to make up a bogus confession, confessing to a whole list of outrageous sins. But the dare was that he would have to do whatever penance was assigned to him by the priest. But the priest saw through the young man, and after listening intently dismissed the young man without giving him any penance. Knowing that his friends would ask what penance the priest had given him, he asked the priest: Aren’t you going to give me any penance? After a moment of thought, the priest responded giving him a simple penance. He was to kneel in front of the crucifix and looking at the image of Jesus on the cross he was to say 3 times "All this you have done for me, and I don't give a damn". The young man was unable to complete the words, for in kneeling before the image of Christ’s act of selfless, sacrificial love, the superficial nature of his own life and love was revealed. In that moment, the selfless love of Christ symbolised in the archetypal image of Christ on the cross became a moment in which he began the journey of being drawn back to his spiritual source had begun, and would culminate in him becoming a priest himself. I don’t know whether the story is literally true or not. Stories don’t have to be literally true to convey truth. But it does express in a powerful way how selfless acts of love have the ability to draw us back to the Source of Love itself. Amen. I Am the Bread of Life - John 6:24-35
How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life right now? In 1965 by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the song "Satisfaction" becoming one of the The Rolling Stones most iconic songs. The irony of the song is that while it is titled ‘Satisfaction’ the repeated catch phrase of the song is ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’. According to Keith Richards, the famous guitar riff that drives the song came to him in a dream. He woke up and quickly recorded it on a cassette player before going back to sleep. Inspired by the guitar riff, Mick Jagger then wrote the lyrics. Upon its release in the United States in June 1965, "Satisfaction" became a major hit. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and stayed there for four weeks. The song also topped the charts also in the UK, where it hit number one 3 months later in September 1965. It’s success in the UK was a little slower than in the US abecause it faced some initial resistance to what was deemed its controversial lyrics at the time. Perhaps a little too raw for the prim and proper etquette of the UK. The lyrics of "Satisfaction" express a deep sense of frustration and disillusionment with the modern world and expresses dissatisfaction with various aspects of life, including consumerism, the pressure to conform, and the superficial nature of popular culture. This in itself is an irony because over the years Mick Jagger has become an icon of that very popular culture and consumerism. But at a deeper level, the repeated line "I can't get no satisfaction" expresses a deep existential frustration, that gets to the very heart of our human condition and the experience of many people. It points to the same existential longing and hunger expressed in Bruce Springsteen's song – Everybody’s Got a Hungry Heart. Human beings live with a deep inner hunger. We are constantly hoping to find something that truly satisfies us, but most of the time we are looking in the wrong places. Scrolling on our smart phone’s looking, hoping to find something that will somehow hit the spot. Hoping and dreaming for our sports team or sports stars to win the big one. Then we will finally be satisfied. Maybe buying the perfect house or the perfect car… constantly looking for satisfaction. In John 6:35, the writer of the Gospel has Jesus speaking these words to us: “ “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Last week we explored Mark’s version of the feeding of the 5000. Our Gospel passage today comes after John’s version of the same story. At the end of John’s version of the feeding of the 5000, Jesus, knowing that the crowds intend to try and make him king by force, withdraws to a mountain by himself. He has no such ambition. Hi Kingdom is not of this world. Instead, He instructs his disciples to cross over to the other-side of the lake where he will join them later. On the other side of the lake we find that the crowds have followed Jesus again. But in the narrative, Jesus knows that their motivation for seeking him is based on the physical bread they received, superficial surface things, rather than the deeper spiritual nourishment He offers. "You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." He challenges them to seek not just physical sustenance, but the "food that endures for eternal life." It is a profound challenge for all of us. Are we looking for outward, superficial rewards in life, t or are we searching for something deeper and more enduring, what Jesus calls, “food that endures for eternal life”. (It could also be translated – food that abides in eternal life… food that comes from the eternal, timeless dimension). Now leading up to this point we see a pattern in the narrative of John’s Gospel where those who encounter Jesus repeatedly misunderstand His words by taking them too literally. Nicodemus (John 3), for example, struggles to grasp the concept of being "born again," thinking in terms of physical rebirth rather than an inner spiritual rebirth. The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) initially interprets Jesus' offer of "living water" as a way to quench her physical thirst. Give me this water she says to Jesus. In today’s passage, the crowd is focused on the physical bread Jesus provided, missing the deeper significance of what Jesus has to offer them. Give us this bread they ask. To which Jesus responds: "I am the bread of life" suggesting that Jesus is somehow able to bring satisfaction to the deeper, spiritual hunger of the human heart. But what exactly does it mean to speak of Jesus as the Bread of Life? How is it that Jesus is able to satisfy our deeper more enduring hunger, a hunger for things of an eternal nature rather than things of a temporary, impermanent nature? One perspective or possible clue comes in those two simple words: ‘I-Am’. This is a literary device in John’s Gospel. The writer of John’s Gospel puts 7 I Am sayings in the mouth of Jesus. (I am the Bread of Life, I am the True Vine, I am the Door for the Sheep, I Am the Way the Truth and the Life). In doing so the writer of John’s Gospel is invoking the Divine Name revealed to Moses in the burning bush and connecting it with Jesus. This is a clue to why Jesus can be the Bread of Life for us. Because Jesus in his humanity has awakened to this Divine "I-Am" presence within Himself, he is thus is able to awaken us to this I-Am presence within us too. This "I-Am" presence is our true essence, our eternal, uncreated, timeless nature, beyond the outward form of our humanity. It is the part of us that existed before we were born, and it is the part of us that will exist when we depart from this world of form. As Jesus says earlier in the Gospel, when speaking to the Pharisees, ‘before Abraham was, I-Am’ (John 8:58). But the Pharisees misunderstand Jesus. They think he is claiming some kind of unique status as the Son of God, but a little later Jesus challenges their misunderstanding pointing out that in their own Scriptures it says ‘You are Gods’ (John 10:34) and in doing so Jesus is pointing to the DIvine I-Am that exists in all human beings. We all have the Divine I-Am dwelling within us. The problem is we tend to define the I-Am within us in too narrow a way. We confine the I-Am to our physical form and the story of who we think we are based on the outer world of form. But Jesus points us to an Eternal ‘I-Am’ nature within every human heart that is much bigger than who we think we are… As the writer of Ecclesiastes so eloquently puts it, ‘God has set eternity in the human heart’. (Ecclesiastes 3:11). There is something eternal, timeless, immeasurable, undefinable, uncreated within each of us, and until we discover it, we will forever be singing with Mick Jagger, ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’, because as Jesus says, we are looking for bread that spoils (John 6:27). We need to begin to look beneath the surface of things to find the Bread of Life, the bread that does not spoil, the Bread that can bring true and deep satisfaction. “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that abides in eternal life” says Jesus in John 6:27). Until we awaken to the eternal, timeless "I-Am" which is our true nature and which is always present within us, we will continue to live with an unsatisfied hungry heart, trying to fill the void with temporary and impermanent things. How do we do this? You might ask? One important way is to make time for stillness and silence. Stillness and silence are a gateway into that eternal and timeless dimenion of life and of ourselves. This is one of the reasons I am regularly making a time for stillness and silence in our Sunday services. But in our Christian tradition, the path to spiritual awakening is also to be found in Jesus himself. Jesus, through His own awakening to the "I-Am" presence within, shows us the way to awaken this profound truth within ourselves also. When we reflect and meditate on the life and meaning of Jesus in the Gospels, and become aware of the timeless and eternal shining through him, it has the ability to awaken us to the timeless and eternal that abides within us too, the timeless, eternal, divine "I-Am" within us. The life and teachings of Jesus in the Christian tradition in a profound way is our meditation practice in which we see a reflection or an archetype of our true selves, our true spiritual nature. If Jesus is, as John’s Gospel says, the ‘Only Son of God’ then you and I too in our deepest essence are also ‘the Only Son/Daughter of God’. What is true of Jesus is ultimately true of each of us to. Jesus shows us what it looks like when the ‘I-Am’ is fully expressed in human form. Because Jesus has awakened to His true identity as the Divine "I-Am," he is able to be the Bread of Life for us, guiding us to discover this same Reality within ourselves. That is why in the passage when the crowds ask Jesus “What must we do to do the works God requires?” the answer comes, “The work of God is this: to believe, have faith in, entrust yourselves in the one God has sent.” To have believe in Jesus, to have faith in him, to entrust ourselves to him, to his way and to his teaching, is to ultimately to discover the timeless I-Am Presence within ourselves and which is Present at the Heart of All Existence. When we awaken to this, we begin to live from a place of deeper inner connectedness, discovering our One-ness with the Heart of All things and that all that we need to feel truly safe, secure, happy, content and satisfied is already here and now. Eternity, already exists within us, the I-Am the Bread of Life that can bring true satisfaction to our hearts. Just some food for the journey… some food for thought for us all today. Amen. |
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