For the Life of the World

I’ve spent this past week coming down off the high of Holy Week at an annual retreat with a group of close pastor friends. We’ve spent years doing this, contemplating things like the spiritual significance of bread and wine, friendship and hospitality. This year, we decided to open the invitation to other pastors in the EPC, to share a taste of what we’ve been so blessed to receive through our own close friendship. It was risky in some ways. We are scattered across the country and don’t get to do this often, so we were all jealous for more dedicated time with each other. But we also just couldn’t unsee the lonely faces of our colleagues, and we felt compelled to try something new for their sake. It could have been a colossal failure, but, as my friend Tanner says, “Maybe you can’t make a horse drink, but you can salt the oats.”

Beginning this new series with Jesus’ self-revelation as the Bread of Life, I keep thinking about the things we’re all hungry for. Another friend, Brandon, is completing a doctorate on the neuroscience of discipleship. He threw out a great line in his talk on that topic that I’ll be stealing forever. He said that the core of the “fight or flight” instinct in animals and humans alike can be boiled down to answering the question, “Are you the food… or am I?” Humans are certainly more than animals, but we’re not less. Remember Paul’s warning in Galatians, “be careful, lest you devour one another.”

That’s what makes Jesus’ very first I AM statement so inconceivable. We’re in this impossible situation where we need not to be devoured, and we need not to devour one another, and we’re starving. And he says, I am the food. It’s a staggering statement that elicits one of two responses: “That’s hard to swallow and I’m going to survey my other options,” and “That’s hard to swallow and I know there are no other options.” I’m looking forward to exploring it all with you this first Eastertide Sunday!