Desire Reorientation
Do you ever wonder how whacky we must sound to people unfamiliar with our traditions? This week, as I prepared to bring this message, I was reading some passages from the Bible. As I was reading I just thought, “this has got to sound like the most bizarre and bonkers stuff ever to someone who has never heard it before.” For some reason I was in the gospel of John. Let me read to you what I was taking in:
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit[e] and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Yo. Great. Cannibalism! Honestly, after my first reading I completely understood the disciples who were jumping ship at the end of this passage. “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” I went back and re-read it and the sentence, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it.” jumped out to me again. I thought I knew why they said it was hard. It was hard because it was WEIRD. And maybe the disciples were like, “Yo, Jesus, this whole eating flesh and drinking blood thing…I think we might have a hard time marketing that.”
I bounced back to read what came before this, and realized context is key. A few paragraphs before Jesus said this:
I’m telling you the most solemn and sober truth now: Whoever believes in me has real life, eternal life. I am the Bread of Life. Your ancestors ate the manna bread in the desert and died. But now here is Bread that truly comes down out of heaven…I am the Bread—living Bread—who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this Bread will live..The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self.”
Now I am starting to see why people were jumping ship. Folks weren’t jumping ship because it was weird, they were jumping ship because it really was too hard. Or, at least, their intentions for following Jesus were being called out…
I’ve shared this story with all of you before, but it is rising for me again this morning. When I was in middle school I was in love. Her name was Casey. We wrote notes back and forth, and held hands in the church vans on our way to retreats. We put a coat over our hands so the youth pastor wouldn’t see our public display of affection.
One day Casey told me she was moving. She would no longer attend the same school. That night I laid in my bed and prayed that God would change her families plans. I prayed that same prayer every night before bed. Why? Because at church the pastor had said that if you prayed hard enough God would give you what you wanted. And what I wanted was Casey to not move. I wanted to hold Casey’s hand more.
Either I didn’t pray hard enough, or the pastor was a liar. Casey moved. Mark’s heart was broken.
I think I proved myself worthy enough to pray every night for that outcome, and I don’t think the pastor was really a liar, he just had some bad theology. Namely, that God is the giant vending machine in the sky. I don’t think God is that.
And I think many of those following Jesus thought that he was going to be their ticket to riches, to fame, to a cushy new place within the newly constructed walls of his kingdom, and Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me will have real life…” Maybe the dots finally were being connected for some folks that day. When Jesus said the word “real” he was calling out the “fake” or “false” life they were chasing. And this “false life” we know it too, don’t we? It is the false life of the ego. That voice that is constantly trying to pull us further away from our truest selves.
Jesus was hitting the reset button on his followers desires. When Jesus speaks of this “real life” he is trying to persuade us that underneath the hollow promises of riches, and power, is another way of life that brings true happiness, and it requires a radical reorientation of our hearts and minds.
And this “real life,” well, we don’t need to guess any longer about what it looks like, or how to achieve it. That is where I think the bread and wine, and flesh and blood stuff starts to turn a corner. No longer do we need to take rely on those God has chosen to speak to, we have a person. With flesh and blood, embodied, standing in front of us, and living a human life as a way to see.
Even though we Quakers do not observe the Eucharist, I can see how a weekly practice of a symbolic communion with Jesus’ body helps us remember that we are committing ourselves to this “real life.” The ceremony and practice of communion is a weekly orientation, an opportunity to take an inventory of the ways that our hearts, brains, and bodies have been wooed by the desires of corporations to keep our attention and wanting more, or systems of power to protect ourselves from enemies who seek to dethrone us.
It feels like a tricky thing for me to talk about desire. I am aware of the way my Christian upbringing set me up for shame about my body, and deeming any bodily craving as sin. I want to be sure that no one thinks that is what I’m exploring here. During my two week vacation I wrestled with this. During the first part of our trip I felt guilty for how much I was enjoying myself. I spent my day fishing, reading, writing, napping, cooking, and eating and when I realized how happy it made me my religious trauma showed up and caused me to wonder if my satisfying these desires was sinful.
Of course it wasn’t, but I have to admit I wrestled with it. I think desire reorientation, or resetting often opens us up to new territory. We find ourselves in space where we know the happiness and purpose that comes from being compassionate to ourselves and our neighbors. We see the power in liberation from oppression, both for ourselves, and especially our neighbors who have lived and still live with those chains. When we taste the sweetness of this reorientation we know we don’t have to return to the other way. We can see the real life available to us.
I feel weird sometimes giving messages like this to this community. Y’all know this already. Y’all are living proof of this. And yet, I think there is power in saying it out loud again. To say it into the space of a faith community. To remind us of our call, of our purpose. To strengthen our resolve against the forces that seek to isolate us, to keep us from forming beloved and sacred community. I want this to be inspirational. I want it to spark creativity and passion in us. I want it to encourage all of you here this morning. We are doing courageous work, and it should feel wildly life-giving even when it is hard.
Some queries:
Has there been a time in your life when you’ve experienced an in breaking of this rich and unexpected “real life” that Jesus speaks of? What happened? What was that experience like? How did it change you?
What excites you about our opportunity to bring about “real life” in a world pulling us away from it? What can you imagine? What do you want to do? Is God nudging you towards something? What is it?