10. Born from Above – Growing into Solid Food
10. Born from Above – Growing into Solid Food.
There is so much to think about as we consider eating our solid spiritual food. We think of the three Christian food groups: Digesting the Scripture; Feeding on Christ; Feasting on the Eucharist. One cannot in good conscience ever accuse the Lord of providing a bland diet! In all three heavenly foodstuffs, we take in the Truth, thereby inviting that Truth to become a part of our very self… body, soul and spirit.
THE SOLID FOOD OF SCRIPTURE, THE WORD OF GOD.
“He was the Word who spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
And what the Word did make it;
I do believe and take it.” (John Donne).
Emmaus Way. We are shown on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 the only way to understand the Word, the only way to take Scripture in and digest it for soul food… Jesus has to be the One who opens up the Bible. We learn to depend on the Spirit of Christ to open it up, anoint the words, and feed us with it. Teachers of Scripture who are not anointed by God will give us stale bread and lifeless food. Whenever we are reading the Bible for ourselves, we are to ask Jesus to anoint the words and open the Word for us, just like He did on the road to Emmaus. Luke couldn’t have put it any better. “He opened their minds to understand the Scripture.” (Luke 24:45).
Chewing the Word. “To meditate is to read a text and to learn it ‘by heart’ in the fullest sense of this expression, that is with one’s whole being: with the body since the mouth pronounced it; with the memory which fixes it; with the intelligence which understands its meaning; and with the will which desires to put it into practice.” (Jean Leclerq).
Holy Scripture. “The Bible is holiness in words. The words of the Bible are like dwellings made with rock. The Bible is the light of God given in the form of language. How is it conceivable that the Divine should be contained in such brittle vessels as consonants and vowels? It is as if God took these Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power, and the words became a live wire charged with His spirit. Just as it is impossible to conceive of God without the world, so is it impossible to conceive of His concern without the Bible. If God is alive, then the Bible is His voice. There is no other mirror in the world where His will and spiritual guidance is as unmistakably reflected.” (Abraham Joshua Heschel, God In Search Of Man, 1955).
The Bible is not an object of worship. It would be easy to make an idol out of Scripture. The Bible is so compelling and powerful and credible, it would be easy to fall into worshipping it. But, as George MacDonald once said, that would be like the pet dog staring at the master’s pointing finger instead of where the finger is pointing. The Scripture is full of light, MacDonald said, to help us walk in the darkness. But that would be moonlight. The moon is only a reflection of the sun’s light. And Jesus is the sun, the Source of light in our darkness. Honor Scripture, revere it, live by it, but don’t worship it. As Jesus Himself declared to the Bible scholars of His day, “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.” (John 5:39-40).
Ready to Listen. “Whatever method we choose we must come to sacred Scripture ready to be placed at God’s disposal and therefore keen to hear His Word. This keenness to hear may be compared with that of a mother for her baby. Before giving birth to her child she may have slept soundly through the loudest noise; but after the birth, the child has only to rustle in the crib and the mother will awake. Her keenness grows and matures in loving care and attention; and her care affects her senses so that she hears with new ears. In love of God and keenness to hear from Him we too will develop new, inner ears to pick up His quiet voice, speaking to us words of grace both in our reading of the sacred text and in our times of prayer.” (Peter Toon).
The Gospels are the North Star. The life of Jesus is the reference point for everything. His words and deeds trump theology. In fact, if there is a point in some theology that seems to conflict with what we see in the Gospels, stick with the Gospels. Maybe the theological assertion will make more sense down the line. But I recommend studying theology in light of the Gospels, not the other way around. I dare to say that even if a verse or two in the epistles seems inconsistent with what you read in the Gospels, stick with the Gospels until the epistle seems to make more sense in accordance with the life of Jesus. There may even be an apparent contradiction between the Gospel accounts, such as the timing of events. Just hold those inconsistencies loosely. It’s doubtful that they are game-changers. Grow in your love of the Gospels, in simply loving the story of Jesus. You can’t go wrong with that. After the three disciples witness the Transfiguration, they saw “Jesus only.” Let that be your guiding light as you study theology and Scripture.
Soul Food. “Now I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, while meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, searching as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching what I have meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.” (George Muller).
“You cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:3).
Imagination. The Christian faith demands an active imagination. So much that is read in the Scripture is actually meant to be a picture of something that we need to acquire through the imagination, something that is done figuratively and not literally. A literal action in the Bible might instead be an invitation to consider what that action represents. Something done physically is sometimes meant to teach us a spiritual lesson. An example is the eating of Scripture. Three different characters in the Hebrew Bible were told to literally eat the Word, to ingest it, and they did. In these cases of John, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, their rather unexpected action of eating the Scripture is intended to symbolize the importance of taking in God’s Word, right into our innermost being, fully digested.
Spiritual Digestion. What are these three incidents telling us? Scripture seems to be implying that we all have a spiritual digestive system. God’s Word is something to consume like food, the nutrients of the Word chewed, swallowed, and broken down in such a way that the Word’s wisdom and life is spread throughout our whole being. We eat this spiritual food and we are nourished as it enters our blood vessels and spreads to our very nerve endings. Our soul hungers for the nutrients of the Word. When we eat God’s Word, we are participating in Scripture and not merely spectating from a distance. When we ingest the Bible, our spiritual life is full of life and growth and vitality. The Bible is intended to be assimilated to every cell of our spiritual being, giving us energy, purpose, spiritual substance. The Scripture is meant to be digested so that we can flourish in the Christian life. Swallowing the Word down our spiritual gullet is a far cry from simply sipping alphabet soup or munching on a word salad. Scripture is solid spiritual food.
A Balanced Diet. While we are feasting on Scripture, we need to maintain a balanced diet… Since we are children of Abraham (Galatians 3:29), we need to study the Hebrew Bible (the O.T.) seriously and regularly with its Torah and writings and prophets; and we need to delve deeply into the New Testament as well, remembering that the Gospels are our bread and butter. The Gospel story is the greatest story ever told. As Andrew Klavan once said, the Gospel is when myth meets history, when mankind’s most earnest and persistent hope becomes reality. The Gospels are our grid when considering theology. If a particular theology seems inconsistent with the Jesus we find in the Gospels, go with the Gospels. The Gospel Jesus trumps a theological Jesus, because the Gospel is God’s Word, and theology is man’s word. God’s Word is our reference point whenever discerning man’s word.
Our spiritual digestive system might look something like this as we consume Scripture:
(1.) Open the mouth. Put your food on your plate, fill up your glass, be ready to dig in and enjoy the meal. Submit to the digestive process by placing the spiritual food within easy reach and lifting it to your soul’s mouth. We’ll never eat the Word if we don’t submit to the process and first open the Scripture for reading and consideration. We need to open our spirit to the Word like we would open our mouth for the food. As we open the Scripture to read, we open the spirit to eat. Remember Chesterton’s words, open your mind as you open your mouth, so you can close it on something solid. Like the Word of God, for instance.
(2.) Taste the Food. Enjoy the flavors, the aromas, the textures, the colors of the Word. Get a feel for the language, the way the words are put together and the scenes are prepared. Enjoy the vastly different personalities involved in Scripture, the history, the backdrop and setting. The process of eating is not meant to be painful or boring, but instead a wondrous meal to participate in. These are the words of the almighty God, and are important as well as interesting. Enjoy the reading as if you are at a healthy buffet. Notice the different flavors of writing: stories, songs, poetry, drama, humor, conversations, plotlines, demonstrations, visual aids and illustrations, imaginative metaphors. The Scripture has it all, just like one of those famous Swedish smorgasbords.
(3.) Chew the Food. Think about the words you read, ponder the ideas being expressed. Chew on it. The farmer’s term for a cow’s endlessly chewing its cud is ruminate. Process the spiritual food you are chewing like you would carefully chew on a tasty meal that you want to enjoy to the last tasty tidbit. One of the biblical words for chewing in Scripture is meditate. Eugene Peterson unpacks the meaning of meditate through its Hebrew word, “hagah.” That is the word used to describe a lion growling over its prey (Isaiah 35:4). To meditate on a passage is like a dog with its bone, a lion enjoying its meal, gnawing on it, getting everything he can out of that bone, “growling in pleasurable anticipation” over the Word. Meditating on Scripture is murmuring out loud as you process the words and ideas, working on it like a dog with a bone (Eat This Book, Peterson). Some thoughts to consider as we chew on the Word: Seek wisdom and understanding, not just facts and data; chew longest on that which will feed your soul; there is no expert in Scripture, so come as a child, teachable; don’t forget about your heart as you use your intellect and imagination; pray for the Holy Spirit as you are chewing. Pray and chew. Don’t limit yourself to letting others do your chewing of Scripture for you and then spoon feed you with it. Do as much of your own chewing as you can, guided by the Spirit. We find that the more we do our own chewing, the stronger our jaw muscles become and the longer we can chew for further passages.
(4.) Swallow the Food. At some point after the chewing, the Word has to be swallowed. Scripture needs to be accepted, believed, received into the digestive tract. Spiritual food requires a swallow of faith in order to be absorbed into the spirit. After all that thinking and chewing, we need to trust that the Bible is indeed the Word of God. Maybe the whole Bible doesn’t need to be swallowed at the same time. Perhaps a mustard seed of faith is all we need to digest the passage. As we find that a portion of Scripture has settled well and has proved truthful and trustworthy, our level of faith will take the next size up, from a mustard seed to a grapevine seed. And then, when we continue in this Word diet, we will discover that the nutrients from our spiritual food will nourish our soul and give us life, meaning, joy and a future. It all began with a swallow of faith. If someone asks you if we actually can swallow that Bible stuff, we can say, “Actually, yes!”
(5.) Exercise Daily. There are too many of us who are spiritually overfed. We don’t get outside and flesh out the Scripture. We need to put the Word into action, using the energy and insight that has been absorbed into our soul. Live out the Word. We cannot afford to be spiritual couch potatoes. Exercise the truth every day. Put some effort into letting the Word form your character and integrity and life purpose. Let the Bible affect your outlook on your life, your meaning for existence. Internalize the Word through spiritual digestion, and then externalize the Word by putting it into practice. We need to be doers of the Word, and not readers or hearers only. Maybe it’s time to turn off the religious podcast and love your neighbor. Perhaps we should file away those sermons and put the Scripture to good use. Instead of picking up another Christian self-help book, maybe we should put that book on the shelf and follow the light we’ve been shown. Christians are always in danger of being overfed and under exercised. Spiritual obesity only comes to those believers who gorge themselves on Christian input without practicing the truth that was just digested. Let the spiritual nutrition give you the energy to love the Word and live into the Word.
THE SOLID FOOD OF JESUS, THE BREAD OF LIFE.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world… I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst… I am the bread of life. Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.” (John 6:32-33, 35, 48-50).
Bread for the Multitude. In John 6:1-14, Jesus then provides a dramatic preview of His Bread of Life teaching and the Eucharist sacrament. He took the bread and broke it; He gave thanks (the Greek word used here is actually eucharisto) to God for the food; He distributed the bread to all those gathered together; the multitude partook of the broken bread. Somehow, the bread in Jesus’ hands just kept appearing. He’d break a little loaf, and more would appear. He kept multiplying fresh bread to the gathered thousands until all had eaten and were satisfied. Certainly, since this was the time of Passover, the people receiving bread from Jesus and His disciples had to be thinking of manna from heaven in the wilderness. Jesus then had the disciples gather all the remnants, all the leftover bread and fish, and put it all in baskets… twelve baskets, one for each disciple. In gathering the leftovers, Jesus was simply following Judaic law which forbids the destruction of food. Miraculously there was an abundance of bread left over, much more than was originally given by that little boy. Jesus created a lot from a little, as He can do with whatever we offer to Him in our meagerness. Isn’t it interesting that during His temptation with Satan, Jesus refused to make bread from stones, but that here in the presence of this huge throng He multiplied bread for the people? Jesus had a problem doing a miracle to minister to Himself, but no problem doing a miracle for others. Fresh bread from the Bread of life, from the hidden manna that comes down from heaven. Jesus expanded on this idea with His great I AM statement about being the Bread of Life that comes down from heaven to give life to the world, soon after the multiplication of bread, in John 6: 30-40.
Living Bread. Soon after Jesus’ astounding feeding of the 5,000 and His walking on the turbulent Sea, He was surrounded in the synagogue by a few of the people who had been fed so miraculously earlier. Jesus saw this as a teachable moment for His audience, especially after someone in His audience said to Him, We’ll believe you if you can show us another miracle, another sign. After all, (this person continued), Moses fed our ancestors with manna in the wilderness all those years (Exodus 16). If you’re the long-awaited Prophet to replace Him, what sign can you do for us? Jesus couldn’t wait to dignify this awkward question with a self-revelation that is profound and puzzling. Jesus decided to mix the spiritual and the physical in an interesting way. He told them, Are you looking for bread from heaven? Are you seeking a sign like manna in the desert? Didn’t you just get fed out in the middle of nowhere? Well, think of this, then. I AM the Bread of Life. Think about that manna with Moses. I am like that, only I AM the living bread that came down from heaven to give His life to feed the world. Come to me and you will never be spiritually hungry again. Come to me, take me into your innermost being, into your deepest self, and you will live forever. The living Bread I give you is myself, my own body, which I will offer as a sacrifice so that all may live. My body is real food for the soul, and my blood is real drink. Unless you eat my body and take me into yourself, and drink my blood while you’re at it, you will not have eternal life. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. I am the Bread, the living Manna, that comes from heaven to feed you unto eternal life. Think of me as spiritual manna for your souls. (read John 6:26-58).
Jesus, the Master Teacher who is always seeking a way to reach the minds and hearts of His students. What better time could there be to expand on what He said in His model prayer (Matt. 6:11 and Luke 11:3). “Give us this day our daily bread.” The biblical scholar Rodney Whitacre suggests that the Greek word for “daily” in the Lord’s Prayer is not the normal Greek word for daily. The Greek word used in the Lord’s Prayer for daily is “epiousios,” and it always refers to the nourishment we need for life in this age and in the age to come. The “daily bread” spoken of by Jesus in His prayer would include both physical and spiritual nourishment. Jesus is claiming to be the “daily bread” prayed for, He is the living embodiment of daily bread for this life and for life eternal. Perhaps the Holy Spirit put this together in the minds of the disciples later as they chewed on the Lord’s Prayer and the Bread of Life teaching.
I AM. Jesus began this rather mysterious teaching about bread and flesh and blood with what must have looked like an outlandish claim. He said I AM, a hint of the personal Name of Yahweh given to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3). I AM is an abbreviated version of the Great I AM, I AM WHAT I AM, I AM HE WHO EXISTS. Jesus here claimed to be divine, to be co-equal to the God of Israel. This is a bombshell of self-revelation, that He is at one with Yahweh, a Son of the Father in heaven. Jesus smoothly transitions from His I AM claim to that of being the Bread of Life. And He goes from there to asking the people to eat His flesh and drink His blood. It’s no wonder that many in His audience at the synagogue were perplexed, or put off by His words, to the point of walking away from Jesus by the time His teaching was over.
Manna. Jesus talked about bread in the context of manna. He even compared Himself a little to that food provided in the desert. He came down from heaven, just like manna. He is to be eaten, just like manna. And He like manna was a gift from the hand of God. Manna was eaten in order to be sustained physically. Jesus is Bread that is eaten to be sustained spiritually. Manna is a bread of mystery that appeared every morning, the word manna meaning “What is it?” Jesus is another bread of mystery to many who misunderstood and rejected Him. Wilderness manna was openly revealed for all to see every day. Likewise, Jesus was walking and teaching and healing for all to see, out in the open. All who wanted manna had free and easy access. All who sought Jesus could easily find Him. All who ate manna had their hunger satisfied. All who partake of Jesus have their spiritual hunger satisfied, forever. Jesus gives the soul true nourishment, and only those with faith can truly receive it. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Ps. 34:8).
Feeding on Christ in Communion. Later in this Bread of Life teaching, Jesus is clearly referring to the Eucharist, eating His flesh and drinking His blood, being lifeless without feeding on Him. (John 6:53-58). But earlier in this teaching in the synagogue, Jesus seems to be speaking more in the present, not the future tense… Come to me now, not later; feed on me now; I Am the Bread of Life now. (John 6:30-40). So what does it mean to feed on Christ in our daily life right now? To feed on Christ is to believe He is the Truth. Believe in Him, trust in Him. Feeding on Christ is to obey Him, to do His will. Remember when Jesus said to His disciples, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.” (John 4:34). In God’s eyes, obedience is the same as eating. In our relationship with Jesus, obeying Him is equivalent to feeding on Him. When we worship God in awe and adoration, we are feeding on Christ. When we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we are feeding on Jesus. When we follow His example in the Gospels through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are feeding on Christ. When we pray and listen to Him, and find Him to be the “one thing needful,” we are feeding on Jesus. Finally, we feed on Christ more literally when we participate in the sacrament of Eucharist, feeding on His body and blood. In short, we are feeding on Jesus when we grow in living into His life through His Spirit in the communion found in church and the sacraments.