Creekside Church Sermon of August 20, 2000 "Transformed" John 6:51-58	Rev. David Bibbee
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I want to take this humorous incident and use it as a metaphor of the situation in which we find ourselves. In his acceptance speech Wednesday night as the Democratic nominee for Vice President, Joseph Lieberman said something that struck me. He said, "Our next frontier is not beyond us. It is within us." Ultimately it is character and the yearning of our souls that will either stretch or shrink us. I have said before that I don't understand why psychiatrists are called shrinks. They should be called stretches because they work to help people expand the way they see themselves in the world.

Being stretched heart, mind, and soul is so important because what is at stake is two views of the world, of life, and what is most real. It is the modern world as seen by itself, and the world as seen through the lens of the Christian faith.

The sciences have made a profound impact upon our world. They have been successful at showing how the world we live in works. Science has accomplished remarkable things. There is a new field of research called nanotechnology. One of its goals is to build miniscule machines. Recently a group of scientists created a working pair of tweezers made from strands of DNA. Don't ask me what you can pick up with them. To illustrate the scale at which this work is being done, consider a nanometer. Working on a large scale, if you were taking a trip from New York to Los Angeles, a nanometer would be an equivalent of going one inch. But remarkable as accomplishments like this are, and though we have derived so many benefits from it, the modern worldview does not have a corner on reality. Science says, "There is much to be discovered and explained, defined, coded, and mastered." Christianity says there is more than we could ever imagine.

In our gospel passage, John has his hands full. Before Jesus, understanding God and the forces operative in the world was rather buttoned down. But then came "the event." God became a man, incarnate in Jesus Christ. Of the four gospels, John employs different language to describe this event. He strains to find words adequate to tell the glorious thing that God had done in Jesus Christ. Jesus came from beyond our understanding; outside our categories, outside of us. He is the bread which came down from heaven.

When Jesus walked the earth he opened the window to show us a world where the impossible was possible; where the crippled audition for Lord of the Dance, and the blind take up sharp-shooting. Light streaming from that window shines on hardened hearts and makes of them changed hearts, and greatest of all...Christ has made it possible for us to live though we die and bring us into a life that is eternal.

As Christians we believe there are other ways of knowing. There's knowledge founded on fact. There is knowledge derived from intuition and revelation. Christians have different ways of thinking, speaking and behaving. This doesn't mean we turn our backs on reason. George Buttrick used to say, "No church should have doors so low that a believer must leave their heads outside before they can worship."

Peter Gomes used two words to contrast how an enlightened, rational worldview differs from a Christian one. He says the modern world is into "mastery"...mastering genetic codes, mastering diseases. But our word is "mystery"...it is the mysterious presence which comes from beyond which inspires faith in us and enables us to live with awe and reverence, knowing that what we know is a mere anthill compared to the Mount Everest of what we don't know.

We have entered the information age. Have you ever felt as though you're swimming in information you don't need or will never use? Did you ever have the feeling that we live in a time when we know more and more about less and less? Is there such a thing as too much knowledge? Or, as my father often said, "He's too smart for his own good." Read the story of Adam and Eve, and tell me what you think.

So there you sit, seeming to pay attention, but maybe wondering, "Where is he going with this?" Well, the story about John Berkebile might help. When John was in grad school he and a handful of other students were in the field working on a research project. It was a glorious spring day. The world was awash with bright blue sky and green earth. It was the kind of day which Claude Monet would have put on a canvas. The wonder of the moment was not lost on John, who, in a spontaneous, reverential way asked, "How could anyone behold the beauty and complexity of a world like this and say there is no God?"

"I can," said another student, who then took off on a discourse about evolution and natural selection. You don't need God to explain the world. John said he was stunned and didn't even know how to respond. So he changed the subject.

But how interesting a world is it if everything is reduced to an explanation? What are the Northern Lights? A disturbance in the earth's magnetic field. What is a rainbow? Concentric bands of the color spectrum formed opposite the sun by refraction and reflection of the sun's rays in raindrops. What is a human being? About 85% water and made up of common elements in total worth about $3. Is this all?

I recall a beautiful spring day during my senior year of college. I was walking with a guy with whom I shared a house. Maybe it was the same day John had his encounter. Don loved to debate. He had been studying the philosopher Feuerbach who said that God is a human creation because we cannot stand the thought of being alone in the world. "I've come to the conclusion that God is not love," Don said. "Love is God." I wanted to respond, but couldn't. I felt dumb on dumb. I should have said, "If whatever God is is dependent on our loving, then I wouldn't give two cents for him."

There have been times when you have not said anything either. Lots of intelligent people have factored God out of daily life. Science and human achievement is their salvation. Please understand that this battle isn't with science. I have no problem with evolution. It is not a threat to my faith. Our problem isn't with science, our problem is with any claim that isn't willing to admit that there are things it does not know, and doesn't bow down before the mystery of the world in which we live.

Sometimes the thing we need is right in front of us, but we don't see it. Life is a challenging, often stressful thing. Those who look to God to help them are weak-kneed, faint of heart people who can't deal with their fears and insecurities, especially of death, so they invented God. They are not brave enough to deal with death so they have made up an elaborate myth. You must have heard this kind of thinking before. We don't have to argue for our beliefs, but we should know how to defend them, and give our witness because as Paul said, "This is how we should be regarded, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."

Some people call Christianity a crutch. But I heard somewhere that atheism is the crutch...a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God. The living bread came from beyond our world and beyond our understanding. He came down from heaven with a message the world has not yet grasped. For all the modern world's discoveries and advances, there is much more remaining to be seen, if we would speak up and say, "Your glasses are on your foreheads."

George Orwell once said, "To see what's in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." Sometimes the thing we need most is right in front of us, but we don't see it. God leaves clues of his presence hidden all around us in plain sight. Marvelous discoveries that have been and are being made for good, perhaps God has wanted us to discover. The God to whom we entrust our lives; the God who first loved us and whom we serve and adore, Jesus his son, who became the bread which came down from heaven...Jesus who promised to be with us always is no cleaver human invention.

We have been given a different way of seeing life. Let me leave you now with two of those voices. You pick the one which is more satisfying. It is an imaginary conversation between twins in the womb:

"The sister said to her brother, I believe there is life after birth." But her brother protested, "No, no this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but cling to the cord that feeds us." The sister then said, " There must be something more than this dark place. There must be something else, a place where there is light and freedom to move." But she couldn't convince him.

She continued, "I have something else to say, and I'm afraid you won't believe this either, but I think there is a mother." "A mother?! What are you talking about? I've never seen a mother. You've never seen a mother. Who put that idea into your head? This is all we have. Why do you want more? This isn't such a bad place. We have all we need, so let's just be content."

And after a (pregnant) silence, the sister said, "Don't you feel these squeezes every once in awhile? They are unpleasant and painful." "So...what's so special about that?" he said. "I think these squeezes are getting us ready for another place, a place more beautiful than this where we will see our mother face to face. Don't you think that's exciting?"

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