Creekside Church Sermon of August 27, 2000 "Curvature of the Christian Spine" John 6:56-69	Rev. David Bibbee
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You would never know it by looking at him that he had once been in positions of great responsibility. In fact, his expertise with numbers made him the choice of the company to go into difficult situations as a troubleshooter. He was a leader in his church and a Sunday school teacher. He made a decent living, but you never would have known it by the rusted out junker he drove which looked destined for the scrap heap. A scrap heap is what he felt his life had become. His wife left him. His children wanted nothing to do with him, and rarely came by to visit though they lived in the same town. No one knows the moment when everything caved in, but he checked out of life, and he idled away the hours of each day a lonely and bitter man.

Once or twice a year, a hardy group of individuals from the church went to clean his house. They had to be hardy. It was not a pleasant experience. When he was done with a snuff bag, he would spit it on the floor. Newspapers were piled in the living room in stacks six feet high. There was a mound of empty milk jugs on the kitchen floor. When he finished a gallon, he just pitched the jug on the pile by the refrigerator.

No one wanted to volunteer to clean the refrigerator or the bathroom. Opening the refrigerator door, the odor was strong enough to knock you out. What once was food had decayed and oozed together into a big bacterial blob which had to be scraped out. In the bathroom, the tub and sink and toilet were encased in black mold. Other volunteers did his laundry. In his closet were 250 pairs of socks and dozens of pairs of underwear. Instead of washing his clothes, he wore them till they were sufficiently dirty and then he threw them into the closet and bought new ones.

It took a few years, but by deciding not to move on and leaving the bitterness behind, he let it build. Instead of reaching out, he merely existed in a self-imposed sentence in a penitentiary of loneliness. And though I never met the man, only hearing of him, I picture him walking stooped over like he was carrying a great invisible weight on his back.

We know people like this, so stooped over all they can see is the ground. But today I am not talking about a physiological curvature. I'm talking about the curvature of our being; a state of the soul where we find ourselves stressed, spread thin, overloaded, and just plain worn out.

If you have nothing better to do someday, count all the messages which come to you from the moment you wake until your head hits the pillow at night. Count the commercials on radio and television. Count the billboards. Count the advertisements which pop up on the computer screen while on the internet. Count the stories of the news telling you about the latest murder, the famines, the wars, and the peace accords broken. Every day we are bombarded with alluring and authoritative voices telling us to drive this, drink that, eat this, enjoy that, wear this, don't wear that, smoke this, sample that.

I wish I had a big off switch which I could throw and make everything stop... traffic, telephones, computers, radios and televisions. I would turn it all off and make everyone stop talking long enough to breathe some peace and quiet into their lives. I would love to make everything stop, but I can't. I can tell you what we have done instead... we have turned ourselves off. We hear about the absolutely awful things which happen, but we don't feel a thing. How many times do we shake our heads and say, "How can human beings do such things to each other?" before we shrug our shoulders and say, "That's just the way it is."

Martin Luther gave a definition of sin as "the heart being curved in on itself." We usually think of sin as "doing" something wrong. But sin can also mean withdrawing from life. We're guilty of sin when we are curled up in a protective ball, hiding instead of letting our light shine for all to see. Have you ever thought of sin as the failure to stand tall and be bold and act like the children of God we are? How can the redeemed of the Lord say so if they have curvature of their spiritual spines?

Last week I mentioned that many in the world see Christianity as a crutch for those who don't have sufficient courage to face life. We are accused of having our heads stuck in the sand because we can't face reality. But whose version of reality are we talking about here? By reality do you mean the crap that passes for entertainment on TV and the stuff that makes headlines in the Truth? By reality do you mean the daily assult on our senses which sets us searching for novocaine for the brain so we can shut out everything around us?

We are here because we believe in a different reality. Week in and week out do you know where you'll find the most courageous? In churches. What we do may not make us look like a power to be reckoned with. Because we march to a different drummer we will be out of step with the world. In church we face the hard reality of pain, struggle, and the suffering of life. Christians are brave enough to see the world as it is with all of its needs. But we are hopeful enough to believe that it won't stay that way because God has other plans for it.

In today's text, Jesus says things that aren't easy to grasp. Last week he said he was the one who came to us from beyond... beyond our world and beyond our expectations. He is the bread which came down from heaven. Today we hear him say, "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me." I love the disciples response. "this is a hard saying." Sometimes the only way a teacher can be heard is if he says something shocking. Jesus wanted them to think. He wanted them to pay attention because In Jesus God was a brand new thing.

"Does this offend you?" Jesus asked. They didn't answer at first... they didn't have to. "The words I have give you are spirit and life," Jesus said. The way he would show them was as different from their customary view of life as flesh is different from spirit. Psychologist Victor Frankl asked, "When does the eye see anything of itself except when looking in a mirror?" The eye only sees something of itself if it has cataracts or glaucoma. A healthy eye sees through itself, which is a wonderful image of a Christian who can see through bitterness and disappointment, through those things of fleeting value which the world would have us think is everything, and instead, see those things that are eternal. Most of all, we can see through ourselves and focus upon Christ.

As far as sermons go, this wasn't one of Jesus' best. "This teaching is tough," they said, "who can accept it?" John said that after Jesus finished, many of his disciples thought better of it and no longer went with him. He said to the 12 who remained, "Do you want to leave too?" I love the disciples honesty. Sometimes they admit to Jesus, "We just don't get it." Yet with these questions and doubts there is also belief which I also love them for. "Do you wish to go away?" Jesus said. And Peter answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

I love those disciples because they are so much like us. There are times when we don't get it. There are times when we are tempted to turn our backs on Jesus and walk away. He is so hard sometimes. Most of us have tried what the world offers and found ourselves wanting still. So back we come to him... to listen, to do the difficult work of paying attention and allow our vision to be changed. It means to no longer be curled up in a protective fetal ball, but improving our posture to stand tall and see straight.

The kind of attention we need is not done by looking at Jesus from the perspective of a detached observer. We have been taught to check things out from a safe distance. We are taught to take "reasonable" approaches. No use taking unnecessary risks. Don't get too close. It has caused the spine of Christians to curve. It leads us to be interested in Jesus, but not involved. After all, it's interesting to apply the gospel to my life. It is interesting to apply Jesus to human relationships, to politics, and to international affairs. But it's something else to allow ourselves to be involved with the faith and not simply be hearers, but doers of the word.

When I was in the fourth grade, the class often heard our teacher utter these words, "Willis Evans! If you don't sit up straight in that chair you're going to look like the letter 'C' before you're an old man!" Willie Evans was a sloucher. When he sat at his desk he slouched so low he looked like he was doing the limbo. At age 9 posture was no big deal to us. Today I know better.

Life today is so frantic and frenetic and hard. Painful things happen which cause our lives, if we are not careful, to turn in on themselves. That's what Luther called sin... a heart turned in on itself. And so we come here to worship... we come to pray and listen, to pay close attention, to not be merely interested, but drawn out and straightened up and led finally to Jesus because there is no other to whom we may go, and when he has our attention, there is none other to whom we shall want to go.

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