“Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life”(Jo. 6:47).
Jesus is casting a big vision this morning in our Gospel reading: a vision that refuses to be bound by the borders of our time and place. Jesus’ horizon in our Gospel today is eternity, and that’s no horizon at all, except a particularly expansive one that resists limitation. Christianity’s critics (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.) accuse it of narrowness and small-mindedness, and maybe Jesus’ followers fall into this category part of the time; but I think the truth about Christian faith is something different. The backdrop here is eternity, large and unlimited, the opposite of anything narrow and confining; and Jesus is not small-minded but dealing with the big questions of life: “Who am I? Where am I headed? What does it all mean?” These questions are also our questions, as human beings.
“Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life”(Jo. 6:47). Jesus’ teaching occurs in the context of ancient Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, and the wilderness provision of the manna that sustained their earthly lives. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died” (Jo. 6:49), as he says. But for those who believe in him, Jesus himself is the bread of life: bread that will sustain us not just in this world but for eternal life. “Whoever eats this bread will live forever” (Jo. 6:51), as we heard in our reading. It’s as open-ended as that.
“Who am I? Where am I headed? What does it all mean?” Absent the perspective of eternity, and its expansive horizon, possible answers to these questions seem limited and small. Not unimportant answers, because human life is always important in and of itself. A life of character and value can be lived without the backdrop of eternity. But Jesus is positing another perspective: the possibility of an everlasting life in which nothing of value is finally or irrevocably lost or abandoned, including ourselves. Our lives and actions, in short, have eternal significance.
Here we need to go to another story from the Hebrew scriptures, one like the story of the Exodus: that is, the story of the Fall. This brings us back to Genesis and the creation of the human race, when Adam and Eve threw off the boundaries established for them by God and discovered (curiously enough) that their range and scope was now constrained by death. They were dust, and to dust they would return. They reached for empire, and ended up clutching ashes. In other words, in the very attempt to become like gods, the human horizon was radically constricted by sin and death.
In the face of this primitive disaster, Jesus opens things up by inviting the human race into new and larger life. The new life is as open and expansive as Jesus himself. We may be dust but we were created for something more. “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life” (Jo. 6:47). As we say in the Apostles’ Creed, we are believers in “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
I sometimes think that by the time we get to the end of the Creed, we’re not paying enough attention to the breathtaking conclusion. Again, “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Faith in Christ is the foundation of this larger life, the possibility itself of new life; belief that our horizon is a broad one, stretching out to the stars.
What is absolutely incredible to me is that this expansive horizon, the promise of the Gospel, is rooted in the particularity of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was born at a particular time, lived and worked in Galilee and Judea, had friends and told stories. It’s not an example of narrowness, but of glorious specificity. He was what the poet Richard Crashaw called “eternity shut in a span” (“In the Holy Nativity of our Lord”). In his own self, in all its particularity of time and space, the unlimited power of God came to rest, with the promise of eternal life for us.
In other words, God chose to open this broad horizon by scaling down to the crib in Bethlehem. As Annie Dillard writes in one of her poems, “The universal loves the particular” (“Feast Days: Christmas”). It’s the same phenomenon that Crashaw describes, “Eternity shut in a span.” In Jesus, we have the particularity of Bethlehem, the specificity of the empty tomb. The opening of the broad horizon begins with the opening of Jesus’ arms upon the cross.
“Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life” (Jo. 6:47-8). Today, for us, the gift of life is shared with all God’s People in the Holy Eucharist. God still loves particularity. He loves the incredible beauty of this time and place. At the altar today, through the inward and spiritual grace of Christ’s Body and Blood, our own horizon is opened up. New and everlasting life is Jesus’ gift to us in this sacrament. Today we’re given a different perspective, and a foretaste of the heavenly banquet as we share in this sacrificial meal. In all his particularity, Jesus has given himself for us, and so now in this sacrament we give ourselves to him!