HWJO?: How would Jesus Offend at COP29? (John 6)
by Lowell Bliss, Director of Eden Vigil Institute for Environmental Leadership
(This Climate Bible Study was first published in the September 2024 newsletter of Climate Intercessors)
Our church service yesterday—I’m writing on August 26—left my head reeling for a number of reasons. For one, my wife was a last-minute substitute as a reader and the text she was setting her eyes on for the first time that morning was from I Kings 8: Solomon brings the ark into the temple he built. On almost a daily basis, my wife mourns not only the unjust loss of life in Gaza, but also the conflation—often purposeful it seems—between Netanyahu’s Israel and Solomon’s. I racked my memory for how this passage unfolds and grit my teeth as each PowerPoint slide changed lest there be some statement of Israeli nationalist exceptionalism that Robynn just couldn’t read. The passage ends with Solomon asking of Yahweh:
Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name - for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm - when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built (I Kings 8:41-43).
I breathed a sigh of relief. What I heard in the moment was that foreigners are welcome in God’s presence. Upon re-reading these verses this morning, I see that Solomon’s interest is primarily in those foreigners who honour “this house that I have built,” as befits a prayer of dedication of the temple, I suppose.
After the readings, the church service moved on to the Gradual Hymn: #461 “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.” This is the first Sunday I’ve been back to church since our Eco-Realism Consultation where we discussed how Triumphalist Christianity has done so much to contribute to the climate crisis, and how anything that ignores a Crucified Christ will be “unintelligible” in a world suffering under the collapses, catastrophes, and extinctions that climate change impacts help set in motion. As early as the first verse I could not bring himself to sing this familiar hymn. I couldn’t re-evaluate it quickly enough in real time:
Stand up! stand up for Jesus!
Ye soldiers of the cross;
Lift high His royal banner,
It must not suffer loss:
From vict’ry unto vict’ry
His army shall He lead,
Till every foe is vanquished
And Christ is Lord indeed.
Additionally, this was also the first time I’ve been asked to sing this hymn after COP28 which generated so many thoughts for me about what it means to have enemies and how to love them. (Blog post: Eight Things I Discovered About Loving Your Enemies at COP28).
And then finally, we were brought to the Gospel Reading from John 6:56-69, and to our rector’s sermon on being offended and being offensive. To be honest, the sermon I was listening to in my head was different than the one our rector was preaching from the pulpit, because I felt that all that had discordantly preceded this in the service was helping me to see something new in John 6. “Jesus said, ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me’” (vv. 56-57). Many in the crowd found this teaching “difficult” and ask “who can accept this?” “But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, "Does this offend you?” (vv. 60-61).
Yet, what exactly was the offense? I’ve grown up with countless sermons and lectures which claim that the primary offense is a viscerality that borders on cannibalism. It’s easy to imagine from the text that the crowd would be disgusted as they pictured themselves swallowing human flesh and human blood. Nonetheless, what are other, and perhaps more overarching, offenses that Jesus introduces about himself in the Gospels? For one, he made claims that he is greater than Moses, and sure enough, even in the John 6 text, he compares the Bread of Life to the deficient manna that Moses fed them in the wilderness. Secondly, Jesus also made offensive claims that he was sent from his Father in heaven, and sure enough, that’s right where he goes after asking “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” (v. 62). A third way that Jesus kept being offensive to his listeners was when he indicated that the good news of the Kingdom might apply to more than just the Jews. Even in John 6, Jesus “said these things in the synagogue,” but kept referring to “whoever eats my flesh” and not just to the descendants of those who ate manna (vv. 56-59). All of these three offenses, and not just cannibalism, are alluded to in Jesus’s teaching in John 6.
Of course, the four Gospels and all the New Testament books were written after the Crucifixion, and some were written after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. When a writer like the apostle Paul goes back and identifies the main “offense” of Jesus’s life, the one that turned so many Jews against him, the one that Emperor Constantine found unacceptable, the one that so many Christian Nationalists in the 2024 US elections choose to ignore seems to be that, namely, Jesus chose the path of crucifixion. We may have hoped that he would ride into Jerusalem on a mighty steed and slay the Roman occupying force. He came in on a donkey. He was a lamb-that-was-slain. He is Christ crucified.
Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength (I Cor 1:22-25 NIV).
Think about those R-rated movies that depict brutal battles, of the savage warrior who slices open his enemy’s chest and lifts high his enemy’s heart or liver. Blood runs down his forearm as the conquering army cheers in the background. In the next moment, he sinks his teeth into his enemy’s flesh. This is what victors do. They would never offer their own flesh to be eaten or their own blood to be drunk. What Jesus proposes is the opposite of what a worthy liberator would do. How offensive to be asked to follow such a lamb! As part of my blog post on Loving our Enemies at COP28, I researched the historical act of cannibalism in Fiji. It was always the act of a victor humiliating the neighboring tribe he had just vanquished, ingesting their strength to glorify his own.
The long liturgy after the homily and before the actual taking of the bread and wine during the Eucharist is not only an Upper Room moment for us, but also a Garden of Gethsemane one. I could imagine a modern-day Peter grabbing a sword (like first-century Peter did in John 18) and swinging it, wildly stabbing at the Roman and temple officials who had come to arrest Jesus. If you listen closely to the modern-day Peter, he would be humming the tune, “Stand up, Stand up for Jesus/ you soldiers of the cross. . . From vict’ry unto vict’ry/ His army shall He lead/ Till every foe is vanquished/ And Christ is Lord indeed.”
Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” (Jn 18:11)
I believe that this year, Christ Crucified wants to lead a delegation to COP29 in the spirit of Christ Crucified. I want to be part of it. I wish I could tell you more about what that looks like—practically speaking—but I don’t suspect we’ll find out unless we first commit to following the Crucified one who shows solidarity with the crucified classes, who knows that whatever “victory” is enduring is one predicated on a grain of wheat following to the ground to die.