I Will Raise Them Up

Imagine that you were one of the first white settlers to travel to Iowa from the East in the early nineteenth century. You would have left friends and family and civilization behind in Philadelphia or New York City and headed west on horseback or covered wagon. It would take days just to get to the Appalachian Mountains, and then you’d have to struggle up and over them. The entire time you’d be traveling through forest. Occasionally a few clouds might be visible overhead. Most of the time, though, all you would see is the trail disappearing a few hundred feet in front of you. Then one day, weeks later, the land would start to open up, and suddenly you’d find yourself in the blinding sun. A sea of grass would stretch into the distance farther than you’ve ever seen before. You’d come to a river wider than any you’d ever seen and wonder how you were going to cross it.

Today if you drive across the same route, you get a little flavor of that journey, although it would be a lot faster. Much of the forest has become farmland, and instead of trails you’d be motoring on four-lane highways. But that last stretch on Route 34 from Monmouth is still a two-lane highway through some very flat and largely uninhabited land (except for Biggsville!). If you didn’t know where you were, you might think you’re nowhere. And then suddenly, Burlington appears in front of you. The wide river is still there, but this time there’s a bright new bridge to take you easily across.

When we travel now, we’re used to knowing where we’re going, and even what to expect when we get there. Travel has become so routine that interruptions or changes are experienced as a lot of hassle. Our expectations are not being met.

I think that complacent familiarity of travel is true of our spiritual journey as well. We think we know where we’re going and what is expected of us. But sometimes God has a different idea. We expect level ground when there’s a mountain ahead. We get used to plodding along, and then the trees part and we get a blinding vision of what lies ahead.

Sunday’s Gospel reading is that kind of journey. Jesus has been repeatedly saying that he is the bread of life, come down from heaven. Today he puts some teeth in that. Literally. When his listeners start arguing among themselves how he can give them his flesh to eat, Jesus makes it all concrete. He starts using a word that literally means chew or gnaw, not just eat. It’s a signal that this is not just all a metaphor, something “spiritual.” He’s talking about real food. He’s talking about the Eucharist, the one we celebrate every week that brings the Body and Blood of Jesus into us. Suddenly everyone is in a place they didn’t expect to be.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He has already said that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever. Today he adds that he will raise them up on the last day. He will raise them up. This is not just an earthly journey. It has another, more profound dimension. The blinding light of God bursts in from above. In Jesus Christ, eternity has broken into the present moment.

God’s breaking into our lives happens every time we celebrate the Eucharist. The writer Annie Dillard famously compared churches to “children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT…We should all be wearing crash helmets,” she said. “Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” There is more power here than we know about. Jesus shows us a vision of the future, and we still have our eyes on the ground, looking for stones in the path.

I’m glad we no longer have to travel by horse and buggy. Like most people, I’m in a hurry to get there, wherever it is. I find I have to use cruise control so I don’t speed. I get so caught up in where I’m going that I overlook the journey itself. It’s only in the present moments of that journey, however, that eternity breaks in, that God comes to us. And when it does, it blinds us with its brilliance. We can see farther than we’ve ever seen before. It’s only a glimpse, but it’s there for us to see. And it comes to us week by week in the Eucharist. may we always be filled with that power so that we have the strength to continue on the journey, transformed by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

[Pentecost 12: John 6:51-58.]