I’ve never shared this story before: it comes from the tomboy contemplative I was when I was young.
Back then, Missouri nights tended to be oppressively hot and humid, and there were few ways to escape the swelter. My father would take the family on car rides, so at least we’d all feel some breeze across our sweaty skins as we were moving.
This particular night, I was about eight years old, and we were headed somewhere we’d never been before: a demolition derby. If you don’t know, a demolition derby back then featured maybe a dozen big beat-up cars milling around in something like an abandoned football field, smashing into each other until only one car could still move.
Hearing our destination, some purpose moved in me that I can still feel.
I was a true and devoted lover of all liturgy and rituals then, and my inner world was full of their presence. That night, I took a piece of the family’s wonder-bread, tore off its crusts, and smashed the center down flat. I wrapped it in a paper napkin, and put it in the pocket of my thin shorts. When we arrived, and my family settled into our seats, I reached into my pocket, and popped the bread into my mouth, but didn’t chew.
Of the thousands of nights I lived as a child, there are few I can tell you much about, but this night still lives for me: the roughly-hung lights high on wooden poles, our bleacher seats on the far left and five rows up, the thick dust on the field and also in the air, and the surprisingly muted sound of the cars crashing. I particularly recall the spirit of the sparse crowd: these people had worked all day, probably not in offices, assuredly not in air-conditioning, and now the night air was so heavy.
In this week’s Gospel reading,* Jesus keeps leaning into his attempt to lead his listeners into a recognition of what he means when he tells them that he is the Bread that gives life, and how his presence with them is also the presence of the God of their ancestors. We get the sense that it’s not going all that well.
But my eight-year-old self seems to have understood some of what Jesus was sharing with the crowd. She believed in the Bread of Life. When she took along bread she’d specially prepared, she trusted she was taking God along with her in a real way. It wasn’t a metaphor: she was real, the bread was real, and she was really carrying it to a particular place in the real world.
She also trusted that something about eating the bread was essential: that by eating, Jesus was coming inside her body. Maybe without these words, but I suspect she knew that she was absorbing Jesus’ presence into herself in some way, that it was becoming part of her. Without pretention, I imagine she was aware of living closer to God: essentially, she let Jesus be where she was.
And Jesus was there, clearly and uniquely. His presence awakened her that evening: a heightened awareness of the night, the place, but particularly of the people around her, and how things were in their spirits.
I think that’s a pretty good take on the essentials Jesus was hoping his people would get.
*John 6:35, 41-51
-Jeanne Marcus, Alumna member of CoS communities
Reflection Questions:
- When have you known the Holy One giving life to newness is you?
- What helps you stay aware of the timeless dimension that is always available in our lives?
