Where Can You Go?

I have to say that as a teacher, it is from time to time really frustrating when your students don’t get it. I mean, you go over something and you explain everything, and you try to make things clear, and most of the students get it, but there’s always some who just don’t get it. So you try to explain things yet another way. You draw pictures. You do whatever you have to do, and sometimes you just exhaust your mind, and they still don’t get it.

This is particularly true when you try to teach ten-year-olds about fractions and how to add them. Kids have a hard time with the whole concept of fractions. For example, when you take a piece of paper and tear it into two equal pieces, children tend to see those pieces as two, instead of halves. So you had one paper, and now you have two papers, instead of two halves of one paper. Much of mathematics is contained in abstract concepts, and if you’re not used to thinking that way, those concepts are difficult to grasp. Sometimes, like fractions, or negative numbers, they make no sense at all. And when you try to explain things, it’s like pointing something out to a dog. They just look at your finger.

Is it any wonder then, that people have such a difficult time with religion? You don’t get much more of an abstract than God. And what makes religion even worse, is that people get passionate about their ideas about God. Mathematicians at least don’t get so passionate about numbers. I don’t think anybody’s been burned at the stake for discovering a new prime number. Although, math teachers sometimes get a little pissed when someone comes up with a non-traditional way of solving a math problem.

I think Jesus must have felt a little frustrated from time to time with the people he was teaching. For one thing, time after time his students, his twelve chosen disciples, kept saying things that seemed to show they were missing the whole point of the teachings. For example, even after coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration, where they, according to the story, heard the voice of God coming out of the heavens, they began to argue about who was the most beloved disciple. I can’t help but wonder if Jesus didn’t think, “Great. Just great. I go and come down here and go through all this trouble. I’m going to get myself beaten and hung up on a freakin’ cross for THESE bozos!”

According to the Gospel According to John, Jesus had fed some 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. And the next day, he had gone across the lake with his students. The next day, all the people who had been fed by Jesus got in boats and came across the lake looking for him. You can’t blame them. They were convinced they had witnessed a miracle and they wanted to see more. People are like that. That’s why hundreds of people turn out every time the Virgin Mary is seen in bathroom window. Miracles attract people. And that’s because people are looking for something. That’s because life is hard, and we all wish someone would come and rescue us from this misery. People need hope.

So all these people show up on the other shore, where Jesus and his buddies are. And Jesus is just a little miffed. He looked at the people and said, “You’re not here because you saw a miracle! You’re here because your bellies are full of bread and fish! You shouldn’t be looking for food that perishes, but for the kind of food that lasts forever!” And again, the people totally misunderstand what he’s talking about and say, “Give us this food that lasts forever!” But this was the ancient concept of God.

The ancient peoples, even the Jewish people, saw God as the supernatural being who either provided good crops or famine. They say God as the being who helped them go about their day to day lives, helped their business grow, or cause it to fail. They saw God as sending enemies to plague them, or as giving them victory over their foes. In other words, God was to them (or the gods, to the pagans), more or less, some kind of servant to make their wishes come true, or some kind of being who managed their lives. And this was not the type of God Jesus was talking about. These people saw God as the sort of being who rewards and punishes, who makes rules, and you, by God, better follow them if you know what’s good for you.

People asked him, “What can we do to accomplish the work of God?” And Jesus answered, “The work of God is that you believe in the one that sent me.” Now, this word “believe” is not easily translated. It is derived from the Greek word “pisteo”, and means considerably more than just to believe. It means to trust in, and to rely upon, and to act in such a way that demonstrates that faith. It means to trust in a promise. So Jesus is saying we need do nothing more than simply hold on to faith. Hold on to that feeling that there IS a creative force in the universe, that we are a part of that force, that that force exists in each one of us, and then act that way. And when you really understand that, then life is about a lot more than simply having your belly full of bread and fish. If our spirits are indeed eternal, then what happens at our jobs is really not that significant in the long scheme of things. But these people still didn’t understand. They wanted Jesus to perform more miracles. They called upon him to show them some signs that they might believe.

These were the same people fed by those loaves of bread and fish! But they weren’t ready to believe yet. They wanted more signs from heaven. And Jesus saw that they just didn’t get it, so he said to them, “Look. I’m the bread. You want to understand. You have to eat MY bread and drink MY blood.” In other words, it isn’t about bread and fish; it’s about being connected to that power. You all want to be happy, but happiness doesn’t come from more fish, more bread, more money, good crops. Happiness comes from being connected with God. These people wanted miracles, and what they didn’t understand was that the miracle was in the message itself. They heard what Jesus said, and were pissed off. They wanted some flash. They wanted pizzazz. They wanted power and glory.

According to John, a lot of the people who were following him left him then and went back to their old lives. The quit following him and had decided that Jesus wasn’t the promised messiah after all. Jesus looked at his twelve disciples, and said, “What about you? Are you going to leave me too?” Peter answered for the twelve and said, “Master, where can we go?” They understood that much. They recognized truth.

It isn’t about some kind of competition in which my god is better than your god. These people believed in God already. But their understanding of God was of one who set about a detailed set of instructions about how life was to be lived. There was a complicated set of rituals and rules. Failure to follow these, according to their belief, would lead to destruction. Jesus was trying to tell them that God wasn’t like that. There were no rules. There was just God. Let go of fear. There is no death, no destruction. We are divine. We are a part of God. Jesus was trying to tell them the nature of the universe, the Tao. You could spend your whole life following a set of rules and performing every ritual just and so, and you still won’t be fulfilled. Jesus was trying to say that the only real fulfillment comes from that connection with God.

And those people weren’t happy. That’s why they were following Jesus, listening to his words. They were looking for something. They thought he might be it. And Jesus tried to tell them that what they were missing was this connection to the Godhead. The people thought they wanted someone to guarantee them happiness and prosperity, but Jesus understood that you can’t have perpetual happiness and prosperity. That isn’t the nature of life. Life is yin and yang. Life is in a constant state of change. There is happiness, but there is also sorrow. You can’t have one without the other. But you can have an abiding faith in knowing that where there is sorrow, joy is coming. There is the faith in knowing you are a part of the universe and everything in it, and that you could never die.

Peter understood the truth when he heard it. Maybe he didn’t like it anymore than any of the others. The book doesn’t say. But it was the truth, and he knew it. So when Jesus asked, “Are you going to leave too?”, Peter knew there was no place else to go. A sense of peace comes from being connected to that spirit. Every ritual, every commandment, every religion, was designed to take you to that point of communion. It isn’t about trying to get some deity to grace you with good weather, or abundant crops, or more money. Those things are only here and now. And when they’re gone, you’re still here. Sorrows come and go, and you’re still here. But the power and energy of life that binds us all together, is here always.

People still want signs and wonders. Do you want to see a miracle? Look into the eyes of a couple who’ve been married for fifty years and who still adore each other. Look into the eyes of a child who has just understood something new and who has taken delight in the joy of learning. Those are miracles greater than any multiplication of loaves and fishes. The true glory and power of God is seen in every act of kindness, every act of charity and mercy we show one another. These are daily miracles, not as showy perhaps, as raising the dead or changing water into wine, but much more powerful.

Our problem is that God doesn’t seem to ever measure up to our expectations.  In that sense, the atheists are right.  We have created God in our image.  We want God to be our servant, to bring us the things we want, to fix things when they go wrong, to right all the wrongs, to make our world perfect according to our definition of perfect.  Of course, that definition changes with every generation.  We have judged God and found Him/Her wanting.

But we don’t get the kind of God we want.  We get the God that is, and the God that is, is so far beyond our ability to understand.  And it’s not like we can go to a different God if we don’t like this one, not if God IS God.  But maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t need to measure up to our expectations.  Maybe the universe isn’t everything I would like it to be. It isn’t easy. It isn’t logical. And it certainly isn’t fair by my standards or perception. The universe doesn’t have to live up to my expectations for it. I have to accept it for what it is. The universe is. The Tao is. God is. Where else can you go?