Imagine you and a friend standing on one side of a tall brick wall. Your friend peers through a tiny, narrow hole and is able to see what’s on the other side. Your friend notices water cascading down like the way water streams off a roof in a downpour.

“It’s raining,” your friend declares with conviction while looking through his very narrow hole.

“Is it really?” you ask, “Is that the truth?” There’s a ladder leaning against the wall nearby, so you climb up to look over the wall. And what you see paints another picture.

A water pipeline runs along the side of a building and has ruptured just in front of, and slightly above, the tiny hole your friend was peering through. Alas, it isn’t raining after all. But you can understand why your friend thought it was.

It’s now up to you to help your friend understand the truth for themself. Will your friend be willing to change their mind and consider another point of view? Will you help them climb the ladder to see for themself? What will you do if your friend continues to insist and persist in believing it is raining on the other side of the wall?

Now, switch roles. Now, you are the one peering through the hole. You are convinced it is raining. What do you say and what do you do when your friend says otherwise?

I’ve just used a metaphor. What is a metaphor? In the context of faith talk, it is something we encounter in our daily lives that lifts up a meaning for us in relation to the story of faith we receive from the Gospel, the bible and what we have learned in the church. We encounter during the course of daily life people, events, experiences and we observe in nature something that reminds us of the faith story.

Using metaphors in faith talk is appropriate. Jesus taught using parables, talking about mustard seeds, fig trees, lost coins and sheep. Abraham and Joseph dreamt. God told Abraham his descendants would number the stars in the sky. In the Gospel today from John 6, Jesus talks about flesh and bread and blood. Of course, we can’t take any of these metaphors literally. They are images that embody meaning for each of us. Metaphors offer us a way to discover fresh perspectives and new learning to renew our faith. So, here is another metaphor ….

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) is a post-apocalyptic film, the fourth movie in the Planet of the Apes franchise. All four movies revolve around the character named Caesar, who is an ape.

Early in the days after a virus wiped out most of humanity, Caesar was instrumental in leading the movement to help apes and humans coexist in peace, living together, sharing the land they inhabited.

Of the humans that survived the virus, most had lost the ability to speak and think intelligently. There were exceptions. One of the main characters in this film, May, is able to speak and is very smart.

The virus had another, unexpected effect: It gave apes the ability to speak, matching an intelligence comparable to what humans once had. Apes are now high functioning communicators.

In this latest film it is Caesar’s legacy which is at stake among the apes who now dominate the world. This movie begins with a dramatic scene of the ape clans burning Caesar’s lifeless body on the funeral pyre. Caesar is now dead. And how will his legacy be preserved?

Proximus Caesar is the tyrannical king of the Coastal Ape Colony, a rogue clan of apes that claim to follow the ways and teachings of the late Caesar. Proximus Caesar is the bad guy, who justifies his lust for power by calling on Caesar’s name and words to rally his troops to dominate all other apes and species on the planet. He twists and distorts Caesar’s words, interpreting Caesar in a way that is not true to Caesar and what Caesar originally stood for and valued.

Our main character, a young ape called Noah is on a journey to find his own clan which was attacked and enslaved by Proximus Caesar. On his way he encounters an old ape who was learned in the ways of Caesar and his time. His older friend maintains an interpretation of Caesar that is truer, and insists Noah keep Caesar’s memory in its rightful place.

Eventually both Noah and May are captured by Proximus. An important scene in the movie has Proximus invite his special human guest and Noah to a table for a feast. A private audience with Proximus Caesar appears on the surface a privilege and an honour. That’s the pretence.

But this meal has another sinister purpose, not fundamentally to show hospitality and generosity but to elicit vital information Proximus needs in order to secure the power he craves.

Here is not a table of grace, of communion. Here is not a table celebrating the bond of friendships crossing the boundaries of race and species. Are their tables like this in your life where the pretence of love is overshadowed by unholy intentions?

It seems both our main characters, Noah the ape and May the human girl, are caught in between divided loyalties despite the friendship growing between them. The conflict is heightened around that meal scene, as Proximus tries to drive a wedge of mistrust between them. Proximus entices Noah to be more suspicious of May’s intentions.

Proximus is not altogether wrong, as May relentlessly pursues her secret mission to retrieve a small computer from a fortified facility along the coast into which Proximus tries to gain entrance. May had earlier deceived Noah, pretending she like most other humans couldn’t speak. In the end, she confesses this to Noah and pleads forgiveness. But the damage has been done, and Noah never fully trusts her.

Jesus invites his disciples to another kind of table — the table of wisdom, of communion, of divine love. Jesus tells his disciples that he is the bread in which we find our true sustenance (John 6:55-56) to live out God’s legacy, which is the Gospel of God’s unconditional grace and love in Jesus’ name.

But so many voices compete in the religious landscape. Whose voice is truer? How can we tell? How is Christianity being interpreted?

Right up until almost the end of the movie, we are left wondering if May and Noah, humans and apes, will ever be able to live together in trust and peace. It doesn’t look good by the end of the movie.

Until the very last sequence of scenes. Because the last scenes depict both May and Noah looking up.

Earlier in the movie, Noah had discovered an observatory with a huge telescope still operational aimed at the night sky. After liberating his clan from Proximus’ enslavement, Noah brings his clan back to the telescope. The last scene shows Noah’s face and eyes open wide as he looks up and into the expanse of the heavens above with curiosity, and wonder.

Then we switch to May who is also looking up. But she, now, far away from Noah, is looking at the giant satellite dishes. The computer she found was able to activate them so her tiny group of humans could communicate with other humans around the planet. May is looking up into what is now beyond her capability and efforts thus far. Her mission is over. May is looking up at the forces beyond her control now.

Both May and Noah leave us hopeful at the end. Both, separated by divisions still rife, turn their gaze upward and beyond who and where they are. Their open eyes and looks of wonder leave us hopeful that something bigger than either of them will guide them into a better tomorrow.

Whether or not we are aware, despite all our good intentions and efforts, and in the midst of all that separates Christians, Jews and Muslims, God is there. The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a metaphor for how it is among creatures who share this earth, how we often don’t get along and sometimes get along. But there is always hope and a way forward when all of us look up towards what is bigger and larger than each one of us.

I started with a metaphor which involved a ladder. There’s a famous ladder in the bible as well. I love the scene at the end of Jacob’s encounter with God through the night (Genesis 28, 32). He has dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven, and he has also struggled while he slept. When Jacob finally awakes and changes his thinking at the dawn of a new day, he discovers who has been with him all along. He says to God, “You were here all the time, and I never knew it!” (Genesis 28:16).

That’s grace.

Around Mother’s Day, this past Spring, Jessica gifted my mom a small sleeve of cosmos seeds. Mom then planted them in the community garden in the backyard of her retirement residence.

Residents there take great pride in the flower garden that each year yields a spectacle of colour and shows off their gardening skills.

Before leaving for our West Coast vacation last month, my mom was delighted to report that the first flowering buds were appearing on her cosmos plants.

Two and a half weeks later, when I returned to observe the progress of the cosmos, I had to blink and pinch myself. Was I looking in the right place in the sprawling garden? Because those cosmos flowers were not where I thought they had been.

My mom then told me the drama that had ensued at the retirement home in the time I was away. Someone in the building had ripped out her cosmos. And they were found discarded in the garden shed atop the compost heap. After my mom reported what happened to the front desk, to staff and her friends there, everyone at the home soon knew of the offence. But no one came forward. Who dun it?

As the Sherlock Holmes investigation went into high gear, my mom’s friends quickly retrieved the limp stems from the garden shed, put them in a bucket of water, and a few days later replanted them in another spot in the garden, and soaked the ground with water.

Hoping against hope, they nevertheless warned my mom the ripped out flowers probably didn’t have a chance as it had been over 24 hours they had lain in the hot shed.

One evening the following week, a resident a few doors down from my mom’s room quietly took. my mom aside after dinner and whispered into her ear that she had seen something from her fifth floor balcony the day of the incident.

The culprit was identified, someone who when gently confronted confessed they thought the cosmos looked too much like a weed; and, besides, it didn’t fit in the otherwise manicured looking part of the garden where the flowers had been originally planted. The deed was quickly forgiven, as miracle of miracles, the transplanted cosmos flowers not only lived but thrived in their new location. What drama! What a miracle!

Despite a mistaken floral identity, despite misguided intentions and conflicting visions for the garden, despite the almost certain prognosis of death for the ripped-out cosmos, grace happened.

The Gospel for today from John (6:35,41-51) presents a far more troubling reality for Christians. This troubling reality is a stain and a blemish on Christian history since the time of Jesus. The Gospel writer John specifically mentions “the Jews” (John 6: 41) as complaining and debating against Jesus. Here we glimpse into what John does a few times in his Gospel: portraying Jews, as a whole, rejecting Jesus.

Perhaps this portrayal was understandable from John’s perspective, if it was a response to the persecution of his community by Jewish neighbours in the latter part of the 1^st century (Oldenburg, 2024) when this Gospel was first written.

But in the centuries since, it has been Christians who have persecuted their Jewish neighbours, in both subtle and violent ways, and often using John’s gospel as an excuse. Particularly after the Holocaust in the last century, today’s reading, like Good Friday’s, cannot be proclaimed without acknowledging how this gospel has been used to justify not only hate crimes against Jews but by extrapolation any race, culture or religion distinct from ours including Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians.

Retribution is a blight on humanity. From disputes in the garden to geo-political conflict, it seems humanity is destined, if anything, to continue the senseless escalations of a tit-for-tat mentality. Can it ever end? Like the ripped-out cosmos, reconciliation and peace really appear hopeless, causes destined to die on the growing pile of dashed dreams and unattainable aspirations.

I sympathize with the prophet Elijah’s impulse to just escape and hide. Jezebel threatens and warns violent retribution against Elijah. In a way you could say Jezebel’s intent is justifiable after Elijah himself killed the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18-19). Elijah therefore gets out of dodge, feeling defeated, vulnerable and depressed. He will give up and disappear into the wilderness. What was the point of his prophetic role anyway if he was just going to be killed at the hand of the enemy?

At his lowest point, ready to die under the broom tree, Elijah experiences grace by the miraculous appearance of life-sustaining bread. Even though he was mistaken to leave his followers and run away from his prophetic duties, Elijah is looked after. Even though he was mistaken, Elijah is nevertheless sustained. Even though his thinking on the matter was flawed, it doesn’t stop God.

God has not given up on him. God’s love and favour are not dependent upon Elijah’s morality, wisdom, or consistency, but upon God’s reliability. God’s grace is not dependent on how many mistakes we make, whether or not we make the right decisions all of the time. Judgement is not God’s first response.

God is faithful. And the life God has given to creation will therefore ultimately find a way. The angels attended to Elijah on his escape path in the wilderness. Just like the angels attended to Jesus when he was tempted in the wilderness (Mark 1:12-14). We are never completely separated from God’s gracious, loving presence no matter how deep and far our wilderness wanderings, no matter how deep and far our grief, our depression, our never-satisfied longings.

We all get stuck in killer cycles – be it retribution, anger, fear, despair, anxiety. God will not be phased by any of it. When Elijah is fed and makes his forty-day journey to the holy Mount Horeb, God meets him there and says, “Why are you here?” (1 Kings 19:8).

Get up and get going! God will be with you and give you what you need for the journey ahead. And God will continue being ever-faithful, ever-gracious, ever-loving.

Reference:

Oldenburg, M. W. (2024). Crafting the sermon; Looking at sunday, august 11 lectionary 19, year B 12th sunday after pentecost. Sundays and Seasons. Augsburg Fortress. https://www.sundaysandseasons.com

I find it bemusing that the crowd in this week’s Gospel reading (John 6:24-35) is still asking for signs. How many do they need? In the first verse of John 6 from last week’s Gospel, “they saw the signs that [Jesus] was doing for the sick.” And then, after the Feeding of the Five Thousand, the Gospel concludes by validating the faith of the crowd: “When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world’” (v. 14).

The crowd’s appetite for signs, for proof, is insatiable. It’s like we are never satisfied. Nothing is ever good enough. There is always something wrong that needs improvement. You hear this from, ironically, players on winning sports teams never mind losing ones, when they say: “We can always get better.” Yes, but, what do they expect? That they can play a perfect game? Really?

The religious craving for signs feels a little bit like what is defined today as “spiritual materialism”. Spiritual materialism feeds off ‘signs’. It just leaves us wanting for more but with the expectation that we have to earn it by our accomplishments, and by possessing greater truth for ourselves. It’s tied in with the world’s values and that prosperity gospel notion – a way of doing religion in which we are never permitted to be content with imperfection. We can therefore never allow ourselves to be at peace.

If something I perceive is wrong I need to figure it out. I need to be better and work harder. Fix it. I must hone my skills of discernment, so that in the end I can own or discard the proposition based on my own interpretation thereof never mind what someone else thinks. On this path, everything I perceive is bad must be purged and eliminated. I therefore live in a constant state of vigilance, unrest, and discontentment.

You ask: Do we not want a deeper communion with God? And, can we not learn to tell the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? Absolutely, we can.

But Jesus suggests a way of life that does not deny the two are inextricably entwined. The weeds and wheat must grow together (Matthew 13:34-40), according to a teaching of Jesus. If we are going to grow in faith, we need to learn to live with and accept both realities.

Jesus talked about the mustard seed, which is both good and bad. Pliny the Elder, a contemporary of Jesus, wrote that the mustard seed was medicinal, so it did have some value. But Pliny the Elder advised against planting it because it tended to take over the entire garden. It was a weed that could not be stopped (Rohr, 2024).

Sometimes what we need is found only by embracing those difficult times in our lives as doorways to experiencing God in a whole new and wonderful way.

Because what we need is not validated by proof. What we need is not immediately perceived by observation alone. Let me give you an example. Today, many of us observe all that is not well in the world. And, there is definitely evidence that will support that proposition. These days are like nighttime when the world is blanketed by shadow and ash.

Ironically it is only at nighttime when we can see the stars shine brightly. When we look up at night our spirits rise to the brilliance of the pinpricks of light against the night sky. Ironically it only when we engage, accept and not avoid nor deny our doubts, our pain and the difficulties of life, that we discover a grace of God, a gift or a help coming from a place we never expected.

People of faith through the centuries have used this metaphor of the nighttime for how they still kept faith through their suffering. How did they do that? Did they know something we don’t? Or are they aware of a reality that exists beyond evidence of what we observe on the surface?

You see, those very stars that shone so brightly for us during the nighttime, are they gone during the daytime? Have they magically disappeared? Well, no. Those same stars are shining just as brightly in the daytime. We just don’t see them. But they are still there.

The brighter our surroundings, the more difficult it is to see the stars. And yet, during the daytime of our lives, those are the good times we say. During the day when our sun/star is shining brightly everything is going accordingly, to plan. During the day when our sun/star shines, all is well, and everything is just so.

We cherish those memories of the way things were – so right, so beautiful – in the past. When we could see it all. And everything was as it should be forever more. And so, as I said, we grieve today, that it will never be the same again.

It is significant that Jesus provides a way forward, albeit somewhat cryptically, in his response to the crowd seeking a sign. He says, in today’s Gospel, “… you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (v. 26).

In other words, you connect with God not because you ‘see signs’ but because you experience something that moves you to act. Manna has a purpose. You connect with God not because you’ve figured it out beforehand in your head, but because you receive God’s grace in the wilderness of your life to move on and do what needs doing.

Remember, when all you had was the simple manna that nevertheless sustained you through that difficult time (Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15). It was during the tough times that God’s presence was made manifest, that God was made real to you in the breaking of the bread. And so it is, today.

At the beginning of my vacation Jessica and I attended a Christian Meditation retreat whose theme was “From anxiety to peace”. Our theme speakers reflected on anxiety not as something to deny or try to get rid of on the journey of faith. Healing doesn’t come by denying the reality of what is, including all our thoughts, feelings and behaviours good and bad.

Rather, we were challenged to consider anxiety as the invitation towards peace, the doorway through which we discover deeper understanding and clarity of thought, teaching us to be ok. The wilderness night times offer a way to experience hope by accepting and seeing with the mind’s eye the small wonders of God’s love made real to us. And therefore we don’t need to let fear be our guide.

What are the stars shining in the night for you? The little things that you might miss in the daytime? Those things we easily take for granted? People and situations we overlook in all our hurry?

God, give us peace. God, give us courage.

Reference:

Rohr, R. (2024, July 30). A gracious weed: The reign of God. Daily Meditations, Center for Action and Contemplation. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-gracious-weed/