The Weather and the Whales - John 6:51-58

Have you heard that The Episcopal Church now how its own version of Alexa? Our AI chatbot is named Cathy, and she’s about to be rolled out on Episcopal websites. She is equipped to scan the internet and prioritize Episcopal resources, to help people with their searches. Fortunately, Episcopal News Service reports that this is not meant to put any priests out of a job. The hope is that Cathy will meet people online “asking life’s biggest questions with care, insight, and careful research” (ENS 8/7/24).

I’m a little leery of AI in general, so my expectations of Cathy are not high. I do think she’ll be able to save us time when we have to find something in the canons, or help someone translate all of the fancy words we Episcopalians like to use. She might be able to summarize Anglican history or theology in helpful and concise ways, too. But what we should manage our expectations of Cathy on the biggest questions, about things like life and love and loss and what it all means. AI is only as good as what’s on the internet, after all. Because of that, I hope Cathy will ultimately invite people into communities of faith like this one, where spiritual experience is not limited to what’s published online. There’s so much more to see and experience than that.

We’ve been hearing about Jesus as the bread of life in the Gospel of John for several weeks now. As we move through the discourse, we start to hear more about the grumblers - those who were listening to Jesus but finding his teaching difficult. They disputed amongst themselves, saying things like, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And next week we will hear that many of Jesus’ disciples left over it. Perhaps they would have been more comfortable with an AI summary of teachings that had come before, something more along the lines of what they expected, rather than something wild and new. This passage is largely about who Jesus is, with his famous “I am the bread of life” statements, but it’s also about human nature and our tendency to grumble, as displayed by those around him.

The biblical grumblers remind me of something I learned on an amazing whale watching trip in Juneau a few years ago. We were on a boat on a perfect summer day, and we saw several humpback whales up close. It was thrilling. Our guide was knowledgable and enthusiastic, and she taught us about the whales and the whole ecosystem in the area. In between whale sightings, we asked her about her work. She said that sometimes people hire her to take them out, and then have a terrible time, grumbling and cranky. The weather might be bad, or the whales might be elusive. That crankiness can get you down, she said. But she had found a way to push through that. “I can’t control the weather or the whales,” she said. But she can try to help people experience the beauty and wonder of the area no matter what. Whales are just one part of an extraordinary web of creation. There is always so much more to see and experience.

“I can’t control the weather or the whales” is now one of our favorite family mottos. It is also the gospel truth. We all get tossed about by things we can’t control, from weather to any number of difficult circumstances. And we can be disappointed if we don’t see whales or whatever other big things we chase after. But we can control how we steady ourselves in the midst of that and how we keep our hearts open to something more. Which I think has echos in Jesus’ teachings about being the bread of life and the means to eternal life.

I imagine his grumblers were like people who feel cheated out of seeing whales on their whale watching tour. People had been listening to Jesus about bread and wine and flesh and blood, and they were starting to get cranky about the strange teachings. They had come for whales, for the spiritual wisdom they signed up for, something they could see and enjoy. Instead, Jesus was being odd and cryptic. Even some of his own disciples were overheard saying, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” And many left.

But for those who stayed, what did they see that the others didn’t? In a few verses later, Peter said that he would stay because Jesus had the words of eternal life. Peter saw beyond the whales in the brochure. He saw something on the distant shore, glimpsing the complexity of the spiritual ecosystem. How do you put into words something like eternal life? How do you describe the God who created the world? And how do you understand how you and I are in relationship to that God? Jesus chose the language of bread and wine. Bread and wine are tangible and easy-to-find signs that point us to the big picture of eternal life, where we and God connect.

Jesus also shows us that the spiritual life is more than fair weather and the excitement of seeing a whale. It’s about being out on the water and knowing that we are part of a bigger creation. Jesus opted for words like body, blood, and eternity to point us toward that truth. If Jesus had used the same old words, the same old whales, he would not have broadened the imagination of those around him. Peter and the others who stayed could see that Jesus was no ordinary tour guide. And we come here to see that, too.

One of the invitations for us in these bread of life passages is to ask ourselves whether we are looking for the same old whales in our spiritual lives. Are we trying to confirm what we already know? Or, are we open to God showing us a new thing and a deeper wisdom? We are all looking for big things of whale-like proportions, things like love and acceptance, meaning and grace, peace of mind and calmness of spirit. We come here asking life’s biggest questions. I do wish our chatbot Cathy all the best as she tries to answer questions about such things. Fortunately for us, we are not limited to what has already been posted online in our search.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” He is the guide to eternal life, inviting us to look beyond the familiar, beyond the whales we expect to see, in order to see even more. If, at times, the spiritual tour doesn’t seem to be delivering as you expect, the Bible assures us that is not a new phenomenon. A good place to start is to remember that we cannot control the weather or the whales. And the next step is to remember that there is always so much more to see.