Do Not Complain

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 6:35-48:

I’ve mentioned it before, I can be a little vocal towards others when driving. Not like rolling down the window and yelling at them, but yelling at them in the car. A little while back I was driving with Lizzie, and I yelled “come on you idiot” to someone in front of me, and so Lizzie asked what was wrong, and I said that this driver doesn’t know what they are doing. And she responded, “so that’s why they’re an idiot?” Proud parental moment right there, and that’s sarcasm by the way. As every parent knows our children are much more likely to do as we do, rather than do what we say, especially if they don’t correspond. But how we act also says much more about who we are then anything that we say we believe. And so, with that, we definitely have to think about the power of our words, and how they not only affect the world but also how the affect us, and so we move onto the not that I have been worried about the most, even though one of the things we are not supposed to do is to worry, but today we tackle the injunction not to complain.

Now while I think this not is a generally good idea, while noting there are times when complaints are important, and we’ll get back to that idea, there is a very specific context in which this injunction, and the complaining he is pointing out are made. As Cathy said in the introduction, before this interchange, Jesus has just fed the 5000 on a mountain, and this is a section of John which is known as book of signs as Jesus does things that to John prove he is the Messiah, or that John wants to give than meaning. Then while Jesus walks on the sea of Galilee, a little more impressive than simply parting waters, the people also go around the sea to the other side, and there they ask Jesus what sign it is that he will do so they will believe, after all God gave their ancestors manna, or bread, in the wilderness. Hopefully then you are seeing the clear illusions to the Exodus taking place here, and then Jesus says that he is the bread of life, which is one of his I am statements, and remembering that the name of God given to Moses is I am. But this causes the religious leaders to begin to complain as we heard this morning, or to grumble as the NIV translates it. So, two important points here.

The first is that with the rise in Anti-Semitism in the country, or perhaps not rise, but that it has once again become fashionable or allowable to say the silent part out loud again. But what religion was Jesus? Jewish. What about all the disciples and apostles? Jewish. So, while the gospels, and John in-particular have been used for anti-Semitic purposes throughout the centuries, while John is being polemical that was not his intention. First because we have to understand that this is an intra-religious argument. Even with the latest dating of John there has not yet been an official break between Christians and Jews yet. So, they are arguing between themselves. And then how this has often been interpreted is that all Jews are doing this. But let me rephrase this to help us see it in a different way. What if they text said, “the Christians began to complain…” would we truly understand that as being all Christians? Probably not because we understand the wide diversity of opinions on things. Or if we said, “the Methodists began to complain…” again, we understand a wide diversity of belief. A better understanding than thinking “all the Jews” is to say “the religious leaders”, but even then, you can run into problems that clearly not all leaders were opposed to Jesus because in John Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both Jewish leaders, are supporters of Jesus. So just take those statements when they are made with a grain of salt in understanding their original context and that they don’t nearly come close to including everyone that there was just as large of a diversity of opinion within Judaism then as there is now and the same is true within Christianity and within Methodism.

But the other piece is the connection to the Exodus story as I already began to build up. But if you were reading this in the original Greek, you could also go back to the book of Exodus and if you were reading the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, you would find it uses exactly the same Greek word for then the Israelites complain to Moses about their having to wander in the desert (and see how easy it is to make the entire group guilty of something rather than just a small party?) and so the complaining that is being raised up here has something to do with complaints against God, and in those complaints completely overlooking the blessings and gifts that God has given to the people. So, these complaints are sort of pointed – sure you fed us then, but what have you done for us lately God? And, why should we trust these people who say they are sent by you, which includes both Moses and Jesus here? Which then ultimately is making it about us, rather than about God. As I’ve said before, we all want to follow God, we would just rather do so in an advisory capacity, rather than as true followers. Additionally, I’m sure that we have all known people who constantly complain about everything and in doing so they totally miss the blessings around them. And there are people who will say that it’s important to get these thoughts and feelings out, and that it’s healthy. But if that was the case then people who complain all the time would be the happiest and healthiest people in the world. But, is that true? No. in fact they tend to be some of the unhappiest because rather than seeing anything positive, or appreciating the blessings in their lives, they instead focus wholly on the negative so they can complain about it and therefore negative things keep happening to them because that’s all they ever see.

And just like with the other nots we have looked at, not complaining is not an absolute. Because is there reason and times to complain, yes. Scripture is full of complaints or lamentations. Psalm 64 beings, O Lord, hear the voice of my complaint. But here’s the truth about those complaints. They are made to the person that can actually do something about it. That’s not true with most complaints. Most of the time we complain about things that only perpetuate the problems because our complaints are not actually about solving them or correcting them, but simply giving voice to our discontent. I think that’s part of the problem that we see in this passage and why Jesus calls them out is because they are complaining amongst themselves. They aren’t complaining to Jesus, or asking him to explain himself, they are simply grumbling, or gossiping which is often a type of complaint, to themselves rather than to the person who can actually solve the problem. If you go to a restaurant and the soup is cold, it’s okay to make the server aware of it and ask them to correct it. That’s an appropriate form of complaint. But, it’s not okay simply to tell everyone at the table, but not give them a chance to solve it, and it is not appropriate to lambast the server about it. There is no ego in telling the server your soup is cold – that’s a statement of fact and is neutral. But telling them they are terrible at their job, or saying “how dare you serve me cold soup,” is a complaint. In the words of Rev. Will Bowen, who created the complaint free world movement, a complaint often has a sense of being a counterattack for a perceived injustice, or a “this is unfair” or “how dare this happen to me” quality to it. That is, we personalize what has happened and therefore feel justified in how we respond, and that’s really where we then get ourselves into trouble and that’s where the passage from Ephesians comes into play.

This passage is actually pared with the John passage for today in the lectionary, which are the recommended scripture readings for each week that are used by the Roman Catholic Church and a large portion of Protestant churches, and I think they go together nicely. Because we have this statement about not complaining amongst themselves, matched up with the author of Ephesians starting this passage, which is a call to how we are to live differently from who we were before, and to live differently from the world first by telling the truth to others because we are members of one another. That means that we are, in the words of Dr. King, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We have to be honest to be in relationship. Now unfortunately in a modern context we misuse this telling the truth with being jerks, and try to cover it up with the statement, “I’m just keeping it real.” Telling the truth here is not giving us permission to demean or belittle someone else, that’s part of the being members of one another, but is also then what follows. First it says “be angry” which is not a command, but a realization that anger is an emotion and we are bound to feel it, but that’s quickly followed by “but do not sin.”

Now if sin is as I refer to it as the breaking of relationship, then it cannot lead to us trying to excuse away derogatory or destructive words because we’re just keeping it real. And that becomes even clearer towards the end of the passage, in being told to “put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another.” And that comes through how we talk with one another because we are to let “no evil talk come from our mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.” And that, I think, is the key when it comes to complaining and what I thought of that can change the voice of our complaint, and studies show that the average person expresses a complaint 15-30 times a day, is to seek that what we say to others, and what we say to ourselves would seek to build others up, and that all our words would convey God’s grace, God’s love, God’s forgiveness to others. Because in doing that we not only imitate Christ, and making a sacrifice of our lives, which means that perhaps we don’t get to do what we want or say what we want, and we do this because of the love and forgiveness and grace that God has already done for us.

Like Christ, we seek to do not our own will, but the will of God, by turning to the light and not seeking the things of this world, but by pursuing the light of the world. We talk a lot about what happens in the waters of baptism, and the new creation we become, and therefore the new life into which we have been born, which is what Ephesians is emphasizing, as well as Jesus in calling for us to pursue the bread that will never leave us hungry, and the water that will never leave us thirsty. But I learned something new about baptism as it was practiced in the early church this week. And that is as those about to be baptized took their vows to reject the forces of the world, they were turned to the west, but then as they vowed to follow Christ and to clothe themselves with Christ, the turned to the East, the direction from which the light comes as it overcomes the darkness of the night, symbolically calling us to do the same. To live in the light and to imitate Christ and to live in love so that all that we do and say won’t be our complaints, but instead we recognize our blessings and will build up others and will give grace to all those who hear. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.