Over a decade ago, when I moved from New York City to Washington, DC, I was constantly perplexed by the traffic circles. I found them maddening. After four years without a car, I suddenly found myself a driver again, vexed at every turn. It was traffic circle after traffic circle, not to mention one-way streets that change direction halfway down the block. It made for extremely frustrating driving.
On more than one occasion, I found myself going round and round in a traffic circle like a vicious feedback loop, unable to make the proper exit. I would second guess the signs and then miss where I was supposed to leave the loop. Before I knew it, I had circled ten times around the statue of George Washington.
At this point in the lectionary calendar of Sunday Gospel readings, it’s beginning to feel as if we are in a traffic circle, going round and round, and unable to spin off to our destination. This is the fifth Sunday that includes a reading from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. It is a rich chapter, no doubt. But John’s literary style is somewhat circuitous, containing a lot of repetition. We hear that Jesus is the bread of life more times than we can count. And often, when Jesus makes a new point, he still repeats something he said earlier.
To make matters even more confounding, Jesus’ bread of life discourse does not take us in any narrative direction. There’s no typical story to tell here. Jesus is teaching, giving commands, explaining, but after seventy verses, we might be even more confused about what Jesus is saying than we were in verse one. We are still in the traffic circle looking for our exit.
In this traffic circle, we are going round and round Jesus, who sounds like a broken record. I am the bread of life. This is the true bread. If you eat this bread, you will live forever. The old bread you ate, well, it was not the bread that will give eternal life. You must eat me, and then you will live forever.
And by the end of chapter six, the disciples who are still going round and round the traffic circle are frustrated. They are beginning to complain, just as their ancestors did in the desert when food seemed scarce and water non-existent. The source of life is in their midst, but they cannot see it. They are angry because they cannot find their exit and move on with their journey. They want to be somewhere, but they don’t know how to get there.
There is something stubbornly mystifying about Jesus. He says seemingly plain things, but the meaning is not plain at all. He invites belief, but then obfuscates belief. He even suggests that anyone who comes to him is only drawn by the Father, which makes getting to Jesus seem all the more ambiguous.
At times, he appears to contradict himself. He orders his disciples to eat his flesh but then says that the flesh is useless. Just when our exit from the circle seems to appear, Jesus says something else that keeps us circling round and round.
It thus makes perfect sense that by the end of chapter six, some people have chosen their own exits. St. John is clear: because Jesus’ sayings are difficult, challenging, and rather impenetrable, many disciples took the first exit in sight and never looked back. They opted for a quick escape rather than sticking it out for the right exit, if there even is one.
Simon Peter, on the other hand, utters his own confession of belief. It is different in John’s Gospel than in the others. He does not literally state that Jesus is the Messiah, but in effect, he does. Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. Lord, I may not know where I am going or why I seem to be stuck in this traffic circle, but how can I take an exit? This is where I’m supposed to be.
Peter, for all his bumbling ways and inherent stubbornness, has understood something important here. He has comprehended, if intuitively, what those many disciples who exited the traffic circle did not get: the exits are not the point. Being in the circle is, because at its center is Jesus.
Until this point, every disciple who has encountered Jesus has approached him not as a source of life and mystery, but as a problem to be solved. These disciples have listened to Jesus speak, and then they have demanded solutions to perceived problems. They have asked for answers to open-ended questions. What must we do to perform the works of God? How can this man have come down from heaven when we know who his parents are? How can this man give us his flesh to eat? This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? For each of these legitimate questions, there’s no exit off the traffic circle, because exits are not the point.
And in today’s Gospel, we have reached the breaking point for some. The frustrated disciples have had their eyes set on a destination, and if the traffic circle is in the way of getting there, they will circumvent it and go their own way. They may reach their destination, but they will also miss Jesus.
John’s Gospel must be read in a different way from the other Gospels. It is not linear. And that is the point. It breaks our inherent Western desire to hear a neat story plot, with tension and resolution. John brings our minds and our hearts to a constant circling around the source of all life.
For this is the Christian way, a way that summons us to a traffic circle, wherein we are orbiting around Jesus with all our questions, uncertainties, and challenges. We bring all the mess of our lives into that circle. And although our souls long for quick answers and solutions to perceived problems, we are usually left wandering round and round, with no exit in sight. And truth be told, few people stick with it. Many opt for the first exit and accept whatever the destination will be.
This is precisely why the Christian life can never be completely about a simplistic affirmation of faith. It can never be relegated only to what happens at a particular moment and the ensuing feeling in your heart. It can never be just about merely a perfunctory vocal acknowledgment of Jesus as one’s Savior. It can never be confined solely to the moment when water is poured over your head at the font. It can never be located to one occasion when your hands were outstretched to receive the living bread from heaven. What St. John tells us is that we don’t come to the traffic circle to find the correct exit. We come to the circle to orbit round and round the center of our lives, and Jesus is that center. Going round and round Jesus is exactly where we are supposed to be.
This is why we never have enough of the true food, the living bread from heaven. And it’s also why it is always enough. It is both never enough and always enough. Every minute of our lives as Christians is a decision to stay in the circle, to avoid looking for quick exits, to let ourselves revolve round and round the source of true life and to be drawn more deeply into relationship with him. Because this is where our true home is. This is where we are meant to be.
Admittedly, at times, the Church has done a poor job of preserving the traffic circle. She has tried to direct traffic off into neat exits, providing clarity where none can be found and sometimes adding confusion where none should be. Where so many get hung up is on the demands of the Christian life, on sticking with it for the long haul. Who wants to sign up for a journey with a destination that is at times uncertain? Who wants to commit to being in a perpetual traffic circle, with no clear exit in sight? Who wants to sign up for encounter with a mystery rather than a problem that can be solved and rendered a concrete solution?
But this is precisely what we have signed up for when water was poured on our heads and we were marked as Christ’s own forever. We said yes to the path that leads us to an eternal traffic circle, whose hub is the living bread from heaven. Jesus calls us back again and again to circle around him, to find in him the meaning for all that we do. He doesn’t always give us the pat answers that we long for, but he invites us into relationship with him and one another. And this is where eternal life lies. We can’t come to the circle without being drawn by the Father, because otherwise, we would cheapen the way to Jesus. We would try to invent the Christian life on our own terms. If we can accept that, the traffic circle is heaven; if not, it might seem like hell.
But the eternal traffic circle, with no exit, is not a hell of entrapment or static ennui. It is a dance of pure bliss, where we are circling round and round the King of heaven, singing, and feasting on the true bread from heaven. And here, we know in our hearts that we are not meant to find an exit. Circling round and round is the point. We are meant to stay here for ever. Because going round and round Jesus is right where we’re supposed to be.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 22, 2021