Turning to Yes

Today’s post is from guest contributor Laurel Potter (she/they), who teaches theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Laurel researches and worships in collaboration with marginal ecclesial communities in El Salvador, where she lived and worked for several years.

The gospel readings of the last few Sundays have been taking us through chapter 6 of John’s gospel, a challenging, philosophical text known as the “bread of life” discourse. 

The chapter starts with the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand—from two fish and five barley loaves to twelve baskets of leftovers!—and winds through a reflection on spiritual food, on flesh and spirit, and on the task of belief. John’s community understood the story of feeding the five thousand to be an important moment of eucharistic institution, and they used some verses of this chapter in their own ritual remembrance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. It’s a text that sets out what is at stake in a commitment to the path set by Jesus the Christ. 

In today’s passage, some disciples are unwilling to bet on Jesus’ promises. After hearing him out, “many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” It’s a conscious decision, an informed rejection of the Jesus way. This moment reminds me of 20th-century German theologian Karl Rahner, who says that we spend our lives answering “yes” or “no” to God. Rahner emphasizes that it is really possible to say no. Human free will includes the possibility to deny God (and in so doing, Rahner would say, to deny the truth of our own selves).

After some disciples leave because they looked at the divine promise of life abundant for beloved creation and either find it too strange to accept or too difficult to believe, Jesus turns to those who remain and asks, So what, you all, too? Are you going to leave me?

And they, notably, do not try to tell Jesus that his message is simple, or easy, or straightforward. They do not pretend to understand, nor to know what may be to come, nor to feign readiness. All they can say is, where else could we go? 

For most people, especially LGBTQ+ people, to live into our unseen hopes is not easy. To become ourselves, to have the courage to change our minds, to accept new realities, to trust in promised futures—it goes against our every desire for security, for the known. And yet, contradictorily, as Jesus tries to explain throughout John 6, nothing but the scary, unsure path will lead us toward that end. This is difficult to accept. When Peter answers Jesus’ question with a question—“to whom shall we go?”—he isn’t ready to say that he knows and consents to each step of the journey that is to come. He can only recognize that there isn’t another path for him, and this answer is enough.

This sense that there is nothing to be done but what is reminds me of a favorite piece by lesbian poet Mary Oliver called “The Journey.” If I were to add a fourth reading to the lectionary for today, this would be it. 

It’s a poem that has accompanied much of my own coming out process and one that I still turn to when life demands what seems impossible. This poem is for times when we can’t totally plot out how fidelity to our givenness will unfold, much like how I imagine the disciples felt when Jesus put them on the spot, much how John’s community must have felt amid the danger and uncertainty of the early Christian period. At a minimum, it’s how I’ve felt at different crossroads of “yes” and “no” in my own life.

I’ll offer it here, as we move into another week, confronting whatever choices, uncertainties, challenges, or possibilities await us. 

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

—Laurel Potter (she/they), June 10, 2024