Living In The Way

Get a Life!

By Katherine Albin, M.A., L.P.C.C.

Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself;
it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. – John 15:4

At the agency where I work I am required to develop a written “treatment plan” for each person I see. Though clients sign the plan indicating that they have been part in developing the plan, I do insist on one core piece for each client, that they develop a “personal wellness plan,” no matter why they have entered therapy. This is based on my belief that people are better equipped to make changes in their lives (what therapy is all about) when they can identify and implement factors that help them feel their physical and emotional best. Though the categories are the same for everyone, each plan is different, as each person is different.

Since I work in a secular organization, I have to set aside my Christian belief system when working with clients—unless the client himself initiates a Christian context. Then we can be more open about topics of religion and spirituality. Even without this openness, however, I feel my work must include personal wellness, which, by its nature, is essentially spiritual wellness, whether we’re blatantly calling it that or not. When we are taking care of ourselves, we are honoring the Creator and His creation, which allows us to be and do our best, the way God intended. When we feel our best (physical, emotional, and spiritual), we are better able to handle life’s trials and to treat others with respect and kindness. In other words, we are more capable of loving others as well as ourselves.

I try to follow my own personal wellness plan, although I admit I fall short. Just as everyone falls short in deserving God’s grace, this does not give us license to not even try to be good! After all, God commanded us to follow His rules, clarified by Jesus, who declared the two greatest commandments, on which all others hang (Matthew 22:37-40). Part of my own wellness plan includes spiritual discipline and refreshment. Though church is not a perfect place nor is it filled with perfect people, I’d like to think the church and its people are at least trying their best. I, for one, need regular reminders that God deserves my attention, not what the world out there is throwing my way in the form of media, advertisements, images, or anything else vying for my attention and worship. Even these articles are a way for me to keep disciplined about God. As I have said before, I see them as “appointments with God.” I don’t always feel like writing, but I know if I just “show up” for my appointment, God will help me say what needs to be said. After I’ve finished writing, I always feel like I’ve completed a much-needed workout.

I thought I would include in this article the questions I pose to my clients for their wellness plans (based on a model by Mary Ellen Copeland). Although in the last few years my client population has increasingly focused on substance abuse, the wellness plan can be translated for any problem behavior or condition. The point is to develop a better perspective and healthier, more rewarding lifestyle by replacing destructive habits with constructive ones.

Exercise One: A New Habit of Thinking
List three to five things you are anxious or stressed about
List twice as many things that are going well for you, or for which you are grateful

Exercise Two: Prevention
Daily maintenance activities, basic and necessary for my physical and emotional well-being
Healthy habits to replace the unhealthy one
Other activities for making my life better, more manageable and meaningful
Personal support system (don’t forget God)

Exercise Three: Intervention
Personal triggers and temptations—or what gets me off course
Early warning signs, physical and emotional
Immediate interventions
Personal support system (again, don’t forget …)

Not long ago Pastor Dale ended his sermon with the wisdom phrase, “You are what you eat” (August 20, 2006). The point was that if we consume Jesus—that is, have Him in us—we will have true (eternal) life. It’s the only kind that matters. As I tell many of my clients (in so many words), get a life! Like anything, the more we spend our time and attention on something, the more we feel we need it: our bodies, minds, and spirit can get used to anything—good or bad. The more time I spend time with God, the more I feel I need Him. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dear Jesus, thank you for being the Vine upon which my whole life depends.

Pastor Dale’s Sermon
August 20, 2006
Text: John 6:51-58

Internalizing The Divine;
Ingesting Jesus

Every sermon I do has a title, usually with a subject and a predicate. I do that because it keeps me on track. The subject is the center of the sermon; the predicate is what I am saying about the subject. Makes sense. Today the subject is you and me. The predicate is about getting God in us. How do we internalize? Get God inside of us. Moving from knowing about God to knowing God. Jesus is very graphic: you get God inside by eating Him. The title is the theme “Internalizing the Divine; Ingesting Jesus.”

We can let the Gospel of John do the talking. We’ve been working through the sixth chapter of John. We’re still there; it’s a long and intense chapter. Turn to John 6; we’ll start at verse 51.

(51) 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. Jesus has been focusing on bread for the entire chapter, which begins with the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus provides our daily bread. But Jesus moves beyond bread that sustains our bodies and begins talking about a bread that comes from heaven, that is, Himself. A nonperishable bread. The amazing thing about this bread, Jesus, is that He connects us to the Eternal in a relationship forever.
We can buy most of this, I guess. But Jesus then scandalizes us. This bread is His flesh.

(52) The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, I>How can this man give us his flesh to eat? You can understand the shock of Jesus’ listeners. They like what Jesus is saying and they’d love to have this bread. That’s what they say in verse 34 of this sixth chapter: Give us this bread always. But then he starts talking about cannibalism.

Now, Jesus is talking with the sons of Israel. They believe that there is only one God. This God is Spirit. Now God’s Spirit resides in the temple at Jerusalem, sure, but God is still spirit. The Law prohibits any representation of what God looks like, a graven image, that is, an idol. Can’t do that. They take this stuff so seriously that any good Jew would never pronounce the name of God, Yahweh, so as not to break the second commandment. So Jesus is already out of their box when He claims to be living bread. To that he adds eating Him. Ingesting him. Those are His words, not mine. And there’s nothing to suggest that he’s being purely symbolic here.

When I was a little kid, I took Jesus literally. I used to sit in the pew at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Akron, Ohio, when the pastor took a funny little cracker and called it Jesus’ body. Then he took some red stuff and called it Jesus’ blood. I thought to myself that this must be a very special church. After all, Jesus was only one man, who lived a long time ago, and we must be a very special church if we still have some of his body and his blood.

(53) So Jesus said to them, Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Just in case they didn’t get it, he is even more emphatic: he’s Son of Man, that is God, and he confers eternity by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. You can imagine the headline in the Jerusalem Times: “Jesus Says He Is God; Got to Eat Him.”

This is a hard image for me. I enjoy the occasional steak; that is, the flesh of a critter. But eating human flesh is repulsive to me. Some of you may remember the news accounts, seen the film, or read the book about the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed high in the Andes mountains and were really lost. Some died, but others resorted to eating the flesh of the dead. What’s even worse is that the Greek sense of eating isn’t polite ingesting, but instead “to gnaw, chew, devour.”

Jesus is clearly being literal here.

(54) Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day. Jesus is linking life with Him in the resurrection of the dead and eating flesh and blood. Jesus is making a promise here, the greatest of all of His promises: that as He brings history to an end, he will raise us all up. By eating His flesh, drinking His blood. That’s got to be Hocus Pocus.
It gets at the issue of how we internalize our faith. How do we get changed so that these promises become real, now and in the future? You know, the difference between knowing about Christ and experiencing Christ.

Question: What’s the difference in a curmudgeon after he is born again?

Answer: He becomes a Christian curmudgeon.

In other words, there’s no apparent change. It was Charles Colson who once said sitting in a church won’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in the garage will make you an automobile.

Internalizing Christ is a life-long and intentional process. We internalize him by eating and drinking Him. By listening and studying His Word. By praying and communicating with Him. By acting like Him. By making love a habit that simply comes naturally because we’ve done it so often.

(55) For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Yikes! Will He never stop with the flesh and blood stuff? In the modern era, which many believe has drawn to a close—so that we are now part of the Post Modern Era—these words of Jesus have taken a beating. They are not to be taken literally, most say. The Latin Hoc Est Corpus Meum, has been changed to Hocus Pocus, which is a derisive term suggesting deception, magic, playing tricks.

(56) Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. You see, it is about getting God in us and us in God. Internalizing God by eating Jesus.

It is an epistemological question, really. That’s been the problem of philosophy, sociology, theology, and science for centuries. The epistemological question: How do I know what I know? This is a shoe, right? How do you know? Because you have been told it is a shoe. Actually, what is a shoe? Can you prove to me that this shoe really exists? This could easily be a widget. Or something else. Did God make this a shoe? Is it something we agree to call it?

You get my drift. If Jesus takes a piece of bread and calls it his body, well, it is his body. By definition. If he takes some wine and calls it his blood, then it is, by definition, his blood. Bread can be bread and wine can be wine, but if Jesus calls it his flesh and blood, that’s exactly what it is.

(57) Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. Getting beyond the cannibalism, Jesus connects himself to God, Father, creator of heaven and earth. The one who gave immortality to Adam and Eve, who upon their rebellion took it away, now gives it again in the Son, Christ Jesus. To internalize the Son is to have life.

(58) This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats the bread will live forever. Jesus now concludes this hard and controversial teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum. My guess is that the listeners are mostly experiencing shock and disbelief. But Jesus is clear. He, bread, ingested and internalized—really taken in—connects us to the Eternal in a unique way.

So how do you internalize Jesus? Remember that little piece of wisdom, “You are what you eat.”

Amen.