Readings: Ephesians 5: 15 – 20 John
6:51-58
We pray: may the
words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight
O God, our rock and our sustainer. Amen.
The Lectionary, by
which readings are selected for each Sunday is an interesting beast at times
and certainly adds a layer of interpretation on how we read scripture – we
sometimes forget that we preach on selected passages in a three year cycle –
unless of course we choose to go outside the bounds occasionally. Some
Presbyterian congregations of course do not follow it at all – preferring to
choose their own focus – in the end it is another way of someone or a group of
someones selecting what it is that we focus on in Sunday service. It has both its dangers and its usefulness.
And always it needs to be supplemented by other ways of reading scripture –
such as focussing on a book at a time reading in our own time and listening to
scripture in church and study groups – all scripture. For me this is what makes the reading of the
bible book by book each month so very useful – providing an overall context for
the journey of the people of God that helps us fill out the gaps left by
lectionary selections.
Why start talking
about the lectionary - because there has been a slightly unusual approach to
lectionary readings from John over these few weeks. Two weeks ago the Gospel
reading of John 6 ended with these words - ‘Jesus said to them: I am the bread
of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me
will never be thirsty. Last week our Gospel reading began with that same verse
and ended with ‘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.’ This week our reading begins with that same
verse and ends with: ‘This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like
that which your ancestors ate, and they died.
But the one who eats this bread will live forever.‘ And next week we begin with the last three
verses from today… and there it ends.
One more time
today with Jesus as the bread of life – do you think that there might be
something more than a simple metaphor at work here? Why such an emphasis? What
is it that Jesus needs us to hear and the selectors of lectionary felt was
important enough to repeat multiple times?
And did you find today’s reading somewhat
difficult to listen to? It appears that the people listening to Jesus did. The cannibalistic overtones are hard to
ignore. We hear in the verses following
todays reading that the disciples found the words difficult to accept and that,
in fact, some of them walked away, never to come back. They were perturbed that Jesus seemed to be
offering his own flesh as food. Shocking
to both their sensibilities and ours.
So, back to Jesus
repetitiveness – what does that say to us? Well, first of all it says that what
we are being told is an important point to grasp and secondly, that what is
being communicated is difficult to grasp.
As the disciples found.
So how do we find our
way into this passage of troubling scripture?
I didn’t find much to illuminate in the commentaries I read. The theology was convoluted and diverse – in
fact the most appealing comment was that of a theologian who confessed the
practice of preaching from the epistle or Hebrew Scripture each time this
Gospel reading turned up.
But we will persist. So, how do we understand this reading in the
context of holy communion and of eternity?
Martin Luther
takes the viewpoint that the words of Jesus cannot be interpreted simply through
the act of sacrament nor can the words of flesh and blood be taken literally. "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. (John
6: 53) cannot be used to as the exclusive and only way into full life in
Christ. He believed when Jesus uses the
language of eating and drinking his flesh and blood he is using a really common
and familiar practice to make obvious what he does not mean ie this is not ‘the
kind of flesh from which red sausages are made….nor veal or beef found in cow
barns…’
Likewise, when
Jesus is talking about himself as bread, he is not talking about flour, water
and yeast – he is talking about something that has come from God, that Jesus come
to us in the flesh, is in fact the bread that leads us not just through this
life but into eternity. We are, says
Luther, to investigate with some vigour what these words mean, knowing that
they are definitely not about one person devouring another.
A helpful
interpretation suggests that this confrontational metaphor is John’s symbolic
‘institution of the Lord’s supper’ with an understanding of eternity - one that
takes it beyond simply a ritual to remember him. It suggests that communion is a time of the
coming together of the human with the divine and that through partaking in it
we enter into life abundant now and for life with God everlasting– that in the
sharing to the bread and wine to remember Jesus, we have a time when eternity
mixes with humanity. I found the words
of George McLeod, founder of the Iona Community, helpful; as a prayer of adoration preceding Communion
he evokes the creator with these words: The morning is yours, rising to fullness,
the summer is yours, dipping into autumn; eternity is yours, dipping into time.[1]
At the table eternity breaks into time
in a unique, unrepeatable way. We are
joined with the living Christ and thus we too are forever.
So are we any
closer to understanding why this repetitive hammering of the message of Jesus
as the bread of life has invaded our lectionary lives these few weeks? At the time of writing I would be tempted to
say no! But actually maybe we do have an
inkling. It’s as if the shocking
language is there to confront us – to challenge our natural inclinations of
what is sensible and within our understanding as a people of spiritual and
religious bent. To say – there is more! This is, according to William Willimon, Jesus
beckoning us towards a thick, multilayered world where there is always more
than meets the eye. As a modern people,
and I suspect for the people of Jesus time, we choose to live in a flattened,
demystified world that is only what we can see or touch. He suggests we live in a world where we love
saying ‘this is only…’ statements – ‘This is only bread, this is only a day at
the office, this is only a Jew from Nazareth.’
The fourth Gospel is trying to get them, and us, to expect more now that
the word has become flesh and dwelt among us. Are we suitably mystified by that
– are the shock tactics working?
In the incarnation
the Word has moved in with us – in the flesh, in this world is where God meet
us! Not on a promise of some futuristic eternity but now Jesus is the bread
come down to heaven to be among us. And Jesus references to himself as the
bread invites us to ingest, consume, have deep and intimate engagement with
Christ in the same way we take bread into our bodies – but as the bread of
heaven, not of the fields.
Are we willing to
go beyond mere belief or intellectual assent and invite that mingling in our
very self that is the Word come to dwell in us and through us and of us.
Jesus wants us all
of us – body and soul – wants his truth to burrow deep within us, consume us,
flow through our veins, to nourish every nook and cranny of our being. We can hold nothing back for the Word has come
to live within us – forever. Amen
Margaret Garland
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