Sermon: 13th Sunday after Pentecost
22 August 2021 –
Archdeacon Mark Long
Ephesians 6:10-20,
Psalm 84, and John 6:56-69; NRSV
Today we complete our journey with the sixth chapter of
John’s Gospel. We began the journey with the crowds as Jesus fed the five
thousand with a few barley loaves and some dried fish – a powerful reminder
that God’s action is not only abundant but also satisfying – and we end it with
the disciples as they grapple with what it means to truly follow Jesus.
We have been presented over these six weeks with what we know and understand: hunger, real food, bread and fish. We’ve also been presented with the metaphor of Jesus as God’s provision for us. Reality and metaphor have been woven together, and we are asked to accept the body and blood of Jesus as real sustainance for life and faith. We’ve been invited by John to understand our gathering together in Eucharistic worship as no different in nature to crowds gathered on the mountainside sharing barley bread and dried fish: both meals are abundant, both are satisfying, both are life giving. We are asked, though, to do more than just accept the similarities of the two meals; we’re invited to see that while the barley bread and dry fish are abundant in the moment and able to satisfy our physical hunger for the day, what we are offered in Jesus is eternally abundant and satisfies hunger beyond the physical, and yet embracing our humanity in its fullness.
Just as we’re beginning to get our minds around all of that, we’re reminded that not only are we invited to feed on the body and blood of Christ, but we’re also asked to be the body and blood of Christ with all that that implies. Just as the barley loaves and fish were broken apart and shared out, just as the bread is broken in the Eucharist and shared with the wine, so you and I are asked to be that for God’s Creation and for the day-to-day world in which we live. We’re asked to trust that the seemingly insufficient is sufficient, and more than sufficient: it is satisfying. We’re asked to trust that in God we are more than adequate for God’s purposes, and that the seeming paucity of our lives when we abandon ourselves into God’s hands, will be ample in the breaking.
Think on that for a moment {pause}. Is it any surprise that we hear many in the larger crowd of disciples around Jesus asking, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”[1] These disciples are not responding just to the opening verses of today’s reading, but to the fullness of what Jesus has been saying through this sixth Chapter of John’s Gospel. It is discomforting stuff, even if only read superficially. However, when the implications of Jesus teaching begin to be understood it becomes deeply disturbing. What Jesus is asking of those who follow him, and by implication of ourselves, too, is to recognise that this is an all-in commitment and not an add on for when we have a bit of time. It is a call to abide as we heard in the opening verse of today’s window on this chapter, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”[2] As I reflected in my sermon last week, “‘To abide’ has a number of different meanings, but it is used here actively: it is to belong, it is to live with, it is to embrace, and it is to persist in doing so.”[3] This teaching is no gentle add-on for those occasional moments when we desire a little distraction from our busy lives, and therefore again no surprise that we hear that “[b]ecause of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”[4] It is a call to believe in such a manner that it is visible in our active belonging, embracing, and persistence in living this commitment.
It is important to recognise that there is a choice, always a choice; as we become more awake to the reality of what our faith increasingly requires of us, so we need to reconsider our willingness to continue on the path we’ve chosen. Jesus offers the Twelve that option, even as others in the broader crowd of disciples make the choice to leave. Jesus asks them, “Do you also wish to go away?”[5] It is Peter who answers for them all, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”[6] You and I of course know how the story continues: this commitment will test them all; Judas will betray, Peter deny, and a good few run away. However, at this particular point of awakening for the Twelve, and for Peter in particular, at the heart of this declaration is a belief based on their relationship with Jesus, “We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”[7] It is sufficient and in that moment satisfying, and despite how Jesus’ arrest, trial, and subsequent crucifixion will break them, it will prove sufficient and satisfying for them beyond this moment.
As I said last week, “We are challenged … to accept that God has acted through the real life of Jesus, and that God continues to act in and through the reality of our lives.”[8] What today’s Gospel adds is that this challenge is accepted within the context of relationship with Jesus, in the context of our willingness to immerse ourselves in the fullness of all that God is; and the touchstone is that we, like the Twelve, have come to believe and know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.
The additional challenge is what does this look like as we move beyond today? Personally, I take courage that the Twelve and others who responded to Jesus were in fact everyday human beings, not too different to you and myself: capable of betrayal and denial, uncertainty and doubt, even fear; yet also capable of great courage, kindness, and love. You and I live in a broken world, and are often broken by it, too. There is much heartache in our day-by-day lives, but also opportunity for joy. Afghanistan and Haiti, our own Nation’s corrupt leadership, institutional racism and economic disparity, xenophobia, colonialism, patriarchy, gender-based violence, gang warfare, murder and rape, addiction, ecological disaster; all these and more define the brokenness of the world we live in and they all occupy various levels of our awareness and concern, our anxiety and fear. Into this broken world, as we embrace Jesus as the Holy One of God, we – the Body of Christ – are broken and shared.
The bread which we break, is it not a sharing of the body of Christ?
As I close, let us take courage and wisdom from the opening words of today’s epistle reading, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”[10]
A prayer by Irish Theologian and Poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama:
Let us pray,
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