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| Photo by congerdesign, pixabay.com |
Let’s just name it. Today’s gospel sounds like Jesus is advocating cannibalism. Eat my flesh. Drink my blood. Eeww.
Dracula would be thrilled. His Jewish audience, not so much. His listeners take his words literally. Jesus, once again showing saintly patience, explains that the invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood is an invitation to deeper and forever relationship with God. His life, his flesh, redefines the life we live in this world AND the next. Without the bread that feeds our souls, our spirits and our sense of God working in and through us will wither and die.
Generations upon generations of faithful people have read these words in John and found comfort, strength, and challenge. God desires us to eat and drink of Love Incarnate, to ingest, digest, and become that Love. Nourishment in our spiritual lives strengthens us to continue growing into the full stature of Christ.
As followers of Jesus, always learning and growing, we pause periodically to check in with one another, with God, and with ourselves about whether we are living the values we most deeply believe in.
Throughout our lives, we make these kinds of self-assessments consciously and unconsciously. Different groups and individuals present values, sometimes very persuasively. Because it is human nature to want to belong, we may not give much consideration to the values of a group of friends, a neighborhood or political group, or a faith group until some issue or change or conversation makes us feel uncomfortable.
We can imagine that the ‘bread of life’ discourse related by John gave Jesus’ followers a moment of pause. Was Jesus really inviting them to nibble on his flesh or sip from his veins? Are they willing to stay in conversation with him through the discomfort to find out more? Or is this idea too much, too dissonant?
It’s interesting to notice that Jesus is not apologetic or defensive about the good news he brings. Even as he oh-so-patiently explains his connection with the Father, again. His focus is on the food of everlasting life, and the invitation to join ourselves with God. It’s up to us to decide if this is the food we desire, and if we are willing to adjust our lives to be part of the family of God.
As individuals and communities striving to live the Good News of Jesus Christ, we make these decisions every day.
Two significant dates happened in the last week.
Last Tuesday, August 13, Trinity celebrated its 159th birthday as a congregation. People started meeting for Episcopal worship in Seattle in 1855, and in 1865 a lay vestry officially established the congregation. Trinity’s location and size changed dramatically in the first 50 years, though the history reveals a constant quest to serve our neighbors in need. Fun fact, the property where this building now stands, before the church was built, housed a hospital for Protestants, in a time when most of the hospitals in Seattle were run by the Roman Catholic church.
After WWII, when many men returning from war had trouble reentering civilian life, Trinity housed a chaplaincy to veterans. And in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Boeing laid off most of its workforce, Trinity provided space to the founding of a food bank ministry that grew into Northwest Harvest. Today, Trinity houses one of Seattle’s only low-barrier shelters for unhoused women. Those are just a few examples of how Trinity has periodically paused to ask ourselves how best and most faithfully we can living our deepest value: to proclaim by word and action the Good News of God in Christ.
I mentioned two significant dates.
The other date is today, August 18. For the last 50 or so years, TEC calendar of lesser saints commemorated William Porcher Dubose on this day. Dubose, who died in 1918, was memorialized as a NT theologian and 2nd dean of the School of Theology at the University of the South. Dubose was, quoting from his official church bio, “among the most original and creative thinkers The Episcopal Church has ever produced.” In the last decade, scholarship into his personal writings reveals that he was also a self-avowed and unrepentant white supremacist. He owned hundreds of enslaved people and, in his personal writings, he praised the early Ku Klux Klan.
159 years after the end of the Civil War, TEC recognizes and deplores the sin of enslaving human beings. In a conversation Dubose may have approved of, given his belief in unmasking errors through open discussion, a process began to remove him from the calendar of commemorations. In June this year, the General Convention, by a near-unanimous vote of 827-2, approved Dubose’s removal from the calendar of commemorations because his unrepentant racist views do not reflect our understanding today of God’s Beloved Community.
The Gospel of God’s love revealed through Jesus Christ does not change, though how we understand it does. As a community following the teachings of Jesus we bring the good news to the changing needs and concerns of the world.
Jesus wants to transform our hearts more and more into the fullness of serving God. To that end, Jesus gives himself as the bread of life, that we might metabolize that love, thrive, and grow in our witness to the power of God working in and through us.
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