Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
- Aug 16, 2015
- 5 min read
This is the third Sunday in a row
we have heard Jesus talking about himself
as the living bread that has come down from heaven.
This morning, we’re in the fourth week out of five weeks
of what’s sometimes called the “bread of life discourse” in the Gospel of John.
It’s the part of John’s Gospel that begins with Jesus’ multiplying
the loaves and fishes,
a miracle that Jesus uses as a “springboard” to
talk about who he is and why he has come.
This is the part of the “discourse” we find ourselves in today.
The part where Jesus is talking about who he is and why he has come.
I have to confess,
by now, I’m growing slightly weary of all this talk about bread.
And also slightly weary about having to preach about it again!
Several times this past week, I’ve wanted to say to say to Jesus,
“You know, I think we get it now! I think you can move on to another topic!”
But as I was sitting with this weeks’ Gospel,
and praying again on these words of Jesus,
it dawned on me that he was probably repeating them for a reason.
I mean, after all, why do we repeat things?
Because they’re important.
Because we’re supposed to remember them.
Last week, I said that really, when you boil all of these words down,
what Jesus is trying to talk about is the Incarnation.
God’s choice to become a human being.
To come down from heaven.
And the Jews around him—
not all Jews, John means to say, but the Jewish leaders—
they say, wait a minute, how is it possible for you
to come down from heaven?
It seems impossible.
Or like an abstract idea.
And in this week’s Gospel, he pushes the envelope even further.
“The bread that I will give for the life of the world,” he says, “is my flesh.”
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life,
and I will raise them up on the last day;
for my flesh is true food and my blood true drink.”
What Jesus says is shocking and even scandalous to the people around him.
So shocking that they practically accuse him of cannibalism!
Which I don’t think is what Jesus is trying to say.
I think maybe part of what Jesus is trying to say is this:
the Incarnation isn’t just an abstract idea.
It’s not just a concept that people debate.
No, the Incarnation is as real as flesh and blood.
It’s something that God, in Jesus, lived out.
In a body.
In real flesh.
Cannibalism aside, this is pretty shocking
and even scandalous.
That the Creator of the Universe
would choose to experience what’s it’s like to be one of us.
What it’s like to live as we live.
What it’s like to struggle as we do.
And to suffer.
And yes, even to die.
I sometimes need reminding of this.
That the Incarnation isn’t just an idea or a concept.
Just something we talk about in a detached way.
Something that happened two thousand years ago,
but that is now far removed from us.
Sometimes, I need reminding that the Incarnation
isn’t just a tired, old church doctrine that no longer has any bearing on our lives.
It’s something that must be lived out
in flesh and blood.
In our flesh and blood.
It’s something we must participate in.
It’s something we must practice.
Yes, in Jesus, the Word made flesh
came two thousand years ago in a unique way,
a way that can not ever be repeated.
But in another way,
God invites us to be part of this.
God calls us to be agents of the Incarnation in our world.
To help make the Word flesh today
by the way we live our lives.
By the ways we embody God’s love for others.
By the ways we show God’s mercy and compassion where they are needed.
By the way feel God’s hunger for justice in our gut,
and strive for this justice around us.
When we do these things, we live out the Incarnation.
We make it real in our world.
This week, the Church celebrates two saints
who did this.
Who lived out the Incarnation in their lives.
Who made it real.
The first is Mary.
Yesterday was the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Mary, of course, was the very first person to live out the Incarnation
by consenting to carry Jesus in her own womb.
Something she did at great risk to herself.
When the angel Gabriel came to tell her
that God has chosen her to be the mother of God’s son,
it would’ve been so much easier and safer for her to say no.
She was young. She was poor.
She was unprepared.
And she had no idea what would happen to her.
But she said yes to God.
She took the risk.
That’s one of the thing about the Incarnation.
It’s often risky.
Risky for God.
And risky for those who are bold enough or crazy enough to say yes to God.
The other saint we celebrate this week,
a 20th century saint named Jonathan Myrick Daniels,
knew this well.
Daniels was killed exactly fifty years ago this week,
on August 20, 1965, in a small town near Selma, Alabama.
He was a white Episcopal seminarian studying in Massachusetts
who responded to the call of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
for clergy and others to come down south to help get black voters registered.
He knew he had to go.
He knew he had to be present.
To do the work of justice.
While he was there,
Daniels was arrested by local law enforcement
for resisting Jim Crow laws.
After being released from Jail,
he and a Catholic priest and two young African American demonstrators,
one of whom was named Ruby Sales,
entered a nearby shop to buy a soda.
Once inside the store,
a county deputy holding a 12 gauge automatic pump shotgun
ordered them off the property,
and began hurling racial insults at the two young black women.
When the man pointed his gun at Ruby Sales,
Daniels pushed her out of the way,
and caught the blast of the gun.
He was killed instantly.
Living out the Incarnation—
allowing our own lives, our own flesh and blood
to be the way God is present in the world—
can be risky.
Because the places where God’s presence is needed most aren’t the easy places.
They’re the hard places.
The places where things aren’t ok.
The places where love and compassion and mercy are scarce.
The places where there is still disparity and injustice and hurting,
and where people live in fear.
The Selmas. The Fergusons. And yes, even Seattle.
These are the places in the world where the Word yearns to become flesh.
The great German mystic Meister Eckhart
is famous for saying that each of us
is called to give birth to God in the world.
Each of us is called to give birth to God in the world.
This isn’t just poetry, though.
This is our calling as followers of Jesus.
Now may we, with Mary, the Mother of God,
and Blessed Jonathan Daniels,
have the grace and courage to fulfill it.
Amen.
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