For Sunday
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Collect

Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Reading

From John 6:51-58

“Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”

Reflection

Reading about this crowd who take the words of Jesus literally, I’m drawn back to an earlier story just like it.

Jesus is calling himself the bread of life. Which, if we’re being honest, is a pretty weird thing to say. And the crowds are taking him literally. They are confused by how this man standing before them could also be a loaf of bread.

Back in chapter 3, when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, a religious scholar no less, Jesus refers to being “born again” and “born from above”. In that case, the intelligent, interested teacher took Jesus as literally asking if Jesus is talking about being birthed by his Mom a second time.

As much as I find these exchanges really strange, I also find them strangely familiar. In part because we have a tendency to get our sense of reality confused. What is real, for instance. What is true? How do we handle the idea that Jesus really is calling himself bread? And then proceeds to talk about people, quite earnestly eating his body?

Certainly Jesus isn’t being literal here. But neither is he being metaphorical in the way that we use metaphors. I think the point of the story is for us to see their confusion. We are reading a story of people misunderstanding Jesus. People who are willing to follow him for miles and miles along roads and crossing seas. People who have committed to change their lives.

Jesus keeps saying that his #1 job is to reveal God to the world. And his being bread is a sign of God’s grace. Take him in—all of him—and we can all know that grace.

This isn’t a concept either a literal or metaphorical reading can truly deal with alone.

Yet we are invited into that very same process. In a very real way, to use Jesus as an access to God. To be loved by him, fed by him, and changed by him. Quite literally and in our very real world.