Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and today is the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XII). Later this morning, I hope to be part of the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, leading the intercessions.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 6: 51-58 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 51 ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘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. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 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 for ever.’
Today’s Reflection:
In our readings this morning, we are asked to consider where we find wisdom, and we are reminded that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.’
But the purpose of wisdom, which Solomon asks for alone, is so that good and evil can be distinguished, especially when it comes to the needs of the people.
In recent weeks, the reading have included some difficult stories about King David. In this morning’s first reading, (I Kings 2: 10-12, 3: 3-14), David has died and is buried in Jerusalem.
God appears to Solomon in a dream. Solomon realises he is dependent on God, and asks not for long life or riches, or the lives of his enemies, but for the gift of wisdom or an ‘understanding mind.’ God grants this request, and then adds on riches and honours, and also promises long life if Solomon follows God’s ways.
The alternative reading (Proverbs 9: 1-6) presents a personification of Wisdom as Lady Wisdom, who invites the unwise or ‘simple’ to her banquet (verses 1-6).
The Psalm tells us God ‘provides food for those who fear him,’ and that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Psalm 111: 5, 10).
So, what has all this to do with our Gospel reading (John 6: 51-58)?
After feeding the multitude, Christ describes himself as ‘the living bread’ (verse 51). He has told them, not just once, but three times, ‘I am the bread of life’ (John 6: 35), ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven’ (verse 41), and again, ‘I am the bread of life’ (verse 48).
Now he says: ‘I am the living bread’ (verse 51).
These are emphatic declarations. In this Gospel, Jesus says ‘I am’ 45 times. But he uses this particular way of saying ‘I am’ 24 times. He says ‘I AM,’ ἐγώ εἰμί (ego eimi), explicitly including the Greek pronoun ‘I’ (ἐγώ, ego). This is odd in Greek grammar at the time. It is as though Jesus is saying ‘I I AM.’
In the Hebrew Bible, the meaning of God’s name is closely related to the emphatic statement ‘I AM’ (see Exodus 3: 14; 6: 2; Deuteronomy 32: 39; Isaiah 43: 25; 48: 12; 51: 12; etc.). The ‘I AM’ in these accounts and the ‘I AM’ of Saint John’s Gospel is the God who creates us, who communicates with us, who gives himself to us, who feeds us in the wilderness places.
But what does it mean to acknowledge Christ as ‘the bread of life’?
During a wedding I was at recently, celebrated within the context of the Eucharist or the Holy Communion, the priest in his sermon compared God’s self-giving to us in Christ’s body as an expression of God’s deepest love for us with the way in which a couple getting married give themselves bodily to each other … the most intimate loving action to be shown to each other.
Of course, for the love of God and the love of one another are inseparable.
One of the great Cappadocian Fathers, Saint Basil the Great (329-379), is known for his challenging social values. He wrote:
‘The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.’
Christian life must be nourished in our sacramental practice, but our sacramental practice must inspire and feed our practice of Christianity. Doctrine and belief must be related to how we live our lives as Christians.
Some years ago, I stayed in Saint Matthew’s Vicarage in Westminster, where Bishop Frank Weston (1871-1924) is said to have written a key, influential speech.
Frank Weston held together in a creative combination his incarnational and sacramental theology with his radical social concerns, and these formed the keynote of his address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923. He believed that the sacramental focus gave a reality to Christ’s presence and power that nothing else could. ‘The one thing England needs to learn is that Christ is in and amid matter, God in flesh, God in sacrament.’
And so he concluded: ‘But I say to you, and I say it with all the earnestness that I have, if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in His Blessed Sacrament, then, when you come out from before your tabernacles, you must walk with Christ, mystically present in you through the streets of this country, and find the same Christ in the peoples of your cities and villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums … It is folly – it is madness – to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.’
He declared: ‘Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.’
Excerpts from this address are pinned to the west door of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford.
Something similar was said in a letter in The Tablet some years ago [4 August 2018] by Derek P Reeve, a retired parish priest in Portsmouth: ‘The … Lord whom we receive at the Eucharist is the one whom we go out to serve, and, dare I say it, to adore in our neighbour …’
So sacramental life, and accepting Christ as the ‘Bread of Life’ are wonderful concepts in my faith and in my Christian discipleship. But they are meaningless unless I live this out in the way I try to care for those who are hungry, suffering and marginalised.
And that, for me is a very concise understanding of the wisdom of God and its impact on my life.
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 18 August 2024, Trinity XII):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘What price is the Gospel?’ This theme is introduced today with a programme update from Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG:
On a visit to Codrington College in 2023, a former student, now undertaking his curacy, spoke of the perniciousness of the plantation model. He spoke of the ways in which ‘the plantation model still exists, manifest in people looking down on people, exploiting and underpaying the lowest workers.’
The Revd Levon represents the first generation in Barbados to have been born ‘free from life in the fields’. Yet his life remains entangled with the plantations. His grandparents worked on a plantation for 40 years. His aunt, unable to secure an education, worked ‘digging cane holes and weeding between the canes.’ The church which he serves is pilloried as ‘the church that had slaves and condoned slavery.’ His ministry is regularly challenged by Barbadians who, like many, are unable to comprehend his commitment to a church which enslaved and exploited others.
Yet this is the Anglican Church of which we are all members, and for the behaviours of which so many of us must repent, seek redemption and build relationships for reconciliation and repair. USPG is seeking to do this with Renewal and Reconciliation: The Codrington Reparations Project amongst other work being undertaken to interrogate how our past is still having an impact on society today.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 18 August 2024, Trinity XII) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:
If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin (I John 1: 6-7).
The Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you are always more ready to hear than we to pray
and to give more than either we desire or deserve:
pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid
and giving us those good things
which we are not worthy to ask
but through the merits and mediation
of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God of all mercy,
in this eucharist you have set aside our sins
and given us your healing:
grant that we who are made whole in Christ
may bring that healing to this broken world,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God of constant mercy,
who sent your Son to save us:
remind us of your goodness,
increase your grace within us,
that our thankfulness may grow,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The memorial in Saint Matthew’s Church, Westminster, to the former curate Bishop Frank Weston (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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