12th Sunday after Pentecost Proper 14, Year B – Bill Harkins
The Collect
Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel: John 6:35, 41-51:
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good morning friends, and welcome to Holy Family on this 12th Sunday after Pentecost. On this Sunday when we hear another in a lovely series of references to the bread of life, invoking a theology of abundance, it is important to think about our responses to this invitation, and about the meaning of discipleship which flows from those compelling images and invitations.
“You are what you eat.” Most of us have heard this in one form or another all of our lives. As a life-long athlete, I get this. I know that when I am eating well—that is, when I am paying attention to what, how much, and when I eat—this is typically reflected in my performance. We try to instill in our children and loved ones wise eating habits, and we endeavor to set good examples for those whom we love. In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers his listeners one of the more perplexing of his sayings, the one about the need for people to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and he talks about the challenges involved for anyone who wanted to follow him. And we know that just a few verses later we find these words: “Many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” I find it intriguing that John uses the term “disciples” in this passage to describe those who turn back. These are not, as John Ortberg has noted in the Christian Century, just casual listeners. Rather, “these are the folk who have been teaching Sunday school and working in the nursery…and when long-time pillars of the church start leaving,” he writes, “we get restless.” So Jesus calls a meeting. And he puts the remarkably poignant question to them with an unsettling directness: Do you also wish to go away? I find myself wondering how Jesus asked the question. Was there sadness in his voice as he asked this of the disciples? Did the question have an edge to it—a hint of anger or disappointment? No doubt it was hard to see people upon whom he had counted as followers decide to leave
I found myself wondering this past week how I would have responded to the question. What does it mean to leave something one has come to believe in? And, how do we make judgments about leadership…the adequacy or inadequacy of it? How do we know when it is time to go away—to break, as it were, a covenant we have made, or how to respond when we feel betrayed by others in that covenant relationship? How do we know when to throw in the towel…to simply give up? These are difficult questions. And one wonders what they may have to do with Jesus’ invitation to drink his blood, and eat his flesh. Was Jesus speaking literally, or metaphorically? Those among his listeners who heard this as a literal command seemed most offended and confused. I think this is because they simply didn’t get the truth of what he was saying to them. This coming week we celebrate the Feast Day of Jonathon Myrick Daniels, who died while taking up the cross of justice in Alabama. He wrote, “The doctrine of the creeds, the enacted faith of the sacraments were the essential preconditions of the experience itself. The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown…I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection…with them, the black men and white men, with all life, in him whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout…We are indelibly and unspeakably one.”
As a runner, I have a strict code of ethics, if you will, about entering races: If I start one, short of injury or illness, I will finish. But what was at stake in this passage is much more than an athletic endeavor. It is about discipleship, and courage, and commitment, and faith, and it also speaks to the Gospel text for today, because it reveals that while the literal food we eat is important, the Bread of Christ is the most important source of sustenance in our lives.
Recently I read a wonderful book by Laura Hillenbrand, entitled “Unbroken,” about the life of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini. He was the son of Italian immigrants and Louis spoke no English when his family moved to California. A young man with behavior problems, his older brother Pete got him involved in the school track team as a way to divert his energy to something productive. In 1934 Zamperini set a world interscholastic record for the mile, clocking in at 00:04:21.2 at the preliminary meet to the state championships. The following week he won the championships with a 04:27.8, and that record helped Zamperini win a scholarship to the University of Southern California and eventually a place on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team in the 5000 metres, at 19 the youngest U.S. qualifier in that event. Zamperini finished eighth in the 5000 meter distance event at that Olympics. Two years later, in 1938, Zamperini set a national collegiate mile record which held for fifteen years, earning him the nickname “Torrance Tornado”.
Zamperini enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in September 1941 and earned a commission as a second lieutenant the following August. He was deployed to the Pacific island of Funafuti as a bombardier assigned to a B-24 Liberator bomber. On May 27, 1943, he and his crew were assigned to conduct a search for a lost aircraft and its crew. While on the search, mechanical difficulties caused the plane to crash into the ocean 850 miles west of Oahu, killing eight of the eleven men aboard.
The three survivors, with little food and no water, subsisted on captured rainwater and small fish. On their 47th day adrift, Zamperini and Phillips reached land in the Marshall Islands and were immediately captured by the Japanese Navy. Both Phillips and Zamperini were held in captivity and severely beaten and mistreated until the end of the war in August, 1945. Zamperini was held in the Japanese Prisoner-of-war camp at Ōfuna for captives who were not registered as prisoners of war (POW). He was especially tormented by sadistic prison guard Mutsuhiro Watanabe (nicknamed “The Bird”), who was later included in General Douglas MacArthur’s list of the 40 most wanted war criminals in Japan. Zamperini wrote up Italian recipes keep the prisoners’ minds off the food and conditions. Zamperini had at first been declared missing at sea, and then, a year and a day after his disappearance, killed in action. When he eventually returned home he received a hero’s welcome.
In 1946 he married Cynthia Applewhite. After the war he suffered from what we would now call severe post traumatic stress disorder. Clinically depressed, and drinking too much, Zamperini attended a crusade led by evangelist Billy Graham. Graham later helped Zamperini launch a new career as a Christian inspirational speaker. His wife Cynthia was instrumental in getting him to go to Billy Graham’s meetings. In an Olympic related interview I saw last week, the interviewer asked Zamperini how he had turned his life around, and what kept him from giving up. He said: “forgiveness.” Over the years has visited many of the guards from his POW days to let them know that he has forgiven them. In October 1950, Zamperini went to Japan, gave his testimony and preached. The colonel in charge of the prison encouraged any of the prisoners who recognized Zamperini to come forward and meet him again. Zamperini threw his arms around each of them. Once again he explained the Gospel of forgiveness to them. “You can spend your life swallowing hatred and bitterness, and it will kill you,” he said. “I chose the Bread of Christ. I chose forgiveness, and it has given me life.”
Saying “yes’ to Jesus may not always be easy, or pleasant, or make sense, but it is who we are called to be. Christian discipleship is embodied in our Baptismal prayer when we ask for an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and persevere, and a sense of joy and wonder in all God’s works . Today’s Gospel reminds us that the Body of Christ is food that will not leave us hungry and unfulfilled. It is nourishment for the long run. It is Bread of life, for Life. If we hear Jesus’ words in the Gospel for today as a life-giving image, it can allow us to be fed in all times and in all places. So, just in case we haven’t “gotten it” after four weeks of bread-themed lessons, Jesus invites us into a way of living and being that is at once both wise and somewhat strange. It is wise by divine standards; in fact, it is not only wise but also “the way” to life abundant and everlasting.
Try to hear the words of Jesus from John’s Gospel without your “church” ears on, and the bare language is more than a bit challenging. “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”? Consuming Jesus doesn’t happen only at the altar rail. Living, breathing, and abiding in Christ’s body each hour of every day is our countercultural calling as Christians. We are to show Christ to the world through our words and actions, every day of our lives both individually and as worshiping communities. Having been fueled by Christ into full communion, we in turn offer the experience of his grace and boundless love to others. We become part of the heavenly food chain and the circle of endless and abundant life. Yes, dear one’s, we are what we eat. Yes, we feast on Christ at the table, but we must make our very lives a banquet of hope, grace, and love. We are stewards of the Good News and consumers of Christ. Together, let’s endeavor to live with a radical gratitude and a holy hunger, always willing to pull more chairs up to the table. If we are what we eat, then we have an opportunity to become that grace, ask for seconds of that abundant love, and pass the promises of God on to others. Amen.