Homily
By The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
John’s Episcopal Church, Bainbridge, GA
23
Aug. 2015
Proper
16 Year
B:
1 Kings: 8:(1,6,10-11), 22-30,4 1-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20;
John 6:56-69
If
I offer you this piece of stale bread how will you react?
Will you eat this stale bread?
Toss it outside for critters to eat?
Tenderly kiss it in humble reverence?1
The
idea of such reverence for a piece of stale bread may be hard to
swallow. I am sure it is less hard to swallow than it was for the
many disciples to swallow what they hear Jesus say in our Gospel
today.
The
disciples who leave Jesus have been his followers, have seen
miracles, eaten bread & fish Jesus has blessed & shared with
thousands of hungry people. Why would they turn away when he says
what he does today as he teaches in the synagogue at Capernaum, his
base of operation in Galilee2?
How
would you react to Jesus saying: “Those who eat my flesh &
drink my blood abide in me & I in them”? You & I have a
relationship with Jesus. The people who leave Jesus have a
relationship with him. He does not force it on them.
All
our scriptures today emphasize relationship: “How
dear to me is your dwelling, O LORD of hosts! Happy
are they who put their trust in you!” as we read in our Psalm. In
Ephesians we hear “Be strong in the Lord...Put on the whole armor
of God.” We hear Solomon say “there is no God like you...keeping
covenant & steadfast love for your servants...” Abiding
with God, we keep our lives closely nestled with God, entrusted to
God.
Our
scriptures point us to the tension in our relationship with God: the
tension between God's freedom & God's accessibility3.
It is hard for us humans to understand God's grace that extends
beyond tangible fact.
We
hear Solomon speak of tangible fact: he has built a house for God
–
a house that has taken 7 years to build, a house dedicated in that
7th
year, a fact that echoes the 7 days of creation,
as
one Biblical scholar notes4.
Wisely Solomon asks: “But
will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven & the highest
heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!”
Solomon acknowledges human limitation, the fact that he – we –
cannot keep God in a box. Despite
the boxes [the aumbry, etc.] we see here in our sanctuary that may
have us think that we think otherwise,
we know God
is beyond any confines we make.
We
know God is readily accessible to us in prayer & reaches us
through others. We know God in our hearts. We sense God walking
beside us, the Holy Spirit whispering to guide us. Sometimes that
whisper is in the voice of a friend.
Difficulties,
stumbling blocks, arise when we try to put God in a box, when we
insist things have to be just this literal way that we can
comprehend. May we have the grace to put on the armor of God, which
is not literal but spiritual armor for defense, not aggression5,
in this battle we have against spiritual evil that is very active on
earth. The
sword God gives us is speech6:
God's
Word Jesus, God's words that speak truth, love, hope, words that
withstand the evil we face, words that the Holy Spirit will give us
when we need them.
Human
difficulties from literal thinking turn many away from Jesus in
today's Gospel. May we have the grace like Peter does in today's
Gospel. May we have the grace to remain in relationship with Jesus.
When
Jesus asks, “sadness
in his eyes, wistfulness in his voice: 'Do you also wish to go
away?'”7,
we know to respond to a question with a question. Like Peter we say:
"Lord,
to whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life...
you are the
Holy One of God."
Our
relationship with Jesus is grace for the long-haul. Like Jesus'
relationship with us, it is a lifelong commitment, not a quick-fix.
It is grace to embrace, to trust, to savor. We savor this grace at
this holy table, in fellowship, in prayer. We can savor this grace
when we feel our relationship with God or another child of God grow
stale. This is the grace that inspires a human to kiss stale bread.
Commenting on today's Gospel
& the meaning of Bread, author Katarina Whitley,
whom some of you remember from the ECW meeting at St. Anne's in
Tifton,
tells about a poor woman in Greece who kissed stale bread.
“She
had had a very hard life...during...war years and immediately
afterward....(T)here were no washing machines, (and) she was trying
to survive by washing other people’s clothes. This woman would not
allow even a stale piece of bread to be casually discarded; she had
such reverence for it that she would kiss it before letting go of
it...For her, bread meant both survival and holiness.”8
The Bread of Life that we
eat at Eucharist
feeds us in ways beyond
what we can understand.
Bibliography
Brueggemann,
Walter. The
Book That Breathes New Life.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2005.
Brueggemann,
Walter. Journey
to the Common Good.
Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2010.
Brueggemann,
Walter. The
Prophetic Imagination.
Second Ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2001.
Galvin, Garrett. Assistant Professor of Sacred Scripture, Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, CA. “Commentary on 1 Kings 8:[1, 6, 10-11] 22-30, 41-43”. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2559. Accessed: 18 Aug. 2015.
Harper’s
Bible Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1988.
Harper’s
Bible Dictionary.
General Ed.: Paul J. Achtemeier. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1971.
Henrich,
Sarah. Professor
Emeritus of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.
“Commentary on Ephesians 6:10-20”.
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2600.
Accessed:
18 Aug. 2015.
Holy
Bible with the Apocrypha.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989.
Jewish
Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. New
York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Levenson,
Jon D. Sinai
& Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible.
Minneapolis: Winston Press. 1985.
The
New American Bible for Catholics.
South Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.
Whitley,
Katarina K.
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2009/08/23/twelfth-sunday-after-pentecost-proper-16-b-august-23-2009/
Accessed: 18 Aug. 2015.
1
Whitley,
Katarina K.
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2009/08/23/twelfth-sunday-after-pentecost-proper-16-b-august-23-2009/
Accessed: 18 Aug. 2015.
5
Henrich,
Sarah. “Commentary on Ephesians 6:10-20”. Accessed:
18 Aug. 2015.
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2600.
7
Ibid. Whitley.
8
Ibid.
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