Posts Tagged ‘drinking blood’

The offence of the Gospel

August 14, 2021

Pentecost 12 – 2021

John 6:51-58

Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

A recent post on Facebook directed me to an article written in September 2019 for Esquire by Shane Claibourne. He wrote: “To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity. Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.” It is quite a confronting statement. He goes on to quote a (then) recent study of the top three perceptions of Christians among young non-Christians in the United States. Their opinion of Christians in that nation was that they were anti-gay, judgement and hypocritical.

I understand and share Claibourne’s angst. It grieves me to observe that collectively, the church – at least in the western world – causes offense in all the wrong ways. Instead of being generally respected, the church today is often a source of scepticism, ridicule and even of anger. To take the most recent example, the churches are currently under attack for (possibly) making a profit out of Jobkeeper. We have lost our standing in the wider community and have become a target for criticism rather than for congratulation. Much of the great work that is undertaken by the church throuhg our welfare agencies goes unnoticed and our misdemeanours are writ large in the public eye.

There are a multitude of factors that have contributed to our fall in grace. These include the fact that we have promoted obedience to a set of rules rather than submission to a God of love and we have focussed on the afterlife (be it heaven or hell) rather than emphasising what faith has to offer in the present. Instead of being seen as promoting social justice, radical inclusion, and unconditional love the church as a whole is more likely to be identified with upholding conservative values, preaching exclusion, or preserving the status quo. In recent times we could have been accused of protecting our own self-interests (the Freedom of Religion Bill being one such example) and of making out that we are being persecuted. We might have been better to acknowledge to ourselves that our place in the public eye has changed considerably during our own lifetimes.

During this period our hypocrisy and lack of openness have been laid bare as the scandal of child sex abuse has been revealed and as high-profile church leaders have been exposed as having extra-marital affairs or having embezzled church funds. We can no longer hide behind a veil of respectability and nor can we afford to take the moral high ground.

Of course, I’m using a very broad brush here. The criticisms I’ve listed cannot be levelled at all churches, but the general public do not necessarily distinguish between the traditional churches and the more recent, more conservative non-denominational churches. In the minds of many we are all grouped together – the sins (or neglect) of one are attributed to us all. Publicly, the voice that receives the greatest attention tends to be the Australian Christian Lobby which, at best, tells us something about how quiet our voices now are or, at worst, how disinterested the public has become in what we, the mainline churches have to say.

These days, as I have said, the church seems to cause offense for all the wrong reasons. Yet there have been times in recent memory when the church caused offence for all the right reasons. For example, in the late 1980’s our voices were raised in support of legislation related to gun control and Anglicans across Australia signed petitions in favour of tougher gun ownership laws. When Bob Hawke’s promise that “no child would live in poverty by 1990” began to falter, mainline churches lobbied successive governments to try make that promise a reality. Nationally today Anglicare continues to argue for a living wage for all people, but that receives little media attention.

Today’s gospel centres around offense. Jesus makes the challenging statement that: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”.  To his Jewish audience for whom the eating of blood was absolutely forbidden, this saying, taken at face-value, was utterly offensive. Despite this, and despite the fact that Jesus, and possibly the author of this gospel, were Jews, Jesus repeats this point at least six times – “eat my flesh, drink my blood, eat my flesh, drink my blood” over and over.

I hazard a guess that if we were hearing this for the first time we would be discomforted if not appalled.

No matter what he did, Jesus managed to cause offense in one quarter or another. Whether he was healing on the Sabbath, dining with sinners and tax collectors, confronting the authorities, breaking the law, or questioning long held traditions Jesus seemed to manage to put someone or some group offside. Jesus was always on the side of the oppressed, the disadvantaged and the demonised. This, needless to say, put him into conflict with the ruling authorities. Yet even though Jesus knew that he was causing offense and even though people rejected him and rejected his teaching, he could not stop. He knew who he was and what he was called to do, and nothing (not even the threat of death) would stand in his way.

If we are truly followers of Jesus, we too should be among those who cause offense by challenging unjust structures, lobbying on behalf of the marginalised and the dispossessed, and questioning laws that oppress rather than liberate.

For many of us it would go against the grain but perhaps, just perhaps, in the name of Christ we should cause offense. Instead of trying to fit in we should try to stand out, instead of being silent we should raise our voices for the needy, the destitute and the burdened and instead of trying to present ourselves as perfect, we should humble admit our shortcomings. Maybe then, those who are longing for God’s kingdom to come, will see in us a community determined to see it come about.

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When it gets too hard do you wish to go away?

August 19, 2012

Pentecost 12

John 6:51-58

Marian Free

 In the name of God – source of life, wisdom and joy. Amen.

 “Do you also wish to go away?” Jesus’ question to his disciples in verse 67 catches us by surprise. These are the people with whom he has chosen to share his mission, his most private moments. In their turn, they have chosen to follow him despite what others might think. Why would they now want to go away? Today’s gospel helps us to understand the lead up to Jesus’ question. In fact, we have to go back to the beginning of chapter 6 to see how the tension builds to the point where some disciples leave Jesus and Jesus is forced to ask the remainder if they too wish to leave. The author of John’s gospel records the account of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’ walking on the water as do the other three gospels. According to the author of John, the crowds which have been following Jesus, discover that he is on the other side of the lake and pursue him. This provides Jesus with an opportunity to challenge their self-centredness and to elaborate on his role and his mission.

Jesus perceives that the crowds are primarily interested in what he can do for them – provide food, heal the sick and so on. These signs, while important, are not the real reason that Jesus is here. He challenges those who have followed to seek the deeper meaning of Jesus’ presence among them. Bread sustains the body for a limited time. Jesus asks his listeners to consider the sort of food that will sustain them in the present and more importantly for eternity. He asks them to look beyond their physical needs for sustenance and to seek the food that endures – the spiritual food that sustains the soul. This is the food that he provides to those who seek it.

As part of this argument, Jesus claims to be the ‘bread of life’. We are so familiar with this concept that it can be difficult for us to understand how such a discussion could create the sort of offense that would cause some of Jesus’ disciples to abandon him and Jesus to ask if others too wish to go away. Jesus as the ‘bread of life’ provides us with strength and courage, spiritual nourishment and support.  Perhaps if Jesus had left the argument there his disciples would have remained with him. However, Jesus has claimed to be the bread from heaven which endures forever – unlike the manna in the wilderness which sustained the Israelites in the present, but which was unable to give them eternal life. Among his listeners would have been those who would have heard Jesus’ suggestion that he was more important than – in fact that he had superseded Moses.

If that claim were not confronting enough, Jesus makes the even more disturbing claim: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this brad will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. 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.” Not only is the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood utterly repulsive, it is impossible for Jesus’ audience to grasp such a difficult and distressing concept. Many of them know Jesus, they know his mother and his father. They know that he is a human being like themselves – how can he say that he has come down from heaven? It is impossible for them to even begin to conceive that it is possible, let alone necessary for them to consume this man’s flesh and blood if they are to have eternal life! No wonder many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him! They say: “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?”

They have failed to understand that Jesus, through this dramatic and uncomfortable language, Jesus is asking his followers not to physically eat him, but to become one with him, to allow him to become so much a part of them that it is as if they are indeed one flesh and blood. Eating and drinking are metaphors for this complete unity. In some way faith is a process of somehow absorbing Jesus into our lives and allowing our lives to be absorbed into that of Jesus.

Eating and drinking are strong images, but they are not totally unfamiliar. We say to children: “I could just eat you!” We don’t mean that literally, we just mean that we love them so much that we don’t want to be separated from them. This is the sort of relationship that Jesus is asking his disciples (and us) to have with him.

It is at this point that Jesus asks those who remain: “Do you also wish to go away?” To which Peter responds: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter, who so often fails to understand, who so often gets it wrong has cut to the core. He may not always understand what Jesus has to say, but he knows what Jesus means – to himself and to the world. Peter may not really understand Jesus’ teaching at this point, but he is sure of one thing – that there is nowhere that he would rather be, nowhere else that he would receive the sort of spiritual guidance that he has found in Jesus. He knows that in the present and in the future, it is his relationship with Jesus that has opened the doors of heaven.

I suspect that it is the same for us. There may be times when we do not understand – when scripture seems too difficult, when the events of our lives or the lives of others seem inexplicable – but we with Peter know that Jesus is the means to eternal life. We have thrown in our lot with Jesus, and nothing in this life or the next will separate us.

 

 

 

 

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