This week my pals at the Lectionary Lab, affectionately known as “Two Bubbas and a Bible” shared the following story as told by Robert Coleman in his book Written in Blood:
“There was a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. For various reasons, the boy was the only donor whose blood could save his sister. The doctor asked, ‘Would you give your blood to Mary?’ The little boy’s lower lip began to tremble, then he took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes, for my sister.’
After the nurse inserted the needle into his arm, the little boy began to look very worried, then he crossed himself, finally he looked at the doctor and said, ‘When do I die?’”
Jesus said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13). The boy in this story had that love for his sister Mary. He was willing to die so she could live.
Ragaei (Rah-jhee) Abdelfattah (Ab-del-fatah), an Egyptian American, was on his second voluntary tour as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, a job that took him to eastern Afghanistan to partner with local officials and the State Department envoy for nation building—Greg Lodinsky’s brother, Jeff-- to establish schools and health clinics and to deliver electricity. On Wednesday, August 8, as Jeff, Ragaei and three NATO security officers were walking to a meeting, two suicide bombers detonated their vest bombs as they approached the peacekeeping party. Ragaei flung himself over Jeff, losing his own life, while saving his friend’s.
Jesus said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13).
The boy in the story was willing to do this.
Jeff’s friend in Afghanistan did do this.
Would we? Would you? Would I? I don’t know.
Would God? Did God? As my father was fond of saying, You bet, God did it in spades.
“For God so loved the world that [God] gave [God’s] only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16).
This, my friends, is what Jesus is getting at in all this “Bread of Life” stuff we’ve been hearing the past few weeks.
God so loved the world that God came to us, in the flesh, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Fully human yet also fully divine, God gave Godself to us wholly and completely, out of God’s abundant never-ending always-unfolding love FOR US.
God, in the person of Jesus Christ, died on that cross for us. But not because we were bad and not because we were hopeless, but because God wanted to show us, to prove to us, that believing in God defeats death, once and for all. That believing in Jesus, the Son of God, assures us of everlasting—never-ending life.
This late summer dip into the Gospel of John gives us a glimpse into the overarching theme of the fourth gospel: that through a series of signs and wonders, Jesus is shown to be God in the flesh. John uses a number of metaphors to show his readers that Jesus is, indeed, God: Jesus the one true vine, Jesus the one true bread, Jesus the living water which, when we drink it, will never leave us thirsty. John’s Gospel uses story after story to help us identify just who this Jesus is and why this Jesus is food, indeed.
From the first miracle at Cana in Galilee, when Jesus turns water into wine, to the plea of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well to “drink this living water, always,”(John 4:15) to the feeding of the five thousand, we are led to this place, to this penultimate lesson taught by Jesus and told to us by John: ‘I am the Bread of Life. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life’
These are tough words to hear and a difficult concept to grasp, which is why John took so many verses to drive this point home. What John is saying, story after story, is that God’s love, as given to us in Jesus the Christ can’t be explained…it can’t be rationalized…it can’t be figured out without diving in full-bore, headfirst. God’s Love as given to us through Jesus, must be experienced. And it is experienced through the act of receiving communion, of coming, as a community, to this altar, to be fed the bread and wine that has been infused with God’s Love. Because when we receive this bread and this wine, when we take and eat, we become filled…filled with the very Love God gave to us in Jesus the man….a Love that then sends us out to be this Love in the World.
On this altar, week after week, we take these creatures of earth human hands have made—bread and wine---and through our communal prayer of hope, our corporate faith in the promise of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit, they are turned into Divine Food.
In the mysterious and holy ways of God the mundane is transformed into the magnificent, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary and our own flawed, doubting, questioning selves are turned into Disciples of Christ, Followers of God, Instruments of the Holy Spirit.
So, it’s up to us to come to this altar of God with hands outstretched, ready to be fed this Holy Food. Because, when we eat this Holy Food, when we ingest God’s love, we can be the people God asks us to be. Because by feeding on the Holy Food of Christ we are strengthened, emboldened and encouraged to lay down our life for another. Just like the boy in the story, just like Jeff’s friend and just like Jesus.
Amen.
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