Proper 16B 2024

 +Today we come to the end of the Bread of Life Discourse in John’s Gospel. Remember, the stage was set on the last Sunday of July with Jesus’s feeding the 5,000. In that story Philip is unbelieving---overwhelmed by the prospect of feeding over 5,000 people with a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread—and in response Jesus begins comparing and contrasting the food that perishes vs. the food that doesn’t. For the last four Sundays Jesus has gone on (AND ON?) about how He is the Bread of Life. At first Jesus was vague about what he meant. It seemed he was just riffing on what had happened with the feeding stories— that the physical hunger we feel can never be satisfied, but that belief in this eternal food—the Bread of Life--  will stave off our spiritual hunger forever.
But then, especially the last two Sundays, Jesus gets real graphic—- we must eat of his body and drink of his blood in order to be in full relationship with him and therefore, with God.
Maybe there’s something about how John phrases it or perhaps it’s how relentless the message has been, that by this week, the last Sunday of the bread of life discourse, many of us are at the point of shouting “all right already….we get it. You’re the bread of life, unless we eat of your body and drink of your blood we’ll never enter the kingdom of God. Got it…can we move on now?”
But, I remember one of the first things I learned in counseling school—-if a client keeps coming back to a particular topic, regardless of what they identify as their presenting issue——the topic they keep returning too? That’s the real issue, the real point.
     Today, as Jesus winds down the 50 plus verse soliloquy on how his body is food indeed, and our reading from Ephesians emphasizes the importance of clothing ourselves in the armor of God’s love to combat the forces of darkness and evil in the world, we can connect what Jesus is saying through John to what Paul’s saying to the church in Ephesus.
  Jesus, crucified and risen, is the fuel of our faith. Abiding in, dwelling in him, (and he in us) clothes us with an armor that protects us from what ails this lost and hurting world.
Abiding in God is what protected the ancient Israelites as they fled the oppression of Pharaoh, it’s what protected Jesus’s mother Mary as she lived into saying yes to God, it’s what protected Joseph as he refused to turn his back on Mary but instead stood by her side doing the right thing for her, and for God.
     Abiding in God through Christ, wearing the full armor of God, is what fills our hearts, minds and souls when we stand up against hatred, bullying and violence.
Abiding in God through the nourishment of all that Jesus was and is strengthens us to fight the good fight, to walk the lonely mile and to sing the song of faith through the words of our Eucharistic Prayer: Take Eat, this is my body, given for you.
Folks, we’re to take and remember.
We’re to remember the faith and the courage of our forebears who wore the armor of God as protection against those who said no while following God’s urging to say yes,  to do the right thing.
By taking and eating we remember Jesus.By taking and eating we’re clothed in the armor of God. By taking and eating we’re strengthened to do the work we’ve been given to do.
The real issue and the real point is to take, eat and go.

Amen.