Eat Gospel, Friend!
One of my favorite lines of scripture comes from the book of Ezekiel, “Eat Scroll, Mortal.” Doesn’t it sound simultaneously commanding and bizarre! Throughout the prophetic books of the Bible this command, in one way or another is made—eat God’s Word, transform your lips by kissing flaming coals for they will speak Holy Words, consume sweet or bitter scrolls…
Now, we’ve been reading through the 6th chapter of John’s Gospel for a month or so…
we’ve been here so long that Karen has rightly started asking me, “Didn’t we just read that?” And in many cases, yes, yes we did…
we’re still in John 6, still slowly but surely feasting on this meal that John has put in front of us.
John chapter 6 is saying to us nothing short of, “Eat Gospel, Friend.”
Look,
God’s saving works continue in this bread,
in this bread you are one with the Father,
this bread is the whole of Jesus’ life,
this bread and cup is offered every Sunday!
“Eat Gospel, Friend.”
Prayer
God’s saving works continue in this bread “Eat Gospel, Friend.”
Now, John’s good news, this Gospel he is serving us, puts Jesus in an interesting place
—he is the center of all the acts of salvation that God does throughout Hebrew Scripture. John’s Gospel rehashes, remixes, is like, the stories of God saving God’s people throughout the Bible!
The Gospel of John has the same rhythm as, and rhymes with, the Hebrew Bible.
For example, in the 2nd chapter Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan Woman at a well, and by the end of that chapter we thoroughly know that what he offers is of the same stuff as God’s action with the patriarchs found in Genesis, Abraham, Jacob, Sarah, and so on.
And so too, in John 6, Jesus embodies God’s saving work at Passover, and his sustenance throughout the Exodus.
Jesus as the bread of life is:
Lamb and Blood,
Bread,
Manna,
the Flesh of the Quail,
every thing that kept folk alive in Egypt and on their desert wanderings.
And just as many continued to complain in the desert and rejected what God was doing
—even when God made every effort to bring them along on the journey,
so too, many folk in Jesus’ day eventually say, in effect,
“I don’t like this Bread of Life, and honestly I don’t really like that God of yours either.”
Yet, like the Exodus, there are also those people like Peter who profess, “Lord, to whom can we go, you have the words of eternal life!”
Yes, it is the Passover story in miniature.
In this bread you are one with the Father! “Eat Gospel, Friend.”
Jesus offers a unique and ongoing connection to Our Father in Heaven!
He has come among us as both the Child of Mary and the Heavenborn child of God, so that we might be the same!
So that we can have a life in God!
That we can eat this bread and lean back and find ourselves laying against the heart of God!
This bread is the whole of Jesus’ life! “Eat Gospel, Friend!”
Jesus’ response that we read today; My God!
Unless you chomp this flesh and guzzle this blood!
…No airy spirituality here, but the concrete
incarnate
God we celebrate every Christmas!
My God! Our God!
Chew on the God who offers His flesh for the world!
This God who truly shows up in the flesh…
in our flesh and blood reality
—flesh in the cradle,
flesh at conflict with religious teachers,
flesh on a Roman Cross,
flesh, resurrected!
This bread and cup, offered every Sunday! “Eat Gospel, Friend!”
One of the quirks of John’s Gospel is that there is no last supper,
or at least no grand recitation of the words of institution
—instead we get that all here with Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000: “It is I; Do not be afraid.”
“I am the bread of life”
“Behold, true food and true drink!”
“His words are Spirit and Life!”
All these things:
God’s saving works throughout history recited so that we remember,
connecting and abiding, Communing with God,
the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ, among us
—all of it we find at table. Thanks be to God!
“Eat Gospel, Friend!” A+A
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