My parents thought that they were doing something great when they bought me a record of “Jack & the Beanstalk” by The Great Gildersleeve. I was terrified when the Giant boomed, “Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum: I smell the BLOOD of an ENGLISHMAN; and be he live, or be he dead, I’ll GRIND his bones to make my bread!!” I also had a great-aunt who would say to me, “Oh, I could just EAT YOU UP!” I avoided her as much as I could… Readings for this weekend deal with the consumption of God, an ultimate feasting on the Holy.
The Hebrew scriptures come from the mystic Book of Proverbs, 9:1-6. Madam Wisdom has set a table for the nourishment of those unobstructed by worldly affairs: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” Am I living before God with integrity? Are we, the Church–those unobstructed by worldly affairs–embodying a mature faith, or have we settled for less than that for which we were Created? Here, too, is a Sacrament.
The passage from Ephesians (5:15-20) is sort of template to give our daily experience a pattern: “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” (They’re “evil” because they erode our best intentions and sap away our vision.) The opposite of foolishness is the understanding (participating in?) the will of the Lord. Paul, also, is inviting those unobstructed with worldly affairs to be filled with the Spirit.
The words of Jesus as remembered by John in the 6th chapter of his Gospel are tough! “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (v.53) No wonder that many who had followed now turned away: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” This is a serious claim about life & death, about taking big bites of God or merely nibbling about the edge. When Immanuel, God With Us, pitched his tent in our backyard, we shoulda known that our lives were going to be, well, different! For me, one of the mysteries of the Sacrament is to envision the holy presence of the Bread & Wine coursing through my arteries, out to even the tiniest cappilary. An intimate banquest indeed!
I don’t think I’ll include it in my Sunday’s sermon, but all this reminds me of the early missionary to the cannibals of the South Sea Islands: the natives got their first taste of Christianity… If we are what we eat, then we can be transformed into the Image of God by ingesting Christ. Taste and see that the Lord is good!
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
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