13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15B

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15B August 19, 2018 When I was visiting my parents earlier this summer, my mom recommended a book to me. Its sensational title is How Not To Die, and it is written by Michael Greger who is an M.D. Greger starts off by telling the story of his grandmother, who at the age of 65 had been diagnosed with heart disease, suffered multiple heart surgeries until there was no more they could do, was wheel-chair bound in constant excruciating pain and was told that she had about 3 weeks to live. The grandmother managed to get herself across the country to California, where she participated in a new study where the patients were all fed whole-food, plant-based diets and started exercising, and as a result, Greger’s grandmother went on to live 31 more years and die at the age of 96 after living a full and active life. Greger uses a large amount of scientific studies and data to write about how a whole-food, plant-based diet can not only prevent and treat the 15 leading causes of death in our country, but it can also reverse conditions such as heart-disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, and Alzheimer’s. He also references research that supports the premise that this kind of way of eating can prolong life by repairing parts of our DNA that wear down naturally as we age. In some ways, it’s not exactly revolutionary. Since childhood, many of us have been taught “you are what you eat.” Jesus is essentially telling us the same thing in our gospel reading for today. He’s telling us both “you are what you eat” and “how not to die” spiritually. This is our fourth week in a row (out of 5 total) that our lectionary has given us passages from this particular section of John’s gospel, where Jesus says, again and again, “I am the bread of life.” As we have walked through Chapter 6 over the last few weeks, we have seen Jesus moving to more and more graphic language, culminating in our lesson for today where he says such shocking things as: “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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” One thing that is important to remember is that John’s gospel is the latest written gospel of our 4. It is written to a particular Christian community who are struggling with persecution in ways that the earlier gospel writers’ communities were not. And John’s community is also unique in its particular frustration in their expectation that Jesus was coming back sooner rather than later. Finally, John’s gospel is unique in that it does not include the story of the institution of the Last Supper. (We see in Chapter 13 the story of Jesus’s last night, in which he washes his disciples’ feet, but there is no story of the Last Supper.) So, this chapter of John’s gospel, Chapter 6, is essentially John’s way of connecting this struggling, worn-down, and persecuted community and pointing them to the Eucharist. These words would have been as familiar to them of the echoes of their weekly table liturgy as they are to us. John’s Jesus is telling the struggling, suffering community “how not to die,” but instead of talking about physical nourishment, he is talking about spiritual nourishment. I have to confess to you all that I was wonderfully and painfully convicted by a line in Rev. Aimee’s sermon last week. She was talking about the connection between the Jews who were listening to Jesus and the Children of Israel who received manna in the wilderness and how both groups were united in their complaining. And she said, “Complaining wins out over believing.” Ouch! Just before we started the first service, I was talking about how I didn’t think our house sale that was set for that week was going to go through, and boy, was I complaining. But in the midst of that same week, David was called to be the new priest at St. George’s--a huge, exciting thing for him and for our family. But the first thing I did was to complain. How many times in a given week do we choose complaining over faith, consternation over hope? It is a symptom of our heart disease, that only the bread of life can repair. One of my earliest memories of church is being a very young girl, kneeling at the altar rail with my hands outstretched and preparing to receive the bread from the woman priest who was coming down the line of the altar rail. As I watched her approach and looked at the people on either side of me, I became very excited because I was getting something special that was also the exact same thing everyone else around me was getting. I was excited to be both holy-set apart and belonging-exactly like everyone else. I also knew a little girl, who would sneak a piece of her communion wafer back to her pew and nibble on it throughout the rest of the service. When her mother learned what she had done, she would fuss at her, and tell her that she needed to consume it all at the altar rail, but it does seem natural to want to take time and savor the mystery and the gift, even taking it with us when we leave this place. What if, today, you approach the altar with the wonder of those two children, knowing that Jesus is giving you himself, the gift to begin to reverse your spiritual heart disease? What if as you stretched out your hands, you invited faith over complaining, hope over consternation in whatever part of your life feels the most dead or dying to you right now? And then, take a little piece of that life out with you into the world this week, so that everyone you see or encounter, even the ones who make you angry or persecute you, becomes the person kneeling next to you at the altar rail, also offered the gift and the mystery of God’s love in and through Jesus the bread of life. How not to die. It’s actually Jesus’s invitation to us this week and every week.