--by the Rev. Leslie Barnes Scoopmire
Readings:
Are there any passages or stories in the Bible that shock you, challenge you, or make you personally uncomfortable?
I’ll confess to you a couple of mine. Jesus commands us as his followers, by his words AND example, to love and pray for our enemies. My ancestral Scots clan motto translates to “Never forget,” and that can all too easily lead to bearing grudges and being reluctant to forgive. No surprise that loving and praying for those who have opposed me or wronged me in my daily life is downright challenging, and I know I am not the only one. There are plenty of us who profess to follow Christ who nonetheless ask God to SMITE our enemies, or let us do it ourselves, rather than loving them, praying for them, and when it is possible, forgiving them.
On a related note, the part of the Lord’s Prayer that I find most alarming—yes, alarming-- is this: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” If that “as” there at the hinge actually means “only as much as,” then, boy, am I in trouble, as I just confessed to you. So, I continually wrestle with this challenge that so counters my own preferences and inclinations.
One thing we learn, if we dedicate ourselves to deep study of scripture, is that there are probably several things that Jesus says that is meant to challenge and even shock us, no matter who we are. And that is made crystal clear this week, with Jesus talking baldly about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. On its face, this is not just challenging, but shocking and even offensive, at the time Jesus said it all the way to now, if we really think about it.
Hopefully, by now you have noticed that one of the questions I always ask about each week’s lectionary readings is, “What is the theme that ties all these readings together?” From the first two readings, it is obvious the topic is wisdom. In the reading from the first Book of Kings, in a dream Solomon asks God for wisdom, rather than power, wealth or glory. The last verse of our Psalm, clunkily translated in English by using a word whose meaning has changed over the centuries, reminds us that awe before God is the beginning of wisdom. Paul tells the Ephesians how to live wisely as followers of Christ. Thus, true wisdom is tied to acknowledging that God is the ultimate source of wisdom.
Then we come to our gospel passage, and it may appear that the gospel is disconnected from our wisdom theme.
I want to suggest that wisdom is still a topic in our gospel passage, but as an undercurrent. Jesus bluntly confronts those considered wise, which means that they should be experts about God, and says things that upend their understanding of wisdom completely. He uses blunt language of “flesh” and “blood”—and they get repulsed because those words at the very least seem to contradict kosher laws against the consumption of blood.
Throughout the Torah, and actually in many cultures, the blood was believed to hold the “life force” of a creature and was therefore only to be offered to God by sprinkling it on the altar, since God gives life to all things. So, to their minds, Jesus’s specific words are not simply talking foolishness, but blasphemy and scandal. But Jesus is reminding us that God’s wisdom often does not conform to human reasoning and impulses.
This passage has been shocking, if one focuses on the actual words, for millennia. Even the great Martin Luther, proponent of scripture only as our primary theological guide, rejected the plain meaning of this passage, as it suggested that the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Catholic Church. But I don’t think Jesus is talking about chemistry. He is using a powerful metaphor to remind us that God’s wisdom is NOT human wisdom. God acts by God’s rules, not human ones.
But Jesus is very serious about us understanding that in the Eucharist, he is offering us his life force so that we may have the strength and courage to not just worship him—something he never asked for—but to emulate him and follow him in what we do in our daily lives. To be his true followers. To be, literally, invited to act as Jesus’s flesh and blood.
You know, when it comes right down to it, more often than not Jesus makes specific claims that were very challenging to those encountering him. And anyone who has really paid attention to scripture knows that there are challenging, and even repugnant events and ideas found throughout the Bible.
Sure, there are massacres and violence committed in the name of God. There are incidents of incest, prostitution, rapes and sexual assaults—we just a few weeks ago heard about David commanding Bathsheba to come to his palace, and she was in no position to say no. Of course, some of the most unsettling stories are left out of the lectionary, so unless you go looking for them, you will be sheltered from them. Our own lectionary pulled that trick this week, did you notice? Look at the verses included in the story about Solomon. Did you notice that practically a whole chapter was omitted between the beginning and the end of that story? And you know why? Because in those omitted verses, Solomon ruthlessly eliminates or cows any of his half-brothers who might have had a better claim to the throne. This is Game of Thrones stuff here—and Solomon is merciless. That doesn’t jibe with the humble seeker of wisdom portrayed here. But both things are true about Solomon.
God’s wisdom IS shocking in its abundance and in its generosity. It is also contrary to all our pettiest impulses. Jesus’s insistence that we live lives guided by love in action, and by extending grace as often as we can in recognition of the debt we all owe to the God who forgives us without limit as part of God’s love without limits for each and every one of us. We can only do that by taking Christ INSIDE us. Living a life rooted in God’s wisdom, living faithfully, has to be centered in the acknowledgement that if Christ is in us, we are also in Christ. And we are called to act that way as a matter of faith, and wisdom.
Look again at this passage. Jesus PROMISES us full, rich, abundant life in him—true and real communion with him and in him. Such devotion Jesus offers us can be overwhelming. Jesus is asking us to have faith enough to let ourselves be wide open to his grace, light and truth. To have faith in the Way of Jesus, a way that is governed by a wisdom that goes against the cynicism and miserly fears that attempt to dominate us. To be wide open to being fed with the very substance of love. Jesus is asking to be welcomed into our inmost beings, and to recognize our oneness with the divine love that is at the beating heart of the spiritual life.
If we take that seriously, of course it shocks us.
But it also gives us true, real, meaningful life.
Our gospel invites us to consider the full implications of the incarnation. Jesus is God in flesh and blood, and invites us to be his flesh and blood, his faithful witnesses, in the world. By living faithfully and transformatively, as Christians we are invited into the full life of Christ and the Trinity. Living by the grace and wisdom of God, nourished in body and spirit by Christ, we reveal the divine spark, the divine love, the divine grace, the divine wisdom that offers us—and all of the world— life abundant and eternal.
Amen.