Three, quite tough and dogmatic readings this week and all seeking to tell us what to do and how to do it. They are the sort of readings that might make some of us rebel, especially those of us that don’t like being told exactly what to do or believe. These readings are a bit like a stern parent saying:

“Just do as I tell you!”

When what we might want to say is; ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ is a good question. These three readings are just gob-bits from larger texts of the Bible and we really can’t take them...

Jesus said to the crowd: Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

If I was to ask you what have the common themes been from our gospel

readings each Sunday this month, what would you say? What words

come to mind or resonate?  They would, I expect, include eating, living,

sharing, life giving and abiding. All active words. All referring, in some way, to

Jesus, the living bread, the bread of life. There is something attractive about

those words.  Something that makes us think, ponder and reflect.

Today’s gospel is...

I am the living bread

In the Soviet Union all shops were owned by the state. Shopfronts did not bear the names of companies or individual proprietors, and most of them only had one word in large letters – it might be Clocks,  Knitwear or Shoes.  It was the simplest form of advertising, almost stark in its simplicity. What you see is what you get.

Out in the sticks, that starkness and simplicity survived the collapse of Communism for some years. I remember in the year 2000 spotting two adjacent shops in the main square of a provincial village. One...

The extract from Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians this morning is entitled; ‘Rules for the new life’ and I think it is worthwhile reading that passage again:

“So then, putting away falsehood let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let...