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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 widely known as “John’s eucharistic discourse”. It is the

clearest reference that John makes to the ritual practice of the Eucharist. The

mystery of the incarnation is seen through the metaphor of eating and

drinking.

Some find the language of the Eucharist too stark and shocking,

with its imagery of eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood. We are not

alone. Some of the disciples in today’s gospel struggled too. They said

“This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”. It is bread that sustains and

nourishes our whole Christian life, spiritually and sacramentally. Through the

bread and wine that we receive in this eucharistic community, we are fed with

his life.

The American theologian, Loye Bradley Ashton comments that “John suggests

that we abide with God by abiding with Christ and we abide in Christ by truly

abiding with ourselves. In other words, by not separating our flesh and spirit

from each other”.

The founder of the L’Arche community, Jean Vanier (1928 – 2019) comments too that “to become a friend of Jesus, is to become a friend of God. Jesus comes through something tiny, a little piece of bread or wafer, consecrated by the priest, which becomes his Body. He will leave us physically, but through the bread he will be present with us. The sacrament becomes a real presence for each one of us; it is not just a moment of grace but a sign of a covenant of love, a friendship offered to us.  By it, He is truly present to us and in us”.

In recent weeks our hymns have included the words “Jesus, true and living bread” as well as “Alleluia, Bread of Angels, here on earth our food to stay”.  Our choir would no doubt have sung the beautiful Eucharistic chant, Ave verum corpus, to settings by William Byrd, W A Mozart or Edward Elgar, if here.

What encouraged me was Simon Peter’s words at the end of today’s gospel when he said “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life”.

As we receive the consecrated wafer this morning may the familiar words of the “Prayer of Humble Access” re-focus our minds on God’s great love and mercy. May they remind us of the great privilege of receiving Christ, the living bread, the bread of life.

We do not presume to come to this thy holy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table; but thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his most sacred body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he us.

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 was labelled Books and the other Bread. I pointed them out to my host, a Russian writer and a devout Orthodox believer. “That’s all we need” was his response.

Today’s Gospel has the same kind of starkness and simplicity. Jesus says:

“I am the living bread”

Some of the starkness of those words is lost on us because bread is only part of the rich and varied diet that we are privileged to enjoy and we have lost some of that sense of its being “the staff of life”, though there are contemporary cultures which preserve that. The Arabic word for bread, aish, also means life.

Jesus forcefully identifies himself with what was the main source of nutrition for his hearers, and goes on to say something equally stark and simple:

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life”

This language shocked many of those who heard him. Some who had followed Jesus deserted him as a result. The words still have the power to shock and to puzzle. Jesus was, however, speaking within one thread of the Jewish tradition, as today’s reading from Proverbs reminds us. Wisdom invites people to a feast, and the people who are invited are those who are simple, even those without sense:

“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.”

That passage from Proverbs helps to remind us of one of the most important themes in today’s Gospel – for what Jesus is doing here is to issue an invitation, and invitation to participate in his life and thus to participate in the life of God.

But there is more to this passage than a simple invitation, for Jesus is also showing  what God is like and what participation in the life of God means. What you see in Jesus is what you get by entering into a relationship with God.

By speaking of himself in terms of food and drink that can be consumed, Jesus is telling us that God is completely free from the defensiveness and individualism from which we humans, broken as we are, suffer. God’s self-bestowing in creating and sustaining the universe is absolute and complete. God in Christ shares God’s self and God’s love without limit or reservation, a sharing and a giving which involve the laying down of his life. Those disciples who heard Jesus say

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life”

and who continued to follow him cannot fully have understood what he meant, and would only come to understand it in the light of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

In his simple, stark invitation, Jesus is teaching that eternal life comes through accepting the invitation to be nourished and transformed by him. Though this requires a personal response from each of us, it is not an invitation to enjoy a closer and deeper companionship with God as individuals. And it’s worth remembering that our words “companion” is derived from two Latin words which mean “with bread” – companionship is literally the sharing of bread. To be nourished by Christ, as we are in the Eucharist, is to be drawn into companionship with one another as well as companionship with him, and it is the companionship that is transformative, for it enables us to experience something of eternal life in the here and now. Behind the stark and apparently simple challenge of Jesus’ words is a profound wisdom, the insight that what truly nourishes and sustains us is our relationships, the relationship with God made possible by the Incarnation and the right relationships with other people that become possible when we acknowledge that they too are children of God.

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 no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”           Ephesians 4:25-5:2

My grannie always insisted, when we children stayed with her, that we never went to bed without sorting out any problems we might have had with each other or making up after an argument. I asked her why one day and she told me the following story.

When her parents Frank and Phoebe were first married her father went to work one morning, not talking to his wife after a horrendous argument they began the night before. My great-grandfather did not even say goodbye as he left the house and walked to work as a blacksmith with Huntley and Palmer. Many couples argue and sometimes the bad feelings can be left unchecked and grumpiness is the order of the day, as it was for my great- grandparents.

During the day at work Frank was involved in a nasty accident. A hammer head came off its shank as another blacksmith was using it. It hit Frank on the side of the head. He was lucky not to be killed by the blow or blinded. Phoebe was, as you might guess, devastated and they both realised that if Frank had been killed then Phoebe would have spent the rest of her life regretting the fact that she and Frank had not had the sense to make up before he went to work. From that day forward they never went to bed on an argument.

Actually, it is a good policy; you never sleep well if you go to bed on an argument. Having the sense to make up is the sign I think of a healthy relationship, a relationship in which you are both prepared to make the first move and say sorry.

It can be all too easy not to put things right as soon as possible and that can lead quite easily to estrangement or malice; neither of which are healthy. Paul tells the Ephesians, and it applies equally to all of us too, that they should always:

• Speak the truth
• When angry not to be malicious
• To be honest
• To share what they have
• To hold their tongues and to think before speaking
• To be kind and compassionate
• To be ready and willing to forgive

These rules Paul suggests are the hallmarks of living a life based on the doctrine of loving in the love of God. For once I think Paul is right, in fact unusually for me, I wholeheartedly agree with Paul’s teaching and I suspect it is based on his own experience.

Many Christians try to follow a ‘Rule of Life’ that tends to address the spiritual aspects of one’s being. I attempt to follow the ‘Rule of St.Benedict’ – which is not only about one’s spiritual life but about the whole of life. It could however be summed up in those words of Paul written two thousand years ago to the Ephesians.

Having a few rules or guidelines in one’s life is a good way of trying to live a good life and a life that is not selfish or hedonistic but based on love. Over this coming week try re-reading St.Paul’s words. Let them seep into your being and refer to them every so often to remind yourself that we Christians are called to live a life based on love - the love of God as shown to us in Christ Jesus.

Love that encourages us to forgive and to forget, to seek to do the best for others and to respect oneself as well. Paul’s verses in Chapter 13 of his First Epistle to the Corinthians will help you alongside his words to the Ephesians to work out your own rules of life:

“4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends.”         1Corinthians 13:4-8

Cooking is one of my passions. One of my weaknesses, though, is buying cookery books.  A while ago now, (pre-Covid) I found in a local charity shop four of Claire MacDonald’s paperbacks, in mint condition. I spent part of the rest of that day with my nose stuck in the books. One bit in particular struck me later as, being rather apt in relation to today’s Gospel reading. It is not as recipe but an introduction to a recipe for ‘Black olive, sun-dried tomato and garlic bread’:

“I made this recipe first in the summer of 1992, making it up as I went along. Initially I tried baking it in oiled loaf tins….(b)ut I didn’t like the texture that resulted… .

then I discovered that in my enthusiasm I was using too much olive oil. This revelation came via the Chubb inspector of our fire extinguishers, who arrived one day as I was happily kneading away, and gazed long and thoughtfully at my bread making (sadly not at me!). Then unable to contain himself any longer, he rushed to the sink and washed his hands, and said ‘Here let me have a go.’ He took over kneading with the sure touch of an expert and told me that he had been a master baker till he was made redundant and got a job with Chubb. I learnt so much from him in twenty minutes! Amongst the tips was that the amount of olive oil I was using was too much for the flour, and my olive and garlic etc., bread has been better ever since!”  From ‘Suppers' P.72

Why I thought this was so apt for today was the way in which from something unexpected came something ordinary and how the ordinary everyday event of making bread became something extraordinary. It can’t be everyone who is taught to make better bread by the fire extinguisher man! Nor is it common place to be told by a prophet that he is the ‘bread of life’!

Bread, ‘which earth has given and human hands have made’ – to quote our Eucharistic liturgy- sustains our physical bodies but as Jesus says in order to sustain the spiritual body you have to eat of the bread of eternal life. For it is the bread of heaven that contains life not the stuff made from cereal. Ordinary bread like the manna from heaven given to the Israelites in the wilderness stops the physical hunger we all experience but it is only by communion with the ‘bread of life’, Jesus himself, that the spiritual hunger can be sated.  Through the Eucharist we are fed spiritually for as we receive the body of Christ we allow his spirit to permeate our whole being.

How often have you, like me, come to the Eucharist ‘out of sorts’ or at your ‘wits end’ and have left after receiving Holy Communion feeling restored, calmer, renewed and able to go on? Familiar?

This is part of what the Eucharist is about for in receiving Holy Communion we are strengthened and supported by Christ. Whether or not you believe that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ or that in someway they represent his body and blood is your choice, so long as you recognise that in receiving communion you come into an intimate relationship with Jesus.

When you come to communion remember that in doing so you are allowing Christ to love you and to work his ways of love through you. As you return to the world outside your Church building try and share God’s love with those who are seeking to be loved and spiritually fed as you have been.

Today is the feast of St.James the apostle, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples but beyond that what do we know of him and why are we keeping his feast day today?

James is often known as ‘The Great’ to distinguish him from the other disciple also called James (the son of Alphaeus Matt 10:3 often referred to as James-the-Less whose feast day is the 1st May). He was a Galilean fisherman, who with his brother John was called by Jesus to ‘follow him’:

“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee … he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.” Matthew 3:18a, 21-22

With Peter and John he was one of the three disciples that Jesus took up the mountain with him when he was transfigured and he annoyed the other disciples by asking if he and John could sit at Jesus’ left and right hands when he came into his glory. He was martyred by Herod Agrippa in about the Year 44 in a campaign to destroy the leaders of the church in the hope that it would stem its growth:

“It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church intending to persecute them. He had James the brother of John put to death by the sword.” Acts 12:1-2

It is not a lot to go on, to give us an idea of what James was like except for the fact that in Mark’s Gospel James and John are given the nickname ‘Sons of Boanerges’  or ’Sons of Thunder’        (Mark 3:17)

Which would seem to imply that they were boys with a fiery temper and it is this reference that for me is probably the most important piece of information we have about James. Important because it tells us that James was no super human hero, but a very human man. A man with all his faults, just like us and it is because of his humanity that we are remembering him today.

All of us, in our humanity, are called to be saints. Our whole lives are supposed to be a journey, a pilgrimage towards sainthood or sanctification. That is to say as we grow up and grow older we should aim to grow ‘holy’ in God. That sounds rather pious but it is what we are actually trying to do. Everyday is a step closer back to God. We are ‘made in God’s image’ and as such contain something of the divine within us and it is that spark of the divine that longs to return to the Creator. It is that desire to be one with God again that drives us to become more ‘holy’ as we grow older.

None of us can, however, become truly holy, until we are reunited with God and enter fully into God’s presence for ever. Once we enter into God’s eternal presence we become fully a part of God - fully holy because God is all holiness.

This is not, however, an excuse for us to skive off trying to be good and to do good. It is not an easy thing to be kind, loving and good all the time. St.James obviously, was not, as his nick-name suggests. I suspect that he often lost his temper and ranted. What we are called to do is to try to live a good life. A life in which we seek to love and help others without being selfish or malicious. Living a life like this is not easy though; there will always be those whom we do not get on with but whom we are called to love despite who they may be - the nuisances, the difficult, the smelly, the bigots, the hateful - even them we are called to help if they need us.

The saints, like James are example and an encouragement for us to follow. I am not suggesting that we aim to get our heads chopped off but I am saying that it is right to stick to what you believe to be right and try to love those who may persecute you because of it.

Today’s collect says:

“Merciful God,

whose holy apostle Saint James,

leaving his father and all that he had,

was obedient to the calling of your Son Jesus Christ

and followed him even to death:

help us, forsaking the false attractions of the world,

to be ready at all times to answer your call without delay …”

and it gives us further clues as to why we should try to ape the example of St.James and all the saints. If we truly love Christ then we must be prepared to give up all we hold dear and follow him.

But, are you? Am I, willing to give up the things we hold dear? Are we willing to open ourselves fully to the Holy Spirit and to follow Jesus, without thinking twice?

How often do the affairs of the world stop you worshipping on a Sunday or saying your prayers?

Quite often if you are anything like me! There are always the times when it is impossible to pray or that the busy-ness of life demands our attention elsewhere. I say to you do not worry about them, because there will be the times when we can pray and come to church and reach out to help our neighbour. It is these times that we should not neglect, and we might need to counter a spirit of laziness or materialism in order to do so. Whenever we have the opportunity to pray or to do unto to others that which we would wish done unto ourselves, we should take it and not worry about the occasions when we do not have that opportunity or time.

St.James was prepared to give up everything for an unknown life, following in the steps of an unknown Galilean preacher. When James and John gave up everything to go after Jesus, their family and friends must have thought them mad. James, however, knew in his heart (as we can too) that he had to take a chance on Jesus, to take a risk and leap into the future - a future unknown.

That is scary - but all of us are called to take such risks, to make such leaps of faith and to go into unknown situations, for the sake of the Gospel. Scary, yes but exciting too.

A bishop I knew in England never told anyone to ‘take care’ he always left from them telling them to ‘take risks’. Risks for the Gospel, to do what you believe God is calling you to do and what you believe to be true and right.

The example of St.James can give us hope. He was by no means perfect, he was no plaster saint, but he never gave up following the path he believed to be right. Life was not easy for him as it is not for us either but hold on to the example of St.James and be encouraged for by following the path you believe to be right you may discover that you have been able to change to world, to have had a profound effect upon it, no matter how small.