Sermon
delivered at St. Lawrence’s Church, Stratford-sub-Castle, Wiltshire – Sunday 16th August 2015
Ephesians 5:15-20; Psalm 111;
John 6:51-58
May
I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a
blessing to all who hear them. Amen
What do you think sustains
you in life? What is your passion? What
is it that gets you excited? In this modern day and age of instant gratification when we have so many choices at our disposal it is so easy to get side tracked away from our faith and look towards other things which can push our faith and our worship into the corner. With a proposed extension of the relaxation of the Sunday trading laws more and more of our leisure time will be taken up with spreading out our normal week into the weekends. I am totally at fault of this myself - for now we are firmly back in the Premier League and in Europe I shall be taking myself off to worship at St. Mary’s Stadium in Southampton on some Sundays – so let me make it clear from the outset, I am certainly in no position to admonish those who spend their Sundays on pursuits other than going to church or relaxing with a bible. Indeed, Jesus himself angered the elders of the synagogue and leaders of the Jewish law observance group on more than one occasion by working himself on the Sabbath.
Today we had two really good
readings and a psalm which remind us of the importance of recalling that our
Faith is based on a firm belief that Jesus is the true way to salvation and
that we as Christians are expected to meet together and worship to remind one
another of this and to support each other – just as we are doing here today and
later will be sharing God’s gifts of bread and wine together in the act of Holy
Communion.
We certainly need times of
relaxation and I, for one, enjoy a glass of wine on the sofa whilst reading or
watching TV or just chatting with friends.
In our first reading (Ephesians 5:15-20), Paul enjoins us not to spend
our time in debauchery, in drunkenness or hedonistic pleasure but to use it
wisely as time is a gift from God which can be snatched back at any moment. In our modern world there are now three major
resources for us – wisdom, knowledge and more recently ease of
information. Each can set us on
different paths but information should properly lead us to knowledge but it is
how we use that knowledge which will determine whether we act wisely or not.
There is a lovely verse in
Psalm 111 which reads : “The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of Wisdom” which I take to mean “Having a respect for
the Lord will lead us to a better understanding of the knowledge we have
obtained through the information sought and received”.The key is that we must
put everything before God through Jesus our Saviour to enable us to lead a full
and wise existence. Wisdom is about making good choices which are ultimately
for the greater glory of the one who created us. That should always be our aim as loyal
Christians.
“Wisdom” is the common golden
thread which runs through each of our readings this morning and had we had it,
also our Old Testament reading from 1
Kings which speaks about the wisdom of Solomon and the building of the
temple at Jerusalem in God’s honour. When we seek wise counsel we are seeking
help and advice which will lead to a better understanding of ourselves within
the context of the created world and hopefully making good choices and
decisions for everyone we may encounter. I have made some bad choices in my own
life, and each and every one of us can think back when we’ve done likewise – very
often because we have failed to listen to good counsel or simply not understood
what we were being told. This is our
greatest danger.
Jesus was constantly being
misunderstood. In our gospel reading the Jewish authorities could not
understand what he was talking about when he said “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will have eternal life”
and their sensibilities will have been shocked by this seeming call to
cannibalism! Indeed, the early
Christians were often rumoured to eat human flesh and drink blood when their Holy
Communion rites were discovered by non-believers. Surely, thought the Jewish leaders, this
cannot be considered acceptable – and we read in the very next verses of John how a significant number of Jesus’s
disciples fled at the thought of this rather gruesome supper – indeed, the
messiah which they wanted to follow was one who was going to give them actual
food and freedom from the control exercised by the Roman occupiers.This was not
what they had bought into.
In fact, what Jesus was
doing was predicting his own crucifixion and explaining that only through his
broken body and the shedding of his blood on the Cross could we poor human
beings truly obtain salvation – eternal life.
If we didn’t believe that, if we didn’t accept that truth as “meat and
drink” then we were lost. It is
interesting how today we still often use the phrase “It’s meat and drink to
them” when we describe something as being trite to a person – without question,
simple, understandable and something being followed naturally. And so should be
our faith – especially when we are called upon to witness to others who are not
Christians.
There are two other famous
incidences in Jesus’s life where the same message is misunderstood. I recall preaching here in this very church
about a year ago when I talked about the woman at the well who thought Jesus
was talking about a real liquid when he told her that he could provide living
water which would quench her thirst for all time. The poor woman had to make a midday trip to the
well every day and thought Jesus would be able to put a stop to that – just as
those disciples who left Jesus thought that he would put an end to Roman
occupation. Again, he was talking about
himself and using water as an analogy.
There is also that famous incident when Nicodemus came to Jesus in the
night when they discussed being “born again” – with Nicodemus asking “How can a
man return to his mother’s womb”. This was not what he was saying but a turning
back – a repentance.
Jesus uses analogies all the
time. In John we have just had the
feeding of the five thousand where Jesus breaks bread – a prophecy perhaps of
the last supper – and bread is very much at the fore. Through his various
miracles around this part of John he
has also demonstrated the power of God and that he has been sent from Heaven –
a theme which John picks up on no
less than thirty times in his gospel.
This morning’s gospel passage
has been the subject of much theological debate and interpretation over the
centuries and led to the doctrine of transubstantiation which has itself led to
violent arguments, executions and even wars.
I don’t intend to get into a massive debate on this – it’s far too
controversial – but it is my firm belief that Jesus is reminding his followers
of his human divinity (both human and divine) and that his sacrifice on the
cross is the centre of his ministry for our salvation. I therefore do not
personally believe that Jesus ever intended the sacraments to be
transubstantiated and the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion,
which I signed up to on my admission as a minister, state the contrary in
Article 28. Far simpler, and a far
better interpretation, in my view, is that Jesus is telling us to have Faith in
his teaching, ministry and in particular his crucifixion and resurrection for
the atonement of our sins.
That of course is not to
diminish Holy Communion nor does that belief mean Jesus is not present at the
Communion table – indeed he is present with us always but this is a special
time to come together in his presence as true disciples and share a common
meal.
Jesus told his disciples –
and we are his modern day ones – that we should remember Him and what he did
for us that first Easter in the partaking of bread and wine. These items, so common at the table then and
indeed today, represent his body and the blood he shed. It was an intimate moment at the Last Supper
when the disciples shared the dish and the wine and joined together to
demonstrate their love and wisdom of Jesus.
They partook of the information he gave them, the knowledge and
understanding of what he was doing by this simple act.
As we shortly go up to the
alter to receive Holy Communion we should recall those prophetic words of Jesus
in John’s gospel – “by eating and drinking
his body and blood we are acknowledging him as our Saviour and obtaining
Eternal Life” and, by doing so together during an act of worship we are
also supporting one another and acting in true Christian brotherly and sisterly
fashion demonstrating the Faith which we have already subscribed to.
For us he should be the very
meat and drink of our Faith.
I began by asking what
sustains us? As Christians this
wonderful belief that Jesus came down, broke bread with us, lived amongst us
and then died for us rising so that he could continue to have a relationship
with us must be the greatest thing to sustain us through life. I pray that each
and every one of us remembers this simple yet enormous thought through, not
only those times of anxiety and despair, but also those times when we could
easily find more material substitutes to sustain us.
Let us pray,
Dear
Lord, we thank you that you came down from Heaven and dwelt amongst us.
In
the act of Holy Communion we remember all you did for us and that by being the
meat and drink of our salvation you will continue to watch over us and guide us
in the paths of righteousness during the period of our time here on Earth
And
that we may live good and sober lives so that you can enrich us with your
wisdom and love.
Amen
MFB/63
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