Trinity 12 (Prov 9, 1-6; Eph 5, 1-6; John 6, 51-58) Preached at St Paul’s Athens

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan

 

‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever;  and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’. (John 6, 51)

So many situations in the gospel revolve around food, eating and sitting at table together. We have such a hospitable God who invites us just to come and sit with him. One bishop once said, ‘God doesn’t need a church to live in, but he needs somewhere to show his hospitality’. That’s a challenge to us. What do you think a church is for?

That’s a very neat little passage from Proverbs this morning. I love the image. Wisdom has set her table. Imagine that as an image for the church as we gather at the table to remember the Lord’s Supper. However, wisdom doesn’t just set her table, and hey presto, there’s an image for the church. There is something else – Come, eat of my bread and drink the wine I have mixed. There is an open invitation to the table.

This is great everyday stuff about God, about our religion, and about the church.

Some years ago Lynne and I were invited to Malaysia, and I was asked to preach in the cathedral in Kuala Lumpur. Long story, and for another time.

The week before the Sunday I was preaching, there was another visiting preacher from England; someone who was almost as well known as me.  It was one Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury . We know him well enough (not that I’m name dropping) for me to drop him a quick note at Lambeth Palace.

‘Dear Father, preaching in the cathedral in Kuala Lumpur this Sunday. Thank you for being my warm up act!’ I won’t share the reply.

Where am I going with this? Well, on that Sunday in Kuala Lumpur I was amazed at one of the hymns the huge congregation sang. The first line was, ‘Jesus you are the rice of life’. I was startled initially, but on reflection I concluded that this was good anthropological theology. Bread is a staple of the diet all around the Mediterranean, and all around the Mediterranean is the cradle  for the faith that began in a bread eating society in Jerusalem.

How do you make the image of Jesus as the bread of life come to life and make sense if you live in a country or a part of the world where people don’t actually eat bread.

‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven’.  In this statement, and in so many other statements through this chapter of St. John, Jesus is saying to us – I am an essential part of your life. As you need food to live, so you need me. As you eat food and munch away at it, and digest it, so you need to munch away at me, and digest me. Indeed the Greek verb used in the gospels is not so much eat, which is rather polite, but munch, as if this were the best thing you had ever consumed.

This is what Jesus is saying to us. There is no life, you cannot live or survive completely, unless I am part of your diet. I am your daily bread – give us this day our daily bread – and I am your daily rice if that is what you depend on.

Proverbs has a table all beautifully set out for us – yes it is bread and wine, not rice and saki or whatever – but the set table is worthless if it is a table set in a grand dining room like that of Blenheim, where tens of thousands trek every year as tourists and view a table set for 24 people with silver, crystal and linen all protected by rope barriers. The only point of a set table is that people should come and sit at it – to partake of the food and to share in conversation and fellowship.

As Wisdom has set her table, so the church sets her table every time we celebrate the Holy Liturgy. Here before us is the Bread of Life and the Cup of salvation. When Jesus uses the words we heard in the gospel reading he is pointing forward to his death and resurrection – this bread and wine is body and blood because he is directing us straight to the mystery of his impending passion, death and resurrection. That’s the table we share in when we gather for the eucharist.

It is a table that resonates with the past, with the Passover and the Last supper; it is a table that is set right here in our midst as we inhabit our present moment; and it is a table that points to a banquet in which none of us, at least yet, eat from.

So what is this saying – in essence it is our faith. ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again’. This is what we will say later when we are focusing on the table that Holy Mother Wisdom has set and laid before us, when we are invited to draw near and eat with Christ.

Let’s end today’s reflection of Christ as rice of life with words from George Herbert (1593-1633):

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lacked any thing.

 

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

 

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

So I did sit and eat.