Enter the City Already! || Christ Vision 5/5
Year B: Proper 16
Over the next four weeks, I’ll be preaching through series called Christ Vision. We know that Jesus is like God, and we know that God is like Jesus. This is really good news. This series is about how Jesus came to show us how he sees the Father, as the Source of infinite love and compassion. Jesus wants us to know that God loves us just as God loved Jesus from before the beginning.
Once we begin to understand this, we will be transformed in such a way that the Love of Father, Son, and Spirit will overflow from ourselves and churches into the world around us.
So we’ve seen that God is love. We know this because of Jesus. We know that Jesus has entered flesh in order that the lies we’ve heard about God and about ourselves are lies, and we have seen how his “I Am” replaces our “I am not…” We even saw how God’s love, which is even evident in God’s wrath, should compel us to love our enemies too. This week, we will see how baptism is a beautiful ceremony in which we join Jesus in the war against these lies by participating in his death and resurrection.
For those of you who enjoy the lectionary posts, they are sill here. Just look below the video!
Year B, Proper 16, August 25, 2024
First Reading: Joshua 21:1-2a, 14-18
Psalm: Psalm 34:15-22
Second Reading: Ephesians 6:10-20
Gospel: John 6:56-69
Sermon - The Flesh is Useless
It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. John 6:63
What a statement. Jesus just said that those who eat is flesh have eternal life, so how could flesh ever be useless?
At this point, commentators tend to distinguish between what John actually recorded and what a later redactor added, specifically regarding the eucharistic sayings in the previous section, but I think John actually is being a bit radical here.
It would be so easy to read the passages about eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood as a magical or transactional interpretation of communion. Perhaps some had already begun to do that when John recored his gospel.
I think that Jesus is saying, “This teaching is difficult because you’re still thinking that I’m talking about my actual flesh and blood!"
As Jesus explains here, what he is really after is for them to listen to and embody his teaching.
As Jesus said elsewhere in quoting Hosea, God desires mercy, not sacrifice. When we make the sacrifice the means through which we win over God’s favor, we have missed who God is. Likewise, when we make communion the means through which we receive grace, we miss the truth that we have had grace this whole time, that God actually does love us already.
When we take communion, we are celebrating the grace that is already ours, the life that is already ours, and the relationship with God that we already have.
Many of Jesus’s disciples abandoned him because of this teaching, so Jesus turned to the twelve and asked, “Do you also wish to go away?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6:68–69
Peter and the other apostles, with the exception of Judas per John’s commentary, had experienced a faith deeper than belief. Others in the gospel of John believed the words Jesus spoke and believed in the signs Jesus performed without believing in Jesus as the Word of God.
When one truly eats Jesus’s flesh and drinks his blood, there is no going back. The transformation experienced by living in Christ, and Christ living in you, is so monumental that it changes the way the whole world looks.
But if our relationship with Jesus is based on transactions, then the moment things seem to go bad, or the vending machine stops working, is the moment we walk away.
The flesh is useless.
Second Reading: The Whole Armor of God
The Whole Armor of God
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power; put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:10–12)
There are several things that stand out to me about this passage that I’ll share with you today.
First, we are to stand in the strength of the Lord Jesus’s power. The power of Jesus is the gospel of Jesus. As Paul said in Colossians 2, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing overtime in [the Cross].” Standing in the strength of the Lord means standing in the power of the Cross. It is his strength through weakness, not grasping for power on our part, that gives us the victory.
Second, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. While humans do a lot of bad things, we should never view them as the enemy. They have been tricked, lied to, and deceived. It is the “works of the Devil” that we are up against. We want to liberate people from the delusion of the Devil through the Cross.
Finally, these enemies are related to darkness. The best way to defeat darkness is through light, and we have the most powerful light of all—the Light of the world. Through the gospel of Jesus, darkness is expelled and the world can come to know the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Let us preach the gospel of peace and join God in the fight against evil, a battle that has already been won through Jesus on the Cross.
Thanks so much for keeping up with this blog. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or critiques, you can always comment here or reach out through my website: https://danielr.net.