From the Lectionary for 25 August 2024 (Proper 16B)

John 6:56-69 (NRSV)

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “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.”

~

"Jesus asks “Does this offend you?” [...] I imagine the disciples thinking, “Yes it does! It offends me! I am very offended. I don’t like the idea of gnawing on anybody’s flesh or drinking anybody’s blood, particularly yours. If that’s what it takes to be connected to you I am not sure I want to. Jesus goes on; if this offends you, “What if you were to see the Human One going up where he had been before.” Jesus seems to be saying if they are offended now they would be even more offended if they knew who Jesus is and where he came from. He doesn’t back down for he knows they must face into the offense. It is the message! Can they believe in someone who says something both offensive but true or will they stumble and turn away in revulsion. This is the alternative they face.  Believe in him or be offended by him. That’s the choice the gospels always present us.

"Jesus then said, “The Spirit is the one who gives life and the flesh doesn’t help at all.” The Spirit is the carrier of forgiveness and mercy. Forgiveness and mercy give life. Forgiveness and mercy is the spirit of Jesus. The flesh doesn’t help because it subsists on consuming human flesh and drinking human blood. This is not an empty metaphor. It’s the way the world works. We talk about our dog-eat-dog world and this is what we mean. We talk about how we divide the world between the haves and have-nots and keep it divided through violence and rules hidden in systems of power that give some the advantage and make it nearly impossible for others. [...] This is what the writer of Ephesians meant when he tells us, “We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.”

"“The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life” he says. They come from another place; a place John identifies as heaven; that restful place outside the force-field of human striving and ambition that we generate in our rivalry with each other. By contrast, Jesus’ words come from a place of self-sacrifice not human sacrifice. We tend to sacrifice the other and not ourselves. We gnaw on each other’s flesh and drink each other’s blood in our wars and economic systems designed to maintain the current distribution of wealth. Jesus sacrifices himself saying gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood instead of your neighbors. I give you my own flesh for you to gnaw on. Does that offend you?

[...]

"We are on this earth and we have begun to face the truth about ourselves. We are the ones destroying this planet with our strivings and fear but [Jesus has] the words that lead to lasting peace. We will either consume each other or eat the forgiving and merciful flesh of Jesus. When we take him in he gradually changes our desires and gives us life that does not end."

- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 23rd, 2015 (http://girardianlectionary.net/.../Proper16-2015-Four...)

~

"We are back again with that recurring theme of the Gospel of John, life, and not just transient life, but eternal life. John speaks of life and how to experience it, in many ways – by metaphors like water and bread, by mystical or philosophical images like light and Logos – but here he attributes it to the discourse of Jesus. Eternal life comes in and through what Jesus has to say.

"It is significant that Peter the respondent does not say “You speak the words of eternal life,” but rather “You have the words of eternal life.” The difference between speaking and having is important. Jesus asks the shaken disciples, who remained when others were shocked into apostasy by the demand that all eat his flesh, “Are you going too?” and Peter answers “To whom Lord shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” He says not “speak” but “have.” The idea is perhaps best translated by the idiom used above, “... have to say.” Eternal life comes through what Jesus has to say.

"Why is this small difference important? Because if we say the power is in what he speaks, we can hear the message, detach it from the messenger, and take it away with us to use on our own. If however, it is in what he has to say, we cannot leave because he himself is the substance of what he says. His whole being is an expression in time and space of what he has to say."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on August 27, 2006 (source no longer available)

~

"“The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” So here he brings out that it's actually the words that are the important thing. Every sign that he has done, they've been tempted to look just at the physicality of the sign, and it's always been the word that he's speaking, the thing that he has been bringing into being through the word. In Greek the word 'rhema' can mean word or thing, just as the Hebrew 'dabar' can mean word or deed. So it's this thing, this speaking thing that I have spoken to you, are spiritual life. It's that which I'm bringing into being.

"“But are among you there are some who do not believe.” And here I want to alter our word believe because we're inclined to hear it, I'm afraid, far too much as an individual thing that we do ourselves, kind of something that I've got to do starting from me. But the Greek word 'pistis' means persuasion and the word that we translate 'to believe' means 'to be persuaded or to be convinced'. In other words, it's someone doing something to you so that you trust them.

"So he says, “The words that I have spoken to are spirit in life, but among you there are some who have not been persuaded, who are not persuaded. [...] For this reason, I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is given by the Father.” Because he's well aware that it's the being given to be persuaded that is the gift of the Father. Jesus is doing what he's doing, he's perfectly confident in that. He knows that that is what persuades, but it doesn't guarantee persuasion. There are some who only see what he's doing as something useful for themselves, it's not because they're allowing him to persuade them, it's not given to them to be persuaded that this is God himself speaking into their midst.

[...]

"So Jesus asked the Twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” [...] Simon Peter answers him [...] “Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” In other words, Peter has understood that the words, the thing, the utterance - something close to the oracles which are speaking and living Jesus - they're the ones that bear eternal life. [...] So he says, “We have come to be persuaded and really know.” That's the wonderful thing, that's why I think it's such a good idea that we translate 'believe' by 'be persuaded', because the process of someone persuading you does lead to knowledge. When someone has persuaded you, you actually do know something. Just remember that's a process of coming to be persuaded and then knowing.

"[Peter] said, “We have come to be persuaded and now genuinely know” - the verb is emphatic in Greek - “that you are the Holy One of God” - the one who was coming in, the messianic priestly figure, the one whom John [the Baptist] had recognized in the presence of these disciples as the lamb of God. They're beginning to get the picture. They don't entirely get it yet of what his giving himself to be the bread, the fruit of sacrifice - which will be the same thing - what that's going to mean. They haven't yet seen him going up to where he was before, the very beginning of all feasts, before even the rite of atonement, certainly before the Passover. They haven't yet seen that but they're going to stick around with him.

"So I think that this Gospel encourages us to say: gosh, often we're falling behind on allowing ourselves to be persuaded. Let's pray to the Father to give it to us, to be taken on to the inside of what Jesus is doing, so that we can be persuaded and know that he is the Holy One of God."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 20/21 in Ordinary Time, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ufGsbQEVbE)

[Source of the links to Thomas & Laura Truby and Robert Hamerton-Kelly sermons, and for extensive analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper16b/]

From the Lectionary for 18 August 2024 (Proper 15B)

John 6:51-58 (NRSV)

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

~

"In 6:51-58, two different Greek verbs for “eat” occur a total of 8 times. The more common of the two, phagein, is used 158 times in the NT; it’s used 15 times in John (four times in this passage; vs. 51, 52, 53, 58). The more rare form, trogein, is used only 6 times in the NT, four of the occurrences here in this passage (vs. 54, 56, 57, 58), with the other two having a negative impact: Mt. 24:38, describing the eating of the people before Noah; and John 13:18, a reference to Judas’ eating next to Jesus at the Last Supper. The lexicons make John’s choice of words here even more shocking as they allude to the fact that trogein is generally used of animals gnawing audibly on their food. It would seem to be a choice of words for “eat” to convey a more ‘primitive,’ i.e., less prim and proper, form of eating, the kind that might shock the majority of diners when dining “in good company.” Is it too much to translate it here as “gnaw” of “chew”?

"In N.T. Wright’s Kingdom New Testament, he translates the first instance of trogein (v. 54) as “feasts upon,” and then the subsequent three again as “eat.” Perhaps to capture the flavor of animals eating, an alternate translation could be “feed upon.” Here’s Wright’s translation of v. 54 with the further modification: “Anyone who feeds upon my flesh and drinks my blood has the life of God’s coming age, and I will raise them up on the last day.”"

- Paul Nuechterlein, from Exegetical Notes for this text on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 15B (link in comments below)

~

"I see Jesus’s use of a more crude word for “eat” - trogein, which I translate as “feed off” - as a cue that he is challenging his listeners on their sacrificial thinking. He means to stir up in them the offensive thoughts of cannibalism because he has come to challenge them to give up all vestiges of sacrifice - most especially, the wrathful, punishing god who demands it. His listeners think themselves above cannibals, but their sacrificial thinking is as deadly as ever. Jesus will eventually let himself be their sacrificial lamb in order to expose the entire business.

"Christians need to hear this message just as much as Jesus’ fellow Jews. We have betrayed his rejection of sacrifice by becoming entrenched in a sacrificial reading of the cross, [which] is a betrayal of Jesus’ mission. It puts back into place the sacrificial thinking which Jesus came to subvert into self-sacrificial thinking - living lives of loving service."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from Opening Comments: Elements of a New Reformation on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 15B (link in comments below)

~

"Jesus’ strange words in his long monolog that follows the feeding in the wilderness connects this feeding with the Eucharist in words that are both comforting in that they promise a deep union with Jesus, but disturbing by thrusting the violence of Jesus’ death in our faces. English translations inevitably lose much of the force of the words as there is no English word that catches the connotations of trogein. “Gnaw” comes closest but even that is not strong enough. The German word fressen, which refers to the eating of non-human animals, comes much closer. When I used the word flippantly in conversation with a German acquaintance, his reaction was very strong, about as strong as our reaction to Jesus’ words ought to be. Which is precisely the way “the Jews” react to Jesus’ words.

"In reply to “the Jews's” anger, Jesus promises that his flesh and blood are “real food” and “real drink” without which we have no life in us. Jesus goes on to make the even more audacious claim that his body and blood do not nourish us as meat and vegetables nourish us. Such nourishment is not lasting and needs to be renewed by further eating and drinking as the manna God fed the Israelites in the desert needed to be re-gathered every day. But Jesus’ own flesh and blood feeds us in such a way that we will live forever.

[...]

"Since Jesus’ promise of everlasting nourishment is tied so closely to his painful death, we might get some understanding by looking at sacrifice. Sacrifice is closely tied to eating. Deities feed on animals or vegetation, or at least the aroma of them, and the sacrificers usually eat the food that was sacrificed. The Passover lamb is sacrificed both to spare the Israelites from the plague that strikes the first-born of Egypt and a sacrifice to physical hunger, and thus a source of nourishment as well. Sacrifices need to be repeated, as the author of Hebrews says. (Heb. 7: 27; 9: 6) In his sacrificial death, Jesus has obtained “eternal redemption.” (Heb. 9: 12) Thus, this author is making the same claim on behalf of Jesus that Jesus is making in John’s Gospel.

[...]

"The death and resurrection of Christ, then, are a pledge of the heavenly banquet where we will be nourished without need of taking any life [...] What we can do is let Christ nourish us deeply in the here and now so that we do not need to sacrifice other people as we are prone to do, but rather will feed others in anticipation of the heavenly banquet."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled "Eating Together" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2018/08/17/eating-together/)

~

"Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Now we understand the living bread is God’s forgiveness that comes from outside ourselves and draws us toward God. [...] The very thing we most need and cannot provide, God provides in the form of Jesus’ broken body, the body we broke, now given back to us as the food of forgiveness.

[...]

"We are used to seeing flesh hacked and blood spilled. [...] This is what we are doing to each other everywhere and this is what Jesus came to stop. He tries to stop it by offering his own blood and flesh instead of all these whose flesh we otherwise feed on. Eat my flesh; not theirs. Drink my blood, not theirs for mine is the bread of forgiveness, mine will satisfy your cravings and give you peace.

"Since our killing is so vividly real he uses images that do not veil the truth and provide an alternative.  It is common to take life but Jesus gives it. This is his alternative. He gives it freely and defines it as the bread of forgiveness. Could it be that all life comes from forgiveness, even eternal life? Maybe forgiveness is a grittier name for love. Could it be that unless we participate in forgiveness we aren’t really living and in fact, are dead already? [...] We must abide in forgiveness; it is the only bread that can sustain us in any sustainable fashion. It is the only way we can live.

[...]

"Our living derives from Jesus. His bread of forgiveness, which is himself, as broken body and shed blood, keeps us alive because it is rooted in his relationship with his non-violent Abba. Because God loves Jesus, loves him for himself and for what he did for us, God will not let us disappear either. It is not metaphysical, it is relational. It is not built on ideas and pure thought. It is built on the non-rivalrous relationship between Jesus and God, where each honors and respects the other. By God’s grace we are included in this eternal relationship as forgiven friends of Jesus. As Jesus put it, “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of my father.”

"Yes, the bread of life is forgiveness; “The one who eats this bread will live forever.” Amen."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 19th, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Proper15-2012-Forgiveness-the-Bread-ofLife.doc)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quotes and links to Andrew Marr blog post and Thomas L. Truby sermon, and for further discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper15b/]

From the Lectionary for 11 August 2024 (Proper 14B)

Ephesians 4:32-5:2 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

John 6:35, 41-51 (NRSV)

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

[...]

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

~

"[An] important word in this lection is “draw” (vs. 44): “No one can come to me unless *drawn* by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.” [...] The notion of drawing has a similar feel to it as an attraction, as a craving. It is important to note, I think, that Jesus doesn’t take away our need for bread; he offers us a bread of life, rather than a bread of death. And Jesus doesn’t take away the craving to be drawn together in community; he gives us another basis for doing so. All the peoples of the earth will be drawn together in true community when Jesus is lifted up, when Jesus comes into his glory (from the Johannine way of speaking) by suffering the apparent victimization of the cross."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from "Reflections and Questions" on the Giradian Lectionary page for Proper 14B (link in comments below)

~

"“No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father.” This is a very gentle verb. Jesus is bringing out that the pattern of love that is behind this, the desire of the 'model', is what points to him. We follow the desire of the Father, and if we find ourselves following the desire of the Father we actually find ourselves being drawn to Jesus. [...] And the one way to be absolutely sure that we cannot be drawn by that love is for us to have been drawn into being able to join a gang of complainers, grumblers, people who are looking for someone whose fault it all is. That's the pattern of desire in which we're going to be heading for a scapegoat, we're going to be heading to do real harm to some 'wicked' other.

"And Jesus is, of course, the one who's come to occupy the place of all our 'wicked' others, so as to set us free forever from having to do that again. He's going to teach us that that's what he's going to do, he's going to give himself to us so that we can begin to step out of that world. But the one who's making all that possible is the Father who draws us. That for me is the gentle central line of this: “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” In other words, the pattern of desire makes available a model, a sign we find ourselves being drawn in to be able to perceive and therefore follow the sign, the One who is being made alive in our midst.

"Jesus then continues this: “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” So, saying that, that all being taught by God, is true, this is to be found both in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jesus is talking about the way in which the Holy Spirit comes between us and enables us to be taken into the fullness of God's teaching so that there's nobody above us, we're all alongside each other. And we're all learning how not to be caught up in lynch mobs and ganging up over against but rather how to be drawn to the One who has occupied that space - occupied the space of the victim, occupied the space of the scapegoat - so as to enable us to have life. [...] [O]nce you say yes, yes I can see that the entire shape of the power and dynamic of God the creator who brought everything into being is made available to us in this One going to his death as the scapegoat, as the cast out one so that none of us needs ever be caught up in that again. And so that we can learn how to live forever, we can share the age that is to come, share the life of God.

"[...] [T]he manna in the wilderness wasn't something to open [the Israelites] up to life for good. It didn't even get them into the Promised Land. It was an energy boost in order to get them through the wilderness. But because they grumbled and complained amongst themselves they were not able to get into the Promised Land. It was the grumbling that kept them out. Why? Because grumbling is the way in which you create bonding and belonging together, and that's always over against someone, and that means you're failing to come to life. It's when you see that the one who is being thrown out is the one who is the representative of how God loves you, that then you are to be given a belonging that's of an entirely different sort. And so you're able to be brought to life.

[...]

"Again the difficult thing with this passage is how much more down to earth Jesus is being that it's difficult for us to imagine. The words sound so celestial that it's difficult for us to see him constantly trying to get people to concentrate on what is before them, what is being acted out before them. Someone who is going to undo the way of being together that is, if you like, dominated by grumbling, by complaining. Someone who is going to occupy the space of the grumbled against and is going to open up life forever."

- James Alison, from "Homily for Sunday 19 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XDw9f1WUrI)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote, and for further discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper14b/]

From the Lectionary for 4 August 2024 (Proper 13B)

Ephesians 4:1-7 (NRSV Updated Edition)

I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

John 6:24-35 (NRSV Updated Edition)

So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us, then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

~

"There are many ways we speak of needing more than bread, most often by noting our need for a meaningful life. After all, eating and sleeping doesn’t add up to very much no matter how good the food is. Given that, it is instructive that in the desert journey and in the aftermath of Jesus’ feeding the multitude in the wilderness, the people seem to be interested in more food  than in a sense of meaning to life. In John, in spite of the abundance of the feeding in the wilderness, the crowd demands to have this bread always. If we remain stuck at this level, various distortions follow.

[...]

"In John, when Jesus says that he himself is the bread, he is clearly taking them to a meaning that would bring home the truth that humanity does not live by bread alone. If they really come to him, they will have enough: they will never hunger again. Or will they? Jesus says that they have to believe in him. Raymund Brown says that faith means giving their lives over to the way of Jesus. Will we do that? What is the life Jesus gives us like?

"In Ephesians, Paul says that the life Jesus gives us consists of humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with each other in love. We are to be one Body in Christ, the same body that we consume in the Eucharist. [...] That is, in Christ’s Body we all have enough because we are always feeding one another at all levels of our being as we build each other up in love. Sounds like life to me."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled "Bread that is Enough" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2015/07/29/bread-that-is-enough/)

~

"Jesus is starting to take the people into the realm of understanding the sign, which is what we're really into today. We saw the sign last week - the sign was multiplying all that bread and fish, feeding people in a perfectly straightforward material sense. But Jesus says that's not the real sign, that's only part of it. You're not really getting it if that's what you got from what I was doing. He says, “Don't work for that, work for something else instead.”

"So they then said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” In other words, there's quite a genuine hunger and thirst, if you like, for knowledge here, they ask him decent questions: “What must we do to perform the works of God?” So they want the right answer. Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” And that's like the mega answer in today's Gospel. We'll see how it ties in further on. He's saying that there is a work in this. And the work is not so much to do anything, rather it is to have something done to you, to allow yourself to be stretched by God convincing you through the One he has sent. It's going to be this shape of allowing yourself to be stretched by the One whom God has sent, that's the shape of God's work in you which is what is going to be emphasized now throughout. Because that's going to be the thing that's really difficult to understand.

[...]

"Notice something which I think is very important that Jesus is doing: he's trying to get their head away from celestial thinking. He's trying to bring down the understanding of God to the person in front of them. Do you want to understand the things of God? Do you want to understand how it is that God opens you up to eternal life? It's going to be horizontally. It's because you learn to believe in the One who [God] has sent. And everything that that One does - the whole of his life, culminating in his death and the distributing of himself - is what is going to feed you and nourish you for eternal life.

"But this is not a handout from heaven. This is the gift of life which opens you up to heaven. And it's God opening you up at this horizontal level. And that's quite a tough thing to do because, in one sense, he is bringing out something that is heavenly, but he's bringing it down to earth. He's trying to get them off tripping on celestial handouts, and saying, “No, the work of God is to believe in the One whom [God] has sent.” This is to be able to look at this human being who is in front of you, who is in fact God's Son, who speaks God's truth, who is going to live out what God's love is like. And your work is to believe in him, to allow yourself to be opened up by this Other, this human Other, at the horizontal level, who is the enactment in our midst of what God's love for us looks like.

"If you like, it's the 'de-celetialising' of the gift and the turning it into something that's much more concrete, much more present, and much more symbolically rich. How to get us thinking of Jesus as bread, how to allow us to imagine that all of this is to nourish us, that it's to take us beyond celestial handouts, if you like, and to turn us into bearers, signs, of this eternal life which is being brought about by Jesus."

- James Alison, from "Homily for Sunday 18 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na_cfs3XDZU)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr blog post, and for further discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper13b/]