Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

This teaching is difficult; Who can accept it?

Last week, I went to the dentist. Now, like many people, I really don’t like going to the dentist. That’s not particularly because of the medical ickiness or discomfort of the procedure, it’s because I know that, every time, they will ask me the same questions about my habits: Do you floss? What do you snack on? And my answers will be… unsatisfactory. And every time they will give me some advice – more or less strongly worded depending on the dentist. Begin flossing. Eat less Chocolate. Drink less coffee. And I will agree! I will say that I will floss regularly, stop eating chocolate, drink less coffee… genuinely intending to do better. But if I’m honest with myself, also knowing in my heart of hearts that I might manage it for… a week? Maybe a month if I’m really disciplined. But sooner or later I will relax into my old ways, and the next time I go to the dentist, exactly the same thing will happen. There’s the embarrassment, the guilt, the promise to do better, but also the knowing that I will ultimately, probably fail in that promise.

This teaching is difficult; Who can accept it?

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I feel the same thing listening to Jesus’s teachings. I hear him telling us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in captivity, and I promise in myself that I will do better at taking care of those around me – especially the most vulnerable. Then the next time I hear that reading I wonder whether I really did do anything new or better. Or Jesus telling us to love our neighbour when I know that there are people that I find difficult. Finding Jesus’s teachings hard is nothing new or surprising; throughout his ministry, there are those who cannot hear him, or hearing him, cannot bring themselves to accept what he was saying. Think of the rich young man in Mark 10: Jesus tells him to sell all that he has, give the money to the poor, and come and follow him – and he finds he cannot do it, and goes away grieving. It can be easy to look at people like the rich young man, or perhaps at ourselves, and see our failings to follow the teachings of Jesus as simply laziness, or a lack of desire to do the “right things.” But our failure to at least begin to (for example) love our neighbour in the way that we would wish can come from an understanding of the depth of need that is around us. Sam Wells in the book Who is My Neighbour describes this as ‘the tangible fear of impossible demand.’ Looking around us, and especially in an increasingly tumultuous world, our neighbour presents themselves as so numerous and so needy that to try to meet their need means that we will lose something. Time, resources, or even our sense of security and safety. That’s the demand. Then there’s the word “impossible.” We cannot meet the needs or demands of all those around us – we as individuals simply do not have the time or resources. As Wells puts it ‘who is my neighbour?’ becomes ‘the one who promises to drown me in a boundary-less ocean of need.’ And yet we are called to love our neighbour.

This teaching is difficult; Who can accept it?

Jesus’s teachings are not just about how we relate to one another, however. As in today’s Gospel, they are also fundamentally, profoundly and always about our relationship with God. Over the past few weeks, we have been hearing a series of Gospel readings in which Jesus feeds people and then describes himself as the bread of life. This week is the culmination of those readings, when he tells his audience in Capernaum that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood abide in him, and whoever eats him, will live because of him. There are many reasons why this teaching would have been unacceptable to his listeners. There’s the implication that those who eat that flesh and drink that blood might be engaging in some kind of cannibalism – an accusation that dogged the early church. Not only that, but to eat anything that contained blood was totally unacceptable to the Jewish faith of his listeners. To claim that to do so was in some way Holy was just – anathema. But this teaching is not just a bit of theological set-up for what we are doing here today, coming to this altar to meet Christ in bread and wine, it is a promise that meets our boundary-less ocean of need. When we feel dead to the world, or dead to our better selves, it is Christ who gives us life. We come here to be fed.

This is not an easy teaching to accept either, because we are so used to the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The idea that someone, and not just any someone but God made man, would give himself for us so that we might live in him is a lifetime’s work to begin to understand. To be loved is difficult, as any brief foray into books, television, songs will tell us. To be loved in our brokenness, in our guilt, in our feeble promises to do better, to never be able to deserve that love but for it to be given anyway, is practically beyond imagining. When we come here to take the bread that is his body and drink the wine that is his blood, we do not merely press it with our teeth. We receive the presence of Christ, who acts in our lives in healing, forgiving and serving love. As Keith Ward puts it: ‘it is a participation in divine love’ and conveys ‘a divine power for living in the world.’ Not one that we can in any sense buy, ‘but a means of personal encounter with the active love of God, to which the appropriate human response is one of gratitude and commitment.’ A personal encounter in which we receive the grace that allows us to respond to the needs of others, beyond that which we alone would be capable of.

This teaching is difficult; Who can accept it?

We are loved, and we are called to participate in that love in a way which equips us to go out into the world to express that love in the face of the needs of our neighbour. As our Collect prays: ‘Help us to proclaim the good news of your love, that all who hear it may be drawn to you.’ Every Eucharist there is an invitation to communion, one which expresses both the fullness of what we are participating in here, and also our faith in the face of our unworthiness. The president will hold up the bread and wine before you and say ‘Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, blessed are those who are called to his supper.’ To which we respond: ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.’ And in those words, there is a choice. The same choice that Jesus gave the disciples when those who could not accept his love expressed in sacrifice had gone away: ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ We know our embarrassment, our guilt, our promise to do better, we know that we will ultimately, probably fail in that promise. But again, and again we are called here and asked, ‘do you also wish to go away?’ May we answer, Like Peter ‘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.’