Twelfth Sunday after Trinity – morning
Sunday 19th August 2018
Proper 15 – 12th Sunday after Trinity – morning
Proverbs 9.1-6
John 6.51-58
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
Yes, Jesus is still talking about bread!
But given that we heard a passage from Proverbs as well as our Gospel from John, I would like to think a little about how and when we feed our minds?
Proverbs tells us to lay aside immaturity….. and to embrace wisdom for ourselves, walking in the way of insight. And insight is what I strive and hope that I can bring you week by week in these sermons. Giving you something to think about, something that might challenge the way you have always understood these holy scriptures. Something that will feed all of our minds, and make us engage more fully with the message that God inspires us with.
But Feed the Minds is also an ecumenical Christian charity, working with partners of different denominations and faiths to promote education in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. They believe that education saves lives – and I quite agree with that thought. As they say, it makes “a world of difference”. Through practical projects, they enable long-term change by building people’s skills and knowledge, so that they can transform their own lives. But they also speak of the spiritual well-being of the communities in which they work.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus recommends us to “feed on him”. It can seem a strange choice of words and long ago it led to a rumour that Christians are cannibals!
Of course he never meant that – but he was referring to eating bread and drinking wine – the central act of Holy Communion / the Eucharist – as a way of symbolizing his body and blood. The words were chosen, perhaps, to remind us that we need more types of nourishment than merely physical food; we need food for our minds and our souls also.
I heard a programme on the radio this week about the great 18th Century Philosopher, John Stuart Mill. As a child he was given a very rigorous intellectual upbringing focused on facts, facts and more facts. Nothing frivolous or light hearted was allowed to distract the infant prodigy. No play; no music; no drama. And as a result, although he grew up to be frighteningly intelligent, and eventually wrote some really important books, Mill suffered a nervous collapse at one point in his life – what we would term a complete breakdown – from which he was only rescued by the lyric poetry of Wordsworth and others.
When we attend a church service, hear the word of God read in the scriptures and wrestled with in the sermon, when we share with other Christians in prayer and singing, then we receive spiritual nourishment.
And when we eat together with other Christians, Jesus feeds our souls also. Whether it is a lent supper or lunch; or the refreshments following our Sunday or Wednesday morning service; or even the monthly lunch club or our Harvest or Rogation Day shared meals or cake, there is something about eating with one another that binds people together in a particularly loving way.
Whenever the whole family can sit down together around a dining table, Jesus is there too at the family meal. Friends dining together, a cup of tea or coffee shared with someone in difficulties; a cheese sandwich at the end of a hard day’s work in the garden, or when you are walking in the countryside, thanking God for his blessings; in all these ways nourishment for the body, can also be food for the soul.
I’m sure you have heard the expression, a healthy mind in a healthy body? Some say it was coined by the Roman poet Juvenal, but whoever wrote it, the two things do go together. We can feed on Jesus intellectually, by reading about him, talking with our friends about him, and praying to him. It’s sad that many people think their minds can be left to go to sleep when they finish formal education (and in the middle of exam results time this is especially important!) In fact whatever your success or lack of it at school, you never stop learning if you are interested in the world around you. You never stop learning about God’s love, if you keep your relationship with him alive through regular study of the Bible and through prayer.
And if you feed on Jesus by worship, table fellowship, reading and prayer, then he will nourish your souls as surely as bread nourishes your body. And your relationship with God will not be interrupted by the death of the physical body, but will continue to grow and blossom in heaven.
Jesus said, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever. But the opposite is also tragically true. If you don’t nourish your soul by fellowship with Jesus, even though your body may go on existing for a good few years more, you may be spiritually dead. Why forgo the chance of eternal life, by neglecting spiritual nourishment? Man cannot live by bread alone – but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Amen.