Pentecost 13

Pentecost 13 (John 6:56-69) Does this offend you?
Jesus is the truth.
Unlike prophets, priests and religious teachers, Jesus just doesn’t give some insight into the truth about God. Jesus is the truth of God.
The truth of God is simple and direct: God is real, God is personal, God is love, God is Jesus Christ.
The truth of God is so rich and abundant and powerful that it can only be embodied. It can never be fully expressed in human language. The scriptures help us understand the co-eternal Word of God. The scriptures are not the co-eternal Word of God. The Word of God is Jesus.
All theology exists in the realm of knowledge. The Apostle Paul comments about knowledge by saying: now we know in part.
The preeminent theologian of the Western Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, had a vision of the co-eternal Word near the end of his life. He responded with delight and distress. He gave voice to his distress by saying that all of his books about God were as dust and ashes in comparison to the reality of God. His delight was to experience the Real Presence of unconditional love and compassion.
Jesus never intended to offend anyone when he came to earth. He came in the abundance of unconditional love and compassion. He also knew that he was coming to a species that had separated from God the Father, rejected the friendship of God the Son and ignored the invitation to personal transformation in God the Holy Spirit.
Moses and the Prophets reveal the framework to understand who Jesus is. They point to Jesus. It is Jesus who completes the revelation our Heavenly Father gave to Moses and the prophets.
God is too vast in his love and holiness to be described by any one prophet, teacher or theologian. In the incarnation, God comes to us in the best way, the ideal way, the only way to make himself known to us. Jesus is God’s Word to humanity. That Word is love.
In Jesus God unites his divinity with our humanity. In Jesus, God reveals that Truth emerges within the context of relationship.
Charles Cooley, a modern sociologist, developed a theory of relationship called “The Looking Glass Self”. In this theory, Cooley observes that we human beings form our individual personalities in relationship with other people. Essentially, we not only learn how to be human through our relationships with family, friends and neighbors, we actually build our own unique personalities in the dynamic of those relationships.
Jesus reveals to us that His friendship is the fundamental and primary relationship our Heavenly Father designed us to experience in order to build our unique identities. We are more of who God created us to be as we cultivate the Prime Relationship, the relationship with Jesus Christ. Correspondingly, we are dimished apart from Christ.
What is unique about our relationship with Jesus is that in Jesus we can experience the Real Presence of the infinite and eternal God. What we experience we can then choose to express.
The infinite and eternal reality of God is steadfast, holy, unconditional love. This love is unlike any thing we have ever or can ever experience in this world. It is the underlying meaning and purpose of life, the universe and everything that exists.
It is the missing term in the human equation of duality, of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, of life and death.
It is the key to understanding how the One God is three persons.
It is the basis of the incarnation.
It is our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation in one word.
It is embodied, incarnate, made flesh in Jesus Christ.
It is the Great Mystery of the Holy Sacrament of the altar.
Jesus said: those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Jesus is God in human flesh. God is love. To eat the flesh and to drink the blood is to make a real choice to enter into the total immersion of our being in the Real Presence of Divine love.
This Divine reality comes to us in the very humble and ordinary means of bread and wine. The sacrament of Holy Communion reminds us that the co-eternal Son of God came in the very humble and ordinary means of our humanity. He lived for thirty years in a small town as one of the working poor. He knows exactly what it means to be human. He knows exactly what we, all of us and each of us, need to be fulfilled and completed.
No book can accomplish this. No theology or philosophy can communicate to us what Jesus offers. Jesus is the perfect mirror of God. He shows us who we are: lost in separation. He shows us who we can become: the beloved of God. He just doesn’t tell us the solution. He just doesn’t show us the solution. He is the solution. He gives us himself is a very real and organic way in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Our Heavenly Father has sent the Holy Spirit into the world to invite all people everywhere to receive the gifts of reunification (through Baptism) and personal transformation (through Holy Communion).
As in Jesus’ time so in ours: this offends many people. Many react from the place of pride and say: why does it have to be Jesus? Others react from fear and ask: will God punish me if I do not receive the gift? Still others simply walk away and say: no way. I will not submit my will to this religious teaching.
As with all things in life, Love is the key. Love is the missing term in the human equation of fear, self-will and pride. Love is not just a feeling or a concept. Love is a person: Jesus Christ.
Are you offended by this? Most people are offended if they are honest. Jesus understands this. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And so he offers us his friendship, his life, his very being. There are no preconditions to the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
Jesus invites us to dialog with him as we read the scriptures.
Jesus asks us to ponder the imponderable assertion that He is real.
Jesus invites us to the altar of sacrifice on the Day of Real Presence to taste and experience the goodness of God.
The reality of God is the relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ. The relationship is the Real Presence of the Infinite and Eternal Beloved of God in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.
The invitations have been and continue to be sent.
The table is set.
The banquet hall is ready.
The time and place have been posted.
The gifts have been prepared.
All are welcome.
The Reality of life itself offers himself to us in the bread and the wine.
Your responsibility is to choose to receive the gift God has designed into this universe of matter, energy, time and space.
The gift is the Real Presence of unconditional love in Jesus Christ.
Does this offend you?