What do you think of Christ?
Ordinary Sunday 21: 24 August, 2003
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
So with the tongue; it is small, but its pretensions are great... the
tongue is a fire, representing in our body the whole wicked world. It
pollutes our being ... no-one can subdue the tongue.
St James in full cry. (3:5-6)
And no doubt Shane Warne, Mr Wilson Tuckey and many others could read
these words with benefit. I suspect that a great deal of heartbreak could
have been avoided in human existence if people had shown more control
over the tongue.
Two of our Readings today are about language – about the effect of the word written and spoken on others. Our Gospel Reading (St John 6:60-69)
follows on from the very demanding words of Jesus in last Sunday's
Reading (St John 6:51-58).
"...and the bread that I shall give is my flesh. If you do not eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you."
This was too much for most of Jesus' disciples, "This is intolerable
language. How could anyone accept it?" As we are told, "after this, many
of his disciples left him and stopped going with him."
And in our Second Reading, (Ephesians 5:21-32), we find language about
marriage which is very difficult for many people today, not least women.
"As the Church submits to Christ, so should wives to their husbands, in
everything." The last two words make a big difference.
However, we must look beneath the surface, and set the difficult expressions
in the wider context of the surrounding parts of Scripture before we
react. The subject in both Readings is obviously Jesus; in the Gospel Reading
his relationship with the apostles and disciples. In the Second Reading,
faith in Jesus, and its working out in the life of the early Church,
particularly in relation for marriage for Christians in a sea of
paganism.
For St John, there is one question at the heart of all his writings,
which can be summed up as, "What do you think of Christ?", or "Is Jesus
the Christ, the anointed One of God?", or "Is Jesus the Word made
flesh?" If we ask the last question, "Is Jesus the Word made flesh?", then his
language about eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood
may become less difficult; especially if we remember that Jesus – at the
Ascension when he returned to the Father – took our human nature, body
and soul, into Heaven. And even though he received there the body for the
life of Heaven, yet it incorporated – embodied – his human nature.
At the end of the Second Reading, the writer to the Ephesians says, "This
mystery has many implications", in particular in relation to marriage;
but also in relation to Christ and the Church.
Mystery seems a good word. We do not use it the sense of something we
cannot, nor ever will understand. Rather, in Christian understanding, a
mystery is a 'hidden reality' in this age, as Professor Alan Richardson
described it years ago. Something which cannot be made known through
communications techniques, but only through the 'hearing of faith'. In
communicating the mystery of Jesus Christ, faith speaks to faith.
Thus the sacrificial nature of marriage – and surely that is central in
the self-giving nature of marriage, when a man and a woman come freely to
commit themselves to each other for life – finds its basis in the
sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for his own bride, the Church?
And this sacrifical nature of life is not limited to marriage, though it
finds a special place in the consecrated partnership. It applies to all
Christian life certainly, but because Jesus died for all people, without
discrimination, it applies to all life.
Both of these Readings are about the challenge to choose. And in the
First Reading (Joshua 24:1-2,15-18), Joshua said to the assembled tribes
of Israel, "If you will not serve the Lord, choose today whom you wish to
serve... As for me and my House, we will serve the Lord."
The people did so choose, "We have no intention of deserting the Lord and
serving other gods. Was it not the Lord who brought us and our ancestors
out of the land of Egypt, the land of slavery ... We too will serve the
Lord, for he is our God."
The writer to the Ephesians is challenging his Christian readers to see
marriage in a special way, as a model based on Jesus' sacrifice, even if
we might put somethings in the Reading differently today.
But when Jesus' disciples were challenged to accept him as the Word of
God made flesh, come down from Heaven, many of them faltered and turned
away. Faith speaks to faith.
Faith is God's gift,"..I told you that no-one could come to me unless the
Father allows him." But the Apostles remained faithful. "Lord, who shall
we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know
that you are the Holy One of God."
We cannot hear Jesus speak to us in person, as they did. But he speaks to
us in the Gospels, and he challenges us, "What do you think of Christ?"
"Is he the Son of God, is he the Word made Flesh?"
If so, if He has spoken to our faith, allowed us to understand the
mystery, then let us respond by a daily turning to him, a daily
conversion, that our nature may be transformed to be more and more like
his nature.
|
Views is a
publication of
St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne Australia.
|
