View as Webpage

Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

August 22, 2022

Invitatory

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.

Reading: John 6:52-59

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 the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in a synagogue at Capernaum.

Meditation – Peter Vanderveen

David Byrne, formerly the frontman of the band the Talking Heads, once recorded a whimsical song on a solo album that narrates what might be a kind of grocery store mishap*. He imagines what might happen if he somehow walked out of the store with another person’s groceries. Consequently, he would change his diet according to the groceries he now has. And the song invites listeners to imagine what it might be like to explore the contents of each bag, discovering the food that someone else had thought desirable.

More interestingly, however, Byrne then muses about how this food informs him about what to think of the other. The groceries themselves suggest a certain perception and picture: someone who eats such things as these… probably looks like this, or lives in that neighborhood, or is in this line of work, or belongs to a certain class, or is of an identifiable age. What we eat reveals a lot about us.

And not only this; for then Byrne speculates that as he consumes the groceries he has accidentally acquired, he might begin to pick up the habits of the other as well. Certain new interests might arise. Different passions might become evident. It is as if the food itself changes the character of those who eat it, and slowly he might be transformed into the image of the other – at least in some noticeable, albeit minor, ways.

The art of the song is that David Byrne makes this whole tale seem utterly believable, as if this could happen, as if food does in fact have this kind of effect, as if what we ingest can and does determine who we are. What we eat shapes our character - substantially. And as David Byrne presents this, it rings true to me. But it does so only in the most mysterious of ways. One couldn’t make a science of this; e.g. creating diets that are guaranteed to produce specific outcomes in personality. Nonetheless, and however subtly, what we eat (and how, and with whom, and in what manner) gives definite shape to our lives. Maybe more than we are ever aware of.

As John records them, Jesus’ comments about the need to eat his flesh and blood are jarring, especially when they are removed from the greater context of the Gospel narrative. The verses appointed for today follow after a very lengthy discussion of food and eating that was first initiated with John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand. In essence, Jesus pointed out that food is a necessity for life, and, just so, his word is a necessity for life too – and he is personally and physically true to his word (the Word embodied). Thus, he himself is a kind of food that we, in effect, should ingest (as if we were physically able to consume his word) so that our lives might be transformed, mysteriously, and intimately, by our practices of eating (both literally and figuratively). And from the earliest times, Christian worship reflected this by being centered around shared meals.

In its eagerness to claim the truth and efficacy of these practices of worship, the church has often tried too hard and too explicitly to explain exactly how Jesus’ flesh and blood become food and how bread and wine become his body, as if there were a science that could be applied. Such efforts only mislead. For ultimately, faith – and its expression in worship – is an art that doesn’t remit to explanation. We are invited to imagine not only God’s presence to us; we are invited, all the more, to imagine God’s presence within us, as we are being transformed by food not of our own purchasing. In a way that can be deeply formative, receiving the elements at Eucharist can be like discovering that you have someone else’s groceries.

●    “Social Studies” from The Knee Plays

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

   hallowed be thy Name,

   thy kingdom come,

   thy will be done,

       on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

   as we forgive those

       who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

   but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

   and the power, and the glory,

   for ever and ever. Amen.