Readings and Reflections for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
Dear Friends,
The Book of Proverbs often speaks in terms of opposites – good and evil, wise and foolish. In today’s chapter, the “simple” are invited to accept wisdom and become “wise”; the “immature” are invited to become people of “insight.” In this context, wisdom and maturity would be marked by a decision to make the Ten Commandments and other teachings of Hebrew scripture one’s “daily bread.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus offers himself as the living bread that gives life that lasts forever. Read with Proverbs, Jesus invites us to make his “flesh and blood” our sustaining meal of daily “bread”. This especially means his sacrifice of the cross where he offers his flesh and blood life for us. In Jesus we have not only a new way of life to which we aspire (wisdom). Since we cannot fully attain that life by our own strength, from the cross we receive a gift of life with the Father that only Jesus himself can live and give to us by the Holy Spirit’s presence within and among us (grace!)
Paul also uses the opposites of wisdom and foolishness when talking to the Ephesians. Followers of Christ are people who seek to understand the will of the Lord, which is their wisdom. They are inspired and empowered by the Holy Spirit rather than wine, “making melody to the Lord in your hearts.”
Comment: Can I think of my life as a song of thanksgiving to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ? In honesty, it is a song that I’d like to sing much better! There remain too many notes of immaturity and places where I am not in harmony with the mind of Christ and will of the Father. Mixing images, I am not always making Christ my bread either- the source that inspires and feeds “my song.” And that may be just it: it needs not to be “my” song at all, but the song of Christ in me