Sunday, August 19, 2018

21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time (14^th Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 16)

The Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Lord’s Day are:

First Reading: I Kings 8:(1, 6, 10-11) 22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84:1-12
Second Reading: Ephesians 6:10-20
Gospel Reading: John 6:56-69

The liturgical color for the day is: Green

Jesus says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

It is about that abiding piece.  That is the point.  The abiding.  The being connected.  The encounter.

It is about our being connected with each other.  That is how both the table and the font draw us together.  It is about a connection with each other and with God.  “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

That connection is not just about being attached together—connection is more than that.  Connection is about the reality that we cannot see and know who we are until we encounter and abide in the other.  It is in this abiding in Christ that we come to see who we really are.  It is in this encountering the holiness of God that we come to an authentic vision of who we are as a people and as a person.

Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

“…and I in them.”  That is the place—that in this spark, in this encounter, in this connection, in our community in that millisecond moment there is that place where there is more than connection, more than encounter.   There is that place where there is God.  …if we will but “taste and see that that the Lord is good.”

To stand in that—“abide in me, and I in them”—is to stand in the “whole armor of God.”