The Yuck Factor

12th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 20), Year B
Texts: Prov 9.1-6; Eph 5.15-20; Jn 6.51-59

As we continue through the Bread of Life Sundays, reading about what happened after Jesus multiplied the loaves, we come to what I like to think of “Sandwich Sunday,” because this is where we get to the meat of the story. Literally. Suddenly Jesus switches from talking about loaves and bread to very graphically inviting people to eat his flesh and drink his blood. If you are thinking that this sounds very weird and disturbing, you’re not alone.

More Than Loaves

10th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 18), Year B
Texts: Ex 16.2-4, 9-15; Jn 6.22-35

As we journey through these 5 Bread of Life Sundays this year, I am particularly interested in where we as the Church are seeking to be fed, and in how God is feeding us. Our congregation has just come out of a period of fasting from corporate worship, as well as from many of the other normal habits of non-pandemic life. We are hungry to get back to “normal.” Now that we are once again able to begin gathering in person, I know there are those among us who are feeling truly fed for the first time in a long time.

I’m one of those people. I’ve missed this assembly, and I’ve missed doing ministry in the physical presence of the people for whom I’m doing it. I’ve missed being able to connect with you all in the little ways that we haven’t been able to for the last 16 months. I’ve only recently begun to realize that it was harder on me than I ever realized.

Hangry

9th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 17), Year B
Texts: 2 Kgs 4.42-44; Jn 6.1-21

I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to realize that, somewhere, I’ve picked up a kind of elitism when reading stories from scripture. It’s easy—perhaps too easy—for me to condescend to the people in these stories who “don’t get it.” Take, for example, the crowds in St. John’s story today. When Jesus miraculously feed them, they want to make him a king. Given his reaction, and what we will read in the coming weeks, this is clearly not the response he was hoping for.

Pandentecost

Pentecost Sunday (8th Sunday in Easter), Year B
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; 24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27,4b-15

14 months ago, when we first all retreated into our homes, I remember thinking how this pandemic was like a time of Lent. There were things we had to give up or from which we must fast for a while—shopping in grocery stores, eating in restaurants, shaking hands with strangers—but which we would eventually take up again. I remember thinking that the time without would make us that much more grateful for the things we would someday have back.

As the lockdown was extended from two weeks to four, then to six, and then again, as Lent gave way to Holy Week and Easter, I remember thinking how this pandemic was like a death. Our old lives have passed away; there is nothing left of them. Our old way of being is gone, lost forever. The way we’ve always done it, the only way we’ve ever known, is dead. What will rise in its place? Now that what is old has died, what new thing is springing forth in God, waiting for us to notice?

Reflecting on how things have changed over this last year, it’s begun to occur to me that this pandemic is also like Pentecost. On the first Pentecost, the believers were gathered together in one place. When the Holy Spirit arrived, the doors and windows were flung wide and they poured out into the streets. This pandemic Pentecost—Pandentecost? Pentademic?—is kind of the opposite: it drove us from the streets into our own little places. But as I’ve watched how the Church has responded in this year, I see the movement of the Spirit.

Abiding in a Time of Pandemic

Audio Recording of “Abiding in a Time of Pandemic” recorded in worship (14:51)
3rd Sunday in Lent, Year A
Texts: Ex 17.1-7; Rom 5.1-11; Jn 4.5-42

“I have no husband.” For better or worse, we don’t know what feelings were behind those words as the woman spoke them. Was she ashamed? She’s been married 5 times and is now living with someone now who is not her husband. For centuries, that fact has gotten her labeled “promiscuous,” and “loose” and “sinner.” She’s there at the well in the blazing heat of noon, when all the other women of the village would have gathered water together at dawn or dusk. She is alone, both physically and socially.

But maybe it’s not shame she feels, maybe it’s hope. Maybe she’s at the well at noon because she’s been hanging out there all day, just waiting for Mr. Right to drop by. Wells are where men and women meet, after all; at this very well, Jacob met Rachel, the woman he loved so madly as to toil for 14 years to gain her hand in marriage. When Jesus asks her, “Go, call your husband,” maybe her heart skips a beat and she bats her eyes a little as she says, “I have no husband.”

However, it could just as easily be disappointment or bitterness she feels. She’s been married 5 times. She’s been left 5 times—maybe divorced, maybe widowed. The man she lives with now is probably her brother-in-law, performing his duty looking after his dead brother’s wife. Maybe she feels like she’s bad luck, like no one could ever want her. Maybe Jesus’ question stirs up in her all those feelings of abandonment all over again.