‘A Poem a Sunday’

Pentecost 12 – B

August 19, 2015

St. John 6:51-58 - New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

^{Commentary: John continues Christ's commentary on the bread of life which gets more intense challenging his Jewish counterparts and raising the stakes as he announces that he is the bread of life come down from heaven.}  

^This discourse is also a challenge to the early Gnostics who insisted on dualism and the separation of flesh from spirit. This speaks of an integration of flesh and spirit - creation as good and redemptive.

⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

⁵² The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³ 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.⁵⁴ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵ for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.⁵⁶ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

'A Poem a Sunday'

Corpus Christi

Speaking of the Church anorexic

undernourished by dogma

and fast food sound bites

from ‘What Would Jesus Do’

campaigns.

Her diet of rice wafers

and shot glasses of grape juice,

speak of fasting,

betraying the Feast.

She walks from the table

and pious words of forgiveness

without pondering the mystics,

the mystery, the peace.

Imagine a large table

full of faces forgotten

of bad, good, indifferent

and all in-between.

Imagine the Host,

Christ, the Jew, oft forgotten

sharing his very self

with the greatest and least

at the large table

deep in a forest

a banquet of plenty

surrounded by beasts.

Where no one goes hungry,

where no one is rejected,

where everyone is satiated

and become what they eat.

Plants and animals,

all of creation

at this universal table,

abiding in the One

who gives his flesh, the true food;

who gives his blood, the true drink;

and new life, now, forever,

for all on the brink.

Kenn Storck ‘A Poem a Sunday’  – written August 11, 2015