Lord, to whom can we go?

 August 25 2024: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, Ephesians 6:10-20 and John 6:56-69

Marc Anderson, an American entrepreneur, wrote an essay on artificial intelligence in which he said this: ‘I am here to bring good news: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it’. [The Guardian Magazine, 24 August 2024: why we should fear AI by Yuval Noah Harari]

Those words may well leap out of us: good news and salvation.

The stuff of hope and healing, justice and joy shifting from the realm of creator to the creation’s creation. 

Image from Y N Harari's webpage for Nexus

For many of us, AI is the impact of Chat GPT and concerns about how to assess essays; or perhaps the worry of a takeover of humanly imaginative endeavours, leaving us with the mundane tasks we’d hoped to jettison. 

Rather than seeing AI development as a risk that we should fear, Anderson  regards it as ‘a moral obligation that we have to ourselves… to our future.’

Others sound a more cautionary note. 

For example, in his book Nexus the historian Yuval Noah Harari looks at the flow of information from the stone age, through the Bible to early modern history to today’s rise in popularism. As he examines the relationship between information and truth, he addresses the choices we face when confronted with non-human intelligence. 

How will digital empires impact on our freedom and security he asks? Can we find a hopeful middle ground rooted in shared humanity?

We have always faced such choices: about freedom and agency, power and “powers”. Today’s readings offer wisdom and insight into where we are to find good news and the hope of salvation.

The book of Joshua follows on from Moses’ parting words and begins to trace the history of God’s people as they settled in the promised land. Part of the story includes the mistakes that were made; the things that led to a time of exile - for example worshipping other gods, failing to show compassion and mercy to the vulnerable, seeking human rather than divine rule, exploitation rather than justice. 

All this is told with the benefit of hindsight. We glimpse one moment when mistakes are named and faithfulness to God is restored.

The challenges and difficulties of present circumstances are named. The promises, which may have faded from memory, are recalled. The bigger story of freedom and protection is retold. 

Remembrance leads to recommitment. Reverence of God leads to service of others. 

Faithfulness overtime relies on such moments of renewal: acknowledging what’s gone wrong, recalling moments of blessing with hope, and being intentional about our own priorities or actions - in worship and compassion.

That movement is not always easy. 

Last week we were immersed in reflecting on the living bread - and our need to be fed. We recognised that this bread gets inside us and changes us. Yet today, we are confronted by a critical moment of choice.

‘This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?’ says one of those who were following and learning from Jesus. In response, Jesus continues to hold out the promise of his words which give spirit and life. He continues to hold out the promise of his very self.

He also looks around him and asks his own question: ‘Do you also wish to go away?’  Do you go, holding on to the offence; or do you want to choose life this day?

Peter’s response is equally direct and from the heart:  ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ 

It is a choice which comes from relationship - just as Joshua and the people recommitted out of their remembrance of being beloved. Peter speaks out of being fed and made whole, forgiven and challenged, taught and embraced. He speaks out of being known and loved. 

We know that Peter will still run into misunderstandings; his ego will sometimes get in the way, his boldness will tip into denial. Yet he will also grow in faith - he will run to the empty tomb. He will be recalled, by name, to love and service by his crucified and risen Lord.

In this moment, though, he longs for and reaches out for the intimacy of continuing and deepening relationship with Jesus: of being fed by enriched bread, the bread of life.  

In him we glimpse something of the process of faith and faithfulness. Peter continues: ‘We have to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’  His commitment is rooted in relationship - in abiding in Jesus. He has come to believe as trust grows mingled with knowledge and experience. 

Moment by moment we are invited to live as God’s beloved, forgiven, healed and restored children. We are reminded that God has already chosen us, loves us. And therefore we are invited to choose God’s love in return. By the power of the Spirit, we continue to abide in this love.

Such choosing and abiding is a gift: individually and collectively. This teaching, this commitment, is hard but also life-giving.  

This is good news and salvation: hope and healing, justice and joy offered by creation’s creator.  Offered as Jesus places himself in human hands - reconciling the world to Godself as he is lifted up on the cross.

Good news and salvation is offered to us as we take the body of Christ into our hands; being fed by the bread of life, so that our lives might reflect his love.  We eat and live. Sustained in times of strength and weakness. Serving others out of that same well-spring of limitless love; using our influence, time, resources to bring life to others.

So we come back to the choices we make about our freedom and agency, power and the powers of the world. Our freedom is a great gift of God to creation yet we are so often pulled in different directions; our hearts divided over the desires and opportunities we should pursue. 

In Ephesians, those struggles are named - including the external influences and forces at work in the world. Perhaps we might add the technological to the cosmic powers we have to confront.  How do we seek after truth rather than controlling information; or respond with caution to tech that we do not understand, for the sake of our moral obligation to creation?

In response we hear of the ‘armour of God’: a visual and memorable shorthand for what God already provides for us as we navigate our world; day by day we choose to be clothed in them.  These are things which enable us to hold onto the hope of our shared humanity: reshaping our imagination; being creative with grace; seeking freedom rather than exploitation. 

The list begins with truth - the life and love of God revealed in Jesus and at work in us through the power of the Spirit. We are invited to a life not of self-righteousness but one built on right relations; we are to take as shoes whatever makes for walking in ways of peace. All that protects us - the good news of salvation - is obtained in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. To whom can we go? He has the words of life!

The sword is of the Spirit, the word of God: the daily choice of choosing life and hope, joy and peace, justice and compassion.  The creator’s gift of salvation to creation - mediated by human lives. As we remember God’s saving acts at this Eucharist, proclaiming the mystery of the gospel, may our faith and faithfulness be renewed in worship and service. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024

You need to eat something

 August 18th, Trinity 12: Proverbs 9:1-7, Ephesians 5:15-20 and John 6:51-58

How often have we heard the phrase: “You need to eat something!” Off the back of nerves or grief; as we’re recovering from illness; before going to school or as we prepare to head out. 

We need to eat. 

Returning from holiday means re-adjusting to meals for one after precious time eating with or cooking with my sister. 

That need to eat is primal and functional - whether we eat to live or live to eat. It can be full of delight - tables set and wine poured - savouring conversation as well as flavours. 

Sister Corita: Enriched Bread via Pintrest

But that need to eat can also be disrupted - satisfying cravings or a means of control; the compulsions of speed or convenience; illness, stress, cost of living, eeking out what we have; being so caught up in things, we forget; patiently holding a spoon to the lips of a loved one. 

We need to eat to live. But though we eat, we will die.

Today, as at every Eucharist, we are invited to eat, to share in ordinary food which carries an extraordinary promise: that we will come alive, live more fully.

We hear bread breaking and smell the wine. We are invited to touch and taste and see.  The one who is the living bread promises life in him, promises to raise us up, promises eternal life. 

In a world where advertisers and influencers shape what we should eat, what we should crave, even the basic stuff of bread is repackaged and marketed to us at every price point.

This was something that Sister Corita Kent - a member of a progressive and creative order in Los Angeles - cottoned onto in the 1960s. She used pop art made famous by Andy Wahol and others to speak about the love of God. She took on the bold colours and messaging of ad agencies and offered life.

In one screen print, she presents an image of the familiar circles of thin wafers we share under the slogan  Enriched Bread: these fragments feeding us and building up our bodies.

In another piece, she says God’s not dead he’s bread. She dares to offer social commentary informed by faith - inviting us to see and to act, to be bodies fed by the Body of Christ called into loving service. 

Alongside that bold  invitation to know the living bread she writes: they say the poor have it hard but the hardest thing they have is us. To share in enriched bread is to soften our hearts and strengthen our resolve.

One of her most striking pisces takes us to the heart of today’s gospel and the shock and strangeness of Jesus’s words. Sr Coria’s print says:

When I hear bread breaking I see something else; it seems almost as though God never meant us to do anything else. So beautiful a sound, the crust breaks up like manna and falls all over everything and then we eat; bread gets inside humans.

We understand the way food gets inside us - the processes of digestion and nourishment. The way in which the bread of life gets inside humans is something we place our trust in without having to define the manner how.

In a recent interview (the "Late Show", here) the musician Nick Cave offers something of a way into this space of worship and remembering. In confronting the truth of grief and what he calls our mortal value, he finds something more joyful and hopeful. 

He talks about the way in which music gets inside of us as a 'sacred act' - something which not only binds us together but which has the capacity to 'change hearts and minds'. Music reaches the core and helps us become more human.

No wonder then that in Ephesians we hear of the emphasis on song and making melody together as an expression of our life together in Christ. Music expressing our thanks to God for that there is in the name of Jesus, but also opening us up to share in that ongoing Spirit-led drama of living.

To live with care and wisdom, to move beyond naïvity, immaturity, indifference or the waywardness of our unchecked hearts and desires. To find, as one commentator on Proverbs puts it, an invitation to 'grow up, rather than down' [Ellen Davies' commentary], in our moral stature.

Cave names the risk of 'wrapping ourselves around' our hurts and griefs, the danger of turning ourselves away from the world; of becoming hardened to it. Instead we are part of it - to know that the world is full of people who have lost things, but towards it and see and seek the beauty not the cruelty. To find joy out of the devastation. 

Perhaps the urgency and boldness of Jesus’ words as he talks about who he is comes from knowing how much we need the life-giving, life-sustaining food that he offers. God’s word of love becomes flesh in him - knowing precisely the precariousness of life of which Cave speaks. 

Jesus carries the grief and tears, fears and hopes, in his own body. Our remembering of him is a re-membering of who we are. We come to his table, stretching out our hands to receive the bread he offers. We come to the cross, carrying the burdens and longings, seeing it through the light of his resurrection. Glimpsing the possibility of being fully human, the promise of a joy that frees us. 

The musical fruit of Cave’s  journey, of the small kindnesses that go beyond words when life falls apart, is the album Wild God. He describes it as a ‘warm embrace’: as vulnerable and fragile as we are; as vulnerable and fragile as the bread that gets inside us.

Bread breaks and gets inside humans.  It reminds us that hospitality is our core social value - not as a matter of correct etiquette but as an unconditional imperative to all.  

It challenges the hardness of our hearts and reframes all that we have - all authority and resource, all energy and influence, every fibre of our being and every gesture, word and silence around loving service. 

Or as Cave puts it to a father in one of his Red Hand File letters: such hopefulness - such hospitality - is far from neutral. It can ‘lay waste to cynicism, each redemptive or loving act as small as you like. Reading to your little boy or showing him a thing you love or singing him a song or putting on his shoes’. 

Bread breaks. Bread gets inside us.

Jesus gives himself for love of the world;  and invites us still to sit and eat. To gather around one table; to share one food; coaxing us to be fed with life. 

Whoever eats this bread will live because of me, he says. He is our bread. Here we are invited to eat something. To discover who God is. To be reminded who we are. To be grounded and restored; to find insight and be enriched. To eat and live. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024

Cat ladies

 Sunday 28 July, Trinity 9: 2 Kings 4:42-end, Ephesians 3:14-end and John 6:1-21

Derogatory comments about cat ladies, and the pushback, turned my mind to two of my favourite 'cat lady' theologians: Julian of Norwich and Evelyn Underhill!

Cat ladies are back in the news thanks to Donald Trump’s running-mate JD Vance. 

Back in 2021 he told Fox news that the States was being run by, amongst others, 'a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and the choices they’ve made' [from X]. He went on to imply that they didn’t have a direct stake in the future or the nation. 

Push back has included social media being flooded with pictures of cats and cat ladies including Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift.  

The cat lady has been a stereotype for years, including The Simpsons: sometimes as an insult or way of diminishing women; other times as something embraced with humour or affection. 

However, cat ladies - or cat lovers - have their own informal patron saint: Julian of Norwich. 

Julian of Norwich image here

Born in 1342 she lived a life of prayer and solitude as an anchoress. Confined to a simple cell attached to a church, she would have devoted herself to the life of spiritual contemplation and giving others counsel; nourished by the sacrament and food that was brought to her. 

Like many mediaeval anchoresses, she would have been allowed to keep a cat - serving a practical purpose as a mouser but also a source of companionship. In stained glass windows and in icons, she is represented with a cat at her feet or in her arms. 

We might speculate about why she entered this life: turning to it in grief, having lost family to the plague; or choosing it to avoid an unequal or loveless marriage, or the risk of death in childbirth. 

What is certain is that far from being miserable in her life and choices, she delighted in the intimacy of God’s love for us and trusted that we are known and protected in that love whether in despair or joy. Far from having no stake in the future or in the lives of others, she had a vision for how love sustains the world, without end. 

Her wisdom and insight flowed from an experience of divine love at a time of critical illness. At the age of 30 she found herself close to death. For three days, her life was in the balance. During that time, she glimpsed what she called ‘showings’ - visions, which she recorded after she recovered. She then devoted the rest of her life to meditating on them, pondering their meaning. 

The result was her book - the first written in English by a woman - called ‘Revelations of Divine Love’. Her most famous saying ‘all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well’ was rooted in a compassionate and joyful theology - full of God’s mercy and forgiveness, and the motherly quality of love seen in Jesus. We are to live gladly, she says, because of this love.

Such love is infinite in its scope, yet Paul prays that the Ephesians might comprehend its length, height, depth and breadth. Endless love surpasses human knowledge. Yet Mother Julian finds a way to express the inexpressible; this endless love tenderly embraces us in our finitude; we are held in love, like a hazelnut resting in the palm of our hands. 

Paul’s prayer focuses on our inner life, being filled with the fullness of God’s love: the Spirit strengthening us; Christ dwelling in our hearts. To be rooted and grounded in love in this way is not divorced from action. 

Another woman, who was a spiritual guide and writer, and who also loved cats, was Evelyn Underhill. Buried a few miles away in Hampstead, she encouraged the unity of the active and contemplative life within Christianity. Like Paul and Mother Julian love was the chief virtue, expressed in how we treat one another. 

She wrote: ‘Adoration is caring for God above all else. Charity is the outward swing of prayer toward the world… embracing and caring for all worldly interests in God’s name.’ She encouraged simple, regular habits of prayer; time spent in stillness. She also explored the ways in which God comes to us in the pressing tasks, demands and routine duties; she called it a “Sacrament of the Present Moment” - receiving God in ‘every sight and sound, joy, pain, opportunity and sacrifice.’

Over the coming weeks, our gospel readings will come from John 6: an extended meditation on Jesus as the bread of life, given to build up his body, the church; given out of love for the world. Today we are given a glimpse of the way God’s love, in him, creates abundance. 

Elisha’s words invite us to know the life-giving justice of divine love. He himself is a prophet and a farmer - working with God in prayer, word and deed to bring life; to provide for the community. Together with the servant, he shared the first fruits - and all were satisfied. Faith and action are bound together - an outward swing of prayer as Underhill puts it, embracing the world’s needs in love.

In today’s portion of John 6, the large crowd needed to eat; but they were also drawn into a miracle of deepest needs being met. Yes, they were fed but they were nourished at the point of deeper need: for love, compassion, belonging, hope and companionship. 

They become collaborators in bringing life out of death, freedom from oppression. When Jesus creates abundance it is more than sparking a wave of generosity. As David Ford puts it, the message is about: ‘the compassionate love of Jesus; the unique relationship of Jesus with God the Creator, who is free to generate this abundance from very little; and the rich symbolism of bread and eating, resonating with the Eucharist and much else.’

Jesus’ feeding miracles are showings or revelations of divine love, to borrow Mother Julian’s language. He gave bread because he is Bread. That bread gets inside us. 

At the end of her text, Julian of Norwich writes: "From the time these things were first revealed I had often wanted to know what was our Lord's meaning. It was more than fifteen years after that I was answered in my spirit's understanding. 'You would know our Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well.' Love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold on to this and you will know and understand love more and more. But you will not know or learn anything else — ever."

Love is the meaning of the bread that breaks, falling over all things. Love is the meaning of the wafer of bread that gets inside us today. Love is the meaning.

When Jesus rejects the pressure to be made king - he withdraws before meeting the disciples on the water. In the face of darkness, winds and rough seas, he stirs up in them the desire to know who he is. May we like them confront their deepest hungers and fears in order that compassion swings from being an abstract concept to life-saving action. 

A prayer by Bill Braviner (posted on X on 28 July)

Encourage us, Lord,

to make constant love

for one another

The hallmark of our lives.

Whether things

are going well or badly,

however we feel

we are journeying

on our path of life,

let your love for us

be the bedrock of our lives,

the heartbeat of all things,

today.

© Julie Gittoes 2024

Hungering for bread

 1st August: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 and John 6:24-35

Paul Hollywood image BBC

Paul Hollywood has become known at the ‘King of Bread’ by fans of the Great British Bake Off. It takes a lot to impress him in terms of taste and technical skill - and the coveted Hollywood handshake is a rarity in bread week. 

For all the exotic flavour combinations on show, Paul himself talks about the simplicity and nostalgia of baking: the taste and smell evokes memories of childhood, community and comforts. Civilisation, he says elsewhere, is ‘built around wheat, around people’s settling down and not being nomadic.’

No wonder then that the Israelites long for Egypt: for the time when they were able to eat their fill of bread. It seemed to them that forced labour was compensated for by the sensory delights of bodies and food. 

They’d have been content to die there. Now, in the wilderness, they were unsettled and hungry; hungry and vulnerable. 

In the wilderness, in their vulnerability they see only the prospect of death: they complain and cling to nostalgia of the old ways. Perhaps we recognise that longing. 

They hunger for life, for comfort, for bread; but life was nomadic, relentless, unpredictable. The congregation complained. 

The Lord hears this complaint.

The Lord speaks to Moses.

Moses speaks to Aaron.

Aaron speaks to the congregation of the Israelites.

In their hunger and vulnerability, the Lord does a new thing.

That new things is a gift of bread from heaven.

Manna from Heaven - Original by Alexander Kanchik

What is it? They ask. It is the bread that the Lord gives.

This bread rains down from heaven and settled on the wilderness as the dew lifted. Fine. Flaky. Fragile.

And in those gathered fragments hunger is satisfied; it is a practical gift of physical food.

More than that: in these fine, flaky, fragile fragments, the faithful God calls a people back to faithfulness.

In this substance they find sustenance: but it is just enough.

No selfish storing up; no greedy gathering of too much; no excessive consumption.

It is enough for hunger to be satisfied; for complaining to turn to gratitude; for vulnerability to become community.

There is grace. It is enough.  Day by day.

Loaves and Fishes - John August Swanson original

Jesus too had looked upon a crowd with rumbling stomachs and grumbling words: in compassion he responded to that hunger and vulnerability and took what was offered - blessed it and broke it. 

He gave it to them, and they ate their fill; they had enough.

Fragments are collected up and baskets are filled. 

But they wanted more: they look for him.

When they find him, he points them beyond the meeting their physical needs to a deeper longing.

He points them beyond the food that perishes, to the food that fills our stomachs and leaves us wanting more.

He points them to the food that endures for everlasting, abundant and eternal life.

He points to himself: the one who is God’s eternal word; the one who is flesh of our flesh. 

Believe in me, he says; believe in the one sent to you because of God’s love for this world.

They know the story. 

They jump in with their own telling of the story of fine, flaky and fragile bread.

Sieger Köder 

Jesus listens. Yes, he says, you’re right about Moses. You’re right about the way a faithful God calls people back to faithfulness with these gathered fragments.

But he says, there is more: there is more than eating your fill; there’s  more than nostalgia for the old ways.

There is more than the bread shared that day: which smelt so fresh and filled their stomachs; but which will go stale and mouldy. 

This more than is the true bread from heaven: God’s own son.

This more than is the living bread: giving life to the world.

This bread is known to us in the fine, flaky, fragile fragment which we break and snap, bless and share at every communion.

For there, in that place, we receive a fragment of Christ’s body to be united as Christ’s body.

The body that was bruised and bled; died and rose to new and eternal life. In communion we are draw near to this gracious and fragile life. 

In that place, the fragments of our lives, our stories, our hungers and our vulnerabilities are gathered up; they become more than the sum of their parts.

There is communion in this. As the bodies within one body we are fed; where we learn to hunger for God; where we learn to love each other as God loves us.

Our faithful God calls us into faithful communion in this way: through the giving of himself in fragility that our fragments might be made one.

So we pray that our bodies may be revived; that the body of Christ might be revived. That we might be strengthened in the Spirit; that we might hunger for God’s ways; that we might meet others in their vulnerability. 

With open hearts might we touch and taste and see how gracious our Lord is. For what is fragile and fragmented is the stuff that makes for communion. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2021

As shoes for your feet

A sermon preached at the Cathedral Eucharist 26th on Sunday 26 August 2018 - and the first time since I've been ordained that I've preached on shoes! Members of my various congregations have become particularly observant about my footwear; friends joke about the disproportionate number of shoes I bring to conferences... however, shoes have all sorts of practical and personal connotations about purpose and identity for example. The texts were : Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18; Ephesians 6: 10-20; John 6:56-69

As an aside, tracing the Gittoes family tree back through a plumber and publican, millers, servants and tenant farmers, it is satisfying to know that one ancestor was a "cordwainer".  In seventeenth century Wales, a certain John Gittoes (1643-1688) was plying the same trade as the creator the Saalburg shoe, crafting footwear from leather.

As shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

This month, a 2000 year old shoe went on display at the Saalburg in Germany. It had been found in a well - a practical, recognisable and intimate artefact; a point of human connection to those inhabiting the fort between the Roman Empire and Germanic tribes. 

Image from open culture website

With a hobnailed sole and leather upper, modelled on a military boot, this shoe offers warmth and protection. It also reveals both the craft of the maker and the wealth of the wearer. Holes punched into the soft leather created an intricate design.  This shoe wouldn’t look out of place on today’s high streets; taking retro fashion statements to another level. 

What would the roman shoemaker think of my own collection of footwear: from my faithful DMs, and liturgically coloured heels, to my trainers, converse and floral flats to umpteen pairs of clerical black slip ons, lace-ups, loafers and boots.  

A Canon's shoes!

As shoes for your feet.

When we look at the stories of Joshua, Peter or Paul; the witness of Ruth, Mary or Phoebe, it can feel as if we have big shoes to fill. As we walk in the steps of Jesus, we can sense the weight of responsibility, challenge, expectation and opportunity. 

Stepping into such shoes can feel overwhelming and precarious; but also exciting and rewarding. Eventually, we grow into them - or break them in - knowing we are where we are meant to be; we can be rooted, take risks and flourish.

Without over stretching the analogy it feels immediate and accessible to hear that when Paul talks to the Ephesians about clothing themselves with the armour of God, he also concerned with their feet.  The shoes we are to put on will make us ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 

Like our physical shoes,  this ‘spiritual footwear’ is practical and intimate, bringing warmth and protection; equipping us for the all-weather terrain of God’s Kingdom.

The steps we take in following Christ are steps towards peace. As Archbishop Justin’s priorities reminds us, this begins with prayer. It continues in the work of reconciliation, transforming conflict in the light of the cross. It involves witnessing in the power of the Spirit to the love of God revealed in Christ.  

Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral by Josefina de Vasconcellos 

Being made ready to proclaim peace demands commitment in the face of struggle. It means choosing life. Today’s readings explore these steps being taken: in gathered community, in communion with Christ, in walking in the world.

In Joshua, steps are taken in gathering together as community and renewing their commitment to serve the Lord.

Joshua was commissioned to lead the nation after Moses’ death. As his life and work draws to an end, he sets before them a choice: between the local gods of their ancestors and the God of the whole universe. 

In the verses omitted today, before he invites them to echo his own declaration, he confesses the story of faith of their community.

He retells God’s call to Abraham; of a promise of blessing which extends to the whole of humanity. He recalls the experience of slavery, the journey through the wilderness towards freedom; he speaks of human bravery in battle and of the nearness of God’s presence in rescuing them.

They are worship and serve the Lord, walk in God’s ways with sincerity and faithfulness. Choose. Life. Today.

His personal commitment is echoed by the voice of the people: ‘we too shall serve the Lord: he is our God’. Today, our footsteps have brought us from our homes to this place, as we too gather to affirm our faith; to recommit ourselves to serve God.

Steps taken

In Jesus’ words, steps are taken in response to an invitation to be in communion; to choose life.

In the beginning, the Word was with God; abiding in the intimacy of perfect communion. That very Word became flesh, entering the complexity human history and taking on the frailty of human a human body.  

That Word came to invite us to abide in him; to lead us to dwell in communion, sharing the very life of God. Jesus dwells with us at wedding feasts and gravesides; he taught on hillsides and sat at table with his friends.  In him, we see love poured out on the cross as God reconciled the world to Godself.

He has broken bread to feed a multitude; he has kindled in them the longing for living bread. The bread from heaven, given by God, is his flesh.  We are hunger for this bread - the presence of God’s love in our hearts.

This invitation to eat and abide demands a decisive response.  Some turn away, refusing the gift and demands of that love. Jesus asks, with openness and vulnerability, ‘Do you also wish to go away’. It is Peter who articulates the hope and courage of this choice. To whom can we go? In Jesus, we chose life; life in all its fullness. 

We hear and respond to that call each time we celebrate the Eucharist together. In broken bread, we are sustained and shaped by Jesus Christ. Our feet are drawn near in faith; our hands reach out to receive; we taste and see how marvellous the Lord is; our hearts are warmed by his love.

And we rise. Our feet walking onwards: clad in leather, heels clicking, laces tied. Our feet walk beyond the threshold of this place into a world. A world where, strengthened by the God’s Spirit, we serve as a pilgrim people; a people called to make peace.

Walking onwards

The Eucharist reveals to us the marks of God’s peaceable Kingdom. And in a messy and complicated world, our lives are to take the shape of the Eucharist as we too are taken, blessed and given for others. 

We are to bring communion to others, in places of beauty and brokenness: as we feed the hungry and struggle for justice; as we take time to be with the lonely and break the bread of hospitality together; as we seek to liberate the oppressed and listen to the anxious; as we share the intimacy and tenderness of care for others; to as we offer the gift of friendship which reveals to others the good news that they are loved by God.

As shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

We walk with Jesus today, nourished by his body and empowered by the Spirit; we walk alert to what God is doing in the world; alert to where we need to offer support or challenge. 

Archbishop Justin says: ‘Reconciliation is one of our greatest needs and toughest challenges as human beings. In a world plagued by conflict, division and indifference, the Church has a crucial role to play as a community of reconcilers. Jesus calls every one of us to love God, our neighbours, ourselves and our enemies – a challenging command, with nobody left out.’

As Paul reminds the Ephesians, to do this we need walk in truth and faith, in righteousness and peace. We walk prayerfully, hopefully and courageously; bringing people together - taking small and risky steps of generosity and healing; making cups of tea, creating space to meet or facilitating a difficult meeting. We need to listen carefully and speak wisely; turning suspicion to trust.  We walk the way of reconciliation - transforming strangers into friends, friends into members of God’s household.

Walking this way is difficult: we need ‘spiritual shoes’ for our feet: shoes which are warm, practical and protective; shoes of humility, time and patience.  May we who have gathered to share our faith in God and been nourished in communion with the living bread, be equipped by the Spirit to walk in the world in the ways of peace.

© Julie Gittoes 2018