The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
“ It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
Summary
Choose. In our readings this morning both Joshua (Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18) and Jesus (John 6:56-69) offer us a choice: to accept or to refuse our identity as God’s people. The choice is not easy. In our translation Joshua states that we may be “unwilling” to serve God. The literal translation is nearer “it may seem evil to you”, unattractive, difficult, just as those following Jesus find his teaching difficult, hard to accept. There are alternative options: Joshua’s people could follow “the gods of your ancestors” or “the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living”. Their lives, like our own, were shaped both by family and history and by the culture and society in which they lived. But Joshua insists that are conscious of the choice they are making. He does not claim that the path of faith is easy or obvious but that in serving God he finds the freedom to become more than just a product of his history or culture. For Jesus, just keeping on keeping on, unconsciously accepting life as it is, is to feed the body but not the soul. We need more than bread alone to be truly alive. Like Joshua, he wants us to perceive that we are more than our history and circumstances, we are made by God to carry God’s spirit into the world and, when we choose to embrace this identity, we become fully alive.
First Reading
Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18
Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods.
Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’
Then the people answered, ‘Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.’
GOSPEL
John 6.56-69
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 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 for ever.’ He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, ‘For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.’
Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’
