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Showing posts from August, 2018

Lectionary Reflection — 19 August 2018

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John 6.51-58 (MSG; adapted): 1 51 I’m the Bread — the living Bread! — who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this Bread will live — and forever! The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self.” 52 At this, the Jews started fighting among themselves: “How can this man serve up his flesh for a meal?” 53-58 But Jesus didn’t give an inch. “Only insofar as you eat and drink the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you. The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has the Life of the Age and will be fit and ready for the Final Day. My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. By eating my flesh and drinking my blood you enter into me and I into you. In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me. This is the Bread from heaven. Your ancestors ate bread and later died. Whoever eats thi

Lectionary Reflection — 12 August 2018

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John 6:35, 41-51 (MSG; adapted): 1 35 Jesus said, “I’m the Bread of Life. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever. 41-42 At this, because he said, “I’m the Bread that came down from heaven,” the Jews started arguing over him: “Isn’t this the son of Joseph? Don’t we know his mother and father? How can he now say, ‘I came down out of heaven’ and expect anyone to believe him?” 43-46 Jesus said, “Don’t bicker among yourselves over me. You’re not in charge here. The Father who sent me is in charge. He draws people to me — that’s the only way you’ll ever come. Only then do I do my work, putting people together, setting them on their feet, ready for the End. This is what the prophets meant when they wrote, ‘And then they’ll all be personally taught by God.’ Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to the Father, really listening and therefore learning, comes to me to be taught personally — to see it with her own eyes, hear it with her own ea