Neil Ellingson - Drink the Blood - August 16, 2015

Co-pastor Neil Ellingson: 

This week we turn to the Lectionary, which saves us from the crippling anxiety of having always to decide what to talk about on our own. Every week there are readings from the Older Testament (or the Book of Acts), a Psalm, a reading from the Epistles or the Book of Revelation, and a reading from the Gospels. So there's still some room to choose your own adventure. This week the readings are all related to wisdom or food/drink or both. I decided to postpone a sermon on a prohibition against getting drunk (which is a sermon some of us may need to hear, or wished we had, especially that one night...), in favor of one exploring how to taste eternity.

Readings:

“We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is.” 

-Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

John 6:51-58

6:51 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."

6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

6:53 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.

6:54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;

6:55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

6:56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

6:57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

6:58 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."