[Propertalk] Proper 15 b 2018 - part 2

[Robert P Morrison]

Part 2

	 Jesus, on the other hand, saw Valjean as did the priest. Jesus saw
the Scribes, the Pharisees and most of the Jewish leaders; Jesus saw
Sara Miles; Jesus sees us, each one of us, and held out, as He holds
out to us still, the Bread which is eternal Life. 

	 It’s not a carrot on a stick which He keeps waving out of our
grasp. This Bread which Jesus offers is given again, and again, and
again. If we’re open to God’s grace working in us in
every-day-ways, we may be as Sara was, and be completely won over to
Jesus’ work at the first bite. But if, like so many others, the
apostle Paul, for instance, we need to be approached, even confronted
and knocked off the horses of our misconceptions, even if we have to
be given the Bread so many times before we accept Jesus fully, Jesus
never tires of holding out the Bread and inviting us to eat. 

	 Perhaps, in the metaphor used by Sara Miles, we find Jesus’ love
and His vocational call too difficult for us to swallow. This idea of
mixing with everyone, with accepting everyone, and working for
everyone before we allow ourselves to consider who that individual is
or where she or he comes from; that CAN be so difficult. 

	 But consider from where Sara was coming. She was not just a
non-Christian. She was antagonistic. She’d not only been raised that
way. She’d discovered for herself how appalling some Christians, or
those who pass as Christians, are. Something, though, got her through
the door of that San Francisco church. We’d probably say that it was
the Spirit who’d been with her all along, unrecognised, yet at that
moment even more present, just as the Spirit walks with us, trying to
get us to look in the doorways, and under bridges, and in parking
lots. 

	 Sometimes the Spirit touches people, and whispers to them, directing
them to move to the less frequented, less usual places. For Sara, it
was going into a building, a space where she’d never had the desire
– or, for that matter, the invitation – to go. For you and me, who
perhaps feel TOO comfortable in here, shut off from the outside with
the doors closed, it may be a littered street, or Freddy’s, or the
corner market, to which the Spirit is prompting us. 

	 Jesus said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink
his blood, you don’t have life within you.” Oh, you may THINK
you’re O.K. It may never cross your minds that there’s more to
life than your experiences already. Unless you eat and drink what may
even seem distasteful, or just challenging; unless you take Me within
you totally, then you’re not yet ready to be transformed in your
thoughts, your words, and your actions. 

	 Somehow, the radical invitation extended by Jesus will help us “to
sense how, EVEN in church, we could follow Jesus: moving from piety to
passion, from habit to risk, from law to love.” 4 


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