PROPER 14, YEAR B

Sunday 11 August 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R.I.

 

I Kings 19:4-8

Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

 

The image or theme running through today’s readings is encapsulated by the phrase food for the journey.

 

In the Old Testament reading from the First Book of the Kings, Elijah’s journey into the wilderness follows the pattern of the Israelites coming out of Egypt centuries before. The parallels are remarkable. Just as the Children of Israel fled to escape death at the hands of Pharaoh, so Elijah flees to escape death at the hands of the wicked Queen Jezebel. Just as the Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron, saying that it would have been better to have died in Egypt than of starvation and thirst in this wilderness, so Elijah falls into despair and asks God to take his life. Then, just as God gave the Israelites water from the rock and rained down manna from heaven, so an angel of the Lord appears to Elijah by night and gives him a cake baked on hot stones to eat and a jar of water to drink.

 

And finally, perhaps the most direct parallel of all, just as the bread from heaven enabled the Israelites to continue their journey to Mount Sinai, so in the strength of that food Elijah travels forty days and forty nights to Horeb the Mount of God—traditionally identified as one and the same place as Mount Sinai. And there, just as the Israelites received God’s Law at Sinai, beginning their new life as the People of the Covenant, so at Horeb Elijah will hear the still small voice, making clear that his mission as a prophet has not ended but is only just beginning.

 

The good news in the juxtaposition of these two stories is that God never asks us to undertake any journey in his Name without providing us everything necessary to complete it. He gives us food for the journey. So, as we think about the various journeys on which we find ourselves, both individually and collectively, the challenge is to examine how far we really trust God’s providence to supply us with all we need to see us through.

 

The interim period between rectors in a parish is also a kind of a journey. God has asked us to undertake the journey of this transition process together, with all its steps, tasks, meetings, and other items to be checked off. Just as the Israelites grumbled in the wilderness, so perhaps we’ve all done a bit of grumbling of our own. Why does this process have to take so long? We’ve never had to do it this way before! In each of the three parishes where I’ve served as an Interim Priest, I’ve heard many such comments, and I sympathize.

 

Nonetheless, we’re being asked to trust God to lead us through what is for many of us unfamiliar terrain, provide us with what need on the way, and bring us safely to our destination. As Psalm 34 puts it: “The angel of the Lord encompasses those who fear him, and he will deliver them; taste and see that the Lord is good, happy are they that trust in him.”

 

Moreover, we have one another as traveling companions. We’re all in this together. In the reading from the Epistle to the Ephesians, Saint Paul gives us good advice on how to conduct ourselves on the way: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

 

That reference to Christ offering himself as a sacrifice reminds us that for this journey, and for all our journeys, he has provided the most precious food and drink imaginable. The Fathers of the early Church understood the manna in the wilderness as an anticipatory sign or foretaste of the Holy Eucharist.

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the people, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. … Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

 

These words of our Lord are fulfilled here and now, and every Sunday and Holy Day, when we gather to break the Bread and offer the Cup in his Name. In the late fourth century, in a sermon to his congregation, Saint Ambrose of Milan said this: 

You ask me why God does not rain down manna as he did on our ancestors … If you reflect, you will realize that he does, even daily, rain down manna upon his servants … How much more excellent this is than what went before! Those who ate that manna, or bread, are dead, but he who eats this bread will live forever …

 

The consecrated bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, are food and drink not only for the journeys that God asks us to undertake in this life, but also for the greatest journey that awaits us all. In the Church’s Last Rites, it’s no accident that the Communion of the dying is called Viaticum, which means “food for the journey.”

 

The manna in the wilderness strengthened the Israelites for their journey to Mount Sinai and then on to the Promised Land. The bread and water provided by the angel strengthened Elijah for his forty-day journey to Mount Horeb. But Horeb, Sinai, and the Promised Land can all be read as symbolic figures of heaven itself. And in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gives us himself as food and drink for our journey through the wilderness of this world to our final goal and destination in the next.