Liturgy: “Cannibals and Vampires of Eternal Life”
”Does this offend you?” Jesus asked after telling his disciples, ”unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).
What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.
This Week’s Lectionary Readings
1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
This week’s liturgy is contributed by Dr. Dru Johnson, associate professor of biblical and theological studies
”Does this offend you?” Jesus asked after telling his disciples, ”unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). What? But, Jesus doesn’t even bother to clue them in—that this is just a vampiro-cannibalistic metaphor for the Lord’s Supper. Nope, he just brazenly scares off most everyone who claims to be his disciples. Basically, Jesus tests these people to see if they came for more bread (i.e., they were just at the miraculous feeding of the 5,000), to see a spectacle, or to follow him. Most of them fail the test, grumbling, ”This is a difficult saying, who can obey it?” The 12 disciples remained and even Peter admits that it’s out of desperation,”Where else can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
I too find it difficult to obey the hard teachings of Scripture. It’s easy for me to nod along with what sounds good, especially if that’s all it requires of me: theology to nod along in mental assent. However, it’s hard to actively give from my possessions, spend time in the community of Jesus, carve out time for including others, look out for those on the fringe, fight for the cause of the poor, etc.—these teachings are too hard, who can obey them?
Despite my deep desire to avoid the hard teachings of Scripture, disciplining myself to do so has turned out better than I could have imagined. As a family, we now spend a lot of time in the Newark housing projects. This habit has been good, exhausting, frustrating, and amazing for us. Our whole family actually knows the world better through obeying the simple command to serve our community. We are smarter and wiser, better as a family, and as a church too. I would not have predicted this, especially after the first year working with children in the housing projects. It has been difficult and provided many public displays of my weaknesses (thank God!).
Despite our feebleness and the less-than-ideal circumstances of many of these children, the hard teachings of Scripture have brought eternal life into unexpected places inside the church and inside the Newark housing project. Ask me about it some time.