August 18, 2024 - Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost - The Joys of Abiding With and In One Another Through Jesus

After a prayer, as she always begins her sermon, Pastor Emillie's launched into analyzing this week's scripture verses in the Bread of Life discourse by preaching on the provocative nature of Jesus' teaching. 

When Jesus said he was the "Bread of Life" come down from heaven is certainly difficult today to understand but imagine what it would have been like for someone who lived in Jesus' time. There are people who may have seen Jesus as a child or teenager that were in this crowd. Trying to imagine someone living next to you as God, as Pastor Emillie observed, would be challenging, perhaps weird.

Our temptation today is to tame his "eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood" statement with Eucharistic language. Yet the understanding and story of communion hadn't happened for the crowd first hearing this "Bread of Life" discourse. How were the crowd to process what Jesus said at this point in his ministry? And how would Jesus want us today to process this "eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood"?

Jesus engages freely in this provocative discourse and, it must be said, doubles down on it. Pastor Emillie preached about her thoughts about eternal life and heaven when she was a child. Eternal life was, for her, what happened after death to people that were exceptionally good. She felt that Jesus talking about bread and wine here moved eternal life from a "someplace out there" to something we can experience. There is spiritual as well as physical nourishment that happens in our lives when we experience the joy in abiding in one another as community.

She quoted a favorite Bible verse of hers, Galatians 5:22-23, which discusses the "fruit of the Spirit," as the qualities or virtues that are produced in the life of a person who is living in accordance with the Holy Spirit. The passage reads:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

She first highlighted joy, which has been on the lips of many in the national dialogue recently and went through the list detailing the challenges and hard work involved in bringing that fruit forward in our lives.

This service embodied the joy she preached today.