You may be wondering what is going on with our Gospel readings, - we are experiencing a few strange weeks!  We have a cycle of three years for these readings, majoring on Matthew, Mark, and then Luke. This year we are on St Mark’s Gospel, and Luke begins at Advent, four Sundays before Christmas. St John doesn’t have a year. His book is special but rather different, including long, somewhat dense, discourses. We do, however, put in some important and favourite parts of John’s Gospel every year on major occasions like Christmas and Easter. 

On top of that, we have our present strange situation. St Mark’s Gospel, which is scheduled for this year, is shorter than the others. So… the powers that be insert weeks and weeks of St John, five weeks, I think, now, just on St John chapter 6.

‘I am the Bread of Life’, last week was part of that. Today, ‘I am the Living Bread’. Generally, it’s all a long discourse about the Eucharist. So its timely for us to notice that St John has his own way of treating the Eucharist.

Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us that the Last Supper, on the Thursday night, when the Christian Eucharist started, was the actual Passover meal that year, with its menu including roast lamb, and unleavened bread. Matthew, Mark and Luke also tell us that Jesus said something mysterious when he said the Graces, about the bread and wine being his body and blood - his very self, his life and death, - those things being for them and for their nourishment, and to be shared among them in a way that will link them to him and to each other.

But St John tells it all in a different way! He has the Last Supper on the Thursday night alright, - but it isn’t the annual Passover meal, it is just before Passover, so leavened bread would be used. One consequence of St John’s timing is that Jesus died on the Friday afternoon, just before Passover, at the very time that the Passover Lambs were being sacrificed. Whatever the history, there is huge symbolism in that. 

We have much to think about in St John’s long account of Maundy Thursday, including washing the disciples’ feet, the command to love one another ‘as I have loved you’, and Jesus’ prayer that his followers ‘may be one’. But… surprisingly, perhaps, St John does not have, ‘This is my body, this is my blood, do this in remembrance of me.’

In St John those ‘I am’ sayings are a feature, and only John has them. I am the Bread of Life, I am the Living Bread. Also, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, I am the Resurrection and the Life, I am the Door of the Sheepfold, I am the True Vine, and so on. These sayings are very weighty because ‘I am’ is the name of God himself which he told to Moses. 

One outcome of the varying accounts of the Last Supper is that we can use either leavened or unleavened bread for our eucharist. There is, perhaps, something lost by us not breaking and sharing one loaf or one wafer. If we each took a unique piece of the one thing, like taking a piece of a jigsaw, it would underline our calling to be united by Christ and in Christ.

There is the saying, ‘We are what we eat’. One of the things which might overtake us is the unexpected need to avoid certain foods. They’ve had me off milk and cheese! We need discipline to avoid the unhelpful, which we might fancy, and to eat what will be good for us. Discipline, regarding spiritual nourishment too is a useful concept. Bible, Church worship, prayer, study, and good deeds, with some sort of priority and dedication, and not just when we feel like them, and not just when convenient.

In St John chapter 4, Jesus says,  ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work’. And in St John ch 9, ‘As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.’ 

So what is our work? Jesus was sent by the Father, then Jesus sends his followers. We have to see ourselves as being, with God, on a mission to the community.

The bishops of the Lambeth Conference adopted “Five Marks Of Mission” in 1988. They were then adopted by the General Synod in 1996.

To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom

To teach, baptise and nurture new believers

To respond to human need by loving service

To seek to transform unjust structures of society

To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain the life of the earth

The last bit about caring for creation may sound trendy, but it has always been there in the first few pages of the Bible.

If we were to turn our minds to all that, those five areas of activity, as a parish church, with God, we should need more than our Weetabix to help us on our way, and would soon be looking for spiritual nourishment with real seriousness to keep us going! Certainly, we need to appear to the world as a community focused on those five things, rather than appear principally as a community trying to preserve a nice ancient church building, and raise money for the diocese, - although all that needs to happen as well.