Reflections and prayers for Sunday 26 August

This Sunday's Gospel reading is John 6.56-69

Because of this [teaching], many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’

There is no such thing as a tension-free Gospel.  Jesus' teaching challenges, and indeed scandalises, many of those who hear it.

Jeremiah condemns the false prophets who 'preach peace when there is no peace', and in Matthew 10, Jesus speaks of the way his teaching will even set members of families against one another.  He too rejects the false peace which is based on collusion with injustice and oppression.  True peace comes only through the cross - through a willingness to confront injustice and oppression, while never ceasing to love and pray for those being confronted.

Simon Peter recognises that, although this is a painful and demanding path, it is the only one worth walking.  As he finds out later in the Gospel, it is not a path he can follow in his own power - but one that requires strength and forgiveness which Christ alone can give.

Prayer intentions

Pray for all those who are attending, serving, volunteering and speaking at Greenbelt this weekend - that the prayer, fellowship and discussion may help their ministries in their local context in the year ahead.

Reflections and prayers for Sunday 19 August

This Sunday's Gospel reading is John 6.51-58 

Jesus said: "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them."

Last Tuesday, many churches remembered St Maximilian Kolbe, who gave up his life in place of another prisoner about to be executed in Auschwitz.

Maximilian's life and his death reveal to us shows us what it means to feed on, and abide in, Jesus Christ.  A Roman Catholic priest, he secretly celebrated the Eucharist when he was imprisoned in the concentration camp.  As he celebrated and fed upon Jesus in the Communion, so his own life was drawn into that movement of self-giving love.  Fed by Jesus, he was able to abide in Christ, and Christ in him.

Prayer intentions

Pray for all whose lives embody that self-offering in our own time - some in dramatic ways, and some in ways that go unnoticed by the outside world. 

Reflections and prayers for Sunday 12 August

This Sunday's Gospel reading is John 6.35,41-51

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.' ...

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ 

This week the church has celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration - when the light of God shines through Christ, in the presence of Peter, James and John.  In the Transfiguration, Christ is revealed as the first-fruits of God's new creation.  The disciples want to stay on the mountain-top, enjoying this vision, but Jesus bids them come with him back down to level ground.

Sunday's Gospel reading reinforces this point.  God's glory is not only found in the obviously spectacular, but in things which seem ordinary and unremarkable. The Word became flesh, not in a palace or a temple, but in a humble family.  Heaven comes down to earth in 'the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know'.

The Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Mass - whatever we call it, this central act of Christian worship takes the ordinary things of daily life (bread and wine, which earth has given and human hands have made) and shows us that in these things, we encounter Jesus Christ.  The Eucharist is not, then, an act separate from the rest of our lives.  Rather, it shows us that daily life is something that can reveal the grace of God, if we have eyes to see it.

Prayer intentions

How can our common life - the way wealth and power is used and shared - reveal the grace and the justice of God?  The vision of a society that reveals God's grace and justice stands at the heart of the Bible.  Pray for all Christians who grapple with these issues in their workplace and in their neighbourhoods.

The Olympics have been an occasion of real gathering and celebration together across cultures and communities.  Pray that this experience may give people a hunger for a deeper fellowship, and a more just and joyful common life - and give thanks for the role churches have already played in making the Olympics serve the needs of the boroughs of London in which it is set.