Day 4 – September 4: Genesis 8-11 and John 6-7

We find ourselves in the midst of some of the favorite Bible stories that we all know. The story of Noah and the ark in which we find the introduction of the rainbow as the sign of a covenant between God and his people. God will never again destroy the earth because of the disobedience of the people. In case we think that things are getting so bad on this earth that God is going to give up on us and destroy us Noah style, well, all we need is a sun shower to dispel that notion. The rainbow has been coopted so many times within our society and culture to represent something quite other than what it was originally intended. The rainbow found its origin in a promise from God to all people. It is a sign of love for all people.

That then takes us to the story of the tower of Babel where we see those who have been newly saved from the flood making a name for themselves by building a tower that is able to reach to the heavens. The key to these verses is that they are making a name for themselves. God never wants us to make a name for ourselves, He wants us to make a name for Him. There is nothing more simple than that and nothing more textbook than our desire to make a name for ourselves. Isn’t that what led us to eat an apple? This sin seems to keep repeating itself over and over again.

We are then introduced to Abraham and Sarah in their pre-newname phase of Abram and Sarai. The story of Israel really go from there.

John gives us Jesus who is consistently talking in the temple and telling anyone who would list who he actually is. We can’t skip over the feeding of the 5,000 and the providing of the bread and fish by a boy. This is John’s communion. We don’t see Jesus at the table with his disciples at the end of John at a meal with the institution of the last supper. We see them at a table and then Jesus washes their feet, but not the institution of the Lord’s Supper like the other Gospels have. Here we see Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and distributes it. That is the formula for communion and it happens here and it is all initiated by a child. Isaiah couldn’t have been more right when he said: “And a little child shall lead them”.

We then see Jesus give what his disciples say are a difficult teaching, which again refers back to communion. Jesus gives meaning to the bread and the wine which are his flesh and his blood. It might be the right time to explain our Presbyterian belief about communion. We know that there are two opposite ends of the spectrum in relationship to what churches believe happens in communion. Every church believes that Jesus is present in communion. The difference is how Jesus is present. I the less sacramental churches, for example non-denominational and anabaptist, communion is something that we do to remember what Jesus did for us. It serves as nothing more than a memorial for his sacrifice. This is important to remember it, but there is more to it than that for some.

The other end of that spectrum are the literalists who believe that the bread and the wine are literally the body and the blood of Jesus. With the words of the priest the elements are transubstantiated and turned into a physical flesh and a physical blood. These verses in John provide some Scripture for support. For Presbyterians we are somewhere in between where we find ourselves believing in the real spiritual presence of Jesus not in the elements themselves, but in the community of believers who are gathered. We believe that the Holy Spirit is present in communion within the faithful in a unique way which finds its power in the Holy Spirit.