Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
† Sunday 20th August 2000
Theme: Jesus - provider of food for the journey

A reading from the Book of Proverbs 9 : 1 - 6
Wisdom and Folly invite us to the banquet. The ‘house...with the seven pillars’ is the whole world for all are invited to know the Truth of God. So the “ignorant” are invited to “step this way.” Likewise the fool; the messengers go out the city’s heights, inviting all to come and hear the Wisdom of God. The invitation prepares us for the Gospel reading of this day.“Come and eat my bread, drink the wine I have prepared, leave your folly and you ill live.”

Letter of Paul to the Ephesians: 5 : 15 - 20
In this reading too, there is a contrast between the person who is drunk with wine like a foolish,senseless dissipated person, and the one who is filled with the wine of the Spirit. The one is foolish and the other deemed to be wise in the things of God. The contrast is between the wasteful pagan moral conduct, and the conduct proper to the Christian who in baptism has put on a new nature, and a different behaviour.

The Gospel according to John 6 : 51 - 58
This text is at the end of a long passage of John’s gospel, which deals with the food and drink that Jesus will provide. Some of it the Jews of the day, found what Jesus said, hard to accept and walked no more with him. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood,” says Jesus, “lives in me, and I live in him....for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.” While each Christian may approach the truth of this teaching, in the light of faith, there is little doubt that whatever the explanation, or the scientific ‘problems’, at its most simple level, Jesus means what he says. The echoing invitation from the Book of Proverbs rings in my ears, “Come and eat my bread, drink the wine I have prepared, leave your folly and you ill live.”
© Peter Harrison 2000