Last week, with a similar Gospel reading about Jesus proclaiming Himself to be the true bread of life, we looked at what is true living... When we taste the bread of life that Jesus offers, we become free to examine who we really are, without our masks, without controls, without our self-delusions. On one hand, we see what kind of people we really are. We become introspective enough and honest enough with ourselves that we can recognize the wrongs we have committed to others, to God and to ourselves. We do away with our excuses and justifications and simply admit that we have added to the suffering and separation of our reality.

On the other hand, we also see the good things: those gifts that God, in His creative majesty and loving grace has given us to add to the healing and reconciliation of the world. No matter what these gifts are, they are the work of the Great Artist and contribute to Her grand plan. We do not have to conform ourselves to what the world says that we have to be like, to have the skills that it says are in demand or the qualities that it wants to continue its economic, social and political systems. We are not interchangeable cogs in a machine but individual strokes in a painting, our colour and uniqueness adding to the beauty of the whole design.

But knowing who we are is only one half of the equation to making the world a better place and experiencing genuine life truly lived. We have acknowledged the truth of ourselves both positive and negative, but then what? Now we have to know what to do without ourselves and how to use our selves to bring this healing and reconciliation to the world.

When we recognize the darkness within ourselves, our negative qualities which integrity and honesty acquaints us with, we are called to change... To repent and turn over a new leaf, to pursue in God's strength a new way of living that brings life to the world. It is to imitate Jesus, our teacher and healer and Saviour, and life lives that resemble His in His compassion and solidarity, in His charity and justness, in His healing presence and His healing words. We have individual gifts and diverse identities, but they must be infused with the spirit of love and grace to be of any use.

This spirit is what Paul advises the early Christian church in Ephesus about in our New Testament reading today. Here we have a recipe for a better world by way of interpersonal relationships. That is how the world becomes a better place after all... Peace has never come through politicians and armies and pieces of paper, but always through individual people living at peace with other people, their love and hope in Christ overflowing and pouring out to everyone.

"Put away falsehood", Paul advises, "let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another." We are all connected, we are our brothers' keeper. We are members of one Creation, all creations of one God... The pain of our neighbours is our pain, the joy of our neighbours - whether next door or half a world away - is our joy.

Far too many would take this quote from Paul and use it to spread pain though. For some reason I am at a loss to understand, we like to wield truth like a weapon to inflict injury. Indeed, the Word of God - His living creative and redeeming force which calls us to reconciliation and new life - is a double-edged sword... But what cuts a world filled with strife and division more than peace and compassion? Our battle, Paul advises elsewhere in his letter to the Ephesians, is not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities. It is against a whole system of oppression that injures and divides us. We fight not AGAINST others, but FOR others, showing and telling them of the Good News of love and forgiveness - the bread of life - which causes injury to the world system.

The truth we speak is not a weapon we use to confront others, but one we use to defend others from evil. Writes Henri Nouwen: "Because the world persists in its efforts to pull us into the darkness of self-doubt, low self-esteem, self-rejection and depression … you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace.'… you have to keep looking for people and places where truth is spoken." THIS is the truth we speak... Not to be right, not to exert some form of moral or spiritual dominance over others, but to be vessels for the love of God because we are members of one another.

Paul acknowledges the reality that we will become angry with one another, for true or false reasons. This is a fact of life known by everyone who has friends or a family. But he advises us not to let the sun go down on our anger. A cardinal rule of relationships is never to go to bed angry and never sleep on it. Sometimes space is needed, but never let anger fester. Poet, artist and thinker William Blake puts forth the disastrous results of anger unresolved in a more eloquent manner than I ever could in his poem "The Poison Tree":

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

"Thieves must give up stealing..." Seems obvious enough: stealing is bad because it violates trust between human beings. But Paul goes on to say that we are to labour and work honestly to have something to share with the needy. Here in Alberta, such a sentiment is heresy! People are supposed to work so they can feed their own damn selves! Why should we have to work to feed some loafing so-and-so?!? Sorry politicians and newspapers, the purveyors and promoters of the world's lies, but we should because they need it. We are members of one another, and when one goes hungry physically, all go hungry spiritually. Giving to the needy is part of the truth we speak, part of the reality we are to live as Christians. It is part of our battle against the powers and principalities, against a society that is fueled by and fuels gross inequalities.

Say "only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear." Again, this is the truth we are to speak... When we add to the world's lies by cutting people down, we speak not the truth. When we say that you're evil because you dress differently or you're sick because of who you love or pathetic because of what you believe, we are not speaking the truth that is love. We aren't treating others as beings created and loved by God when we make pariahs out of them to indulge our fragile egos and even more fragile and arbitrary social order. When our words bring grace, then we speak the truth.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, the being of God that dwells within each of us, guiding us in the ways of grace and love, of healing and reconciliation. In essence, Paul is telling us to do God proud... God has invested so much in us by making us Her children, by sacrificing Himself for our reconciliation and by choosing to work through us, fragile as we are. "No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me" says Jesus, affirming that God has picked us out to be a part of the Good News. God has given us our gifts and identity, and has invested us with the Spirit of love and forgiveness that heals the world. How can we betray this? How can we, having tasted the bread of life, grieve the Spirit?

So in the end, Paul tells us to do away with bitterness and wrath and anger if we can, to do away with wrangling and slander and malice (try to imagine a church without that... Would it even BE a church anymore?!). Instead, we are to pursue tenderheartedness and forgiveness. We are to love because God first loved us and forgive as God has forgiven us... Just as we have tasted the bread of life, we are to share it with others. This is true life, and this love and forgiveness is the most powerful thing in the universe.

Though it so often seems weak in the face of incredible horror and violence, these things that have been spoken to us and placed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit are indeed so very powerful... Much more powerful than any evil. We even see this in the sordid tale that is related to us in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. Amidst all the convulsions of war and revolution, in all this terrible violence which is fully justified by the lies of the world, we see a spark of compassion and the desire for the truth of love. Here we see David insisting that his armies do not hurt Absalom, the rebel leader and his own son. Unfortunately, the zeal for violence - the dedication of these soldiers to the lies of the world - results in the death of Absalom in spite of the king's wishes. But upon hearing of his son's murder, David wept openly and cried out that it should have been him rather than his son... All this for a bitter enemy, a political rival, a revolutionary, a terrorist.

The cry of David is the cry of the whole world, the cry of all people of conscience when they see what has happened to their neighbours, for we are all members of one another. But there is healing as Christ wipes away our tears and brings solace to our grieving. Jesus gave His life for the life of the world. He came to bring us a new way... Not propositions to injure others which we mistake for truth, not justifications for our system of lies... He brought us Himself, a simple backwater rabbi living and breathing and teaching and BEING a new way of life, new life incarnate. He offers Himself to us both as metaphorical bread from Heaven and as actual physical bread in Communion, which is itself an act of healing. Though confusing to the people of His day, we know that Jesus does come to us in this Sacrament of bread and wine, and brings us closer in community as we kneel together at His table. We, people of all races, cultures, genders and orientations, gathered together in an unlikely assembly, living together in love and forgiveness being fed with the food of love and forgiveness. This is real life, and it shall last for all eternity when, in His time, God makes all things well.

Amen.