B, Pentecost 12 Proper 13 – John 6:51-58 “Trusting the Transfusion”

Downolad WORD doc here

The language of medical personnel is hard to understand. Their words are long and complex; often immersed in Greek or Latin leaving the layperson wondering what they've just said. And many of them have hand writing that makes their scripts just as illegible as their lingo of medically precise terms. Questioning doctors is a hazardous pastime. Once a patient was prescribed a doctor's medication thinking the doctor was mad, but two weeks later when the symptoms disappeared, the doctor was proved right in his diagnosis.

Therefore, for the most part we just sit in the chair or lie on the bed, and let the doctors do their thing. Perhaps, it's better to keep one's mouth shut and have the doctor think you're silly, than to open it and prove you really are. So we trust the doctor to diagnose what's wrong, the surgeon with the knife on our flesh, and the General Practitioner prescribing dangerous drugs to make us better.

Yet when it comes to our spiritual health, self diagnosis seems to be the overwhelming opiate of the masses. And with self diagnosis people turn to a plethora of prescriptions ignoring the prognosis of those called to intervene in one's spiritual health.

Much of the information out there floods and fills our ears from the media. We seem to trust the television to make our decisions for us. Discernment goes out the window in favour of a tabloid treatment of the problem. The emotions are tantalised and teased into trusting the temptations on TV. Unfortunately, we are led to believe we are making an informed decision, when really we have been manipulated like puppets, mesmerised, handing over our dollars to doctors of delusion.

The same mentality causes big problems for God and his church too. Some will argue why man should come between them and God. They make a good argument, and they're right. But what they don't realise is they're also defeating their own argument since their self diagnosis is actually coming between themselves and God. Especially when the prognosis is ignored from God's very own mouthpiece in this world, the church with its pastoral prescribers whom are faithful to God's Word!

I invite you to sit back from the noise of this world and observe through God's Word, what is happening to many whose spiritual walk is without discernment. One will see people wandering without wisdom; persons pursuing prescriptions of death; the walking dead everywhere.

But let's not throw stones in glass houses either. How much have I swallowed the pills of popular prescription? How often do I fall back into my default position of trusting myself; walking in the descriptions of death I know, rather than the prescription of promise that's offered to us from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit through his Word, by means of his church on earth?

In his Word God teaches us about trusting his transfusion and the prognosis of peace received from it when we believe and receive what he gives to us. He calls us away from our self diagnosis; which at best is pithy and deluded, into a diagnosis and prescription of his Word. This is the way of wisdom who calls out to us all…

"Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight." (Proverbs 9:5–6 ESV)

You see this life is one of healing. None of us are well! We like to think we are fine but really a faith like this is like one who checks themselves out of hospital and the moment they walk out the door, they fall straight back into the fatally flawed faith of failure. And once back there, there's no forgiveness and no eternal future!

This is why Jesus tells us, "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." (John 6:54 ESV) You and I will be raised up from our sick beds on the last day. We will be led out of this life through the doors of death into the gardens of eternity where true life, true peace, and eternal healing are found forever.

This is the will of the Lord. That you believe in the One he has sent; that you receive his recipe of redemption; that you turn and trust his transfusion of life.

Therefore, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. (Ephesians 5:15–17 ESV)

But how do we make best use of our time? How do we live lives of wisdom discerning just what is the will of the Lord? God tells us simply to be filled with the very things that prescribe life, the things which cause healing to happen within.

…be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:18b–21 ESV)

Now the trick here is not to fall into the trap of letting these things be a laborious work thinking we need to earn God's favour. Rather, we need to remember we're lying on our death beds and we need only believe in the One the Father has sent.

When we allow the Holy Spirit the freedom to move within our beings these melodies of psalms hymns and spiritual songs are entry points for the Word to do it's healing.

The more we are healed the more we want to be healed and raised up from our sick beds of sin to abide more and more in our Great Physician. He not only gives you a transfusion of blood, but a transfusion of his very own body and blood, giving you his very own faithfulness with which he attends to you, which led him to attend to the Cross for you out of love for the Father.

Therefore, frequent the places and situations where you receive forgiveness and are fed the faith. Lie back trusting the transfusion, and hear the language of love.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! (Psalm 34:8 ESV)

Blessed is Jesus who takes refuge in our Father, blessed are you when you take refuge in Jesus, and blessed is the world when we let the Holy Spirit take residence in us. Amen.