Today’s sermon takes the form of a demonstration – not of a capable wife but of a committed Bible reader wrestling their way through an ancient text in order to hear the Word of God within it. Here we go…

This is the gift we receive from the Syrophoenician woman: to be called out of our comfort zone; challenged on our assumptions about what the Gospel means and who it is for; and pushed to grow in new and exciting ways.

The offense isn’t that Jesus is somehow made present in the bread and wine. The offense is that Jesus is now present in whoever eats him; that they are made of him and by him and live because of him.

It’s not that hard to free people from hunger. All it takes is food – Jesus proved that when he took five loaves and fed the crowd of 5000 – and we have so much more than only five loaves in this world – we have more than enough food to feed every member of the human family.

It is so easy for loyalty and love to slide into idolatry, for us to allow nation or family to replace God as the recipient of our worship and the source of meaning and direction in our lives. And so we forget that we are called to something so much bigger…

The nature of God is a mystery, too high for us to attain. But we need words and images and approximations and so we continue to grasp at descriptions of God, pointing towards something we know to be true even if we can’t explain it or understand it.

But, on the Feast of Pentecost, we remember that the Spirit is not simply, now and always, present and active in the world but was sent specifically to Jesus’ disciples and is sent to us today. And our readings this morning point the way to understanding why.

Imagine if we modeled ourselves on the Ethiopian eunuch – learners rather than teachers; explorers rather than experts; making room to listen to others rather than inviting them in to listen to us. What transformation might the Spirit have in store for us; what invitation into the way of God; what fruits, to borrow Jesus’ metaphor for a moment, might we produce?

The disciples are in the resurrection path of totality and they have the special glasses. They are looking directly at the Son (pun entirely intended) and having an astonishingly dramatic experience. They will go and bear witness to this experience, just as Jesus tells them to do

Easter answers one question – God’s love is absolutely stronger even than death – and then immediately asks another: so now what?