Category Archives: Bread of Life

Choose This Day (Sermon 8/26)

6 Replies

Joshua 24:1–2a, 14–18; John 6:56-69
If, on a morning, I open my eyes,
My first decision thereupon lies.
Will I continue to lie in the bed,
Allowing my thoughts to run through my head?
Will I get up and go to the shower,
Regardless of both weather and hour?
What of my child, who may want me to stay?
What of the tasks that call me this day?
From the minute of waking, there are choices to make,
What will I give today? What will I take?
I want to be saintly and say my first thoughts are of God,
But sometimes they’re not and, in that, I’m not odd.
We may rise with the sun or maybe at noon,
And we make hasty promises to get with God soon.
Yet, that instant, a choice has been made-
The balance of time against God has been weighed.
We can’t do it all. Surely God understands.
Consider this: did not God make this world, its demands?
But in each thing we choose, and it is choosewe must
We have decided in which god we shall trust.
When we make decisions for work or for pleasure,
With money or time, talents or leisure,
With each small decision we leave or we make,
We are choosing a god for each task’s sake.

When Joshua says, “Choose this day whom you’ll serve.
My household and I, from God we’ll not swerve.”
He means the God of justice and freedom,
The God who through the desert did lead them.
This is a God of providence, of mercy and manna
Compared to others, God proved top banana.
For the Israelites, Joshua clearly lays out a decision,
Because they had, in history, treated God with derision.
Sometimes God seemed so far and so distant,
They struggled to find God’s mercy consistent.
Yet, who gave the manna? Who gave the quail?
Who brought forth the water when the people did wail? 
“People of Israel,” Joshua said,
“Turn all that you’ve known ‘round in your head.
Think of the guidance through both day and night,
Think of God’s grace. Think of God’s might.”
The people responded, “Our choice has been made.
We’ve looked around. Only Yahweh makes grade.
Only one God can say, ‘I am who I am’
Only one God would work for our father, Abraham.”
So Israelites promised to serve God whatever may come,
For richer, for poorer, when happy, when glum.
The years passed, however, and memories faded.
People thought of this choice and became jaded.
The desert, the manna- they all became history.
What God’s doing now… that became mystery.
It became easier to feel freed by law and instruction,
Only society’s rules prevented destruction.
But that structure left some people wanting,
The gift of the law could seem rather daunting.
When onto the scene, this man Jesus appeared.
Some people rejoiced. Some people jeered.
Then, and again, he talked about bread
About life here right now and life after we’re dead.
He healed sick people, he fed many others,
But his teaching confused both sisters and brothers.
What was this about flesh to eat, blood to drink?
A hard teaching to swallow, most people did think.
Said his disciples, “Jesus, this is enough.
What you’re teaching- it’s too much. It’s too tough.
We don’t like it. We don’t understand.
We’d like to quit you, but it doesn’t seem that we can.
We’ve looked around as to where we might go.
The problem is, there’s some truth we doknow.
Within a world of struggle and strife,
You have the words of eternal life.
Only you have offered hope in the future,
Between God and us, you are the suture.
Even though it is hard to stay,
We cannot leave you or your way.”
The disciples decided (or most of them did)
It was with Jesus that they placed their bid.
They decided, as their ancestors had,
To be on God’s side couldn’t be bad.
And so I say to you this day…
“Wait, Pastor Julia, I’ve something to say…”
“What is it, my child, what bothers you so?”
“Well, you’ve confused me. And so I must know
I thought God chose us. I thought it was done.
I thought the war’s over. The fight had been won.
Didn’t Luther write we’d never say yes…
Without God’s Spirit, we can’t acquiesce!
If you tell us, ‘Today you must choose’
Are you not setting us up… to lose?”
You are right, my child, in every way.
And yet you made a choice today.
You came to be here, to be in communion
To pray, to eat, to embody reunion.
Each day, we see gods far and near.
We can worship success. We can give over to fear.
We can spend our resources or over-honor our kin,
We can reverence our bodies from our toe to our chin.
We can make work our idol, honored, adored.
We can seek that which gives immediate reward.
But in the end, it all fails. It all becomes dust.
These idols- they fade, they die, they rust.
In the end, what we want is something that lasts,
Something that goes beyond all other forecasts.
What can bring order to confusion and strife?
Only the hope of eternal life.
Eternal life, both for there and for here.
A growing, a knowing, a ridding of fear.
This is what Jesus offers- in body and blood.
Without that promise, bread and wine are just mud.
Like us, they’re from dust and to dust shall return,
But through eating and drinking, still we can learn
That God has chosen in creation’s favor,
The presence of Christ is what we savor
When we gather at table, both willing and able
To experience Jesus as truth and not fable.
To trust, to be open, is the choice we must make,
Each day, in the moment right when we wake.
In every moment, we choose a god to serve
With all that we have, each sinew and nerve.
We have a God on the side of all of creation,
Who knows and who loves without cessation.
Who gives us each talents and gives us each gifts,
Who forgives our sins, who mends our rifts.
Who with body and blood has chosen to feed us.
Who through valleys and o’er mountains, has chosen to lead us.
Lord, where could we go? You made us, you know us.
Now, through the Spirit, continue to grow us.
God has called you by name, so as your fear eases,
Choose your god. Every day. I recommend… Jesus. 
Amen.

Life Force and Momentum (Sermon 8/19)

Leave a reply

John 6:51-58
           
            How many of you know someone who says they don’t believe in God? Most of us do. Many of us have had conversations with friends or family members or even strangers who tell us that they don’t believe. Sometimes their reasoning has to do with church history or personal experiences and sometimes they just feel like what we trust is true just cannot be. So in your conversations with these people, how many of you have ever offered today’s gospel passage as an argument support?
            How many of you have just casually offered, “You know, Jesus said: Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:53-58)
         What? No one has used this passage as an argument or comfort in a discussion with someone who has difficulty experiencing God in the world? Why not? Why wouldn’t you use this passage? Because it sounds crazy. You might try to tone it down by saying, “Well, I know it sounds crazy, but we don’t really eat Jesus. I mean, we eat this bread and drink this wine and we believe he’s present in those things. We don’t really know how he’s present, we just sort of trust and eat and look at each other and go home and it’s very meaningful. But we’re not crazy. I swear.”
            Well, that falls a little flat, doesn’t it? This passage sounds strange even to us. Even if we’ve come to accept that we’re a little crazy, we like for things to make sense, to seem logical, to be rational… and this passage brings us right up to the edge of what we believe and says, “Here it is, all laid out for you. And it’s a little bit more than you can swallow.”
            What is Jesus saying here- to the people around him at the time and to us today? Part of this goes all the way back to the beginning of this whole section of John- with the feeding of the 5,000 and having leftovers, with the walking across the water and stilling the storm, with the phrase “I am the bread of life”. Part of what Jesus is telling his audience is that it’s not enough to participate in what is easy or obvious- the miracles, the healings, the supernatural events. It’s not enough to live based on the history of what God has done. In the case of the Jews in Scripture, it’s the memory of the freedom from slavery and manna in the wilderness. In our case, it’s not enough to believe in Christmas and Easter- the birth and resurrection. When we reduce God’s actions to what was and a vague expectation of what may come, we are missing the present, the current action, the contemporary revelations.
            The bread of life is not fast food. We do not grab it and go. It’s not something we consume just to have eaten, to have enough to get us to the next meal. What Jesus is telling those who would hear him is that the body and blood is something to chew on, to sit with, to return to. It’s something to gnaw on- with your mind and with your body. We chew on the bones of our salvation- making the taste last, always finding one more morsel, one more piece that gives us the flavor of heaven.
            And what is this eating for? Why do we chew over Jesus? What’s to be gained from eating the flesh and drinking the blood? True enough, eternal life. True enough, a better understanding of God. True enough, a very strange image to have in your mind. But what about the word Jesus uses, “abide”? What about abide? Eating the body and blood brings us to abide in Christ and Christ, in us. What does that mean?
            This week, I’ve been reading a book called “God’s Hotel” about one of the last almshouses in the country. An almshouse is where people used to go if they weren’t really able to pay for a hospital stay, but still needed care and had nowhere else to go. In one section, the author, Dr. Victoria Sweet, talks about the difference between seeing a person alive and seeing the body of the same person after they’ve died.

            “Much later I learned that medicine had once had a name for this, this something present in the living body but missing from the corpse. Two names, actually. There was spiritus, from which we get the English spirit, although the Latin spiritus was not as insubstantial as “spirit”. Spiritus was the breath, the regular, rhythmic breathing of the living body that is so shockingly absent from the dead. Spiritus is what is exhaled in the last breath.
            And there was anima. Usually translated as soul, the Latin is better for conveying the second striking distinction between [the body of the person] and [the person themselves]- its lack of movement. Because anima is not really the abstraction, “soul”. Anima is the invisible force that animates the body. That moves it, not only willfully buy also unconsciously- all those little movements that the living body makes all the time. The slight tremor of the fingers, the pounding of the heart that shakes the living frame once a second, the rise and fall of the chest. Those movements by which we perceive that someone is alive. Anima, ancient medicine had observed, is just as absent from the dead body as spiritus.” (p. 2-3)[1] 

            I read this passage this week and I thought, “That’s what we get through eating the body and blood of Jesus. This is what happens with Christ abides in us! We have spiritus! We have anima!” When Jesus abides, resides, dwells, within us- we have something that we otherwise lack. We cannot always put our fingers on it specifically, which is what makes it hard to explain to doubtful listeners, but it is something that both comforts and motivates us, something that feeds and exhausts us, something that grounds us and gives us forward momentum. That’s what it means to have Jesus abide in us- as a result of our feeding on him.
            And what does it mean for us to abide in him? It means our spiritus and our animahave an anchor, a solid base. It means that when we look around, we see Christ in all things. And it means that all things see Christ in us. It means when we are wondering how to respond to all that God has done in Christ, when we are asking the question, “What should I do?” The answer is “Abide.” When we rest in presence of Christ, we are even more able to be present to the people and circumstances of our lives. Having fed on the body and blood, the Spirit uses that fuel to help us brighten the corner where we are, to shine the Christ light right onto our every day tasks, to love our neighbors and to be about the work of justice and peace.
            Yes, it all sounds a little crazy, but in the end… what we do here is not about bread and wine. What God does here is not about bread and wine. It’s about bodies. It’s about flesh and blood. It’s about life force and movement. It’s about Jesus, abiding in us and we, in him.

[1] Sweet, Victoria. God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine. Riverhead Books, New York. 2012. p. 2f 

Why are you Eating? (Sermon 8/12)

Leave a reply

1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51
            My best friend and I are what you might call “eating friends”. She lives in Pennsylvania, but when we know we are going to get together- we immediately start making a list of restaurants in the area in which we will be. We make choices about which days to eat the big breakfast, lunch, OR dinner. We also have foods we both buy or bring, only on trips, because they are our vacation foods and because we enjoy eating them together. For us, the experience of eating together is a fun part of our relationship and our memories of things we have done together. (For the record, we do things other than eat. I think.)
            What are some of the reasons we eat? We eat for pleasure. We eat because it’s time. We eat because we’re hungry. Anyone who has worked at losing weight knows that it’s easy to fall into the trap of eating because you’re lonely, bored, or sad. We eat when we’re celebrating and when we’re grieving. But when it comes down to it, we eat to stay alive. We eat because without eating, we cannot function.
            So, we understand that while we often have many, sometimes overlapping reasons for eating, there is one basic reason why we eat- to stay alive. So here’s my follow-up question to that: why do we trust in Jesus? What are some of the reasons why we put our faith in Jesus, a Jewish man of two centuries ago, who some say was the Messiah of God?
            We may have faith in Jesus the Christ because of some experience- internal or external. We may trust in our tradition and the tradition of our families, a part of which is belief in Jesus. We may still be questioning in our hearts, but feel that Jesus is the best bet for an anchor in a rocky sea. We may be seeking our best life now and a great return for bread cast out upon the waters. Of all these reasons, when it comes down to it, why do we believe in Jesus?
            We want eternal life.
We want eternal life. We want to stay alive. We want heaven. We want the reunion with those who have gone before us. In a way that is beyond our imagination, we want the banquet and the rejoicing and the tree of life and city beyond imagination and the parade of nations and the drying of all tears and abounding joy. We eat to stay alive and, often, (more often than not) we look to Jesus as our ticket to doing the exact same thing. We treat the bread of life like a ticket to heaven. We look at the table as a foretaste of the feast to come and, when it doesn’t turn to ashes in our mouths, we see it as insurance and assurance that we will be at that feast.
            But the life of faith is so much more than that. More importantly, Jesus is so much more than a ticket to ride or insurance toward immortality. In today’s readings, God’s story unfolds to help us understand that bread of heaven (and bread from heaven) is for the life of the world, eternally. Which is wholly different than being for eternal life.
            When Elijah is fleeing from Jezebel (the actions preceding today’s excerpt), he travels to the end of the known world and then goes one more day- just to be on the safe side. He’s ready to die. He wants to die. God sends a messenger to Elijah, bringing him food and telling him to eat. Why does Elijah  need to eat? Because his work is not done. He has to eat for life- his own life and for the life of God’s word in the world. As a prophet, his work of speaking truth, of revealing God’s power, of bringing hope to God’s people is not yet over. Thus he receives bread for the journey because it is not time for him to die. Elijah receives bread from heaven, the bread of life, for his life here on earth (and for the other lives whom he encounters as well).
            When the crowds gather around Jesus, they grumble about what he has to say- even though he’s fed them, healed them, and generally amazed them. Still, they know his people, they’ve seen his followers, they know he sleeps and has physical needs. What’s this about heaven? Yet, he tells them the One who has come from God is the bread of life. The bread of life comes for the life of the world. Jesus explains that the bread of life feeds us for eternal life and for life right now.
            Like the crowds, we do not always like that “life right now” part. What does that look like? The writer of Ephesians says it is a life of uplifting speech (no slander, no backbiting), a life of kindness and gentleness, a life of forgiveness and imitation of Christ. Would this be the same Christ who gave up his life for the sake of the world? Are we supposed to imitate that Christ?
            That’s where our experience of Jesus gets tough- where we’d rather think about eternal life, than what’s happening right here and now. When the imitation of Christ means loving our enemies, not the ones far way, but the ones next to us, the ones who we see in the grocery store, at the family reunion, at the communion rail… When the imitation of Christ means trying something new and uncertain… When the imitation of Christ means admitting that you’re not, that we’re not in control… When the imitation of Christ means living by faith, and faith alone… all of that makes the bread of life seem a little dry and to catch in our throats.
            Eternal life, whatever it is like, will be fantastic. But we are here now. The bread of life… the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we experience in communion, in Word, and in community… this bread of life is food for this journey, nourishment so that we can live, sustenance so that we can live right now, provisions so that we can live right now for the sake of the world. Fuel for the imitation of Christ.
            Our faith is not a retirement plan. It is not a moral system that we use for guidance on occasion. We have been given the gift of faith, so that the world might know the joy of salvation, the salvation that has come through Jesus the Christ. We have been baptized into God’s history for the life of the world, the life of the world right now. We are fed- as a community and as individuals- in communion and in prayer- through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are fed so that we can stay alive. Alive in faith. Alive in Christ. Alive to do the work to which we have been called and to which we are being led.
            We are eating friends, food friends, bread sharers. Being fed from heaven right now- for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the world.
Amen.