Category Archives: Year B

Life Force and Momentum (Sermon 8/19)

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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)

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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. 

John the Holy Forerunner

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A Sermon for the Feast of John the Baptist
   

         John the Baptizer hardly ever gets his own attention. It seems like we hear quite a great deal from him in Advent and then at Jesus’ baptism, but we hardly ever talk about him. In Advent, the discussion is more about Zechariah’s, his father, lack of faith compared to Mary’s trust in God. After Jesus is born and grown, the actions focus on who God is in him and what God is doing. John is a footnote to that story as well.
            This week when I asked for questions about John the Baptizer, only one person dared to ask anything and they sent the question in a message, rather than in any kind of public forum. The question ran along these lines: Do you think John ever wondered if he might be The One? Did he always know he was the forerunner? What was it like to always know that you were second?
            I had to think about that for a while. John would have grown up hearing his own birth narrative and that of his cousin, Jesus. He was probably raised in a very particular way, given his father’s priesthood and the specificity of his dedication to God. He may have even been a Nazarite with strictures on cutting his hairs, touching dead bodies, sexual practice, and eating. In fact, the camel’s hair clothing and the locust and honey diet are supposed to help us understand that he lives the life of prophet- like Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos.
            Given the way that John is depicted, as such an obvious bridge between the promises of the Messiah and the advent of the Messiah, it is hard to think that he ever thought that he might be the One Who Is to Come. Yet, don’t you think every little boy of the time thought he might be the Messiah? If your stories of God’s anointed are of David to the tenth power, when you and your friends played Roman invaders versus Holy Warriors, don’t you think one kid always climbed on top of the rock and declared himself “The Messiah”?
            Would John have thought that might have been his name? Names were important as we saw in today’s reading. People did not speak the name of God and the names that were bestowed on children carried weight and power. And in other Christian denominations, John receives much more serious treatment and gets other names. He is the Baptizer, the Forerunner, a prophet among prophets. As the Holy Forerunner, his entire work is pointing to the One Who Is to Come. Given the seriousness of his nature and his focus on his work, I’m not sure I would blame him if he had occasionally wondered if he might be the One. Somehow, I doubt it though. Once Jesus appears on the scene, John knows him and is inspired by God to understand who and what Jesus is. Still John wonders and eventually asks, “Are you the One Who is to Come or are we to wait for another?”
            And there it is, folks, the doubt of the Holy Forerunner. The question of the ages… Jesus, are you it? Who among us hasn’t asked that question? And has anyone hear fulfilled their own call with what appears to be the certainty of John the Baptizer? He lives into what he believes and still dares to ask… Are you the one? He’s AT THE BAPTISM… and he dares to ask… Are you the One?
            What was the work that John was doing again? What does his father prophesy that he will do: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”(Luke 1:76-77) John prophesies at the side of the Jordan- telling people that the times- they are a’changin’. He is offering a baptism, outside of the temple and separate from the culture of sacrifices, for the forgiveness of sins. He speaks truthfully of sin and separation, of false truths and false leaders. He speaks of transformation, of lives altered by an experience of God’s promises and trust in their truth.
            In a time of permanent Advent, John says the Light is coming and you better be ready! And the message he brings attracts people. John has disciples. John is condemned by the temple leaders. John gives the ruler, Herod Antipas, serious indigestion. And it is not because John is saying that “I’m all right, you’re all right.” It’s not because John is saying, “God is love.” It’s not because John is saying that the Messiah will bring joy.
            People are coming because of the promise of new life. People are attracted because it seems like this is something to give them hope. People are coming because they are being told that God has not forgotten them. That God is still acting. That the voice of God in the world has not been silenced. That God is speaking to them about the expectation of changed behavior and the reality of promises fulfilled.
            People wanted to hear the message that John was preaching. People want to hear the message that John was bringing. In truth, I think we ask ourselves “What would Jesus do” because it seems easy. You can either tell yourself, “But I’m not Jesus” or you tell yourself that Jesus welcomed and care for all kinds of people. Both of these things are true, you’re not Jesus and Jesus did minister whole-heartedly to all kinds of people. But we are not baptized into Christ for an easy life or for comfort or for consolation. We’re baptized into a life as co-workers in the kingdom and what if our work is supposed to look a little more like John’s?
            What if the work to which we are called is political, like John’s- calling out injustice against women, children, men- all races, all nationalities, all faiths? What if our task for the kingdom is to call out leaders who bend the rules for their own benefit, but ignore the possibilities of their power to bring justice and change? What if our work is theological, like John’s – not be Jesus, but to point to Jesus, to explain who Jesus is to us and to the world? What if our work is prophetic- affecting what we eat, what we wear, where we live, with whom we are seen? What if our work is revolutionary, like John’s – to call for change in hearts (including our own), in minds, in churches, in communities, in governments, in the world?
            And what if we are called to this work at the very same time we ask the question, “Jesus- are You it? Are you The One?” Keep in mind, John asked that question through his disciples, while he was in prison for doing the work to which he had been called. He knew he was the Forerunner, he knew he pointed to the Light. He was just checking, one more time, to be sure Jesus was it. And then he kept going, right to his death.
            We wait. We wait for a new heaven and a renewed earth. We wait for the kingdom where justice and peace are at home. We are Easter people, resurrection people, living in the second Advent, waiting for Jesus to return (Jesus- are You it?) In a world that lacks justice and peace, where people commit the same sins over and over again… maybe in this perpetual Advent- the world needs a little more John, a little more promise, a stronger expectation of change, a demand for righteous action, and an unambiguous pointing to the light.
We too are holy forerunners, pointing to the One Who Has Come and Will Return. God shapes us into the people the kingdom needs for our particular time and place. Occasionally, when the world is dark and has great need, the Holy Spirit is equipping us- not to be like Jesus- but to be like John.
Amen.