Bread

Eat This Bread…Eat It Now

shelliwilliams Uncategorized , ,
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Lectionary Text:  John 6: 35, 41-51 (Proper 14B)

35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Once a year my rather large extended family holds our annual Family Reunion and for more years than I can even remember, there has always been a story contest.   But in recent years, the stories began to get a little bit raunchier and a whole lot stupider.  So, a few years ago, when the year came for my branch of the family to be in charge of the reunion, we came up with something new.  Rather than trying to top each other with the raunchiest and most outlandish stories, we decided to tell stories about the past.  You see, in those years, we had lost most of those that were two generations ahead of me, those that could remember another time, those that knew the stories and even the members of our family that were part of settling the town of Katy and part of creating the foundations of what would become this rather large, diverse, chaotic and storied family.

We heard stories of learning to swim in rice wells, of my father’s generation growing up within a couple of miles and sometimes a couple of feet of nineteen first cousins, and of my great uncle handing out treasured silk stockings behind his grocery store during the rationing of World War II.   You see, most of us had never heard many of these stories.  I remember my great-grandmother’s large Victorian house in downtown Katy when it was next to the Methodist church but I don’t remember it when it had a chicken coop with fresh eggs or a cow grazing next to the sanctuary.  By the time I came along, the upstairs had long been closed off and my brother and I used to beg my grandmother to take us into the un-air conditioned upstairs when we visited there.  The house now sits in an historic park in old town Katy.

You see, all of this is part of us.  It is part of who we are as a family and who we are as individuals.  And even though they are not our experiences, they are indeed our memories.  We recollect them and make them part of our lives and part of who we are.  It’s called anamnesis, [Greek for] remembering.  But we don’t have a good translation of that.  It’s more than that, more than merely remembering something that happened to you, but rather recollecting something that made you who you are, acknowledging our connective past and our mutually-embraced future.  We do it every time we participate in the Eucharist.  We do this in remembrance.  The past becomes our present.  The two are so intertwined that they cannot be disconnected.

But the future is no different.  It is not out there, removed, sitting and waiting for us to pursue it.  It is already part of us.  The past and the present and the future cannot really be separated. Revelation is ongoing. One thing builds on another.  Life is not a straight road, but rather a multi-dimensional pathway taking all that it encounters unto itself.

I think that’s what Jesus was trying to get across.  But, not unlike us, those first century hearers just didn’t get it.  After all, they had God all figured out—what God expected, what God promised, what God wanted (and, in particular, what one had to do or be to be accepted by this God).  This was a God that would supply their needs and someday reward them with the promise of life.  And, on some level, this was a God that was removed from them, “out there”, waiting for them to do the right thing or worship the right way.  This God was holy and sacred, but almost untouchable.

And yet, here was Jesus, speaking things that did not make sense, things that did not fit with the idea of God that they held.  Here he was, this son of Joseph, the lowly carpenter, the one who they had known as a child, the one that they had seen playing with the other kids in Nazareth, perhaps getting in trouble when he didn’t come in for dinner when Mary called him, and the one sitting at the feet of the Rabbi’s listening to stories, now spouting utter nonsense.  In fact, refresh my memory—wasn’t he the one that got lost in Jerusalem when he was about twelve or thirteen and worried his parents so much?  And now here he is, claiming to be the bread of life, claiming to be capable of showing us the pathway to eternal life.  Who did he think he was?  This was blasphemous.  This was wrong.  And they became angry.  After all, he was one of us and how could one of us dare to know God, dare to approach this somewhat unapproachable God of theirs, the one whose name could not be uttered?

The truth was that they had limited their idea of God.  They had made God manageable, pulling this image of God into something that only they had experienced, affirming how they lived their lives, how they worshipped, what they believed.  Righteousness and living rightly was what was expected.  Righteousness, in their minds, is what would bring them to God.  And heaven?  Heaven was out there somewhere, waiting.  Heaven would come later.

But these words of Jesus did not reflect that at all.  “I am…”  It’s present tense.  It’s not talking about a God of their experience or a God of their ancestors.  And it doesn’t depict a God out there in the future, still waiting to be claimed.  Jesus’ words shook them to their core.  “I am the bread of life.”  No longer are we talking about rules or rewards or even righteousness.  God is here; God is now, drawing us in, into a story that has been in place long before us and that will continue beyond what we know.  But we are still called to remember it. 

The word that is translated here as “drawn” can also be translated as “dragged”.  That’s a little more intense, this idea of God dragging us toward the Divine, somehow compelling us to become that very image of God that we were created to be.  It is an image of a God that rather than watching us from afar and judging what we’re doing, is here with us, working with us, drawing us or dragging us into the story.  It is the very image of heaven spilling into the earth, into our lives. 

Now for a little high school English refresher:  Life is not limited to past and present and future.  Do you remember those pesky perfect tenses?  In English, the word “perfect” literally means “made complete” or “completely done.”  (Interestingly enough, that’s close to what it meant for John Wesley when he talked about going on to perfection, going on to completion, not necessarily unblemished but the way it was meant to be.) So, future perfect tense is completed with respect to the future, like the phrases “I will have seen it,” or “I will have known it.”  But it refers to something that has already happened.  Our faith is the same way. Eternity is not something that will happen to us someday; rather, we are living it now.  Its COMPLETION will come in the future.

Edna St. Vincent Millay once said that “[Humanity] has not invented God but rather developed a faith to meet a God already there.”   Look around.  God is here.  The Divine is always pouring into our lives.  “I am the bread of life.”; “I am the bread.”; “I am.” 

You see, we cannot limit ourselves to only the part of the story that we know.  There is so much out there that God is offering.  We are in this very Presence of God swept into the past, the present, and the future.  But it’s all right here, already a part of us.  I think that’s the reason that Jesus used the notion of bread.  So, why bread?  Why not potatoes? Or blueberries?  Or filet mignon? I mean, bread is a ridiculously common food.  Breadmaking has happened throughout the world for probably as long as humans have been around.  In fact, there is evidence from 30,000 years ago in Europe and Australia that revealed a starchy residue on flat rocks used for pounding plants.  It is possible that certain starchy plants, such as cattails and ferns and maybe even mosses, was spread on the rock, placed on a fire and cooked into a sort of flatbread.  Bread is a part of our life.  It always had been.  There’s nothing out of this world about it—a little flour, a little salt, a little water, sometimes a little yeast—the land, the sea, the air, and even some fungal microorganisms.  So why use something so ordinary, so organic?  Because it’s here.  Because it’s part of our lives.  Because it’s accessible.  It’s all here, right under our noses; And eternity is the same.  Here, now…right now…not something beyond this world or up ahead, but here…no waiting, no wondering, just something that requires that we step out of where we are.

In the 19th century, Soren Kierkegaard once told a parable of a community of ducks waddling off to duck church to hear the duck preacher.  The duck preacher spoke eloquently of how God had given the ducks wings with which to fly.  With these wings, there was nowhere the ducks could not go.  With those wings, they could soar.  Shouts of “Amen!” were quacked throughout the whole duck congregation.  At the conclusion of the service, the ducks left, commenting on the message, and waddled back home.  But they never flew.

We need to learn to fly.  Patrick Overton once said, “when you have come to the edge of all you know and you are about to drop off into the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen:  There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.”  Eat this bread.  Eat it now.  Immerse yourself in the life that God is offering you.  You will be amazed at what will happen if you only let God draw you or drag you or in whatever way it takes to compel you into life.  Eat this bread.  Jesus said “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  Eat this bread.  It is here; it is now.

Begin where you are…Live this present moment, this present hour…keep up a silent prayer, “Open Thou my life.  Guide my thoughts…Thy will be done.”  Walk on the streets and chat with your friends.  But every moment behind the scenes be in prayer…internal continuous prayer.   (Thomas R. Kelly)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Body of Christ Given For You

shelliwilliams Uncategorized , ,

Lectionary Text:  John 6: 24-35 (Proper 13B)

24So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”

28Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

So in August of Year B of the lectionary (as in this year), we talk about a lot of bread.  In fact, we end up with four weeks of bread, manna, and Parker House rolls (kidding, not those!).  What is that about?  Well, bread is sustenance; bread is comfort; bread is an ordinary thing, something that most of us eat every day in some form.  Now Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.”  Bread is what we need. 

“The Body of Christ given for you.”  You probably hear it at least once a month, maybe more.  What does that mean?  What does it mean for the Body of Christ to be given for you?  When you go up to the altar rail and you are handed that piece of essentially ordinary bread and you hear those words, what does that mean?  Part of it is a reminder of Jesus’ death, the body—the literal body—that was given out of love for us.  But if that’s all it was, this meal would only be a symbolic remembrance of that.  There’s more.  Isn’t that just like Jesus?  There’s ALWAYS more.  You see, that holy meal is not just so we can remember that Jesus died for us; I think it’s really about remembering that Jesus lived for us.  Jesus became us.  Jesus walked this earth as one of us.  Jesus died as one of us.  Jesus, God Incarnate, became one of us and when this very earthly Jesus was gone, we were left with the Spirit of God surrounding and flooding in to every aspect of our lives.  We were left with this–the Body of Christ.  The Body of Christ given for you.  So now what?

The Gospel passage for this week follows up to last week’s passage about the Feeding of the 5,000 (or more…there’s ALWAYS more.)  It’s a little funny.  It’s like these people are chasing Jesus throughout this lakeside region, almost stalking him.  They wanted more.  But Jesus was no dummy.  He essentially tells them, “Look, you’re not looking for me because you understood what I said and want to give your life to me and follow the Way; you’re looking for me because you want your needs met.  You want me to give you more food or more stuff or more guarantees of safety and security or more of what you desire.  You don’t really want to change; you just want to be filled up.” Instead, Jesus offers himself.  He offers himself as the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  So, is this about bread, or isn’t it?  Is it about literal, material bread that fills our stomachs and provides sustenance for life?  Or is it about being filled spiritually, having one’s soul filled with all this is God?  Yes…both of those.  Jesus is talking about both of those.

Jesus is trying to connect physical hunger and spiritual hunger.  The two cannot be separated.  It is the Word made flesh and the ordinary made Holy.  After all, what good is food that fills our stomachs if we are spiritually hungry?  And, yet, what does it say about God’s Presence if one is so hungry that he or she cannot see past that?  Mahatma Gandhi once said that “there are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”  It is true.  The two cannot be separated.  Jesus knew that.  So, Jesus offered food for the hungry—in every way. (That’s the reason he just came out of figuring out lunch for more than 5,000 people!)  The Body of Christ given for you.  But beyond just offering bread, Jesus became bread, became that sustenance that fills our lives in every way.  Jesus, God Incarnate, was God, was the life-giving bread that our bodies and our souls so crave.  Jesus gave us himself.  Jesus gave us the very Body of Christ.

So here we are, the Body of Christ, each of us called to become the very incarnation of God in our midst, each of us called to become bread, living bread that is offered to others, each of us called to become the very real presence of Christ in the world, each of us called to now be the Word made flesh.  That’s right, WE are called to be that.  We come to the table every month, sometimes more.  We come with thanksgiving for what Jesus gave us.  We come to remember Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  But we also come because at that table, in that place, somehow ordinary bread and ordinary wine (or grape juice, in the case of us United Methodists!) becomes something that sustains us forever, something that means we will never hunger or thirst again.  And that ordinary table becomes a great banquet to which everyone is invited.  And we, ordinary people with ordinary gifts somehow, some way, somehow become the Body of Christ.

I want to ask you…How many of you like flour—just flour, nothing else?  How about shortening?  Maybe, some raw eggs?  OK, how many of you go for your daily treat of baking soda?   See, none of those by themselves make a whole lot of sense.  But all of them, along with some sugar, some bananas, and some pecans, make my grandmother’s banana bread.  You see, you take these ordinary things and put them together and they become incredible.  We are no different.  Ordinary people, ordinary gifts, and you take them and put them together and somehow, some way, they become the Body of Christ.  Woodrow Wilson once said of our country: “America is nothing if it consists merely of each of us; it is something only if it consists of all of us.”  It’s the same with the Body of Christ.  We are not a group of individuals clustered together into a church; we are the Body of Christ—each of us and all of us, together.  Oh, individually, we are important, we are loved.  God created us.  But together, oh, together, we’re the very Body of Christ.  Together, we’re extraordinary!

You know, those people came back, wanting more from Jesus.  What they didn’t understand was that there was always more.  In the 4th century, St. Augustine said that our souls are restless until they find their rest in God.  We will always hunger, we will always thirst, until we figure out that it is this—this table, these people, this banquet, this Body of Christ–that sustains us.  The Body of Christ given for you.  And then God gives all of us gifts to become bread, to become wine, to become the Body of Christ for the world.

Years ago, I was at a church where I was one of six or so clergy, so we weren’t always in each worship service.  One Communion Sunday, I was not in the middle and the last services.  I was going to get things done.  But I kept getting pulled away, needing to go across the Plaza to the other building.  At one point, crossing the Plaza, I glanced out onto the street.  It was a little street called Fannin in downtown Houston and there was an older man who was trying very painstakingly to cross four lanes of museum district traffic with a walker and only his daughter supporting him.  The traffic was whizzing by and it was not good.

I grabbed the crossing guard that we had and made him stop the traffic and went out and helped him across.  It took a really long time and by the time he got across, he was exhausted (and there were four lanes of traffic that were very irritated with me).  I asked the guard to go get a chair and we sat him down right there on the curb of Fannin underneath one of the sprawling Oaks with cars speeding by.  His daughter didn’t know what to do.

I started talking to him and he told me that he just wanted to come for Communion.  He was on his way to be checked into the hospital and he just wanted Communion.  He didn’t belong to our church; I had never met him.  But he needed more.  He said that he didn’t think he had the energy, though, to walk all the way into the sanctuary.  I told him that I was one of the pastors.  I told him to stay there, sitting on this chair on the curb under the Oak tree with cars whizzing by and I would make this happen.

I ran into the sanctuary just as they were serving Communion.  Now, for those of you that are not familiar with St. Paul’s, it is very high church, very proper.  Everything is done right.  The worship is stupendous.  But I leaned over the Communion rail to one of the other pastors.  “Terry, I need two to go.  I’ll explain later.” 

So, with bread and cups, I went outside and served the man and his daughter.  They were both crying.  They got it.  I’m sad to say that that man went into the hospital and passed away a week later.  That would be the last time that he took Communion.  But on that street corner, under the Oak tree, with cars whizzing by, was the Body of Christ.  The ordinary not only becomes holy; the two become unable to be separated. That IS the Body of Christ.

So, when we come to that table, ordinary and gifted as we are, we receive the bread and receive the cup, and our hunger and our thirst will subside, and somehow, some way, the very real presence of Christ will be there, the living bread, the eternal cup.  And through the Mystery of God, even we, each of us, will become the Body of Christ.  And then we will go into the world and be the Body of Christ for others. (And you just thought it was a bite of bread and grape juice!)

Eat this bread.  Drink this cup.  Come to me and never be hungry.  Trust in me and you will not thirst.  The Body of Christ given for you.   Amen.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli