Choose This Day (Revised)

Joshua 24:1–2a, 14–18, John 6:56-69

If, in the 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 the weather and hour?

What of the children, who may want me to play?

What of the tasks that call me this day?

From the moment of waking, there are choices to make,

What will I give this day? What will I take?

I want to be saintly, 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 most of us promise to get with God soon.

Yet, that instant, a choice has been made-

The balance of time againstGod has been weighed. 

We can’t do it all. Surely God understands.

Did not God make this world, its chores, its demands?

But in each thing we choose, and it ischoosewe 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 all choose 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 God of providence, of mercy and manna

Compared to all others, She proved top banana.

For the Israelites, Joshua lays out a decision,

Because, in history, they’d treated God with derision.

Sometimes God seemed so far and so distant,

They struggled to find His 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 around 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. It’s the Lord who makes grade.

Only one God says, ‘I am who I am’

The same God who was served by our dad, Abraham.”

Israelites promised to serve God, what may come,

For richer, for poor, when happy, when glum.

The years passed, however, and memories faded.

People forgot 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 community’s structure prevented destruction.

But that structure left some people wanting,

The gift of the law seemed rather daunting.

Late onto the scene, the rabbi, Jesus, appeared.

Some people rejoiced. Some people jeered.

Then, and again, he talked about bread

About life here right now andlife 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 talking about- 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,

Only 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 grows quite 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 has been won.

Didn’t Luther write we’d never say yes…

Without God’s Spirit, we can’t acquiesce!

If you tell me, ‘Today you must choose’

Are you not setting us up… to lose?”

You are right, my dear, 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’ll fade, they’ll die, they will rust.

In the end, what we need 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 the 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.

 Our God is a God on the side of all of creation, 

Who knows and who loves without cessation.

Who gives us each talents, who gives us each gifts,

Who forgives our sins, who mends all 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.

Chew on This (Sermon)

John 6:51-58

         I have an obnoxious habit. (Well, probably more than one, but I’m just going to mention the one right now.) In a situation, when I am with other people whom I know identify as Christians and if we are talking about churchy, religious, or spiritual type things- I pay attention to how many times Jesus is mentioned. In listening to sermons, I think about how long it is until Jesus’ name comes into things. I want to hear about Jesus. 

         More specifically than just a mention of Jesus, I am interested in how we talk about him. Is Jesus easy to talk about- he’s great, good, and groovy? Is Jesus difficult to bring up- mysterious, frustrating, and confusing? Is Jesus close by and a ready comfort or far away and standoffish? 

         How do we interpret Jesus as a revelation of and from the Godhead? What does Jesus teach us about eternity, creation, and mercy?  

         It is possible to have a reductive conversation about Jesus- Jewish man from Roman-occupied Palestine, an itinerant rabbi with a band of unusual followers made up of women, laborers, and people who had worked for Rome. He died an ignoble death and something happened to his body. 

         For many of us, that’s not enough to say about Jesus. However, we are often as simplistic about

By Fritzs [GFDL ]

his divinity as some people are about his humanity. He died for our sins. He came to save us. Jesus loves the little children. 

         We’re talking about a fully human, fully divine being who caused his parents deep grief, who spoke with full knowledge about the prophecies of Isaiah, and yet also called a Canaanite woman a dog (Matthew 15). The very touch of his garment brought healing to a woman who suffered years of bleeding and his very words cursed a fig tree (Mark 5 and 11, respectively). Jesus warned off Peter’s bluster by rebuking him, “Get behind me, Satan” and then, later, washed Peter’s feet with humility and tenderness. 

         Jesus is a complex figure, the pioneer of our own faith and faithfulness, and God in flesh in our world. We cannot simplify who he was, who he is, and who he calls us to be. Today’s reading from John underscores that truth. 

         By the time gospel according to John is written, the Christian sect of Judaism is pretty much on the outside of temple life. It is, in part, through their own doing. Imagine tolerating a small group of people inside your religious group who have their own language, their own daily habits, and their own worship liturgy. As they progressively grow in their separation, it becomes harder and harder to include them in the activities and dynamics of the larger group. While there was animus between Jewish Judeans and Christian Judeans, the separation between the religious groups likely was more organic than the historically anti-Semitic slant of Western church history has led us to believe. 

         When the Fourth Gospel is being written, the complexity of living the Way of Christ has become evident. In the snippet of chapter 6 that we read today, the Greek takes a strange turn. The writer has Jesus initially using the verb phago for “to eat”, which is fairly straightforward. In verses 53 and 54, however, there is a switch. The writer moves from phago to trogo. Trogo is a little more graphic, more intense than the simple eat. Trogo, in Greek, conveys gnawing, munching, and crunching. 

         Thus, the writer is deliberating making these words of Jesus almost more offensive. Jesus invites those who believe to eat his flesh and drink his blood and it won’t be a dainty or tidy meal. It’s a gnawing banquet, in which everything is to be savored and stripped- with the bones crunched and munched. 

         The writer of the Fourth Gospel is making it clear that being part of the community will not be for the faint of heart. The very ways that the love of Jesus compels us to be at home and in the world are tough, intense, gnawing acts of grace and mercy. 

         Unfortunately, many Christians today want Jesus to be fast food- cheap, easy to consume, and quick to clean up after. Yet, I find that the world needs the Jesus we gnaw, the Jesus we pick over, the Jesus we make soup from and still find marrow inside the bone that brings nutrition. 

         That 900-page report out of Pennsylvania about 30 years of abuse by priests- the pain of that situation, the hurt people, the damaged trust… that situation needs gnawing, munching, and crunching. It is for trogo, not a quick phago. There is not fast food solution to that in the Roman Catholic Church or to anything similar in any denomination or religion. Jesus urges us to do the work of getting to the bone of the issue. 

         The reality of Anchorage teachers returning to work without signed contracts- guaranteeing their rights for the year ahead- is an issue to gnaw over. It stresses and stretches people who are in this room right now. It affects the children of this city, the present and future of Alaska. The love of Christ compels us to consider the complexity of the issue and gnaw it down together. 

         The growth of wildfires in California, the frequency of 100-year floods in the mid-West, the overturning of regulations meant to sustain the growth and safety of wild and human life… these are issues to gnaw over together. Not things that can be solved simply. Not things that can be ignored. Not things that have nothing to do with our faith, but in fact, these are the very things that we can address because we have faith. 

         The eternal life mentioned in John here and elsewhere is synonymous with the abundant life mentioned in John 10. It is not a life waiting to start after death, but a life that comes with having Jesus with you in the present. It is a clear and present truth for all whom Jesus draws through himself, by the Spirit, to God the Holy Parent. This is the life we have when we feast on Christ- when we gnaw on the truth, munch on the mercy, and crunch on the amazing grace that leads us to where God can use us for the sake of others and the world that God made. 

         When we come to Jesus’ table, we are usually pretty tidy. I know that you want bite-size morsels that you can chew and swallow easily. Little sips of wine or juice wash down the crumbs and we wipe the edge of the cup in a semblance of being sanitary. Yet, we are fed in a mysterious way by a complex Savior who has promised to show up in this meal for the purposes of feeding our faith so that we can live a life that is going to bring us alongside all kinds of people and situations that we would probably not choose for ourselves and, sometimes, would avoid if we could. 

         It was true for the Christians of the first century, receiving the words of the Fourth Gospel, and it is true for those following the Way of Christ in the 21^stcentury. We serve a resurrected Savior who is our brother (sibling rivalry), our leader (who is sometimes too far ahead), our teacher (whose lessons can be confusing), our healer (in his own sweet time), and the lover of our souls (what?!?). All of these things gnaw at us and we, on them. 

         Jesus is complicated. Jesus loves us. Jesus challenges us. Jesus wrestles with us. Jesus sends us out into the world, but there’s nowhere we can go that he’s not already there to welcome us. He feeds us. And, since Jesus is God, our whole lives are contained in him- from beginning through eternity. 

Let’s chew on that for a while. 

Amen.

God's Work, Our Work

This week’s Gospel reading is: John 6:1-21

1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, 9 "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" 10 Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." 13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world." 15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. 16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20 But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." 21 Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

Some thoughts on the gospel lesson:

I cannot think of this story without remembering the first time my son, at the time four years old, recounted it to me after Vacation Bible School. He called it: “Jesus feeding the fifty hundred”. He told me that there were a lot of people gathered to hear Jesus talk. They got hungry. Only one little boy had food, but he brought it to Jesus. Jesus broke it with his two hands- here my son demonstrates and holds his hands up like he is celebrating communion- and passed out the fishes and bread. Everyone had enough to eat and there were lots of leftovers. The end.

What a story! It makes an impression on even a four-year-old. My son didn’t seem fazed by the idea of a small amount of food feeding so many or even think it was that miraculous that Jesus was able to use the lunch of a child. In my son’s young mind, sharing is what we do and making it all work is what Jesus does. When everyone does what they are supposed to, everyone will have enough.

What a concept! As adults, we get caught up in the hows of this story. How did the disciples find a boy with a lunch? How was there really enough for everyone to share? How were there leftovers? Many times I have heard it said that maybe everyone brought a little food with them. As the baskets went around, they actually put into the baskets some of what they brought. Hence, everyone ate and there were leftovers.

I don’t think so. If this is the same Jesus who will walk on water out to the disciples and will later be raised from the dead by the power of God, what’s a little miraculous food distribution to him? It’s not magic. It’s a miracle. That means we don’t have to know how it happened, but to trust that God was at work and is willing to do the same thing again.

The child inside each adult must be willing to grasp what the children hear when this story is told. The little boy shared his lunch- sharing is our work. Jesus multiplied it and made it so all had enough- that is God’s work in Christ and through the Spirit. We have a task and God has a task. Are we doing our part so that we might be participants in how God’s part is being accomplished?

Distributors or Roadblocks (Sermon)

John 6:35-59

Many of us have restricted diets. Jesus’ words about salt or bread bounce off us as we think about low sodium, paleo, gluten-free, heart-healthy, or the many different ways our diets are different from the diet of a first century Palestinian. However, for Jesus, his followers, and for most people around the world, bread is the stuff of life.

Separate bread in your mind from what it takes to make bread. Flour, salt, water, maybe yeast. What do you need to have those things? What’s required for flour? Wheat or some other grain. So you need stability to grow, tend, and harvest that. You need strength and maybe tools for the threshing and grinding.

Water needs to be clean. You need a well or a clean water source. You need a vessel to carry it in and a place for safe storage. Salt requires drying or discovery. You need time and space for this. It requires patience and expectation.

All of these are gifts that God gives us in Jesus- stability, growth, strength, community, safety, a body (for storage), patience, time, space. Let’s dwell on and in that understanding. The reality of bread is much, much more than the loaf in front of us. The gift of Jesus- God with us- is more than have either or physical or spiritual needs met. He is the embodiment of God’s desires and plans for you, for me, and for creation.

This is the point where my sermon derailed on Saturday night. I was thinking about God’s desires for us- the realities of being able to receive and eat the Bread of Life. Then I read the news about the conclusion to Michael Dunn’s trial for the murder of Jordan Davis. In November of 2012, Dunn asked an SUV full of teenagers at a gas station to turn down their music. When they refused and prepared to leave the station, Dunn fired at the SUV, killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis.

At the conclusion of the trial yesterday, Dunn was convicted of several counts of attempted murder with regard to the other teens in the car. The jury ended up hung on the murder conviction for Jordan Davis. Do you think it matters in this case that Dunn is white and that Davis and the other teens were black? What would have been the outcome if a black man had fired into a car full of white teens for exactly the same reasons?

We live in a society, in 2014, where not all lives have equal value. Where people’s worth is judged based on their color, their race, their religious expression, their gender expression, their sexuality, their physical or mental abilities, their age and a variety of other factors. There are people in this congregation who regularly worry about their children or grandchildren, not in the way that we all do, but because of their color or other factors. We cannot pretend this doesn’t happen. We cannot pretend it doesn’t affect us. We cannot pretend that we can’t help.

We have said things- security, growth, strength, peace, community, bodies, safety, time, space- are God’s desires for creation as evidenced in Jesus as the bread of life. I assume we mean that they are God’s desires for all people, all people. Give us this day our daily bread is prayed by millions and millions of people. The inability to have bread- spiritual or physical- is not impaired by God’s willingness to distribute it. God has already shown that willingness by sending Jesus. The ability for all people to enjoy that bread- spiritually and physically- is impaired by how other people facilitate or get in the way of God’s distribution.

It matters greatly that the Bread of life is both a physical and a spiritual experience. It’s not just spiritual because there are real, concrete things our bodies must do as followers of Christ. It’s not just physical because there we have real, concrete spiritual needs that must be addressed and fed. If we have them, all people have them.

            We cannot listen to today’s reading, Jesus explaining about all who come to him being fed, and not feel some responsibility to respond and to help others respond. We cannot, we must not, listen to the news about the Dunn verdict and not feel any responsibility to respond and to help others respond. We cannot allow the forces that oppose God and God’s desires to make us believe that this problem is isolated to Florida or doesn’t have anything to do with our faith lives.

            If anyone, anyone, anywhere, anywhere, is afraid, is persecuted, is unable to imagine a better future, is isolated, is killed, then there are realities that are getting in the way of the Bread of Life. This happens in Anchorage. Schools have unequal resources. City communities receive unequal attention. Certain populations are profiled. Young adults do not believe they have valued potential.

            This goes beyond how we pray today. Either we are action takers, on a day to day basis, through the help of the Spirit, allowing our hands, our feet, our voices, our votes, our dollars, to be a way of distributing the Bread of Life. Or we aren’t. If we aren’t, then what are we doing? And who are we doing it for?

            In Jesus’ time, this teaching was scandalous, mainly because of what he says about blood. Jews did not eat blood. It was the life force of an animal. Therefore, it was forbidden. For Jesus to give instruction to drink his blood and eat his flesh, therefore to consume his life, this was disgusting and very off-putting to many, many people who heard him.

            It’s critical for us to hear those words today, though. If we understand that Jesus is present in our neighbors, the senseless killing of people around us- both actual killing and things that keep life from flourishing- we are witnessing the blood of Jesus being spilled, without life coming from it. We are witnessing the exact opposite of God’s desire and intention.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are the fruits of the Spirit. They grow from the nurturing of the Bread of Life. God’s plan for Jesus as the Bread of Life is to help creation enjoy peace, stability, growth, strength, time, space. As people who receive that Bread, physically and spiritually, we are called to be a part of how all people receive the Bread of Life. If you come to communion today, if you are praying today, if you are giving thanks for the forgiveness of sins today, you have entered into a covenant, a contract with God, in which you have agreed to respond and to be used for God’s purposes in the world.

Knowing that, believing that, will that change what you do? Today? This week?

            Stability, growth, strength, community, safety, a body (for storage), patience, time, space- required for bread, results of the Bread of Life. Bread that is intended for all people. We are definitely partakers for ourselves. When it comes to others, others like Jordan Davis, are we distributors or are we roadblocks?

Amen.

Choose This Day (Sermon 8/26)

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 choose we 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 do know.

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)

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 anima have 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.

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[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)

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.