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. 

The Bondage of Memory (Sermon 8/5)

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; John 6:24-35

            Every four years, I have a little jealous streak that rears its head. It’s not because I wish I had put more effort into being an Olympic athlete, though I am admittedly envious of their skills. The little green monster that peeks out dates way back to my childhood when, looking at a poster in the hallway of my house, I realized there were no women presidents. Immediately, I wanted to be one. The presidency became my goal. In high school, I pursued a lot of avenues that were open for politically inclined students. I was voted most likely to succeed and most likely to become President. So every four years, I feel a little nostalgia that it is not going to happen.

            At some point, I realized this was not the path for me. I do not mean a path that was not open to me- I mean not the best one for me. In order to move on to places and things that were better suited for my skills, I had to let the dream of being president die. Yet, the ghost of that dream occasionally haunts me.

            In today’s readings, people are having a hard time letting their dreams die. The Israelites likely dreamt of freedom each night they were in Egypt and, to be sure, it did not look like this wandering in the desert, uncertain, hot, and wistful, even, for the food of Egypt (tinged with the poison of slavery, though it was). They are in bondage to their memory, unable to be thankful to the God who has brought them thus far.

            Their memories will neither allow them to let go of what they thought freedom would be like nor will their memories recall the truth of what life in Egypt truly was. Their memories are holding them back from seeing God’s actions right in front of them- the actions that are bringing them life.

            The people gathered around Jesus in today’s gospel, both Jews and Gentiles, are not able to see who he really is. Their memories are fixated in two directions as well. On the one hand, they are clearly remembering the many baskets of leftover food after an entire crowd ate their fill. On the other hand, they are remembering what has always been promised about the Messiah of God and what his advent will bring. Obsessed with the signs they’ve witnessed, they crowd Jesus- unable or unwilling to hear what he is saying about belief in God and what truly sustains life.

            Their memories will not allow them to see past the obviousness of the miracles nor will it allow them to let go of the messiah of their minds. Their memories are holding them back from seeing God’s actions right in front of them- the actions that are offering them life.

            We too can be in bondage to our memories. Not just to what we once thought we might have been personally, but in many directions. We can hold ourselves captive by society’s standards or the expectations of those we hold dear. We may be enslaved by the memories of our own beliefs about ourselves, our work, our families- what they were going to be, what they could be if we just made a few changes.

            As a church family, we can be in bondage to our memories of what we think we our best times. We can long for the leeks and cucumbers of days gone by, forgetting the work that went with those meals. As part of the church universal, we can hold so tightly to our memories of what we believed would happen when we nailed the theses to the door, ordained women, become more welcoming… that we are devastated by events that do not live up to the expectation of our memories.

            I’m not talking about our memories of people we have loved or times that we appreciated- those are gifts from God that we’re able to recognize. But the memories of what we thought would be… Our communities, our homes, ourselves… can be held back by what we once believed would be our future. When this happens, and it does, we often grieve for what might have been- without taking stock in what is. Our memorial grief can hold us back from seeing God’s actions right in front of us- the actions that are offering us life.

            When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life”- it’s not about food for the stomach. When God provides manna in the wilderness, it’s not about keeping the Israelites alive for another day. It’s about the present… and the presence. About the relating… and the relationship. The reality of the spiritual strength that is offered to us through Jesus, by the work of the Spirit… that reality is so that we can live, right now. So that we can believe that God is with us, right now. So that we can grow into our potential as God’s beloved, right now. 

            Part of the work to which we are called letting go of the idols of our memories, breaking the bonds of what we thought would be, and helping our neighbors to do the same. We have a very real present in which to live, a very Real Presence that feeds and sustains us. In order to appreciate these gifts and their accompaniments, forgiveness, reconciliation, hope, we have to be willing to be open to the immediate work of the Spirit. We have to accept that God is still speaking. We have to expect that Christ will feed us. We must believe that what God is doing, right now, in our lives and in the world, is greater than what we could have expected or dreamed.

            And then we find ourselves released from the bondage of our memories, false as they were. And we find ourselves in a gracious present, lacking nothing, equipped and energized to carry the bread of life into the world. Whether we are Olympian, pastor, lawyer, teacher, accountant, retiree, homebody, or president. 

The Class I'll Never Forget

I just received the most recent issue of the Yale Alumni magazine and the feature story is entitled "The Class I'll Never Forget". Inside the magazine, there were 15 short paragraphs from various Yale alums- describing their most memorable class and what made it so. Inspired by the article, I began to make a list of the classes I took while attending Yale Divinity School and my different teachers.

You'd think the class that I'll never forget would pop right out at me, but as it turns out I think of the professor and the class so often, it took a minute to bring them to mind in context. I would like to say, however, that I took many classes from deeply profound and caring professors who inspired me in any many ways. These were men and women who taught me to see the humanity and the Spirit in church history, the power and the humor in Scripture, the darkness and the light in Christian ethics.

Yet, the class I will never forget is "What Would Jesus Write" with Jack Hitt. For this very small seminar class I had to submit a writing sample, preferably in the style of an editorial or magazine pitch. I wrote "Where would Jesus drill" about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and sent it in, fingers crossed.

When schedules were published, I saw that I was in! The class initially conflicted with a language requirement, but Hitt moved the time and we gathered once a week to hear each other's pieces, encourage one another in submission, and to be told, bluntly, where we needed to cut, shape, and get over ourselves.

I believe only 8 or 9 of stayed in the class and, I'm not entirely sure, but I believe I was the only one in the class aiming toward ordination at the time. We wrote about politics and personal experience, religion and education, science and mystery. And Jack Hitt inspired us all. If you've ever read his books, heard his pieces on This American Life, or flipped through a magazine he's edited- the man knows how to tell a story. He knows how to wind you up, play you out, and then bang you on the head and hang you out to dry. And he imparted as much of that skill as we could soak up in a semester.

He showed us how to sell ourselves, sell our writing, and sell the point we were trying to make. I wrote 300-500 word piece after piece in that class- some poignant, some funny, some angry. Hitt edited via email to us all, talked on the phone, and spun out three hours of some of the most useful class time I'd ever have.

Having written for radio prior to YDS, I was used to writing short, informative pieces. Hitt gave my writing a whole new edge, a sharpness and clarity that was absent before- perhaps because of necessity or because of lack of skill.

Even now, when I am writing a sermon (or a blog post), once I pass 500 words- I wonder if I still have anything to say or if I'm just talking. The very best of my sermons and posts are definitely influenced by that class and by Jack Hitt and what I learned from him. I read almost everything he puts out, in the hopes of continuing to shape my own style through his lessons. Of all the classes I took, of all the things I remember from seminary, the thing I ask myself daily is "What would Jesus write"?

Monday Prayer: Hymn to Christ

You who bridles untamed colts, 

Who gives flight to birds, 

Who steers ships along their course, 

Tame our wild hearts, 

Lift our souls to you, 

Steer us toward the safe harbor of your love. 

King of the saints, 

Invincible Lord of the Father, 

Prince of wisdom, 

Source of joy, 

Savior of our race, 

Cultivator of all life, 

Guardian of our desires, 

Whose sure hand guides us to heaven. 

Fisher of mean, 

You cast out the sweet bait of your gospel, 

You draw us out of the waters of sin, 

Shepherd of men, 

You call us with your sweet, gentle voice, 

You invite us into your eternal sheepfold. 

Fountain of mercy, 

Light of truth, 

Faith without limits, 

Love without end, 

Exemplar of virtue, 

Proclaimer of justice, 

Leader of men, 

Your footprints show the way to heaven. 

Mother of your people, 

Your celestial breasts give pure spiritual milk. 

You slake the thirst of all who have faith. 

Bridegroom of your people, 

Your celestial beauty inspires us to sing your praises, 

You lift our voices with hymns of everlasting praise. 

-Clement of Alexandria

cross-posted at RevGalPrayerPals

Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles

            This past spring, a mom from the preschool came back into the church after dropping off her child. In the corner of our parking lot, she had found a woman bent over and crying. Bringing her into the church office, the mother said that the woman was in pain from a broken tooth. The woman was obviously in a lot of pain and had sores on her face and her hands.

            She said that she had been in so much pain she wasn’t able to work. When we asked what she did, she looked at us and said, “I’m a working girl.” She waited for the judgment we didn’t have time to give because we were trying to figure out how to help her. The mom offered to drive her over to Safeway for some Orajel (pain killer) and some food. In the meantime, I made calls to find some help. I tried the Mary Magdalene center, but got no answer.

            I called LSSA and received the names of some dentists who might do low-cost or pro-bono work. However, we concluded that the entire situation might be better if we could get the woman to go to the emergency room and perhaps receive care, food, and contact with a social worker. I did not think we would end her professional career that day, but I hoped we might offer some light.

            Eventually, the mom came back to the church alone and very upset. After receiving the medication to make her tooth stop hurting, the woman wanted to go back to work. She was worried about the people who had her things and to whom she owed money. It was tough to console the mom who returned, who had been so hopeful that we would be able to save the woman. She cried to me, “How could she want to go back?”

            Because she does not know anything different right now, I said, but you helped her see a little something different today. And that will stay in her mind. It is hard to watch people who really want to help feel rejected and confused, but it happens in the work of reaching out to people in a broken world.

            I kept thinking about both those women this week when I was pondering Mary Magdalene in my heart- the bruised “working girl” and the very clean-cut preschool mom. As most of you know, I have a personal crusade to make it known far and wide that in the gospel accounts, Mary Magdalene is NOT (NOT!) a working girl (prostitute). In church history, she’s often been conflated with Mary of Bethany and the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet. While this did narrow down the number of characters in the Scripture, making it easier to keep everyone untangled, it gave Mary Magdalene a reputation she didn’t earn and threw into the shadows the one she did.

            In Luke 8, Mary (called Magdalene) has seven demons cast out of her by Jesus and then she, with several other women, begin to follow him as disciples. There is no mention of what the demons were. Presumably, like other demons encountered in Scripture, they are afflictions that prevent her functioning in society. They could be things like depression or anxiety, things we might recognize as psychological. They could be physical ailments- bleeding, epilepsy, screaming fits. They could be Satan trying to prevent her from becoming the instrument of God that she’s about to become.

            Nevertheless, she is freed from these demons and follows Jesus. Imagine what that was like for her. She had been invisible to society and now, suddenly, she was seen and known by the eyes of God in Jesus. She was restored, not only to wholeness, but to companionship, to community, to communion. Her body is whole because the body of Jesus, the body of God, came near and brought her consolation and healing.

            After her exorcism, we next see Mary Magdalene at the tomb. And she’s there in all the gospel accounts. She will not abandon the body that brought her own self back to life. Sometimes she’s with other women, sometimes she’s the first one there. I occasionally wonder if she ever left after Good Friday- after they laid him in the tomb. Maybe she never went home, but lingered in the shadows, in fitful waking and sleeping and sobbing, until Easter morning.

            This is the story that people need to know about Mary Magdalene. That she encountered the risen Christ and that she, she, carried the good news of resurrection to the other apostles- who were hiding in fear. That Jesus ate with prostitutes and tax collectors are facts that we can get from other stories and other characters. We do not need that good news from Mary Magdalene.

            What we need from her is the tower of faith that stood in grief by the tomb. The pillar of strength that recognized the face of her teacher, her rabbouni! The urging of the Spirit that hurried her feet over packed roads, singing, “He is risen! He is risen indeed!” The truth people need to hear about the story of Mary of  Magdala is not an exaggerated claim about what she might have been, but the bare facts of who she was- the Apostle to the Apostles, the first post- Easter evangelist, the foundation of the church because of the story she carried.

            If we elevate her too much, we risk her seeming too saintly, too out of reach. Yet, with Mary Magdalene, I do not think that will happen. When the other apostles seem uncertain or bombastic, unfaithful or confused, the eyes of the church turn to Mary Magdalene- who had real, physical experiences of healing, forgiveness, and hope.

             A working girl on Spenard doesn’t need to know, yet, that Jesus was a friend to prostitutes. She needs to know that the people who claim to follow Jesus are. People who are struggling, looking for hope, lingering because change does not seem possible need to know that the people who claim to follow Jesus are on their side. And in as much as we help anyone, we should never be doing it because it is what we think Jesus would want us to do. We should be doing because of what we know has been done for us through Jesus. And how did we come to know of this grace, this Easter hope, this work of forgiveness?

            Through the words of the first preacher, Mary Magdalene- who dared to follow Jesus, who dared to stay at the foot of the cross, who was prepared to honor the body of her Lord fallen- but met that body risen. Her story needs no embellishment or conflation, but it is powerful through the test of time. And if we dare to be like her, to trust in the healing that we have received and to seek the risen Christ, our story will stand as well.

            People want to know God’s history, and how will they hear it unless someone speaks it to them? People long to know that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, cannot, will not overcome it.

            With Mary Magdalene, like Mary Magdalene, I tell you, “Christ is risen.”

He is risen indeed.

Amen. 

God's Verbs

In trying to come up with a bulletin cover for this Sunday, we made a Wordle of the Ephesians 1:3-14 reading.

Those are the top 100 words from the reading. Clearly, Christ is the main word. Surprise! Yet, I'm drawn to the verbs- destined, ransomed, intended, blessed, sealed, adopted, believed, chose, received... Almost all of these refer to God's actions toward us (and all creation) through the Living Word, through Jesus, through Christ. We are often too quick to list or listen to harsh verbs about God's action. God does get angry (see: Amos, Ezekiel, Jonah), but typically with just cause. Yet, God's modus operandi- FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME- is not anger, but relationship. The verbs of Ephesians 1 reveal that desire- choosing, blessing, adopting- in a way that we should sit with, respond to, and ponder in our hearts.