Already Here

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La., 19 August 2018

What can possibly be left to say about bread? 

I mean, three weeks ago, I preached about how Jesus fed 5,000 people with two loaves by transforming the hearts of people. And we have been talking about bread ever since.

You might recall that two weeks ago, Mthr Petrula helped us see that Jesus’ miracle was not just about physical bread for physical bodies, but also about spiritual bread for our spiritual lives. 

Last week, the Bishop urged us to not get so bogged down in the mundane that we miss the mystery of God incarnate in ordinary things—like a morsel of bread. 

If I might be so bold as to put myself in the company of such excellent preachers.., three fine sermons on the meaning of bread.

And yet here I am, tasked with preaching about bread! I console myself with this thought: I’m preaching about bread yet again for a very good reason. And that’s because Jesus did a miraculous thing.., and then apparently spent days and multiple encounters explaining it, and making the connection—and the distinction—between bread for the belly and the bread of life.

Notice also the language in today’s Gospel. It is the most extreme yet! “Eat my flesh and drink my blood and if you don’t, you have no life in you. My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats me will live…."

Is it any wonder the early Christians were accused of cannibalism? More to the point, why is Jesus so adamant about this? Why does he use such… visceral language to talk about something that surely is not to be taken literally?!

So here’s what I think is going on in this extraordinary passage: Jesus is teaching incarnation. Jesus is trying to tell us that the world we experience as so separate from God isn’t at all. Jesus is trying to tell us that the life we experience as so mundane and... profane isn’t at all.  
 

Here’s what I think can be said yet again about bread. And wine. And everything else. Jesus is in it. Always has been, always will be. Just take a bight. He’s here. He’s all around. He’s already as much “in you” as the last meal you ate. That’s incarnation.

A few years ago—in 2009, to be exact—I spent a couple weeks traveling in Europe. One of the places I went was Nuremberg, Germany, the attraction there being the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi Party at events in Nuremberg. I spent a day there at a most amazing museum trying to absorb not only the horrors of the Holocaust and World Wart II, but also the unflinching, exhausting and redemptive efforts of Germans to come to terms with that ugly, evil chapter of their history.

By  my analysis, the Germans learned a very valuable lesson from that experience, namely that the only way to deal with the sins of the parents is to face them honestly, know them fully, claim them publicly and teach all of it to the next generation. I’m sure there’s a sermon in there somewhere!

But for the moment, I turn to St. Sebald’s, an awesomely beautiful church in the heart of Nuremberg. St. Sebald’s was bombed nearly into oblivion by the Allies near the end of World War II. It has been partially restored, but evidence of the devastation of the bombs was retained and built into the structure as an ongoing reminder and teacher of the lessons of the past.

Wandering through St. Sebald’s, absorbing beauty, reading placards explaining the past, making photos with my iPhone…, I came to a stop at a corner where the transept met the nave. Looking up at the majestically arching columns and ceiling vaults, I saw a painting hanging on one of the columns rather high over my head.

It was one of those paintings common in European churches: A nativity triptych featuring the Holy Family in the middle, the Magi on one side panel and the shepherds on the other.

How odd, I thought. What is that painting doing up there? It’s almost as if it’s not meant for human eyes!

And as I stood there gazing up, I was struck by the pleading quality of all of it: the architecture, the painting, as if to say “Here God, we’ve built this space for you, and every inch of it reaches for you, yearns for you. We’ve even hung a picture here to show you this is your home. Please, please come and be with us!”

Already Here, by Bette J. Kauffman

 

Much later, at home, I’m on my computer looking at my photos from the trip. And as I go through them, I pause at the picture of that painting high on a column and re-live that moment at St. Sebald’s. This time, the words that come to mind are these: “But you were already here.” You, God, were already here. Before the war, through the bombing, in the very stones and glass… you, God, were already here. 

Do you know where I got that? Do you know who first said something like that?

Let me remind you. The story is in Genesis Chapter 28. Jacob is on the road. He stops for the night, uses a stone for a pillow, and dreams of angels ascending and descending on a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. And God comes to him and makes him promises, the last of which is the most important: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…”

Then comes Genesis 28:16: Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 

And Jacob builds an altar, anoints it, names the place BethEL, eats bread, and goes on his way.

Jacob, the ancestor of Jesus, was discovering incarnation! And Jesus, in the radical language of today’s Gospel, is making himself part and parcel of it. Here’s how Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and author, explains it: 

What was personified in the body of Jesus was a manifestation of this one universal truth: Matter is, and has always been, the hiding place for Spirit, forever offering itself to be discovered anew. 

I have since had many of what I have come to call “You, God, are already here” moments. It’s like the Bishop said last week: I can only hold on to the acute awareness of God’s presence in and around me for about a nanosecond.

Then it’s gone. Then I have to discover it anew.

Why is that? Why is it so hard for humans to hold on to the knowledge that God lives in and among us?

I think there’s a couple reasons. One is that acute awareness of the presence of God overwhelms our senses. It’s like the psalmist says, more than once: Your precepts are too wonderful for me. The knowledge of you is more than my mind can bear.

Another is that we’re kind of not always sure we want that level of intimacy with God! I mean, we put some pretty awful stuff in our mouths! And some pretty awful stuff comes out of our mouths!

Intimacy with God should be kneeling in a church receiving the Eucharist, not stuffing myself with beer and boudin and bad-mouthing my neighbor, right?

We want God to be in places WE find godly. We really don’t want God to be in that which we find ugly or simply mundane. We especially don’t want God to be in people who hurt us, or who don’t think and behave the way we think they should.

Fortunately, we don’t get to choose. God is already here, within and among us. Or, as a meme I found and shared on Facebook last week says, “God loves everyone whether you like it or not.”

Our choice in the matter of incarnation is to ignore, deny, cover up and try to build a wall separating ourselves from God within and around us and in our neighbors. Or we can seek God in ourselves and each other and all of Creation, and thereby, slowly, over time, become what we receive.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.