Bread

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 12 August 2012

A couple of years ago, I spent 10 days traveling about Europe. Since returning home, I have more than once stood in the bread section of the supermarket thinking, “We U.S. Americans have a great deal to learn from the Europeans about the production of bread!”

Bread in my Spanish Mother's cupboard.*

In Europe, bread is fresh each and every morning, and often still warm when it gets to your table. It comes in a variety of rolls and buns and small loaves, crusty on the outside, soft on the inside, brimming with aroma and flavor. I hardly noticed that, in Europe, bread is often served without butter. It’s so good it doesn’t need butter.

It is no coincidence that bread figures prominently throughout the Bible whenever God has a lesson for humankind. Thus when Jesus taught us to pray for “our daily bread,” he was also teaching us to ask for messages and lessons from God.

The prophet Elijah has had to flee from the death threats of Jezebel ( I Kings 19:4-8, 9-15, NRSV), wife of Ahab, King of Israel. He is discouraged; he believes himself to be a failure. And so he sits under a tree and asks to die.

But God has other plans. He provides food for Elijah, food so nutritious that it sustains Elijah on his long trek back into the wilderness to Horeb, the mountain of God. There was something special about that food, which is called “cake” in this passage, but must have been rather bread-like to have been baked on hot stones.

From the continuation of Elijah’s story, we know that he encounters God on Mount Horeb, just as Moses had before him. It is no coincidence that Elijah’s story reminds us of “manna,” the bread from heaven God provided to the Israelites on their original trek through the wilderness.

Bread from God seems always to have more than one purpose. It is first, of course, to ensure the physical survival of God’s people—the Israelites on their exodus journey, Elijah on his pilgrimage back to the mountain of God.

But bread from God also has spiritual purposes. It reminds us of our dependence on the bounty of the earth for our human existence. Although we indeed must cultivate and plant and reap, we had nothing to do with creating this fertile planet and we cannot control the weather that makes harvest possible and fruitful. Surely I’m not the only one awestruck by the differences between our planet home and the barren surface of Mars, as revealed to us this past week by Curiosity.

Elijah had apparently lost faith in God’s purpose for his life, so he sulked under the tree and—rather melodramatically—wished to die because his prophetic word had indeed raised the ire of those at whom it was directed.

You have heard, “No good deed will go unpunished!” but apparently Elijah had not heard it!

Today’s psalmist seems to have understood that the connection between God and daily bread has meaning beyond physical survival. Taste and see that the Lord is good, he writes, happy are they who trust in him (Psalm 34:8, NRSV). We and Elijah are reminded that bread from God has larger meaning.

What, then, should we make of today’s Gospel reading? In the context of a long history of bread given, received and celebrated as a sign of God’s grace and faithful care, what are we to make of the complaining that breaks out when Jesus claims to be living bread from heaven (John 6:35, 41-51, NRSV)?

And not only do the good church people of that day complain, but they also attempt to discredit Jesus! Notice that they do not complain that he claims to be bread. That metaphor apparently does not give them a moment’s pause.

Rather, they complain because he claims to have come down from heaven. Here’s where the story begins to sound like a family reunion to me, with all the aunts and uncles sitting around gossiping and weighing the merits of people not present by identifying what family they come from.

You have heard these kinds of conversations! “Oh, well, you know, she’s from the Such & Such family,” or “His father is so and so,” “his brother did thus and such,” as if that’s all you need to know about a person to judge him or her.

So here’s my question: Had we been among those listening to Jesus proclaim he was the Bread of Life come down from heaven, how might we have responded?

Complaining is certainly alive and well. When someone else’s version of reality does not line up with our own, we assume it cannot be true. When we do not like something we hear, we belittle it and attempt to discredit the speaker.

We hear this from talk show hosts, as well as from people who call in to voice their opinions, often on things about which they know little and often in ways that label all other points of view as unworthy before they have even been expressed. We hear it at parties and family reunions, in offices and at church.

Jesus said lots of things that did not sit well with the good church people of his day.., and still don’t. Complaining and discrediting are alive and well, in our churches as well as in our politics and throughout everyday life.

Try to tell those who operate on a “teach them a lesson” mentality about turning the other cheek and see how far you get. Bring up what Jesus said about violence in a discussion of, say, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you might be accused of being un-American.

Dare to mention what Jesus said about taking care of the poor when the discussion turns to welfare, or point out that he healed everyone who asked without question in a discussion of health care, and you will be tagged a socialist.

What Jesus taught 2000 years ago is as unpopular today as it was then, even among those who claim to follow him.

Anyone who participates in social media knows that posting pithy quotes is a really popular way to fill up all of that online space and appear to have a lot to say to all of your friends and followers. I scroll over most of them pretty quickly, but recently I saw one that seemed sadly right on. It went something like this: “People will be mean, but nobody’s meaner than the person being mean for Jesus.”

We are about to share in the Eucharistic bread, and we are quite clear that we do it not to satisfy physical hunger but because of its larger meaning. But what do we think it means?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ.

Jesus said he was living bread, given for the life of the world. And if we look at his ministry along with his teachings, we know that the bread of life lives, not only within us, but within the least desired and least loved of humanity. This is Christ’s true presence.

AMEN

*I took this photo in the summer of 1979 when I was an exchange student in Spain and lived with a Spanish woman. My more recent travel in Central Europe was in the summer of 2009.

Touch of Faith

Christ Church, St. Joseph, 1 July 2012

This is really not the sermon I wanted to write and preach today!

And that’s because I have to begin with suffering—acute suffering. Human anguish of body and spirit.

We in this room are all old enough to have been there. We’ve been through deaths and some of us divorces, jobs that ended, businesses that failed, economic crises.

A couple who are friends of mine both used to have their own businesses, and they made decent money for many years. They own a nice, middle class home. Then suddenly a few years ago, both businesses failed at the same time. They discovered that their pockets weren’t as deep as they had thought.

The older we get, the more suffering we have seen and survived. Like David, we have lost and grieved beloved family and friends (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27, NRSV). Having suffered is one of the defining differences between “young” and “old.” 
                                  

King David mourning Saul and Jonathan.

Of course, sometimes children suffer too. And those who care for critically ill children often comment on how wise beyond their years those children become.

Suffering is part of the human condition, in our day just as in Jesus’ day, and every day in between. One of my spiritual mentors, a Franciscan monk, priest and writer by the name of Fr. Richard Rohr, defines human suffering as loss of control.

We humans strive to control our lives. We in this individualistic society especially take seriously the cultural value that each and every one of us is responsible for our own lives and those of our families.

But we lose control a lot.

We lose control when people we love change in ways that fundamentally change their relationship to us, and sometimes take them out of our lives.

We might be able to influence the aging process by making healthy choices, but we ultimately cannot control it.

We lose control when illness takes over our bodies at any age.

We lose control when a huge, complex economic system, dependent on activities of many people with many motives, some good, some not so good, deals a blow to our own economic security.

And we suffer. And then comes the question, what do we do with our suffering? And the answer to that is the measure of us as people of faith.

If we do not deal with our suffering creatively.., if we do not embrace it and seek the lessons it has to teach us, we will merely pass it on to others.

Suffering is isolating. We feel alone in our suffering! Like no one else really, fully understands. Why me? we ask—and it’s God we are asking!

But you know what? God can handle that question. God can handle our crying out. God can handle our lamentations. Our anger. Our accusations. Go ahead! The Psalms model exactly how to do it!!

But know that God is not necessarily going to give us an explanation. I believe explanations and “reasons” for things are human needs and behaviors. WE are accountable to each other. God is not required to give an account to us.

But God is with us. That’s what we were given in the person of Jesus the Christ! God with us. That’s what we are continuously given in the Holy Spirit! A bit of God within us.

And somehow knowing that, and even in the midst of desperation and despair and feelings of utter alone-ness, reaching for God’s healing—like the woman in today’s Gospel story—is the very definition of faith.

How do we do that? How do we reach for God when Jesus is not walking among us? Maybe just by being still and open, both to our suffering and God’s response to our suffering.

Episcopal priest Suzanne Guthrie wrote this about it:

When despair has obliterated ordinary prayer; when the psalms fail and all words are stupid and meaningless, the mantle of loneliness surrounding me becomes a mantle of dark and wordless love. This darkness reveals the paradox of prayer: in the absence of God, all there is.. is God. (from Grace's Window: Entering the Seasons of Prayer)

The great value of suffering is that it strips us of all illusions of self-sufficiency. And for some of us who really, really believe we are self-made people, it can take a lot of suffering to get our ego out of the way. It feels like dying.

It IS dying. That lesson is in the Biblical account over and over again. Saul had to die for David to become king. A seed must die for a new plant to grow. Jesus had to die so that we may live. Our own Gospel story (Mark 5:21-43, NRSV).

I wonder how you imagine this story? How do you see it in your mind’s eye? 

If you do a Google images search using a phrase like "woman touching hem of Jesus," you'll find lots of artistic interpretations of the scene. Virtually every one features a woman on her hands and knees--no pride, no self-sufficiency, no ego—arm outstretched, fingers splayed. I urge you to try on that posture!

A woman touches the hem of Jesus' garment.

 The central story and mystery of our faith is that something must die in order for something new to be born. And when, in our desperation and despair, we reach for God’s healing, it will be there. Some how, some way.

It might come to us in a private moment of utter stillness before God. It might come to us through the beauty of the sky or a leaf or a rock or the smell of rain or the sound of kids playing. It might come to us through the touch of another person.

It might NOT take the form we hoped for—like physical healing, restored wealth, reconciliation and renewed relationship. But God’s healing will come, some how, some way, in some form.

And then the greatest miracle of all happens: We become God’s healing touch in a hurting world. We become what the Native Americans called the wounded healer, the one who can heal precisely because of our own wounds and the grace of God we know because of them.

Mother Teresa said, Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.  

AMEN

Rise and Serve: A Sermon for 4 February 2012

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

A few evenings ago, I spent a couple of hours visiting with a friend who recently returned from spending about six week over the holidays visiting her French cousin who lives in a village not too far from Paris.

While she was there, my friend got a bad case of stomach virus. Her host family decided that she needed medical attention. They called the family doctor, who came to the house to tend to my friend.

What a novel concept that is for us here in the U.S., where I strongly suspect no doctor has made a house call in some 25 years!

In today’s Gospel lesson (Mark 1:29-39, NRSV) Jesus makes a house call. That actually is not what he set out to do. If you can recall for a moment last Sunday’s Gospel, you’ll know that Jesus came to the home of Simon and Andrew straight from “teaching with authority” and casting out a demon in the local synagogue.

So he’s going to Simon and Andrew’s home to spend the remainder of the Sabbath eating and resting. But when he arrives and is immediately told of the mother-in-law’s illness, Jesus does what Jesus does: He heals her—without even asking about her medical insurance or ability to pay!

John Bridges, Christ Healing the Mother-in-Law of Simon Peter

Today’s lessons are rather perfect for a Deacon preacher! First, deacons are charged with being the prophetic voice of the church. That is, like the prophets of old, we contemporary deacons are called to remind the church of how it is to serve God in the world. Care for the sick is one of those ways, as modeled for us by Jesus the Christ, the only Son of God.

                                    
When a healing story is part of our Gospel lesson, I am reminded to look critically at our contemporary society and how we manage health care, and to ask people of faith to do the same. I stay out of the politics of saying exactly HOW we should do it. But Jesus offers us a model of healing for all that should be our ideal and goal.

Second, this story is ideal for deacon preachers because the healed woman immediately gets up to serve. Likewise, deacons model servant ministry by being servants themselves, and encourage and enable the servant ministry of everyone, not only lay people specifically but the church in general. We are to bring the real needs of the world to the church and facilitate the church’s response to those needs.

I’m a member of the Association for Episcopal Deacons, and one of the things we do at our triennial assemblies is share ideas and strategies for enabling the ministries of the congregations we serve. The association itself also engages in ministry. Most recently the AED began a national initiative to address poverty and the causes of poverty in this country.

But in another way, these texts are a challenge to deacons, and not only to deacons but to all Christians. They are a challenge because they make demands on us and they call us to examine critically some of our most cherished values.

Paul’s message to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 9:15-23, NRSV) really hits us over the head with that, and I'll return to that lesson in a minute. But first, we have more to learn from Jesus.

He goes to the home of friends to eat and rest, but upon arrival is immediately confronted with need. And he sets aside his own needs to respond to that need.

Moreover, no sooner does the sun go down, but that he is confronted by the world at his doorstep—a world of sick people. And he tends to their needs.

I don’t know about you but I think caller ID is the greatest invention since sliced bread! And once I have ended a day of work and gone home to eat and rest, I would much rather ignore those calls that are likely to demand more of me.

More than one Gospel story reminds us that Jesus responded to the needs of people, even when he himself was tired and needed rest.

But the remainder of this story is also a very important lesson for us. Early the next morning, Jesus got up and slipped away by himself to a place of prayer and meditation. Jesus needed to recharge his batteries, so to speak, and so.. do.. we.

Lent is fast approaching. We think of it as a time we “give up” something: chocolate, beer, whatever. And that is fine and good. Fasting is a Lenten discipline. But this year, think about also using Lent to recharge your spiritual batteries. If Jesus needed to get away to a place of prayer and meditation, so do we. Serving a hurting world is hard enough, and impossible to do unless we are connected to the source of all healing.

Indeed, the mother-in-law in this story is worthy of our attention as well. Healing is not only about the body, but about the spirit as well.

Note that this story offers not a single hint of “let’s make a deal.” Jesus doesn’t extract any promise from the woman that she will serve if he heals her, and she does not attempt to “earn” her healing with any promised service.

Simply put, Jesus heals because that’s what he does; she gets up and serves as a natural response to that healing. We express our connection with Divine love and forgiveness by sharing that Divine love and forgiveness in service to the world.

Now back to Paul. What in the world can we make of this notion that we can or should be “all things to all people”? What a strange idea!

We are way more inclined to believe things like, “to thine own self be true.” We are devotees of Individualism with a capital I—the notion that each of us is unique and different and entitled to live out our uniqueness and individuality in every possible way. And along with individualism comes “personal responsibility,” the idea that each of us is responsible for ourselves and our own well-being.

Personal responsibility and respect for individual differences are useful concepts. We need to learn those things and practice them in our relationships with others.

But all too often they spill over into much less flattering things, things like needing to always be right—at the expense of all who disagree with me, needing to feel safe—at the expense of the civil liberties of others, needing to exercise my right to choose or to do—without regard for how my choices or deeds might hurt others.

Paul offers us an alternative vision, an alternative devoid of damaging ego claims. Indeed, he sounds devoid of ego. But he offers this vision from a position of great emotional and spiritual maturity and strength. Only the truly strong can become weak in order to reach out to the weak. Only the free can give up freedom in order to become one with those who are not free.

And only those who know themselves to be beloved children of God can rise and serve, like Simon’s mother-in-law, and strive to be “all things to all people” for the sake of the gospel, like Paul.

 AMEN