Ingest God's Love Aug 19,2012

This week my pals at the Lectionary Lab, affectionately known as “Two Bubbas and a Bible” shared the following story as told by Robert Coleman in his book Written in Blood:
“There was a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. For various reasons, the boy was the only donor whose blood could save his sister. The doctor asked, ‘Would you give your blood to Mary?’ The little boy’s lower lip began to tremble, then he took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes, for my sister.’
After the nurse inserted the needle into his arm, the little boy began to look very worried, then he crossed himself, finally he looked at the doctor and said, ‘When do I die?’”
Jesus said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13). The boy in this story had that love for his sister Mary. He was willing to die so she could live.
Ragaei (Rah-jhee) Abdelfattah (Ab-del-fatah), an Egyptian American, was on his second voluntary tour as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, a job that took him to eastern Afghanistan to partner with local officials and the State Department envoy for nation building—Greg Lodinsky’s brother, Jeff-- to establish schools and health clinics and to deliver electricity. On Wednesday, August 8, as Jeff, Ragaei and three NATO security officers were walking to a meeting, two suicide bombers detonated their vest bombs as they approached the peacekeeping party. Ragaei flung himself over Jeff, losing his own life, while saving his friend’s.
Jesus said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13).
The boy in the story was willing to do this.
Jeff’s friend in Afghanistan did do this.
Would we? Would you? Would I? I don’t know.
Would God? Did God? As my father was fond of saying, You bet, God did it in spades.
“For God so loved the world that [God] gave [God’s] only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16).
This, my friends, is what Jesus is getting at in all this “Bread of Life” stuff we’ve been hearing the past few weeks.
God so loved the world that God came to us, in the flesh, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Fully human yet also fully divine, God gave Godself to us wholly and completely, out of God’s abundant never-ending always-unfolding love FOR US.
God, in the person of Jesus Christ, died on that cross for us. But not because we were bad and not because we were hopeless, but because God wanted to show us, to prove to us, that believing in God defeats death, once and for all. That believing in Jesus, the Son of God, assures us of everlasting—never-ending life.
This late summer dip into the Gospel of John gives us a glimpse into the overarching theme of the fourth gospel: that through a series of signs and wonders, Jesus is shown to be God in the flesh. John uses a number of metaphors to show his readers that Jesus is, indeed, God:  Jesus the one true vine, Jesus the one true bread, Jesus the living water which, when we drink it, will never leave us thirsty. John’s Gospel uses story after story to help us identify just who this Jesus is and why this Jesus is food, indeed.
From the first miracle at Cana in Galilee, when Jesus turns water into wine, to the plea of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well to “drink this living water, always,”(John 4:15) to the feeding of the five thousand, we are led to this place, to this penultimate lesson taught by Jesus and told to us by John: ‘I am the Bread of Life. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life’
These are tough words to hear and a difficult concept to grasp, which is why John took so many verses to drive this point home. What John is saying, story after story, is that God’s love, as given to us in Jesus the Christ can’t be explained…it can’t be rationalized…it can’t be figured out without diving in full-bore, headfirst. God’s Love as given to us through Jesus, must be experienced. And it is experienced through the act of receiving communion, of coming, as a community, to this altar, to be fed the bread and wine that has been infused with God’s Love. Because when we receive this bread and this wine, when we take and eat, we become filled…filled with the very Love God gave to us in Jesus the man….a Love that then sends us out to be this Love in the World.
On this altar, week after week, we take these creatures of earth human hands have made—bread and wine---and through our communal prayer of hope, our corporate faith in the promise of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit, they are turned into Divine Food.
 In the mysterious and holy ways of God the mundane is transformed into the magnificent, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary and our own flawed, doubting, questioning selves are turned into Disciples of Christ, Followers of God, Instruments of the Holy Spirit.
So, it’s up to us to come to this altar of God with hands outstretched, ready to be fed this Holy Food. Because, when we eat this Holy Food, when we ingest God’s love, we can be the people God asks us to be. Because by feeding on the Holy Food of Christ we are strengthened, emboldened and encouraged to lay down our life for another. Just like the boy in the story, just like Jeff’s friend and just like Jesus.
Amen.

Halting HALT through Holy Food

+The angel says to Elijah:
“Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” (1 Kings 19:5)
Everyone needs nourishment--strength for this journey we call life. A journey full of ups and downs, highs and lows. Sometimes we just muddle through, while other times we soar and still other times, so haggard by trouble and hopelessness we, just like Elijah in today’s reading from Kings, want to lie down and give up.
Elijah had been on a roll! He had defeated formidable pagan foes and had stood up to crazy old King Ahab’s wife Jezebel after she introduced the pagan ideals to the people in the first place. He had been doing excellent work, but as is the case with anyone who works long and hard at their job, perspective can be lost and suddenly a challenge that, before the stress of all the long hours took its toll, would have seemed difficult but doable feels overwhelming and impossible. Elijah was worn out, cranky and at a loss.
AA has a saying : HALT, H-A-L-T is a slogan that means:  never get too Hungry, too Angry, too Lonely or too Tired.  The wisdom behind this slogan is that when we get too hungry too angry too lonely or too tired we lose perspective, get run down and become vulnerable. Elijah’s HALT was working overtime… he was too hungry, too angry, too lonely and too tired. And so he plopped down under that broom tree and gave up.
What happens next is a brilliant foreshadowing of our Gospel readings for this month, and a reminder about the importance of spiritual sustenance, about how important it is for us to provide our bodies, our minds and our souls with nourishment.
Exhausted, Elijah falls asleep under the tree, half expecting…hoping...praying… that he would die. That’s how out of sorts he was, Elijah couldn’t see any way out of his distress, so he prayed that God would let him die. But instead of letting him die, God encouraged Elijah to live.
Awakened by the rush of busy angels, or perhaps by the smell of baked goods Elijah is presented with a freshly baked cake and a refreshing jar of water. No doubt Elijah thought he was dreaming, for he just lays back down again until the angel returns, saying, “get up, eat and get going. There is work to do and we need you to be strong for your journey.” So he did. He ate and was strengthened to do the work he was given to do.
He ate and he was strengthened. That’s just what Jesus is telling us to do in the Bread of Life discourse which is our Gospel message for the month of August. Jesus is food indeed, a food that, when we receive it, when we partake of it, will never leave us hungry, will never leave us thirsty. Holy Food for Holy People.
Now this bread of life stuff can go any number of ways—we, as followers of Jesus, as Christians, can be viewed as cannibals (wait til you hear next week’s Gospel, the cannibalism imagery is really difficult to ignore then) or, on the other end, all of this can be viewed as simply a metaphor…nothing more than a fairytale of imagery used by Jesus to make the point that he was the real deal. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between: we aren’t cannibals, nor are we gullible saps falling for this itinerant preacher from Nazareth’s catchy marketing plan.
What we are---what we are called to be—are followers of this man named Jesus, believers in this Messiah the Christ, people who try our very best to live out the ideals handed down to us by teachers, by prophets and by the Son of God.
We are called to do the work of Elijah, to do the work of all the prophets, to do the work Jesus has given us to do.
And to do this work well, we need to nourishment. Nourishment of both body and soul.
The act of receiving communion nourishes us for this work. But our nourishment comes from more than this holy meal. It comes from fellowship, it comes from service, it comes from being a community of people offering refreshment, offering hope, offering a way of life that defeats hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness. A community that knocks the socks off of HALT.
The holy meal we gather to receive feeds us but without the community that surrounds this meal, there is no nourishment in the sacrament, there is no strength to be gathered from the prayers. This is why I am forbidden from celebrating the Eucharist alone. It means nothing if done in a vacuum, it means nothing if we try and do it alone.
Elijah had run off to be alone, and while by himself, while alone he lost his way. While alone, he lost his will. He needed to, as we heard last week, “get up and walk.” To walk until he got to the other side…to walk until he reached the source of all nourishment: God.  And he did…for forty days he walked until reaching Mt Horeb where God, in that wonderful scene from scripture, nourishes his soul in the absolute quiet that followed the strong wind, the earthquake and the fire. From there, his soul nourished by God, Elijah headed to Damascus where he established a new community of faith to be led by his protégé Elisha. Physically nourished by the angelic meal of fresh baked cakes and cool water, Elijah made his way to the site of his spiritual nourishment and from there he was able to be the prophet he was meant to be. He prophesied to others, making disciples, and creating community.
This is the formula Jesus wants us to follow. We get nourishment from him and from others here in this community, strengthening us to go out into the world, doing the work we’ve been given to do. So get up, eat and be strengthened, we have work to do. Amen.

Just Walk Proper 13 Aug 5 2012

Man, I thought I lived in a fishbowl…but I have the epitome of privacy compared to poor Jesus. This morning the folks he had just fed (in the feeding of the 5,000 from last week)—have gotten hungry again. So…. They start looking for Jesus. Realizing he’s gone, they climb into boats and cross the lake to find him. Now this isn’t some small pond, this is a Lake roughly the size of Chautauqua lake….yet they climb into row boats and cross the lake in search of that miracle food purveyor: Jesus of Nazareth.
People do amazing things when hungry.
Although Jesus isn’t surprised that they’ve come… he is a tad annoyed at their shortsightedness—happy to have their stomachs filled but completely oblivious to the real reason for His presence in their lives….just like we’re often oblivious to the real reason for Jesus’ presence in our lives. You see, Jesus didn’t come to fill our stomachs, Jesus came to fill our souls. But, and Jesus knew this,  it’s really difficult to pay attention to one’s soul if one’s stomach is growling. So, he filled their stomachs hoping—maybe even assuming---that once their stomachs were full, they’d realize just how empty their souls remained. But to do that, to realize how empty we may feel, is not so simple. There’s no definitive signal---like a growling stomach---to tell us we’re spiritually empty, that we need some spiritual nourishment. It takes awhile to figure it out.
And, apparently, it takes awhile to explain it as well.
In John’s gospel, Jesus spends four Sundays trying to get his followers, those then and us now, to distinguish between physical and spiritual hunger. It’s annoying as we hear, again, again, again and AGAIN that the manna from Exodus and the multiplication of loaves and fishes in the gospels is nothing…NOTHING compared to The Bread of Life...the bread that is Jesus.
And while in theory we may join with the folks from the gospel and say, “yes Jesus give us this spiritual bread forever,” it’s a lot more involved than just saying yes. We can’t just say it. We have to live it. We have to believe it. We have to accept it. We have to receive it.
You see, since time began we have been separated from God. And, as I say all the time, God has been, since time began, trying to bridge that gap, trying to reach us, trying to touch us.
And religion, according to philosopher Louis Dupre is how we reach out toward God. It’s how we try to bridge the gap from our end of this divide.
Remember Michelangelo’s depiction of Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? In it is the iconic image of Adam-- stretched out on the ground, dazed and confused, one arm, one hand, reaching out toward an old and slightly wild looking God, who’s also stretching out an arm, a hand, with one finger almost touching Adam’s. In between is a teeny space separating God from humanity. Separating us from God.
Dupre says that our entire life is lived in that tiny space between God’s finger and Adam’s hand. Trying to bridge that gap.
The problem is, we don’t know how. We try to be good and faithful Christians, but it doesn’t always work. It doesn’t work because we forget to do what Jesus told us to do---- believe and to trust in him.
 It doesn’t work because instead of letting go and trusting God, we hold on and try to do it on our own: “Just show us how to do it and we’ll do it ourselves, God. We really don’t need this Jesus fellow…just give us the magic formula and we’ll take care of things.”  That never works. It doesn’t work because it isn’t about us, it isn’t about our filled bellies, it isn’t about what we can do. It’s about what God does. And what God has done is given us Jesus.
Jesus says, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of God will GIVE you” And the people respond, “OK, so how do we learn to get this food ourselves?”
Jesus tries again. “This is the work OF GOD. (God’s work; not our work): That you believe in the one God sent. It’s a gift. God does the doing, the sending. We do the receiving. The accepting.
You see, Jesus is the one who fills up that tiny space between God’s finger and Adam’s hand. Jesus bridges that gap, so tiny in the painting, so vast in our lives. What we need to do is climb up on that bridge, walk across it and touch the outstretched hand of God.
It really is that simple: just walk.
Our own Kathy Boone has given me permission to share a dream she had last year. Nervous about walking across a very rickety bridge while vacationing in Central America, Kathy went to bed the night before this trek across the long and not very sturdy looking bridge, fairly certain she wouldn’t take the walk--that she would stay safely on this side of the divide. But then she had a dream. A dream in which she was standing in a long line of people, all of whom were waiting to cross that bridge. The line was stalled, no one was moving at all and it looked like nobody was going to cross the bridge that day when suddenly, a woman using a walker, a woman bearing a distinct resemblance to our own Marie Hubbard, raised her head and said, simply and firmly: Just walk. When Kathy awoke she realized, “Marie is telling me: go for it. Stop worrying and just do it. JUST WALK.”
That’s really it. The wisdom from one of our own beloved elders, the wisdom of God’s own Son, our Savior: Just walk. When hungry: spiritually, emotionally and thoroughly hungry we are to put one foot in front of the other, and walk across the bridge of faith, the bridge that is Jesus, crossing over into the outstretched arms of our God. +