The Bread of Life and the Armor of our Faith Strengthens Us to Do What is Right While Changing What is Wrong Proper 16B Grace Lockport Aug 26 2018

+Today we come to the end of what is commonly referred to as the Bread of Life Discourse in John’s Gospel. The stage was set on the last Sunday of July when we heard the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. In this story Philip is unbelieving---overwhelmed by the prospect of feeding over 5,000 people with a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread---so Jesus begins to compare and contrast the food that perishes vs the food that doesn’t. And then for the next four Sundays endless rhetoric about Jesus being this Bread of Life. At first Jesus was being somewhat vague in exactly what he meant by “I am the bread of life.” It seemed he was just riffing on what had happened with the feeding stories— that the physical hunger we feel can never be fully and forever satisfied, but that belief and faith in the eternal food—the Bread of Life--  will stave off our spiritual hunger forever. 

But then, especially the last two Sundays, Jesus gets real graphic—- we must eat of his body and drink of his blood in order to be in full relationship with him and therefore, with God. 

“Eat my flesh, drink my blood.” Even though we celebrate the Eucharist every week, even though we hear “Take, Eat and Take drink” every week, there is something about how John phrases it or perhaps it is how relentless the message has been, that by this week, the last Sunday of the bread of life discourse, many of us are at the point of shouting “all right already….we get it. You are the bread of life, unless we eat of your body and drink of your blood we’ll never enter the kingdom of God. Got it…can we move on now?” 

But…being a former psychotherapist I can’t help but remember one of the first things I learned in counseling school—-if a client keeps coming back to a particular topic, regardless of what they identify as their presenting issue——the topic they keep returning too? That’s the real issue, that’s the real point.

      So, in that vein, I have resisted the temptation of many a preacher these past weeks who have avoided John’s Gospel, focusing instead on the literature of the Hebrew prophets and the poetry of the letter to the Ephesians. I can’t let people repeatedly, week in and week out, hear things like:

“Those who eat my body” and just let that go. So here I am, for the fourth straight week, diving into the Bread of Life!”

     Today, as Jesus winds down the 50 plus verse soliloquy on how his body is food indeed, and our reading from Ephesians emphasizes the importance, the absolute necessity, of clothing ourselves in the armor of God’s love to combat the forces of darkness and evil in the world, we can connect what Jesus is saying through John to what Paul is saying to the church in Ephesus. 

      You, Jesus, crucified and risen, is indeed the fuel of our faith. Abiding in, dwelling in him, and he in us clothes us with an armor that can—and does—protect us from what ails this lost and increasingly hurting world. 

Abiding in God is what protected the ancient Israelites as they fled the slavery and oppression of Pharaoh, it’s what protected Mary the mother of Jesus as she lived into saying yes to God, it’s what protected Joseph as he refused to turn his back on Mary but instead stood by her side doing the right thing for her, the right thing for God. 

Abiding in God through Christ, wearing the full armor of God is what gave Martin Luther King the courage to have a dream, it’s what fueled the men at Stonewall to confront the brutality of the police, it’s what fills our hearts, minds and souls when we stand up against hatred, bullying and violence. It’s what makes our hearts sink and our tempers flare when we hear some Roman Catholic leaders seemingly defend child molesters instead of ensuring that God’s children are always safe in their churches. 

Abiding in God through the nourishment of all that Jesus was and is strengthens us to fight the good fight, to walk the lonely mile and to sing the song of faith through the words of our Eucharistic Prayer: Take Eat, this is my body, given for you. 

Folks, we are to take and remember. 

We are to remember the faith and the courage of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Leah and Rachel. We are to remember how Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathon, Tamar, Deborah, Judith, Elizabeth, Zechariah,J ohn, Joseph and Mary all wore the armor of God protecting themselves against those who said no while following God’s urging to say yes,  to do the right thing.

By taking and eating we remember Jesus.By taking and eating we are clothed in the armor of God. 

By coming to this altar to be fed, we are emboldened, strengthened, prodded and pushed to turn this world, through our own acts of kindness, justice and mercy, into the vision and dream God has had for us since the beginning of time.

The Bread of Life and the Armor of our Faith strengthens us to do what is right while changing what is wrong. Right here and right now, the world needs us to do this. So, take, eat and do the work that we have been given to do. Love God, love our neighbor and change the world.

Amen.

Take and Eat: For Alone We are Nothing, But Together We Are Everything Proper 15 St Martin-in-the-Field Grand Island Aug 19, 2018

+Bishop Bill shared this story with me: he was officiating at a funeral for people who were not familiar with the church. But the family, for reasons unknown to the Bishop, but clearly important to them, wanted communion at the service, so in a funeral chapel, not one of our churches, Bishop Bill officiated and celebrated the Holy Eucharist. When the time came for communion, the Bishop said that anyone who felt drawn to receive communion was invited to do so. As he distributed communion he noticed a little boy in the back of the chapel…it was clear that the boy was “feeling drawn” but didn’t come forward. Later at the reception, the Bishop spoke to the boy’s father who said the boy desperately wanted to receive communion but said, “I can’t, we’d be eating Auntie’s body.”
It makes sense. For someone who wasn’t raised in the church and was at a funeral with communion for the first time, how must it sound to hear “Take Eat, this is my body” …while staring at a casket with the body of your Aunt in it? Of course, the boy was torn, bewildered, scared.
And even for those of us familiar with the ways of communion and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist today, this whole Bread of Life thing gets kind of creepy doesn’t it?
Jesus says:  only those of us who will eat his body and drink his blood will have eternal life.
Of course, we use this imagery and almost exactly these words, each and every time we celebrate the Eucharist “This is my body, take eat, this is my blood, take, drink….”but somehow, because we’ve heard it for so long, because we haven’t thought about it that much, because we just excuse it as one of those “mysteries of faith,” we let those words roll of our back. But there’s something about how John words it in today’s Gospel that makes me understand how freaked out the temple authorities were then, and how freaked out that little boy was last week.
Back in Jesus’ day and in the early days of Xnty this concept of eating of Jesus’ Body and drinking of Jesus’ blood was downright scandalous. The creepiness, the discomfort with which many of us heard the words of today’s Gospel was magnified as they heard Jesus speak them…it smacked of cannibalism and cannibalism then, just as it is now, was taboo, forbidden. It was horrifying, disgusting, evil.
And yet, it is one of the foundations of our faith—to take to eat, to remember.
 How do we explain this—to those unfamiliar with our faith and, if we want to be honest, to ourselves.
how to understand it?
     Well, I didn’t have a good answer until I read some words written by Elizabeth Kaeton, an Episcopal Priest in Delaware who, while searching for inspiration as she prepared her third sermon in a row about the Bread of Life discourse, pulled out her Oxford Dictionary of the English language and looked up “bread.” By doing that she, and in turn I, discovered that the word we use to describe bread wasn’t always bread, and by understanding that, this whole thing   becomes a lot less creepy and lot more poignant and life giving. (many thanks to Elizabeth's weekly email of last week: Telling Secrets, I am the Bread of Life, August 12, 2018 received via email)

 Let me explain:
The substance we commonly refer to as bread was, before 1200 or so, called hlaf---loaf.
It was only around 1200 that the common usage switched from the old middle English word hlaf or loaf gave way to the Germanic based word, brud or bread.
Hlaf meant one whole thing ---- while brud, bread, meant a portion of, a piece of….
When I read this, it hit me---Jesus is talking to us about the interconnectedness of God’s creation, of the desperate need we have for each other and for God. And the desperate need God has us. Think about it---God so longed for us, so wanted to understand us that God became one of us, taking flesh and bone to to walk among us as Jesus. I suppose it’s easy to think of us as needing to be in relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but how often do we consider how much God needs/wants/longs for us?
    This change in the word that we use for bread highlights that for me---when Jesus said he was the bread of life he most certainly wasn’t speaking English. And when John wrote about Jesus’ life he most certainly did not write it in English BUT when the Bible was translated into English ---in the 16th century—the word used was not Hlaf—the whole thing---but brud, bread, a piece of, a portion.
  I am the Bread of Life, says Jesus, only those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will be a part of me, a part of God.
My friends, we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. We are part of something much bigger than our friends and our family, bigger than this parish and this diocese, bigger than this state or this country. We are part of God’s creation and God longs for us, aches for us to do our part within it, because if we don’t do our part, if we don’t partake of our portion than we, than us, than this creation, God’s creation is incomplete.
      I am the Bread of Life says Jesus, all who partake of me will have eternal life, all who eat of my flesh and drink of my blood will be a part of me and I will be a part of them.
Dear people of St Martin’s, we are hungry, the world is hungry, Jesus is hungry, God is hungry and you know what? We all hunger for the same thing---each other, together in peace and in love. Take and Eat: For Alone We are Nothing, But Together We Are Everything.
Amen.

Get Up! God has Plans. Proper 14B St Matthias

+Jane was finished. The pain too much, the efforts to relieve it too much, the hate she had for her very being, toooo much. So, she drove partway across the bridge and stopped. With a deep breath and a resolve she hadn’t been able to muster for years, she got out of the car, climbed over the guardrail and looked down, prepared to jump.

But, as is so often the case, God had other plans.

There was a hesitation—not really doubt, not even fear, Jane couldn’t explain it, but something caused her to pause and in that moment she heard Joe say “it’s not hopeless. Please don’t jump.” Suddenly, gentle giant of a man wrapped his mammoth arms around Jane and lifted her to safety. Jane says it was a Holy Spirit moment….Joe, the truck driver who saved her life, agrees. “I don’t know what came over me-- It had to have been a higher power. I did the rescuing, but it wasn’t me, someone/something else took control.

Yes, God had other plans.


Elijah’s toast. He’s done. He dared to disagree with Jezebel and neither she nor the king were amused. Elijah’s running for his life. He knew there was nowhere to hide, he knew eventually the King’s guards would find him and that would be that. So, Elijah, exhausted and disgusted with himself collapses under the broom tree—begging death to overtake him.

But God had other plans.

A divine messenger awakens Elijah and says, “Get up! Eat something!”
Elijah opened his eyes and saw bread and water right by his head. He ate and drank, and then went back to sleep.
A second time the messenger awakens Elijah, saying, “Get up!”
“Eat something, you have a difficult road ahead of you.” Get up!
Elijah got up, ate and drank, and refreshed by that food, carried on.

Because God had other plans.

Several years ago I heard Katharine Jefferts Schori preach a wonderful sermon on the gospel story of  Jairus’ daughter. Remember the story? Jairus comes to Jesus, begging him to heal his daughter. Jesus dilly dailies and when he finally reaches the girl, everyone says she is dead. Jesus clears the room, takes the girl’s hand and says, “Talitha Cum” which means, Little Girl, Arise, but which Bishop Katharine translated as “Get Up, Girl!”
This girl was as good as dead, but God?
 God had other plans.
Through messengers, prophets, apostles, the Holy and Undivided Trinity calls to us all the time, telling us to
“Get up girl, get up boy, get up man, get up woman, get up church, get up world, there’s work to do!”
And my friends WE’RE  just the people to do it.
God has plans for us:
Get up, woman!
That’s what the Holy Spirit was saying to Jane as she climbed over that guardrail.
Get up, man!
That’s what God was saying to Joe, the truck driver who prided himself on not getting involved but who got involved and pulled Jane from the edge.
Get up, prophet!
That’s what the messenger was saying to Elijah, “your work is not yet done.”
And yes, by the way, the road will be long, the journey tough, but GET UP, for I need you---yes YOU---to do this work and to do it now.
It’s a good message and it’s one we’d all be wise to heed.

Get up girl.  “I am the bread of life.”

Get up boy. Those who come to me, fully and completely, will never ever be thirsty.



 Get up woman. Follow Me.
 Get up…
What’s that, you’re too tired? You’ve tried everything and nothing works? Well, get up ---through me you’ll find your way. I need you… there’s work to be done.

Throughout this month of August we read what’s known as the Bread of Life Discourse. In these 50 + verses Jesus repeatedly tells us that he’s all the nourishment we need. That the strength we find sapped from our very being; that the hope we find elusive at best and utterly absent at worst isn’t gone, it hasn’t run out, it hasn’t been removed.
It’s still there.
It’s always there.

Jesus is telling us in John’s Gospel, Elijah is showing us in the reading from Kings that hope and strength aren’t things we create, or earn, or acquire. They’re gifts, given to us by and through the unending, outrageous, abundant love of God.

It can’t be said enough. God loves us beyond all measure.
But God’s love of us doesn’t mean that the road won’t be long, bumpy, scary and full of detours.
It will be. It is!

And that’s just what Jesus is trying to get across to us in these endless verses about being the Bread of Life.
Life isn’t easy. We’re faced with challenges all the time. Scary things.
Difficult things.
Heartbreaking things.
There are times when we want to give up.
There are times when we, just like Elijah, want to set ourselves down under a broom tree and fall asleep, hoping to never wake up.
There are those of us who, like Jane, have contemplated ending it all by our own hand.
There are those of us who’ve lost the ones we love because they became overwhelmed, heartbroken and at the end of their rope.
Life is most definitely NOT EASY.
But, as the Church in Iona says in their invitation to communion and as Jesus is telling us through the Bread of life verses and the messenger told Elijah and Bishop Katharine told us in the sermon:
“Come to this altar, we have a holy meal to share.
Come, those of you who have much faith and those who feel you have none.
Come, those of you who have tried to follow Jesus, but believe you’ve failed.
This is the feast of Jesus our Lord;
holy food for holy people.”
So get up folks….come and be fed, God has plans for us.+

Just Walk. Just Reach. Just Touch. Proper 13B Trinity Hamburg Aug 5, 2018

+People do amazing things when hungry.
This morning, the people Jesus fed last week are hungry again, so they’ve piled into boats, crossed the water and have tracked Jesus down.
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 as we often are, these folks are clueless as to the real reason for Jesus’ presence in their lives.
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’ve been separated from God. And God has been, since time began, trying to bridge that gap, trying to reach us, trying to touch us.
According to philosopher Louis Dupre (wiki preacher) religion is how we reach out to 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 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: 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 walk across that bridge between God and us, reaching God, touching God, being one with God.
It really is that simple: walk. Reach. Touch.
As many of you know, my mom’s health has been failing quite precipitously for the past 18 months. I just returned from Chicago where mom entered into a higher level of nursing care. Mom’s most debilitating symptom of kidney failure is unrelenting fatigue. She said to me the other morning. “I just want to be able to walk on my own and get to where I want to go. I just want to walk.” Of course, the only way she’ll be able to walk without lots of assistance is when she transitions from this life into eternal life. When that happens she will walk, she will run, she will be free. She will walk, she will reach, she will touch, she will be one with God, forever.There is great wisfon within her lament.
Just walk. Just Reach. Just Touch.
This is really it. It’s the wisdom of God, manifested in my mother’s waning days on earth, the wisdom of our Savior: Just walk. Just Reach. Just Touch.
My friends, we are hungry. Let us, fueled by the Bread of Life,  walk, reach, touch and be filled. Amen.