8/18/09

On the Eucharist - Pentecost 11 (August 16, 2009)


The following sermon was preached by Fr. Jack Holman, Associate Rector of The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Tomball, TX.

Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Eating alone in silence is not the option of choice for most of us. Human loneliness is graphic in large cafeterias in our area. It just isn’t natural not having someone to talk to, someone to share with. We feel profoundly for the poor lonely men and women who must eat their meals by themselves. Somehow they seem cut off from the rest of the human race. The message of the Eucharist is that we need never eat alone. Sure, on occasion or even frequently we may have to take our meals by ourselves, but we are never really alone because Jesus is with us. Jesus, who fed the multitudes, Jesus who enjoyed the table fellowship of his apostles is the very same Jesus who is with us not merely in the Eucharist meal but wherever we are and wherever we go. No matter how alone or cut off we may feel, Jesus shares the table with us. Saying Grace emphasizes this. The Eucharist means that Jesus has come to eliminate loneliness from human life. Even though occasionally we may be alone, as long as we believe in the love which Jesus manifested when feeding the multitudes, we know there is no reason for us to be lonely.

Scripture commentators tell us that while the Last Supper was indeed the last meal that Jesus ate with his followers, before his execution, it was not the first of the “table fellowships” which Jesus shared with them. Eating a meal together had deeply religious significance for all small religious groups in the time of Jesus. Therefore, it is very likely that the fellowships which Jesus shared with his apostles before the Last Supper were religious meals in tone and symbolism. The Eucharistic Rite is described as many things: a sacrament, a memorial, a sacrifice. But above all else, it is a meal and it plays the role as a sacrament, a memorial, or a sacrifice, insofar as it is a banquet. Not just an ordinary banquet; it’s a wedding banquet, a meal that celebrates the love among those who deeply love one another, even though it doesn’t look like any kind of meal at all. Jesus has compared the kingdom of his heavenly father to a wedding banquet and the Eucharist is a union between Jesus and his followers in that kingdom

Furthermore Paul compares the love between Jesus and his church to the love between a man and a woman. The Eucharist is a celebration of the union between Jesus and his church. Saying that it is a celebration of a passionate love does not seem to be an exaggeration. We sing and celebrate the Eucharist because we are convinced that God is deeply in love with us.

Those of us, who assemble around the altar to eat the bread of the Eucharist, necessarily and inevitably, commit ourselves to do all we can to eliminate physical suffering in the world. Hunger, poverty, ignorance, sickness, misery—none of these have any place in the world in which the Eucharistic banquet is celebrated. Now we are under no illusion that they can be eliminated immediately; nonetheless, as Christians we must consider ourselves committed to do all in our power to overcome physical suffering. Just as Jesus did, we must take compassion on the multitudes, even if we realize our compassion is not going to be completely effective. The war on poverty began not in Washington but along the shore of the sea at Tiberias twenty-one centuries ago.

This is not to say that there is any specific way of “feeding the hungry” which every Christian must follow; much less to say that specific legislation is endorsed by the gospel. But it is to say that every Christian must be profoundly concerned about hunger—or any other kind of human misery—where ever it occurs, and must do all that he can to work for its elimination. Theologians tells us: Non salus sine pauperes: There is no salvation without the poor!

We don’t minimize the importance of the theological controversies raised over the Eucharist down through the ages, but there is a danger that these controversies may blind us to the basic message of the Eucharistic banquet. We need only to take Jesus at his word that this bread and this wine is his flesh and blood and that we are in communion with Jesus and his work when eating this bread and drinking this wine. We are brought into contact with a new life, a life which is the ‘springtime of the world”. It does make us an integral part of the great historical process which began on Sinai and was renewed in the Upper Room. It does give us a share in the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus and it does promise us ultimate reunion with Jesus in the new life of the Resurrection.

Neither the theological discussions going on thru the centuries, nor the exegetical considerations, should cause us to overlook the message of Marks’s gospel: Where he writes: “He who eats the bread of the Eucharist is really in communion with Jesus and is working together with him in fulfilling his covenant”. Let’s not overlook the familial nature of the Eucharist. Then and now it was a family banquet, a small intimate gathering of a group of close friends. Early Christians, whatever their understanding of the precise relationship between the Lord’s Supper and the Passover, were quite aware that the Lord’s Supper was a gathering of people who loved one another. In other words, the covenant of Jesus was a covenant rooted in a love feast of a group of intimate friends To the extent that Eucharistic banquets do not manifest this profound affection which Jesus and his apostles felt for one another, they are less than adequate symbols of what the Eucharist really means. We may not always know the person next to us and that’s unfortunate, but if we are not prepared to love that person or anyone else in church, then we simply do not understand what the Eucharist means-no matter how sophisticated our theology or our exegesis may be.

We humans hunger after meaning, hunger for purpose and faith. We can understand how the Good News of Jesus can protect us from ever being spiritually hungry again. The purpose and meaning that the Good News puts into our life, makes it impossible for us to drift into chaos and confusion. It is not merely a banquet of wisdom as stated in Proverbs. It’s a kind of unity with God and his Messenger for which there was no preparation in the OT. It is obvious that Jesus is speaking of a form of union with God that is quite new. The Eucharist represents the most intimate union that is possible between Jesus and us, between God and us through Jesus. The love of Jesus for his followers was such that he would remain, somehow or other, present with them through the Eucharist, bringing life now, not only through his teaching, but by his presence! Case closed!

8/11/09

"The Bread from Heaven" - Pentecost 10 (August 9, 2009)


1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-52
John 6:35, 41-51

Many of the stories in the Old Testament have an epic character to them, where the forces of good battle against forces of evil. This is no less of our story from 1 Kings. The hero of our epic story is the prophet Elijah – one of the last surviving prophets of God. He is a wanted man, for the wicked Queen Jezebel has been purging the nation of its prophets of Yahweh and replacing them with prophets of Baal. In our Old Testament reading (1 Kings 19:4-8), we see Elijah at a tragic, low point in the story… a low point in his life… ready to give up. At first reading, this seems strange, because he has just won a major battle against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). However, no sooner had Elijah defeated the forces of Baal than Queen Jezebel resumed her manhunt with renewed vigor, and Elijah is forced to flee into the barrenness of the desert. In the desert, under a solitary broom tree, Elijah falls into a deep depression and asks God to take his life. “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors” (1 Kings 19:4). At this point, God sends an angel to minister to him. Upon waking him, the angel bids Elijah to get up and eat the baked bread lying near him on hot stones. He does this twice in fact. And through this bread, prepared by God’s angelic messenger, Elijah is given the strength, encouragement and endurance he needs for the forty day journey to the mountain of God – Mount Horeb.

Once again the connection between our Old Testament reading and the Gospel appointed for this Sunday (cf. John 6:35, 41-51) is the metaphor of Bread. Our gospel begins with the words of Jesus: “I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to me will never be hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (Verse 35). Bread is an incredibly powerful metaphor, both in Scripture and in the historical narratives of virtually every culture. Bread is as old as culture itself. Anthropologists mark the beginning of civilization with the cultivation of grains – e.g., wheat, rye, barley, rice. Our earliest human ancestors may have had a diet richer in protein, gathering nuts and fruit and hunting game, but it was not until humankind mastered the tilling of the soil for grain crops that human populations could settle into communities and nations. Ancient Rome was just as dependent on the breadbasket of Egypt to advance its dominion as are Western nations today dependent on oil rich countries to fuel modern society and advance modern values and ideals.

You see, there is more to bread than meets the eye or nourishes the body. It is the root of human ingenuity and industry, the fundamental building block of culture. Bread is fundamentally a human “invention,” yet the ability to make bread depends entirely on God’s goodness in creation – i.e., in creating the seeds of the earth, sending the rains, and providing the nourishment to grow. In a very real sense, one could say that the making of bread defines what it means to be human. Yet if this is true, it is true in the sense that it defines what it means to be human in relation to each other and human in relation to our Creator. This is expressed well in the Offertory of the Roman Mass:

“Blessed are you, Lord, God of all Creation: Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life. Blessed be God for ever.”

It should not surprise us, then, that throughout the biblical narrative God meets his people in and through bread. The preparation, giving and eating of bread is no less than the juncture of divine and human fellowship – whether it is in the unleavened bread of the Passover meal, the Manna in the wilderness, the showbread in the Tabernacle which David and his men were permitted to eat to replenish their strength, or in the bread that Elijah ate to strengthen his body and replenish his soul. Throughout Scripture, God demonstrates his companionship towards humankind in bread. In fact the words “companion” and “companionship” come from the Latin words “com” meaning “with” and “panis” meaning “bread” – i.e., to partake of bread together.

For Jesus then to make the claim to be “the bread that came down from heaven” would have been astounding to his hearers. Remember these were people who were steeped in these stories from the Old Testament; good Jews who knew that Jesus’ statement amounted to a claim that he was in himself the mediator between God and humankind, that God meets us and communes with us in Jesus. Indeed, our Gospel tells us that it was this claim that caused the crowds to complain about him and disbelieve his message; this same prophet who only a day before had fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” Is he not a mere man like the rest of us? No doubt they could have accepted Jesus as a good teacher, a rabbi, or perhaps a prophet; no doubt, had he given them the sign they demanded they would even have accepted him as a prophet on par with the great Moses! Even today there are people who can accept Christ as a good teacher or perhaps a prophet. But Jesus claims to be more than this, much more. At one and the same time, his claim is grounded both in the human and the divine. By saying that he is “bread” he is claiming to be fundamentally human (in fact the fundamental human – the founder of a “new humanity”). By claiming to be “from heaven” he claims a divine origination, like the Manna from heaven, and yet much more than Manna that merely feeds for a day. For the Bread that Jesus gives is his own flesh, and the life that he gives through his body is eternal. It is in Jesus, in partaking of him through his broken flesh, that we meet God, that we are strengthened, encouraged, and given eternal life. But more than this…it is in Jesus, in participating in our human condition, that God meets us and solidarity and companionship with God is established.

It is for these reasons that on his last night with his disciples, Jesus gave us the bread and wine of the Eucharist – the holy food and drink of eternal life. Through these actions at the altar, the Church’s primary act of worship together, that we meet the Christ who died for us, the Christ who is risen for us, and the Christ who will one day come again us. This is the Church’s hope and faith. This is our faith as the body of Christ.

8/3/09

"The Bottom Line" - Pentecost 9 (August 2, 2009)


Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35

I recently re-connected with one of my college roommates on Facebook. For the last few weeks, he and I have been reminiscing about college and the apartment we shared with three other guys. Of course we also talked about the things that we used to bicker about, like dirty dishes, house cleaning and food supplies. I was reminded of the many times the four of us would wait each other out to see who go shopping for food. During the lean times we would carefully ration what few food supplies we had – Graham Crackers, Saltines, dill pickles, Cheez-Whiz, Cool Whip, ketchup packets, etc. (We also kept Dominos Pizza very busy!) Sometimes we would go for two weeks before someone would break. On one such occasion, my roommate Billy was scrounging around for something to eat, when suddenly we heard a cry of delight coming from inside the refrigerator: “Aha! A jar of peanut butter!” A moment later, Billy grabbed his coat and keys and made for the door. “Where are you going?” we asked. “You guys win, I’m going shopping,” he replied. “Why’s that?” “Because we’re out of peanut butter, and when you’re out of peanut butter, you’re out of food.” Everyone has a bottom line.

It’s virtually a cultural universal that the metaphors we use for food are whatever happens to be the bottom line; the basic thing you need to stay alive. In many Asian cultures, the word “rice” and the word for “food” are the same. In Melanesia, the same applies to yams. For Billy, it was peanut butter – the one food item, stuffed somewhere in the back of a refrigerator or a pantry, that he could always count on if there was nothing else to eat (unless of course someone had forgotten to throw away the empty jar!).

In English, the word “bread” is often synonymous with food. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Bread also happens to be the biblical metaphor for food, because bread in biblical times happened to be the staple, essential, bottom-line food. If Jesus had been Melanesian, he would have spoken about yams. (Imagine that! "I am the Yam of life!") But bread it is. And bread it was that the crowd was looking for when they sought Jesus on the other side of the Sea of Galilee from where he had so recently fed a crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fish. When they finally catch up to him in Capernaum, they ask, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus responds bluntly by pointing to their bottom line: “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” [cf. John 6:25-26].

Now this response may seem harsh on Jesus' part. After all, they had just been fed by Jesus, and obviously this Jesus was someone who seemed concerned for the hungry, someone who showed compassion on the multitudes. Obviously he also had the power and authority to do something about it! And besides, it’s a good thing to well-fed! Would that everyone in the world had enough to eat every day! None of us would allow a child to go to bed hungry if we had the resources to feed him. This is all very true, and yet Jesus still goes on to challenge this crowd’s bottom line: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal” [John 6:27].

It is evident that the bottom line for Jesus was different than the bottom line for the crowd that sought him out. “What must we do to perform the works of God?” the crowd asks Jesus [John 6:28]; a question that betrays not only their basic misunderstanding, but that of people down through the ages. How often do we look to our needs as the bottom line in our relationship with God? What must we do, what deed must we perform, to get God to fulfill our basic needs? – To fill our bellies and pay our debts? Perhaps the need is little less tangible, e.g., our emotional or relationship needs. And when bread or finances do not miraculously materialize, when emotions and relationships fall apart, we conclude that either we have failed to do something for God or, more often than not, that God has failed us. Was this not Israel’s attitude as they complained to Moses and Aaron? – “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread” [Exodus 16:3].

“This is the work of God,” Jesus answers, “That you believe in him whom he has sent” [John 6:29]. In other words, Jesus reminds us that there is something more basic than food or clothing or any of our material needs; so basic in fact, that Jesus co-opts the very metaphor we use to describe our basic physical needs: BREAD. “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,” the crowd retorts. “It was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven,” Jesus says, “But it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” [cf. John 6:31-33].

Now I realize that in an age of uncertainty it is all too easy to focus on our material needs. This is true not only for the poor, but for the rich as well – perhaps more so! J.K. Rowling describes her life before the success of the Harry Potter series as being “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless,” and yet “… I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

Now, mind you, we are not presented here with an either/or choice. Jesus is not telling us to make a choice between our bellies and our relationship with God. It is not that we should be unconcerned about the physical, or not trust God to see to our needs. Rather, Jesus reminds us that OUR solid foundation, our bottom line, is a right relationship with God – a relationship that is grounded in our faith in what Christ has accomplished for us on the Cross and in the resurrection – the forgiveness of our sins and a new life in him; a relationship that we re-affirm at this altar each time we gather to partake of his body and blood – the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. Herein, Jesus reminds us what the true bottom line is for us: “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” [John 6:35].

Bread – the bottom line physically; as it turns out, the bottom line spiritually as well, but not bread that spoils, not bread that fills the belly merely for a day, but the bread that fills us for eternity: Jesus Christ.