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Sermon for August 16, 2009
Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Texts: Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-16; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58
Grace to you and peace, from God our creator and from Christ Jesus who is the living bread from heaven.
Some of my most meaningful experiences of being a pastor is bringing communion to people who are in nursing homes, preparing for surgeries or are home, unable to come to church. I guess if I was honest, my most meaningful experiences of being a follower of Jesus, since I was a child, have been while sharing the Lord’s supper. In many ways, it has been my own experiences of the transformative power of this meal that urges me to share it with people, and to extend this table. One reason I love these moments of bringing this meal to those who cannot physically be present here as we share it on Sunday mornings, is the very ordinariness of it. In the middle of people’s homes, on tv-trays and coffee tables, with paper towels and napkins and chairs gathered around the cup and bread, we share this meal which promises us life.
This meal, after-all, breaks into our lives and changes us. This meal is not just about a few minutes of holiness standing around the altar, but the way those few minutes of holiness change us into more holy and faithful people, made new for our day to day lives. One day, when Olga Bruce was in the nursing home months ago, I brought her communion as we were sitting in the big common recreation room at the nursing home. I got everything ready and we huddled together to pray as the noise began around us. We prayed for courage and for her healing, for patience to endure the place that she didn’t really like being in and for the people we loved.
As we prayed, we began to hear bingo being called from one corner of the room. By the time we were saying the Lord’s prayer, our heads close together so we could hear one another, a singer began his afternoon entertainment. We heard him singing, “Mack the Knife.” All this commotion was going on as we received the body and blood, as we prayed and experienced the grace that we needed. After the blessing, Olga smiled and apologized for all the interruptions, and I said, “No, Olga, it’s perfect!” We laughed and shared a few more stories before we said goodbye, fed, transformed and nourished by the life-giving body and blood Jesus, ready for whatever we would face.
As I thought about it in the car on my way home, I thought about the miraculous gift that Jesus gives us in this meal, that Jesus, our Lord and Savior, the heavenly one of God, comes to us to be with us in the very places we live and work, play and struggle. This meal gives us life, eternal but also here and now, even in the commotion. In gratitude and awe, I thought about the ways that Jesus comes to feed us so that we can live in him and he in us. This life he gives helps us to live and believe and love in these very places. It tells us who we truly are – God’s beloved children. We are not just another person in a wheelchair or an dispensable part of the machine or a sinner with no hope for redemption, but a beloved part of the body of Christ.
In our gospel reading the last few weeks, Jesus has been on the shores of the Sea of Galilee with a group of Judeans. They were fed by the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and came to track Jesus down, to get as much out of him as they could, hopefully another meal. They were hungry, not just for the wisdom of Jesus, but also for bread, for food, for some sort of sustenance. So Jesus begins to preach what has become known as the “Bread of Life” discourse. Jesus talks about how he is the bread which sustains life, that gives life eternal. As the crowd gets more confused and agitated, Jesus clarifies what he is talking about. Jesus tells them, “I am the living bread of heaven and whoever eats this bread will live forever - the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
This, of course, puts the crowd over the edge and they dispute violently among themselves. “Who is this man? Eat his flesh? Yuck, no way!” It does seem a bit gross, but what Jesus is telling them, telling us, is that Jesus is willing to give himself to us so thoroughly that not just our hearts and our minds, but our whole bodies are changed. But it is even more. This gift of life is even more amazing. Jesus says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” Jesus is telling the community of those gathered, and to us, that in our eating and drinking of Jesus, we receive Jesus into our very beings. Jesus comes to abide in us, to stay within us.
Jesus says to us, “I am the living bread.” We experience the most miraculous closeness, care, nourishment. For in using these words of feeding, of drinking, we hear Jesus say to us that Jesus is becoming not just a companion by our side or a model for how to live, but Jesus is within us, nourishing us, pulsing through our blood in all that we are and all that we do. Jesus becomes a part of us. In this, Jesus comes to give us life, not just here or for an hour on Sunday, but a part of our every day, to change us and the ways that we are in every place we go. In this, Jesus makes us again who we truly are, God’s beloved people, the body of Christ in the world. Jesus makes us who we truly are, not just consumers or patients or worker-bees, not selfish sinful broken people, but people who are made whole, forgiven and renewed, with a purpose and a future.
This is what makes our faith unique and powerful and transforming. We have a God who not only became human, living on earth, serving the poor and outcast, offering forgiveness, healing the sick, and who died on a cross only to rise again. As John wrote, “For the word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.” God continues to enter the world and into our lives, our beings, our bodies as we gather together to share in this Eucharistic meal, to eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus, to ingest the stuff which gives us life, nourishing us, pulsing through our blood in all that we are and all that we do, in all the places we go. Jesus becomes a part of us, and this changes us. We can no longer live the old way or see ourselves in the former light, because through this meal, Jesus changes us and calls us to live differently. It makes us, over and over again, into the people we truly are, and who we are made to be.
This is a miraculous and transformative thing, that we have a God who not only dares to become human in Jesus, but dares, through the work of the Spirit, to enter into our bodies that we might live as the body of Christ in the world. Jesus, the living bread from heaven, feeds us so that we can live with courage and hope and love in all those places where we go. It is this deep and abiding presence of God that helps us to hear his grace in the midst of the commotion, to have the courage to face the difficult moments, to dare to live differently and change directions and deny those sinful foolish ways so that we might live in him, truly, as we really are. This deep abiding presence of God changes us, and helps us to live with wisdom and hope.
Just like the food we eat on a daily basis changes us, nourishes us, gives us energy and focus, the meal that Jesus gives us also changes us, nourishes us and gives us energy to live as Jesus calls us to live. With this meal, we are changed into people who give their lives away for the sake of the world. Changed by this meal, we are called to live as Jesus would, daring to enter into the lives of those around us, to act with compassion to those in need, to treat ourselves and those around us as holy beloved ones of God, to give ourselves away as bread for the world. Through this bread and wine, God gives courage and hope for all of us - for those in nursing homes and facing surgeries, for those shut-in at home or stuck in uninspiring jobs, for those who are overwhelmed and weary and for those who fear the future and for those who face death.
For all of us, this meal is life-giving, because it is Jesus who gives it and it is Jesus himself who is given. It is life-giving because it draws us into relationship with Jesus so that he abides in us, wherever we are and whatever we face. It is life-giving because it brings us life eternal - a promise for when we die, but also for now, in the midst of our daily lives and struggles and hopes and joys. This meal is life-giving because in it we receive Jesus, the living bread from heaven.
Thanks be to God.
Amen
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