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August 13, 2006

Fred Heard - August 13, 2006

Sermon—August 13, 2006
Holy Trinity

John 6:37-51

Father Fred Heard

This summer, I have really gotten to preach on some interesting topics: Jesus feeds the 5000 and then two weeks ago he is walking on water, last week we talked about transfiguration and then today, “I am the bread that came down from life.”

I hope I never become one of those people who thinks that changes in our world or life or fads of our young people mean that the world is surely coming to an end within the next week or so…and you know it will someday, but not when we predict it and not because of some fad or style we do that wasn’t done in Grandpa’s day.

Our world has changed a lot during our lifetime and it will continue to change. There are a few people who are still living that have lived in three centuries: the end of the nineteenth, all of the twentieth and these six years of the twenty-first century. Imagine what they have seen. My young grandson—Christopher—will soon leave Texas and head up to Oregon to begin his college education at Linfield. One of his grandfathers gave him a nice new computer for high school graduation. I was thinking when he received it that I went from first grade on through high school and college and earned two degrees without a computer. I didn’t turn to the computer in my education until I went to seminary. I found it was indispensable during those seminary years and I marveled at how fast I could write a term paper or do research when the entire Bible and numerous commentaries were at my fingertips on my computer. How well I remember typing papers into the wee hours and wrestling with carbon paper and later white out and counting up from the bottom of a page to place footnotes just where they should go when I started college nearly fifty years ago. I even typed papers in college for others to earn extra money. The world today does seem to be a stretch from the one we have left behind. We conduct our telephone conversations in public today and if we don’t turn away, we will get that dirty look implying that the person wants privacy. Our kids spot dial telephones and wonder what they are.

And what about food? Food and our consumption of it is a major tool today in keeping us healthy. At a recent meeting of the board for Pacific Church News, we talked about the spirituality of food and how we can make a statement within the pages of our church newspaper. One day in frustration, I told Adair I was so tired of being told what I could eat and what I couldn’t eat—when what I really wanted was some fried potatoes and steak. I was thinking of some of that comfort food from my childhood. I loved wilted lettuce salad—hot bacon grease poured over lettuce. What would the food police say about that? Now so many things are not on this diet or that diet. Meat is the enemy. Eat your vegetables. Don’t eat rich deserts. Don’t drink sodas. But you know what? You really are what you eat.

Much of the Bible talks about food. In Deuteronomy this morning, we are fed with manna and God has brought us into a good land flowing with water and where wheat and barley and fig trees and pomegranates freely grow. There are olive trees and honey and it is a land where you may eat bread and you will lack nothing. We are told we may eat our fill and bless the Lord our God for the good land that he has given us. In the same reading, we turn to one of the most familiar quotes from the Bible, “one does not live by bread alone…” and often overlooked, the rest of that quote reads, “…but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” This reading is thought to be a sermon given by Moses. So you see while God feeds us physically—that is not enough…and so we must be fed spiritually and emotionally also.

And now in this morning’s gospel, Jesus takes us to the next level. Plain bread will sustain our physical bodies for everyday chores. But there is higher nourishment and it gives us strength to move from ordinary humans into beings reflecting the image and likeness of God. This new life is one that moves us beyond everyday existence to one of eternal hope. Episcopalians are reminded of this each time they participate in the Eucharist. With this meal, we are eating with a community we know and also with people we don’t know throughout the world. In a few minutes we will consume bread and wine and we will acknowledge our common journey deep into the heart of God. My liturgics professor Louis Weil said, “When we hold the bread and drink the wine, we are touching the most sacred things on earth” and that is what we believe as Episcopalians…and over the years we, by custom, have come to make the Eucharist the central part of our liturgy. In taking the Eucharist, we invite Jesus Christ into our beings.

Many people believed the Messiah would come as the King of Kings to live in great luxury and privilege—instead; he came to us in a manger. When Jesus asked us to remember him, he didn’t use prime rib or some other elegant food. He chose the mundane. He chose bread. Jean-Pierre Caussade wrote in Abandonment to Divine Providence: "God speaks to individuals through what happens to them moment by moment… The events of each small moment are stamped with the will of God…we find all that is necessary in the present moment. So often we are bored with the small happenings around us, yet it is these trivialities—as we consider them—which would do marvels for us if only we did not despise them. "Bread, he wrote in the 1740s, is a perfect example of God speaking to us through the mundane. Ordinary bread, something we know well, becomes divinely significant and sustaining when people gather together and share it in recognition that all of us start in the heart of God and spend a lifetime journeying back there together.

A very wise priest friend of mine, Jay McMurren once said, “Wow! This is big stuff—this is church.” Well Jay, this is ordinary stuff. It is stuff we know. It is enduring stuff that will carry us through the ages. I know there are divisions within our church. I know there are brothers and sisters with differing views and positions and I know their hearts are breaking—but it is the Eucharist that binds us together and moves us through this life to the next. God is here—He is here this moment and He will be at the altar rail as you take communion today. There will be new interpretations of the Bible, there will be new Prayer Books, there will be new hymnals, we will ordain or not ordain, we will experience human conflict—but always remember: the tie that binds us together is Jesus Christ who we encounter each time we take the Eucharist. And that is ordinary stuff we know as Episcopalians. It is strong enough to endure shifts and bumps and fights and disagreements…because we share in the bread of life. Some people will try to make it more than it is. Some want it to be more because it is ordinary. In its simplicity it is magical, powerful and glorious.

Remember that very special hymn we sing:
I am the bread of life—

They who believe in me shall not hunger;

They who believe in me shall not thirst

No one can come to me unless the Father draw them

And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up. AMEN