Jesus said, “Do not work
for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”
Well, lets get this
sermon off to a good start with a couple of jokes about communion:
Did you hear about the business that is
marketing new low-fat communion bread? They
call it, “I Can’t Believe Its Not Jesus!”
The new rector of a lethargic congregation
announced he intended to replace communion wine with prune juice. When a warden asked why the change, the
priest replied, “If the Holy Spirit won’t move this parish… the prune juice
will!”
A seminarian was giving a children’s sermon
and wanted focus on the meaning of the Eucharist. “The Bible,” she said, “talks about Holy
Communion as being a ‘joyful feast’. ‘Joyful’
means happy”, she said. “And a ‘feast’ is a meal. So when we celebrate the Eucharist we are
having a happy meal. Now, who can tell
me what goes into a happy meal?” A
little boy’s hand shot up, “A cheeseburger, fries, soft drink, and toy surprise.”
Today’s gospel reading
picks up just after last Sunday’s reading where Jesus feed 5,000 people with
five leaves of bread and two fish. Jesus
and his disciples leave that place and travel by boat to another spot along the
Sea of Galilee. In the morning, the
people realize Jesus is gone and set off to find him. Today’s reading is the beginning of the
conversation Jesus has with them once they locate where he is.
One thing is clear
from the outset. While Jesus and the
crowd are talking about the same thing – bread – they are talking about it in
two completely different ways. The
people are interested in bread as food whereas Jesus is focused on bread as
spiritual nourishment.
If you recall last
week’s reading, Jesus leaves the multitude when he perceives they want to make
him king for feeding them. King is a
very different role from messiah, isn’t it!
At a surface level, the sign of the feeding is just that – a meal – but
there is so much more depth to it than just that. Jesus wants to help the multitude explore the
depths, but how? How can he do it? He challenges them to think about food that
perishes and about food that does not.
He points to the bread he gave them to eat and then proclaims that he is
the Bread of Life.
This tension between
the surface aspects of the faith and the depths is ever present. I encountered it yet again at the closing
Eucharist of General Convention in Salt Lake City. Several thousand people attended the
service. Ninety loaves of bread and a
case and a half of wine were consecrated.
When it came time to receive communion over a hundred Eucharistic
ministers fanned out around the cavernous space. Each section of people was directed to one
station or another.
On this particular day
I was sitting at the end of a row of chairs, about three rows from the end of a
section. People in the fifteen rows or
so ahead of me went forward to receive communion – one row after another – and
then returned to their seats. When it
was my turn I went forward – along with the other people in my row – and
received first the bread and then the wine.
I returned to my place, allowed the others to file in, and then took my
end seat.
I had a lot on my mind
as I sat there. I was thinking about my
travel arrangements and hoping I would not encounter any delays with my
flight. I was thinking about the work
that awaited me back in Suffolk – e-mails pile up and my yard turned into a
jungle. At a deeper level, I was
thinking about people I had hurt and people who had hurt me. I fretted if I would ever know what peace and
reconciliation look like. All told, I
was in a dreary mood as I offered up a prayer of ‘gratitude’ for the communion
I had just received.
Just then a hand from
behind me touched my shoulder and a volunteer in a red smock leaned over to say
something in my ear. I only caught the
briefest of glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye. She was about seventy and her voice had a
beautiful, soothing, melodic quality to it.
She said only four words to me: “Did you get communion?” And I responded with two words: “I did.” With that, the encounter was over. It didn’t last but a second or two. I never even turned to see her face.
After no more than
another second passed I began to wonder why she asked me that question. The process of receiving communion was not
complicated – one row follows another.
She didn’t check with the person sitting behind me or behind that
person, nor did she approach anyone sitting in front of me. Only me.
Did I get communion? I took the word “get” to mean “receive”, as
in did I go forward to a communion station and receive the bread and the
wine? I had. But, as I sat there in my fretful state it
occurred to me there was a deeper level to “getting” communion. Did I get that Jesus’ very Self had entered
my life in a nourishing and life giving way?
Did I get that I am deeply loved by the One who created me, died for me,
and redeemed me? Did I get the peace
that passes all understanding? Did I
understand that communion is a sign of all of this and more made real by
receiving the bread and the wine? Well,
as I sat there in my brooding mood, I realized my unequivocal answer should
have been, “No, I did not get (as in understand) communion.”
This whole process
unfolded in no more than five seconds. I
wondered again who this woman was and why she singled out me. Her voice had been so beautiful and
pure. I turned around and looked for
her, and even though there were several volunteers wearing red smocks, none
appeared to be right for the woman I saw only out of the corner of my eye. Where did she come from? Where did she go? I don’t know, but even as I stand here in
this pulpit, I can hear her voice as clear as I heard it in that moment: “Did
you get communion?”
A month has passed
since that service. I can’t begin to
tell you the hours I have spent thinking about, meditating on, and praying over
that question.
I have been pondering
the nature of faith. Some people have
faith in every word the bible says. They
believe in a literal six days of creation, ark and flood, parting of the Red
Sea, reluctant prophet being swallowed by a whale, and so on. Their mantra is “The bible says it, I believe
it, and that settles it.” That is one
kind of faith.
Then there are those
who have faith God is watching over them.
Wasn’t it Stonewall Jackson who sat on his mount in the face of
withering fire because there was nothing he could do to avoid the bullet
ordained to strike him and no bullet not ordained by God would come near him? Now that is a different kind of faith from
believing every word of the bible. It is
a faith that trusts God no matter what.
There is still another
kind of faith. It is the faith that
believes what God says: before you were born I knew you, you are special, you
are forgiven, you are loved. It is the
faith that responds the way Zacchaeus did when he scrambled down from the tree
and hosted a meal for Jesus. It is the
faith exhibited by the woman caught in adultery who, once her accusers slinked
away, put her hand in Jesus’, stood up, and walked in newness of life. It is the faith of Paul who was struck blind
in his self-righteousness so that he might see the world through the eyes of
grace. It is the faith that dispels
brooding, dreary fretfulness.
I suspect that this is
the deepest, most foundational, and most important level of bread that Jesus
wants to give to us. And I can say,
based on my own experience and on the things that many, many good and godly
people have shared with me, it is the level of faith where most of us struggle
most of the time. It is the bread we
need, the bread we crave, and the bread that endures. But most of the time it is a hunger so deep –
and often so painful – that it becomes easier to work only for the bread that
perishes – the toys and tastes and other temptations that provide a temporary
way to ease the aching. At least perishable
bread soothes the craving for the time being.
But the hunger still remains until we “get” that Jesus is the Bread of
Life.
At what level do you
“get” communion? Does it have more depth
for you beyond coming to the rail and receiving bread and wine? Beyond being a process, beyond being an
obligation, even beyond being an act of devotion, do you “get” communion?
