O Key of David — December 20

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Since the 8th century, during the last seven days of Advent, leading to the Christmas celebration, the Christian Church has been singing a set of antiphons that were written as introductory prayers for the singing of the Magnificat at Evening Prayer. They are popularly known as “The O Antiphons” and serve as the basis for the well-known hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Each day uses a name for the coming Messiah drawn from the messianic hopes of the First Testament. They proclaim the coming of Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promised salvation.

In Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, there’s a scene in which Barrister Jaggers’ clerk, John Wemmick, walks through a London prison. “Wemmick walked among the prisoners much as a gardener walked among his plants.” Wemmick was highly popular among the prisoners, personally recognized each of Mr. Jaggers’ clients. Wemmick inquired about each of them, taking note of their condition since his last visit.  But it was clear that he was not there to bring them the deliverance the prisoners were hoping for. When a prisoner might ask for something that Wemmick could not deliver, his reply was, “It’s no use, my boy; I’m only a subordinate. . .don’t go on that way with a subordinate.” At the end of the scene Pip and the clerk come to the end of their walk through the jail, they come to a man known only as the Colonel; the Colonel speculates that he’ll be out of jail by Monday. As they leave the jail, Wemmick instead reports that the Colonel is to be executed on Monday.

The Key of David is no subordinate. Indeed he cares about those locked in their deathly prisons, those of us — all of us — sentenced for our rebellion. The One whose birth is near, was born to die and in his death and resurrection he has opened the prison doors, set the prisoners free, and invited all into Life and Freedom.

O Key of David,
opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom:
come and free the prisoners of darkness!

O Root of Jesse — December 19

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Since the 8th century, during the last seven days of Advent, leading to the Christmas celebration, the Christian Church has been singing a set of antiphons that were written as introductory prayers for the singing of the Magnificat at Evening Prayer. They are popularly known as “The O Antiphons” and serve as the basis for the well-known hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Each day uses a name for the coming Messiah drawn from the messianic hopes of the First Testament. They proclaim the coming of Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promised salvation.

The last few years I lived in Illinois, I volunteered at the Nachusa Grasslands tallgrass prairie conservancy in Lee County, Illinois. I was part of a small crew that would walk through stands of prairie grass spotting and removing invasive plants, making room for the remarkable diversity of native prairie grasses and flowers. The steward that I worked with was an encyclopedia of mind-blowing information about the prairie plants that we were making room for. I learned that for most of the prairie plants, the root system is deep and substantial. In fact, most of the biomass of prairie plants is below the surface of the ground. The deep and substantial root system insures that the plants will have water even in the driest summers. They enrich the soil and for some plants provide the network for forming new plants. The deep and substantial root system allows the plants to survive the prairie fires that are so vital to the health of the prairie ecosystem. The root systems of grasses and plants in the silphium family go down as far as 20′-25′.

The roots of Jesus go deep. The O Antiphon for December 19 takes those roots all the way back to David, son of Jesse, shepherd boy who rose to become king. John 1 takes those roots back even further. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him not one thing was made.”

The One by whom all things were made, the One who spans the long reaches of time and space, the One whose existence lies far beneath the surface of the humble birth in Bethlehem comes to us, comes now, comes to save us.

O Root of Jesse’s stem,
sign of God’s love for all his people:
come to save us without delay!

O Leader of Israel — December 18

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Since the 8th century, during the last seven days of Advent, leading to the Christmas celebration, the Christian Church has been singing a set of antiphons that were written as introductory prayers for the singing of the Magnificat at Evening Prayer. They are popularly known as “The O Antiphons” and serve as the basis for the well-known hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Each day uses a name for the coming Messiah drawn from the messianic hopes of the First Testament. They proclaim the coming of Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promised salvation.

In the O Antiphon for December 18, Christ is called the Leader of the House of Israel.

Call to mind the great leaders of the nation of Israel: Moses, who let God’s people out of slavery, through the long wilderness wandering, and into the promised land. Deborah, the prophetess who masterminded the assault against Jabin, king of Canaan and his military commander Sisera. David, the great warrior king who got his start as a young shepherd boy who slew the giant. Esther, the Jewish queen of Persian who foiled the plans of Haman to have all the Jews in the land killed.

The Messiah was to be the great leader of God’s people all rolled into one. “He will lead his flock like a shepherd,” Isaiah proclaimed.

The shepherd who himself was led to slaughter. The shepherd who became the Lamb. The shepherd who was stripped, beaten, crowned with thorns, and led outside the gates of Jerusalem to the place of the skull where in his mighty cruciform power he rescued all creation.

O Leader of the House of Israel,
giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai:
come to rescue us with your mighty power!

O Wisdom — December 17

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Since the 8th century, during the last seven days of Advent, leading to the Christmas celebration, the Christian Church has been singing a set of antiphons that were written as introductory prayers for the singing of the Magnificat at Evening Prayer. They are popularly known as “The O Antiphons” and serve as the basis for the well-known hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Each day uses a name for the coming Messiah drawn from the messianic hopes of the First Testament. They proclaim the coming of Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promised salvation.

They say that wisdom comes with age and experience. I wonder.

While I hope that my blunders are fewer and that have learned a few things along the way, I still manage to do some things that in hindsight are pretty dumb. And with age and experience comes the possibility (the probability?) of making mistakes that are more costly, both economically and relationally, and have deeper lasting consequences.

In the O Antiphon for December 17, Christ is called the Wisdom from on high, the one who brings divine knowledge.

Throughout the gospel of John, the gospel writer is nearly obsessed with the theme of Christ as the one who has come so that we might know God. Except contrary to the way western theology has typically been ordered, the truth about God that Christ came to bring is not propositional truth; it is relational truth. God comes to us, dwells with us, takes up residence with us, hangs out with us, so that we might know God in God’s unimaginable, never-ending, limitless love.

Certainly there is a certain practical, utilitarian wisdom that smooths the skids of daily life; it may or may not come with age and experience. The greater Wisdom comes to bring life; that wisdom is rooted not in facts and figures or the school of hard knocks, but in divine love, Love Incarnate. Only when we acknowledge that we cannot know God — and therefore, cannot know real Life — except by God’s grace, God’s invitation, and God’s enlightenment, do we begin to know true wisdom.

Muscle Memory

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Most Wednesday evenings, I momentarily plunge into a tunnel of darkness.

Thursday is the day they pick up the garbage at our place.  By 6 am on Thursday morning, the two big plastic garbage cans on wheels have to be rolled down our long driveway to the road. Usually, it’s after dark on Wednesday before I get around to it. Close to the house, the sky is open; the same at the road. But in between, there’s a section of driveway that is covered by a canopy of thick cedar branches. So, even when the moon is bright or the stars are out, it is completely dark. I’ve walked it enough times now that I can get through just on muscle memory. Still, for those few moments and those 50 or so steps, I’m putting one foot in front of the other with no visual confirmation that I’m going in the right direction.

I gathered with some of my people earlier this week for bible class. There was a heaviness in the room. We had been together on Sunday morning; there and then we acknowledged the violent week we had just lived through — the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, the spate of mailed pipe bombs, the shooting at the Kroger store — but no one was able to give voice to their grief. At bible class, we took time for that. Ironically, we were scheduled to study John 6 that morning and began with John’s account of Jesus walking on the water (vs. 16-21). As John tells the story, he does his best to paint a picture of the proverbial dark and stormy night. There’s darkness, a sudden and strong wind, an angry sea, and an absent Jesus. I can’t help but picture John writing to his people for whom the experience of the world was dark and stormy. And the message is clear. In the midst of all that, Jesus comes.

I believe that. I believe that in the midst of all the darkness — and believe me, I feel the darkness. As we run up towards next week’s election, the fear-mongering rhetoric is getting ramped up even more. I wish we could have a break from all of that. But my experience over the past two years tells me that we will not get a break, even after the election. That’s the new normal.

Yet, we live in hope. That’s part of my calling as pastor to remind people that we live in hope. Part of that hope is knowing that as a community of the called, gathered, and enlightened people of God, we know what to do, even when it’s dark. In the darkness, we live from muscle memory. Even when we can’t see the way forward, we know what to do. When we can’t see, we still put one foot in front of the other. We know what to do. It’s the little, common, ordinary things. Love those around us, and love them fiercely. Look out for our neighbor, especially the vulnerable ones. Reach out to the stranger. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.

“What Must I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?”

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Hoffman-ChristAndTheRichYoungRuler23nkjasc90-largeThis sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin on October 14, the 21st Sunday after Pentecost and is based on the lessons for the day, Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 and Mark 10:17-31. 

Today’s gospel lesson is another provocative story that may very well cause a little squirming. Several years ago, I was having lunch with a a wealthy member of my suburban congregation; we got to talking about scripture, about how to live as a Christian in the world. He said something that has stuck with me for a long time: “Some of Jesus’ words I like, some I find hard, but the one that I have the hardest time with is the one about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. I came from nothing and I’ve worked hard for what I have. I don’t think it should keep me out of the kingdom.”  It’s hard for me to argue with that notion.

I want to put at the center of our reflection the question this rich young man asks of Jesus. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

The content of the question is odd. In a sense, it’s an absurd question. You can’t do anything to gain an inheritance. To inherit something is by definition passive. If my father has an inheritance set up for me, the only way I get it is for my father to die. Then it comes to me. I haven’t done anything for it. My father might choose to give it to me before he dies, but even then, I have done nothing; I simply receive. So, from the very outset, the young man is going in the wrong direction if he wants to discover anything about eternal life.

There’s something else a little odd.  How quickly Jesus changes the subject from eternal life to how the rich young man is to live in this life. If the man is asking about salvation, if he’s asking about his relationship with God, Jesus answers his question by urging care for his neighbor. It’s the same thing that seems to be going on in the lesson from Amos. The relationship between the nation of Israel and God is broken. The symptoms of that broken relationship are not what the people are doing directly to God, but all the ways that they are living out an oppression to their neighbors, especially the poor. Did you catch all the references to justice and oppression in that reading from Amos? The leaders are trampling on the poor, exacting oppressive tax burdens on the poor, offering and taking bribes and showing favoritism when bringing cases before judges. It seems that for both Jesus and Amos, the sign of God’s presence in the community is communal justice, a focus on furthering the common good and caring for the most vulnerable.

And that’s where things get difficult for our young man. See, there are apparently obstacles to the life that Jesus offers to this rich young man, obstacles that have continued from the first century to the 21st century. For both him and us, one of the most serious obstacles is our possessions. My friend that I referred to earlier had a bit of nervousness about that. What if Jesus’ words are true? That’s where the squirm factor comes in. Some of hearing this story this morning are even by your own standards wealthy. Probably many of the rest of you would not consider yourselves wealthy; yet chances are you have stuff, and you have money and you have some interest in either keeping that money or making more of it. And maybe you yearn for more stuff. Even beyond that, simply by virtue of being born in the western world, we are among the wealthiest people on the planet. Compared to the rest of the population of the world, we are probably among the 1%. So, for all of us, Jesus’ words are a warning. What we have can serve as a serious obstacle to life in the kingdom of God. Here’s how that works: If we are determined to hold on to what we have, if we place what we have at the center of our lives, if that’s what we think gives life meaning and purposes, if our stuff and our money become the measure of what life is all about, if our stuff and our money are what we are clinging to for security, then we are holding on to only a fragile and hollow shell of life. Jesus encourages a willingness to let go of the fraudulent and collapsible supports for life, those supports that are epitomized, but not limited to wealth. Believe me, there is a long list of things we are tempted to rely on. No wonder the rich young man went away sorrowful; no wonder the disciples threw up their hands in frustrated despair and asked, “Then my Lord, who can be saved?”

Exactly. I don’t intend to soften Jesus’ words about the difficulty of the rich man entering the kingdom of God. In fact, I think the whole point of it is the impossibility of it, and the accompanying miracle of God calling us into God’s family. So often in Mark’s gospel, Jesus makes the impossible possible. He feeds a crowd with a few loaves of bread and some fish. He restores sick and dead children to life. A destitute widow deposits her last coin. And in perhaps the most unlikely miracle of all, God takes the crucifixion of God’s Son and turns it into the event that brings life to the whole world. We are reminded again in the first few words of this gospel lesson that Jesus is on a journey; he is heading to Jerusalem; his face is turned resolutely to the mission before him. There in the holy city,  by his death and resurrection, God would bring life to you, to me, to the whole world, indeed to all creation.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Nothing, except to open our hands and hearts to receive the transformed life that God offers to us, a life grounded in the love and grace of God, a life grounded in our own baptism into the death and resurrection of the Crucified One.

What that looks like is that we don’t have to hold onto our possessions with white-knuckled anxiety. We don’t have to live in fear. We don’t have to cling to things because we know that our life does not consist in things. Elsewhere, Jesus says not to worry because God cares even for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness and everything else will come along.

A number of years ago, the congregation where I was a pastor was doing some work in Haiti. We partnered with an organization and some local Haitians to help build and improve an orphanage and school in one of the poor neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. While in Haiti, we lived and worked with people who had very, very little. No running water, the simplest of homes, clothes that were hand me downs from the US, and no assurance that there would be food on the table tomorrow. Yet, I observed that these were people of deep faith. They relied and trusted on God to care for them today and tomorrow. I must confess that my abundant possessions get in the way of that kind of trust. Seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness and everything else will come along.That’s the kind of life I yearn for.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Thanks be to God that this morning, yet again, the Lord Jesus invites us into a new life where we center our lives completely apart from all the things we are tempted to build them around: wealth, career, family, pleasure, prestige, and the rest of the long list. Instead, he offers us real life, to center our lives in the goodness and grace of God, to be transformed once again so that both our lives and our possessions become seeds for the kingdom.

A Moment of Crisis

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This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin on August 26, the 14th Sunday after Pentecost and is based on the lessons for the day, Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, Ephesians 6:10-20, and John 6:56-69.

This morning’s lessons provoke us to a moment of crisis. I don’t mean the kind of crisis where your car breaks down in the middle the night in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. I’m talking about a the kind of crisis that’s a fork in the road. A momentous decision is required. You can’t stay on the fence anymore; you have to decide to go this way or that way; there’s no turning back.

You can think of those kinds of crises in your life. Here’s one of mine. I was a freshman in college, having declared my music major. It was my intention to be a professional trumpet player. But I discovered that while I loved playing the trumpet, I did not enjoy practicing. It was a moment of crisis. I had no idea what else I would do. But I knew I would not be a musician. So, at the end of the first semester I dropped all my music classes and enrolled in other things with no idea where I was headed.

in the first lesson, Joshua, the great leader of the Israelites is gathering the people for a solemn assembly. They had come to a crisis in their communal faith life. Which god they would serve? You see, in the religion of the ancient near east, each tribe had it’s collection of local gods. There were the gods of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Egyptians, and every other tribe that inhabited the land. Joshua was inviting the people to leave behind the tribal gods for a God that was above other gods, the God who had rescued their ancestors from slavery, had entered into a covenant with them, and who had promised to accompany them wherever they went. “Choose this day, whom you will serve,” Joshua challenged the Israelites. A moment of crisis. A moment of decision. A fork in the road. One of those “no turning back” moments.

Because that phrase has entered our popular and sentimental lexicon, it might be hard to imagine that this was indeed a crisis this was for the people of Israel. See, they had become used to having it both ways: to worship Yahweh, but also to hang out with the local gods, the ancestral gods, the tribal gods, the ones who brought them some level of comfort and security. Yahweh was the God of Israel, the one in the translation we read this morning was called The Lord; Yahweh is the personal name of God given to the Israelites, and here Joshua is calling them back to exclusive worship of this covenant God. So, the challenge, the moment of crisis that Joshua laid before the people, would have touched them deeply. A decisive moment indeed.

But Joshua was also inviting the people into a different way of living and and different way of believing. Yahweh was different from the worship of the ancestral gods. Yahweh is the God who travels with God’s people. Yahweh is not tied to any land, to any place, to any tribe, or to any sanctuary. This God makes a different promise to the people. This God promises to accompany the people wherever they go. This God will be with them not only in their prosperity, but also in their suffering and trials. This God promises security and abundance, though it may not be in the ways that the people hoped for or expected. This God promises to be present through all that life brings.

Similarly, Jesus provokes a moment of crisis in today’s gospel lesson. For weeks now, we’re been hearing this bread sermon of Jesus. For weeks, we’ve been hearing his mysterious and puzzling words about eating his body and drinking his blood that we might have life. In today’s lesson, he does not back off from that offensive language. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. . .the one who eats this bread will live forever.”  And now, not surprisingly, some have had enough. Some are offended. Some are questioning it. “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” And at the end of the reading, John reports that many of Jesus’ disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.

I suspect we can identify with them. Jesus does have some hard things to say. He does not always meet our expectations. The life we are called to is a different life than the world around us urges. Jesus does not offer a glossy magazine picture of a perfect easy life. There is something in Jesus’ offer of life that scandalizes even those who would follow him. His words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood ignore all proper decorum and they link us in the most physical, fleshly was to Jesus’ own body, his own flesh-and-blood life. Christ in our mouths, on our lips, absorbed into our own bodies, coursing through our veins. It’s the kind of language that led the ancient Romans and contemporary atheists to accuse Christians of cannibalism. Such talk might be considered a mere breach of etiquette were it not for the fact that Jesus follows up by pointing to something even more scandalous — his own death and resurrection. Jesus’ reference to the Son of Man “ascending” is code for the cross. And the cross is more than mere symbol. It is the scandalous center of our faith, that God became flesh and was lifted up on the cross so that we might know life with God. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, we can now have life.

And let’s be clear. When Jesus and John talk about life, they are not talking about the progression of days. They aren’t talking about the biological processes that mark the difference between being alive and being dead. They are talking about Life with a capital L, life as God intended it, rich life, abundant life, life with sparkle and vibrancy, life in whole and full and rich relationship with God that overflows into life with each other that is whole and full and rich. Jesus is talking about our best life, our fullest life.

If there is any truth to Jesus’ words, then any talk of this rich and full life has to be connected somehow to Christ’s crucified life — his self-giving, his compassion, his love poured out for the world. This is the mystery of the gospel that Paul talks about in the second lesson. And this is the beginning of any Christian vision of what it means to have life. You see, Jesus will go on to say that the ones who really want to have life must lose their lives for the sake of their relationship with God, must lose their life in service to their neighbor. And in doing so they will find life, real life.

A moment of crisis. Whom will you serve? Will you also go away?

This morning we get to answer with Peter, to put his words in our mouths. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” This is yet another moment when we recognize that all our own tribal gods of comfort and security have nothing really to offer. Surely there were places that Peter and his friends could have turned. There were business prospects, family commitments, the comforts of home, and the search for social status that called for their attention.  There is always another dollar to be earned, another purchase to be made, another relationship to explore, another position to pursue, another enemy to withstand, another grief to mourn, and another country to explore.

But Peter knew, even if incompletely, what he had found. In following Jesus, he came to recognize that Jesus was the Holy One of God who alone possessed the words of eternal life.

Our moment of crisis ends up being not a crisis at all, not a fork in the road, but a gracious invitation to life. Empowered by the Spirit, we choose the One who has first chosen us and who yet again offers us his risen life.

When I take communion to those who can’t come to church, the rite ends with a beautiful prayer. Almighty God, you provide the true bread from heaven, your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Grant that we who have received the sacrament of his body and blood may abide in him and he in us, that we may be filled with the power of his endless life, now and forever. Amen. 

Food Matters

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This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin on August 19, 2018, the 14th Sunday after Pentecost and is based on the lesson for the day,  Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58.

Have I told you that I love to cook? It’s not just a matter of getting dinner on the table, but the care for fresh ingredients, the proper cooking method, and the combinations of flavors. My two sons share in my love of cooking and when we’re together, we have frequent conversations about the wonder of how a few simple ingredients and a few seasonings can be combined to make flavors and textures that  are simply marvelous. For instance, they were here this past week, and here’s what Tim made:  sauté some onion and garlic; when they get soft throw in a whole bunch of fresh cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes carmelize and the skins pop, so you have this fresh sweet juice. Put your pasta in the pot and a few cups of water and simmer until the pasta is al dente. Voila!  The pasta absorbs not only the water, but the heavenly juice of the tomatoes. Man, my mouth is watering.

Food matters. Three years ago, I visited Greenfield Village In Detroit. It’s a reproduction of an historic 19th century small town. I was once again reminded how much taller we are than our ancestors. Over and over, I walked through reconstructed historical homes where I had to duck my head. Historians estimate that our great-grandparents were, on average, four inches shorter than we are — primarily due to nutritional differences.

Food matters. Thirty years ago when I was a youth pastor, I never asked about food allergies. Now, we always ask about that, knowing that missing something could have catastrophic consequences.  Many of you have discovered that you are gluten intolerant or lactose intolerant or acid intolerant or peanut protein intolerant. So we plan our diets to avoid those kinds of things.

Food matters.

Jesus does not beat around the bush in saying that he is our most important food — he is the bread of life itself. Lest we misunderstand what this bread is, he continues, “The bread that I give for the world is my flesh.” In fact, the text startles us in its candid emphasis on eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking Jesus’ blood, referring to such eating eleven different times in eight short verses. The text is perhaps more graphic than we would prefer. A little too much information.

A long time ago, Martin Luther got into a debate with another scholar named Ulrich Zwingli about holy communion. Luther was defending the real presence of Christ in the sacrament and he wrote these words, “This is my body; this is my blood.” And he underlined the word “is.”  “This is my body; this is my blood.” Luther didn’t claim to know how Jesus was present in the bread and wine, but he would not budge in the belief that Jesus is really and truly present in the meal.

See, Luther gets at the heart of what’s at stake in this discussion. If we see the meal as a gift because it calls us to remember that Jesus gave up his body and blood for us on the cross, then it can also follow that our experience of grace in the meal is dependent on the vividness of our memories and the power of our emotions. Luther’s underlining of the word “is” takes the burden off our feeble memories and emotions and recognizes the bread as pure gift, whether we recognize it or not, whether we feel it or not. In my own times of doubt or questions on my own journey of faith, it’s vital for me to trust that the gift of the meal is not dependent on my thoughts or feelings. Jesus is present. Jesus does visit me with grace and forgiveness, strengthening my faith and nourishing me for life. It’s pure, objective gift that comes from outside of me and does not depend on me to be effective. Food matters.

In the reading from Proverbs, Wisdom invites us to “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. . .and walk in the way of insight.”  Here food matters because of its power to shape the way we walk — the way we live. If Jesus is our true bread, then his real presence in our lives courses through our veins, our muscles, our minds and our wills. It affects how we live. Jesus affirms again and again that his flesh gives life. In John’s gospel, eternal life begins now, in a living relationship with Jesus. In fact, I think this is a good a summary of what the Christian faith is — it’s a living relationship with Jesus that joins us to his body and changes the way we live in the world.

The people that were addressed in the letter to the Ephesians encountered temptations that could entice them from walking in God’s ways. “Be careful how you live. . .because the days are evil.” Temptations are real and strong and plentiful. We can get drunk on wine, or high on opiods. We can get drunk on our own exalted self-importance or the accumulation of things. Technology provides entertainment forms that can keep us occupied 24/7, blurring our vision and our ability to see the neighbors God calls us to love and serve. Food matters. As an antidote to that way of living, we take in Jesus whose body and blood in the eucharist lead us to eucharistic living. Eucharist is the Greek word for giving thanks. Paul urges a life that is bathed in a spirit of deep gratitude for God’s constant and rich goodness. Eucharistic people begin their prayers not with please, but thank you.

Food matters. We are called to be filled with the Spirit — to satisfy our hungers with the bread of life. As we are hosted by Wisdom with a capital W, the Lord Jesus himself, we may need to give up something of our previous knowledge or understanding in order to be shaped by God’s wisdom. At the table of God where Jesus himself is the meal, we eat in a way that changes us. The bread, while a free gift, is also costly. Jesus promises to abide in us as we eat, and that abiding presence will not leave us the same. The loving will of God is to be in relationship with us, ever forming and reforming us. In those changes, like the rising of bread, the reign of God is tasted.

As we become God’s people around the holy table, we are drawn into the holy mystery and we become food for others. Here in this congregation, this ministry, we are called to be a banquet hall where week in and week out we welcome all to God’s lavish feast, where we offer the gifts of food and drink that bring us to Jesus. Eating our fill in this banquet hall, we leave strengthened to walk in God’s ways, resisting the temptation of worldly food and finding strength and vision to share God’s love and justice for the neighbor.

Hymnwriter Susan Briehl expresses the paradox beautifully: In our living and our dying, we become what we receive: Christ’s own body, blessed and broken, cup o’er flowing, life outpoured, given as a living token of your world, redeemed, restored. The poet W. H. Auden puts it this way:  The slogan of hell: eat, or be eaten. The slogan of heaven: eat, and be eaten.

Longing

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This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin on August 12, the 12th Sunday after Pentecost and is based on the lessons for the day, 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:1-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51.

I remember a conversation several years ago with a pastoral colleague. She and her husband deeply longed for children and yet remained childless. With each step along the road, with each new doctor visit and each new referral to an increasingly narrowly focused specialist, they became more and more discouraged; yet the longing was still there. Longing. I used to be pastor to the retired managing editor of Ebony magazine, one of the foremost magazines for the African American community. He was raised by sharecropper grandparents south of Memphis. We got together occasionally for conversation. He spoke with deep passion and grace about the longing of his community to break free from the systemic racism that has for too long bound our African American brothers and sisters. Longing.  One of the realities of living in Door County is that for many of us, family lives elsewhere. I long for face to face contact with my sons, their wives, and our new granddaughter. Longing.

To be human is to experience longing, yearning. Our lives are not perfect and our world is not perfect. We long for the perfecting of what remains imperfect. If I were to ask you to take a moment and write down three things that you yearn for, I doubt it would take you very long. What would you write down? Maybe more time with your children or grandchildren. Maybe a little less frenzy to your schedule. That trip to Australia that you’ve always wanted to take. To be released from the crush of household debt. To be free of the tensions in your marriage or with a parent or child or sibling. To be human is to experience longing.

In the first lesson, Elijah longs for deliverance. He has just won a contest with a group of false prophets over who could call down fire from heaven on their respective altars. Not only did Elijah win the contest hands down, but in the aftermath of his victory, all the prophets of Baal were slain. Now Queen Jezebel has been disgraced and she’s not taking it well. She places a bounty on Elijah’s life, intent on his assassination. In fear, Elijah heads off into the wilderness, seeking deliverance and safety. I imagine him exhausted, anxious, discouraged. At the end of his ability to cope, he sits down under the shade of a juniper tree. So much does he long for deliverance and safety that he asks God to take his life.

God does not answer that prayer. Yet God provides. Miraculously, a loaf of stone baked bread and a jug of water appear, not once, but twice. Elijah is told  to get up from his sleep — sleep that he is using to escape his predicament — and he is told eat. God was not promising to deliver him from his predicament, but he was promising strength for the journey. So, Elijah ate and drank, and was nourished and strengthened for the journey to meet God on Mount Horeb.

We hear that story in the context of yet another reading from the bread chapter of John 6. All through this chapter, hunger and thirst have become a metaphor for the existential human condition of longing. In the early part of the story, Jesus provided literal bread for a crowd of physically hungry people. Now as his sermon goes on, he offers himself as the living bread and living water that come in order to satisfy our deepest longings.

If it sounds a little too good to be true, then join the club. In today’s episode, Jesus gets a little pushback. “How can this be?” the religious leaders ask. “Isn’t this the son of the carpenter from Nazareth? He cannot be serious when he says that he is the one that comes down from heaven.”

So Jesus tries to clarify just what he’s getting at. What he’s getting at is that we often seek to satisfy our longings with things that will never ultimately satisfy. “Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died.” Those Israelites received momentary satisfaction that did nothing for the deepest longings. Before long, they were complaining again, forgetting the gracious presence and deliverance of God, and that God was actually in the process of leading them on a journey to the land of promise.

That’s the same game we play over and over. We long for relationship and we turn to social media or the vicarious relationships of television or cinema. We long for affirmation so we seek success. We long for security, so we put our faith in the stock market and economic growth. We long for novelty so we never stop shopping. We long to have our lives mean something so we fill them with never-ending activity.

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “I am that which will give life.”

Here we are. Here, with our longings. Here, perhaps without even knowing fully why we’re here or what we need. At God’s gracious invitation, we have gathered here again from the places of our deep longing. We come because we know God is here and God has what we need, even if we don’t fully know what that is.

Once again, in this place, that old person that seeks to satisfy longings in all the wrong places is drowned in the waters of baptismal remembrance, in the act of confession and the words of forgiveness. A new person rises from that saving fountain of grace to new life and to living bread and living water, to what will sustain us for the journey. We come again to Jesus. Coming to Jesus is the simplest description of the way humans come to life.

And the way Jesus describes it, it’s maybe not even that we come to Jesus but that God in Jesus comes to us. “No one can come to me,” Jesus says, “unless the Father draws him.” That’s precisely what is happening here this morning. In the declaration of grace your sins were forgiven. In the proclamation of the Word, God draws you into God’s love. In the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine, Jesus comes to you to strengthen you for whatever lies ahead of you in the coming week, strengthening you that you might live in faith and trust in God’s goodness and answer your calling to love God and love your neighbor.

In the second lesson you heard a long list of New Testament proverbs about what it means to live as a Christian. Sometimes that seems exhausting.To live in the way of God is not a particularly easy or comfortable life. Yet we don’t go out there to live for God on our own strength. We go out, having eaten the living bread and drunk the wine of salvation. Our hunger and thirst are satisfied here and then we go out with God’s promise always to go with us. We come to realize that even the calling to live in love as Christ loved us is a gift of grace animated in us by the gift of the Spirit. I think that’s at the heart of our longing — to live life as God intends, and to do that is actually possible; that’s the gift of Jesus.

Several years ago when I was traveling in Europe with my son Chris, we were traveling light and cheap. Every morning we looked for a bakery so that we could have a bit of bread to keep with us so that even if we couldn’t find a restaurant later in the day that matched our budget, we’d always have something to eat. Those impromptu meals of bread and a bit of cheese, maybe a shared bottle of wine, often eaten outdoors in a park — those meals sustained us and those times are vivid reminders of all the good things about that trip.

Here we have come to rest under our own juniper trees and we receive bread from heaven. For whatever lies ahead of us, today, tomorrow, this week, this month, Jesus sustains us for the journey. Jesus is the living bread.

Taste and see, the goodness of the Lord,

Taste and see, taste and see.

Getting It

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This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin on Sunday, August 5. It was based on the gospel lesson for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost,  John 6:24-35

The great Methodist preacher and pastoral theologian, Will Willimon wrote, “The gospel of John is a veritable symphony of incomprehensibility.” Perhaps a shocking statement for someone — never mind a bishop of the church — to say about a part of Holy Scriptures.  What Willimon was getting at however, is not that it’s impossible to understand the gospel of John — though I think there are parts that continue to be difficult — but that everywhere we turn, we find people who just don’t get it.

Take this morning’s story, for instance. We’re coming right on the heels of the miracle that we reflected on last week, when Jesus turned a poor boy’s traveling lunch into a meal for thousands. The crowds were so impressed that they wanted to make Jesus king. At which time, Jesus, having a different idea about his ministry, escapes the crowds and heads to the other side of the lake. The crowds get up the next morning and see that Jesus isn’t there anymore so they go across the lake looking for him. Finding him where they did not expect to find him, they ask right off, “When did you come over here?” It becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that they are seeking Jesus, not for that thing that is at the heart of his work, but because they got a free lunch yesterday and hope for the same thing today. They didn’t get it.

Jesus immediately challenges them. “What are you seeking?” That’s quite a question, isn’t it? What are you seeking? The same question he asks Andrew and Peter in the opening chapter of the Gospel. What are you seeking?  Then follows a sometimes confusing and puzzling back and forth that will last virtually this whole chapter, a conversation that sometimes almost seems like Jesus is speaking in riddles. Bottom line, the people didn’t get it. The crowds are after Jesus to fill their stomachs, not to find that which would fulfill their lives. The great 4th century Greek preacher, John Chrysostom wrote, “it is not the miracle of the loaves that has struck you with wonder, but the being filled.”

Jesus challenges them again. “You aren’t following me because of the signs, but because you ate your fill.” In response to his challenges, they fire off a rapid succession pushback. “What works must we perform?” falling back on their religion. “What sign will you do for us?” asking for verification despite the miracle they witnessed the day before. “Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness,” they say, standing on their own tradition, suggesting not so subtly that Jesus ought to do an update of the wilderness provision.

They just didn’t get it. Which I think is what Bishop Willimon was getting at in his comment about John’s symphony of incomprehensibility. Throughout the gospel — and certainly throughout this long discourse on bread — Jesus is revealing something about himself and about God. He is trying to show people what God is like and that he is here as God among them to bring a word of grace and truth. And they didn’t get it. Remember the first chapter of John. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Or “he came to his own and his own did not receive him.” And it’s not just the crowds; even those closest to him — his own disciples — did not get it. This is John’s persistent theme, that the truth of Jesus’ person and his work goes right past people as they pursue their own vision of what God is like and their own ideas about how to satisfy their deepest longings.

And I’m guessing that the words apply to us as well.

We have longings about important things that are at the heart of human existence. We long to matter, to be loved, to know we are worthwhile, to know that our brief time on this planet matters. The problem is that we, too, seek to satisfy those yearnings with pretty, shiny things that we ultimately discover are empty. We know that life doesn’t consist of things, yet its hard to resist the cultural norm of success, that the accumulation of material things and economic abundance is the sign of a successful life. Or that a life full of volunteering is the measure of being a good person. Or that children and grandchildren and a loving meaningful family means that our life has been worthwhile. It’s not that those things don’t bring satisfaction. They do. But they don’t satisfy the yearning that is at the heart of our lives. For centuries theologians have been following the sentiments of Blaise Pascal, suggesting that there is in each of us a God-shaped hole, and only God can fill that longing. 

In the church, too, we often miss what’s at the heart of our life together. We invite people into the church so that we can get new members, more money in the offering plate, and more people to help out with fellowship hour on Sunday morning. We want youth and families in the pews on Sunday morning so that the future of the church is assured. We are often more interested in clever marketing than the simple gift of what we have to offer.

What we have to offer is Jesus. What we have to offer is faith in the Son of God who gave his life so that we might have life with God. He is the One lifted up so that all who believe in him might have eternal life. The crowds wanted a sign. We already have a sign. The sign is in the shape of a cross, the sign of a divine life given so that we might have divine life. The sign is the sign of the cross on our foreheads and on our hearts, the sign that we have named and claimed by God himself. The sign is the Word of life proclaimed yet again in this Sunday assembly, the bread and wine, the people of God here gathered around God’s gifts.

God is here doing God’s work. What is that work, you ask? It is the work of calling us to faith in the Crucified One. Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the One whom he sent.” Isn’t that odd? That while we are called to a life of service, first comes the simple gift of faith, of believing and trusting that God is who God says he is and does what God says God will do. Luther was fond of reminding his hearers that the thing which brings God the most delight is our simple trust in God, our faith. Faith is more than clarity about facts and belief in a set of propositions. Faith is an encounter with a person, with the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He invites us not only to think about him, but to feed on him, ingest him. Without him, we starve to death. You see, the truth here is not something we “get.” It’s something we are given. We get this life in the Son of God not as an achievement, but as a gift.

So, we come to the eucharistic table bringing nothing but our open hands. For millenia, this has been posture of receiving the bread; not to grab, but to receive. The emptiness of our open hands is a sign that we have nothing to offer that would be in any way a transaction; and sometimes our empty hands are even a sign of our empty hearts. There in our empty hands is placed a piece of bread. And there in our hands is the One who said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger.” There in our open hands, we receive just what we need, even if we don’t know exactly what that is.

So, let’s eat.

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