Bread and the Buddy Board

Sermon 8-12-18

Grace to you and peace from God our creator, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

In case you haven’t noticed: I love camp. Maybe that’s why I’m excited to be using our fire pit on Wednesday for a campfire. But really, I love everything about camp: The singing, being out in nature, making new friends, playing games. But we all know that camp life isn’t an endless game of ultimate Frisbee. Safety is always a serious concern and takes precedence over fun.

One thing at camp we took seriously was something we called the “Buddy Board.” In addition to lifeguards, the Buddy Board is how Pine Lake Camp in Wisconsin kept campers safe at the lake. Every camper got a number, and everyone partnered with a buddy… so when kids swam in Pine Lake, their number and their buddy’s number were put next to each other on the board – Buddy Board. You did not leave the beach without checking out at the board. Once or twice an hour, the lifeguards would blow their whistle and yell BUDDY CHECK. Every buddy found their buddy to be counted and accounted for by the life guards to cross-check with the Buddy Board attendant.

99% of the time, a quick count and then everyone got back to swimming. But not every time. If someone didn’t have their buddy, or if the numbers didn’t match up, we had to sound the “Lost Camper” alarm. Now, for as long as I was a counselor, it was always the case where a camper forgot and left the beach without checking out or telling their buddy. But we HAD to take each alarm seriously… and when that happened, we ALL had a job to do. At the sound of the Lost Camper alarm, all campers gathered to be counted in the dining hall with a half dozen councilors. Two counselors were assigned to search every cabin.  The rest of us dropped everything, ran to the lake, and formed a line, elbow to elbow…While the lifeguards began rescue diving in the deep end.

Like I said, every single time during the three years I worked at Pine Lake, it was ALWAYS some kid who was sufficiently embarrassed at all the fuss who had “forgot” and left the lake area. I still can remember the rush of dread and adrenaline when hearing that alarm, and the relief when it was called off for happy ending.

There are always those weeks that it seemed that we just couldn’t catch a break. …where the “lost camper” alarm went off more than once …..or when campers  were otherwise causing trouble or feeling homesick, weeks when staff were not getting along…. weeks when lice or whooping cough broke out, or the ticks were really bad, or or when campout got rained out, or the whole camp lost power during a thunderstorm. By the way, all of these things happened at one time or another while I worked at camp. As fun as camp is, there were always THOSE WEEKS I wondered why I was doing all this – it certainly was not for the “amazing” pay.

The prophet Elijah knows exactly what we’re talking about. Here was a prophet who couldn’t catch a break, either. Elijah from our first reading was doing amazing work in Israel in the name of the Lord – earlier in First Kings miraculously providing food for a widow in Zarephath then reviving her son, then confronting the priests of a false god in a dramatic showdown that would rival the end of ANY superhero movie.

The short version is that he challenged the priests of the Idol Baal light a sacrifice of a cow on fire. When they tried first, and couldn’t do it. Elijah had them pour BUCKETS AND BUCKETS OF WATER on the cow…. and boom, instant steak. Anyway, even after all that, the people in power wanted to kill Elijah. And.  He. Is. TIRED. Tired of fighting, tired of trying. He was dried up, burned out, emotionally drained, sick with dread, burdened with the fear he carried. He even falls asleep out of his sheer exhaustion.

Elijah Under the Broom Tree by He Qi

 We’ve all been there too, right? We’ve come to the end of our rope… we find ourselves dried up, burned out, emotionally drained, sick with dread, terribly burdened with the fear we are carrying. When was the last time you wanted to get away from it all, to tell God and everyone else to leave you alone because You. Were. Just. SO TIRED. Was it … six months ago? Yesterday? Five minutes ago?

Elijah, like us, was a guy who just couldn’t catch a break. Not even with God.  Because, instead of granting his request for a permanent vacation, God sent a messenger with food and encouragement to keep him going. There, under the tree of Elijah’s despair, is water and warm cakes freshly baked on hot stones. Hmmm that sounds so good right now, doesn’t it? And these were some pretty awesome cakes…. because they sustained Elijah for 40 days and 40 nights, so that he could hear the next message that God had in store for him. How’s THAT For an energy bar?

Just when it looked like Elijah was on his own, left high and dry by the Almighty; just when it looked like God went missing at the Buddy Board and it was time to sound the “Lost God” alarm, God came through. And I’m guessing that every single one of you have had your own “under the broom tree” experience too: when everything looked bleak, and you didn’t want to keep going. But just when I find myself under the broom tree, ready to throw in the towel and give up the search, God comes through. Usually in ways that I’m not expecting. Sometimes it’s little things, like a text that asks, “How are you today?” Sometimes, it’s much bigger. The last time I preached on this text three years ago, I was going through my own broom tree moment, and God used the people in my life who love me dearly to give ME what I needed in order to keep going.

God tells and shows us, over and over again, that you will never be left on the Buddy Board without a buddy.

This is what Jesus is trying to get across to his listeners as we overhear his conversation in our latest installment of the “Summer of Bread” Sundays. For us, God pulls out all the stops. God stops at nothing to make sure that no one is abandoned, that no one is left behind, that no one who seeks God is cast away and left hungry. God goes the distance, by sending down God’s own son, so that each one of us can be Jesus’ “plus one” at heavenly feast.

Psalm 34 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” … which should be pretty familiar words to us. Every Sunday, pastors stand before their communities of faith and welcome all to the Lord’s table in the name of Christ to share a taste of the feast to come. And many of them, including myself, choose to say these very words from this very psalm. It is not just a wafer and a taste of wine that you taste when you come forward for communion every Sunday. It is the very goodness of God you are receiving, over and over again, keeping us going while we are still under the broom tree with Elijah.

But like with Elijah, being the recipient of this great gift of sustaining life from God comes with a charge. Elijah’s journey continued, as does ours. He ate, and then he rose and left that broom tree behind. We eat, and then we rise. Sort of like loaves of bread.

We will certainly rise because Jesus is risen. But this also means that we are to imitate Christ in other ways as well. As the letter to the Ephesians encourages this congregation and US, to imitate God, we are all reminded that “… we are all members of one another.” We are all part of the buddy system. We’re all together on the Buddy Board. But sometimes we have fallen down on the job. We have lost a few along the way. We have sometimes walked away from our responsibility to one another. There are people all around us that have collapsed underneath their own broom trees with nothing left to give. There are some right here in our own county who have fallen behind or have been lost.

Our country is in the middle of some very difficult conversations. Many, myself included, have to be reminded of our own tendency to believe the messages of the world that tell us that certain types of people SHOULD be left behind, abandoned, forgotten, or go hungry, because they inherently deserve it based on what color skin they were born with. I am reminded, rather, to imitate Christ, to “not make room for the devil” as Ephesians put it. Rather, when the alarm sounds, we are called to drop everything, run to the lake, jump in, and start looking, clothes and all. Find the lost. Raise the fallen. Give to those who have nothing. Speak for the voiceless. Use our privilege for those who have none.

The risen Christ has raised me up, fed me and sustained me, and I am called to do the same. I am reminded that when I raise someone up, WE. ALL. RISE. UP…. TOGETHER. Like we are one big loaf of bread. And, I would like to add, it’s probably not going to look like a loaf of Wonder Bread. It might be a little nutty sometimes, but together, we are going to be delicious… and we are going to give life to the whole world, abundant life that comes from our Bread of Life, Jesus. Thanks be to God, amen.