8-26-18
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.
Welcome to the last Sunday in our Summer of bread, where,
if you have been sticking with us, we have now read through ALL of John chapter
6 (we added the last 2 verses to the Gospel reading)! We have almost made it through the summer of Bread!! I bet you thought that
I couldn’t get out one more bread sermon…. well, we’ll have to see if this one
is delicious or maybe a little half-baked.
Last week I told you about what makes bread, bread - it
makes a journey that includes a fascinating cycle of life, death, to life again
when we eat it. One of the things I mentioned is the reason behind fresh bread’s
gooiness (from a TED talk last week) is made in part by yeast sweating
and burping. Uhh, gross! Did Jesus
and his followers think about this when Jesus told them “I am the bread of
life?” Perhaps not. But we do know that in the original language of the Bible,
Jesus chooses a word for “eat” with a very interesting meaning. When Jesus
says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood….” He uses a word for “eat”
that more specifically means “chew on, gnaw, munch,” or even “crunch.” … not
unlike how cows chew on their cud.
I honestly don’t know what’s weirder: eating the sweat
and burps from yeast… or thinking about munching or gnawing on Jesus.
So, because the beginning of John 6 was quite a few weeks
ago, we are going to make like a cow, and chew on all that has happened since
we began the summer of Bread.
Chapter 6 began with Jesus feeding more than five
thousand people with just five loaves and two fish, with lots of leftovers. The
crowd really liked the free meal and followed Jesus, wanting to know more.
Jesus reveals to them that HE is the bread of life, better than the manna that
their ancestors ate in the wilderness after God freed them from captivity in
Egypt hundreds of years before. This is a hard claim to swallow and many
questioned his recipe to eternal life. Jesus rises to the occasion and reveals
that he is the bread of life. Today we heard that some turned away, because
this was too big a bite for them to chew, but others decided to stick around to
see what Jesus means by “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me,
and I in them.”
This is STILL a hard teaching, and it hasn’t gotten any
easier to understand, even after two thousand years’ worth of ink has been
spilled on the subject. It’s tempting to explain away, skip over, or say that
Jesus does not mean it literally.
And by this time of the Summer of Bread, many preachers
by now have given up taking about and thinking about “bread and Jesus” for so
many Sundays in a row. But not us. Not today. We are going to keep on, to stay
the course. Because I promise you, this will NOT be the last time that we talk
about bread, Jesus, confusion, and betrayal.
Every week during worship, we hear Jesus says similar
words to that in John 6. In the words of institution, we remember that “In the
night that Jesus was betrayed…” Jesus shared with his disciples a loaf of bread
and a cup of wine, and declared that these were his body and blood, given and
shed for them. It is the last night he spent with his disciples before he would
be arrested, tortured, and hung on a cross to die.
Right before Easter every year, we commemorate this night
on Maundy Thursday, during Holy Week. Holy week seems about a million years ago
by now, doesn’t it? Half a year later, we are reminded yet again that Jesus
shared his last meal with people who would later deny him like Peter, betray
him like Judas, and turn their backs on him like the rest of the disciples.
And here, long before that night, Jesus is here with
them, giving the words of spirit and eternal life to these knuckleheads. Because
that is what the death… and LIFE of Jesus was all about… THIS Is the good news
of Jesus Christ: that while we are still lost, broken, oblivious, ashamed…
Jesus arrives to us and gives us everything that he IS and HAS, so that we may have
life, abundantly and eternally. And Jesus does this despite … or maybe even BECAUSE Jesus knows that we are going to
deny him like Peter, betray him like Judas, and turn our backs on him like the
rest of the disciples.
But Jesus never give up. Even in the darkest nights of
betrayal. Even here, faced with rejection and misunderstanding, Jesus keeps
loving, feeding, and sharing. He never stops saying the words of spirit and
life, even as some of his disciples admitted defeat and walked away. Because it
IS going to be a challenge to keep going for the long haul.
You thought that 5 weeks in John 6 and Jesus talking
about bread was a tough slog? How long do you think it feels while waiting for
justice to be fulfilled while we who have privilege deny, betray, and abandon
our neighbor?
How do you think
that the leaders and participants of the Civil Rights movement felt during the
months and years of bus boycotts and freedom rides? How long did the two
thousand years feel before women could be ordained as pastors? (And how long
before all women in every tradition can be ordained?) How
long did those years feel to same-gender couples before marriage equality granted marriage justice to
all couples?
What are five weeks of bread compared to their time of
hardship? I admit that when some of my colleagues
complain about the overabundance of bread these weeks – which to me sounds similar
to the complaining of the people in the desert– When I hear their complaints, I wonder (perhaps
uncharitably) if they should perhaps find a different calling. Because if you
struggle to find things to say for five weeks about how Jesus sustains us
during one of our most holy rituals, how are you going to feel after five
YEARS… or five DECADES?
Because Jesus will never
stop being bread, even after the Summer of Bread is over. And we will also
never stop being called to BE bread for other people. Jesus never gives up
being bread for us… and we are not supposed to stop either, even when the road
is a long and we often mess up along the way.
 |
| A baked Alaska, apparently. |
One of my favorite shows to binge-watch on Netflix is The
Great British Baking Show. Any other fans? Has anyone ever made “Baked
Alaskan”? Me neither. All I know is that it involves ice cream and cake. During
one of the hottest days of the summer, the cake of one contestant got melted
beyond repair, and in frustration he threw his cake into the garbage can. And
since he didn’t have enough time to bake another one, when it was his turn, he
had nothing to show the judges. At the end of the show, the contestant who had
thrown away his Baked Alaska was eliminated from the show that week. Would he
have stayed on if he had allowed his poor melted cake to be judged? We can
never know.
But we do know that God has way more grace than a baking
show judge. But I like to think that there is a difference between giving up and
walking away from what Jesus has to say, and showing up with Jesus even when we
don’t understand and sometimes feel uncomfortable by what he says… and when we
royally screw up when trying to follow these hard teachings. But we keep
trying, even when the baked Alaska melts or we are just SO DONE taking about
bread, already!
We keep going, because Jesus keeps feeding us with words
infused with spirit and life.
We keep going, because Jesus keeps giving us everything
that he has, ever week, in the form of a bit of bread and a taste of wine.
We
keep going, because Jesus is always the bread of life, even when it’s not the
“Summer of Bread.”
We keep going, because Jesus is always with us. Thanks be to
God. Amen.
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