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St Brendan's
Anglican Church |
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St Brendan's
Anglican Church |
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Sermon on Sunday, Pentecost 10 Rev. Gerry Swieringa “I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” If you came to St. Brendan’s today looking for a tidy, tight exposition on one of the finer points of Christian doctrine, I’m sorry for you. You picked the wrong Sunday to worship at St. Brendan’s. This Gospel, these words of Jesus, thrust us into the very heart of what it means to love God, to be a believer in Jesus Christ, and the message he needs us to carry into a waiting and desperate world. It also directs us to the Eucharist, where we celebrate the flesh of Jesus, his death and resurrection each and every Sunday. It’s like Vince Lombardy used to say about winning, it’s not everything, it’s the only thing. For us, on this day and reading this Gospel, the Eucharist is the Only Thing. And because it’s so central to what we do, and because our priest is 2000 miles away, I’m going to break with tradition and we’re going to set the Eucharistic table now. I’m going to ask Erik to give me a hand as we set the table for Eucharist. Chalice veil. Forces us to consider other veils, the torn veil of the temple, the veil that separates us from a deeper and closer life with God, Pall. The funeral pall. Bearing the body of Jesus to the sepulcher. Patin. Purificator. Chalice. Ciborium. There. We are now ready to receive the consecrated wine and host. We’ll stop here. How important is this to our lives as Christians worshipping at St. Brendan’s today? Well, think on this. Father Kevin, the shepherd of this flock, did not tell me what to preach about today. He didn’t pick out what hymns to sing today. He didn’t tell us what to pray about today. But he did leave us with the consecrated wine, which he blesses, for our consumption at this table. In other words: the Eucharist isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. And if that’s not enough proof, consider where God has been leading his church, this congregation at St. Brendan’s. over these last weeks. We have been focused on the food that God provides for his people. From the story of manna in the wilderness, alluded to by Jesus in our Gospel today. To the feeding of the 5000 that we looked at last week. The story is the same: God’s desire is that his people be fed, that they be fed fully, and as we learn today, eternally. How desperate is the world for this food? We could go out today into the parking lot of this church, pick up a stone and throw it, and I will tell you that within the radius of that stone’s throw, would be someone desperate to taste the living food of Jesus Christ. And probably many more than just one person. We would find people in financial desperation. We would find people in desperation from drug addiction, from the breakup of relationships, from pain and suffering from physical ills. And the desperation that comes from separation from God. They are right here. They surround St. Brendan’s. They are the darkness into which we, as the light of Christ, are called to shine.
But there’s another
desperation at work as well. It is the desperation of God in his desire to
feed his people. Let me give you an illustration. Jack and I were fishing
on the Skagit river. It was a fine summer’s day, warm. Across the river 3
teenagers decided to take advantage of the day and swim across the river.
Now the Skagit up here around Marblemount is fast and wide and cold. Two
of the swimmers made it across just fine. But the 3rd one
struggled with cramps about 1/3 of the way across. He tumbled upside down
and came up, panting, yelling for help. Jack and I and the other two teens
stood together on the opposite side of the river and there was nothing we
could do. Suddenly on the far side the boy’s father appeared, summoned by
his son’s call of distress. He shouted out his name and worked his way out
on a narrow sand bar to get as close to his son’s path in the current as
he could. He called again desperately and the boy responded and began
making short, painful strokes to the sound of his father’s voice. The
father reached out as far as he could and caught his boy just before the
current would have turned and pulled him away. We were stunned and
silenced by what we had seen and the tragedy that had so narrowly been
averted. Father and son wept in each other’s arms on the opposite bank.
That is a human image of the divine desperation that Jesus speaks of in
today’s Gospel. Can you hear the desperation in Jesus’ words? He is
pleading with his listeners. Please, get this! I like the translation of
“The Message” here. Jesus says, This is The Message. And how are we supposed to carry it out there? We at St. Brendan’s have committed ourselves to a program of evangelization. We as the Anglican church in North America have committed ourselves to a program of evangelization. If all we had to do was commit ourselves to it, we’d be there. We’ve done that. But then we stop and say, great, now what? And we talk about programs to teach us how to evangelize. We’re planning a Sunday and Wednesday night Bible study course to teach us how to evangelize. We may very well end up being thoroughly trained evangelists and still be sitting here on a Sunday morning and wondering, What next? I submit that the problem we need to solve is not how to evangelize as it is what are we selling. A salesman needs to know his product before he can become an effective salesperson. We are the same. We need to know what it is we are offering, in the name of Jesus, to the world. We need to know it ourselves. We need to be full of it. Are we inviting people in to join us for worship, then coffee and fellowship? Are we inviting them in for Bible study and growth in their spiritual lives? Have we really taken the time to ask ourselves what are we going to do with these people we evangelize? What are we evangelizing them to? The answer is right before us. The answer is this table that we set together this morning. We are evangelizing them to Jesus Christ made present in the sacrament of his Body and Blood. We need to remind ourselves, no more than that, to refresh ourselves in what this means to each of us before we can proclaim it to a desperate world. I believe there are moments, in each of our lives, when coming to this table has been a transforming experience. When we have tasted the presence of Christ in the bread and the wine, and had our lives renewed, our vision cleared, our joy magnified a thousand times. These are our personal treasures. Do you remember the last time you were moved to tears by partaking of Christ’s body and blood? That was God’s answer to your desperation. That is what God desperately desires for all his people. I want to read something to you. This is from a book written by a Christian woman who was not always a Christian. Her desperation manifested itself in alcoholism and alienation from family and loved ones until she walked by a church one day and for God know what reason, walked inside. She left before the Eucharist. But she came back, again and again, always leaving before the Eucharist until the Holy Spirit had made her ready. As Jesus said , “No one comes to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” Here is Sara Miles: (read the passage from Take This Bread about her first Eucharist experience.) I love that explanation. “Jesus happened to me.” That’s what we’re evangelizing to. And while teaching ourselves how to evangelize is good and necessary, we’re never going to be any good at it unless that is what we carry in our hearts, out there. And to do that we come to this table, Sunday after Sunday, to be refreshed in and by the presence of God. How badly do we need it? Consider Elijah in today’s Old Testament lesson. He’s gone as far as he can go. He’s ready to give it up, join his ancestors and die having done his life’s work. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. 1 Kings 19: 5-8. We need this for our own lives. We need this bread to offer this bread. When did Jesus break the bread that he first offered to his disciples? What was the occasion? Where did that occasion have its origins? Who has a Bible and will read to us from Exodus 12: 1-11? God called his people to commemorate this hasty meal in which he passed over the houses of Israel and saved them from the Egyptians. He asked them to paint the blood of the lamb on their door posts and lintels. Not on their floors or ceiling or walls, but on their door posts. It was a right of passage, a transforming experience, that Jesus was celebrating with his disciples. And what about the bread, the unrisen bread. God was very specific in how this moment was to be commemorated throughout the ages, how the bread was to be unleaved, unrisen. Unrisen, until the Risen Lord offers it to us in the Bread of Life. It is not the hasty, commemorative bread it once was. It is now the full risen bread, the whole loaf from which whoever eats will never again be hungry. Today, when you come forward to this table, partake of the Risen Christ. Let Jesus happen to you. Amen. |