Kids

Mark 9:30-37

30[Jesus and the disciples went on] and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it;31for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” 32But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
  33Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” 34But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. 35He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” 36Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

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I don’t know about you, but I have been avoiding these GOP debates for the sake of my blood pressure. I know why people think we shouldn’t talk politics in polite company, or religion, for that matter, even though our emotions betray how important these things are to us. On the other hand, I don’t know if it really is religion and politics that get us worked up as much as it is our fear about being wrong and the absolute survival instinct that kicks in when we have to prove ourselves right at all costs. We have lost the ability to listen to one another and public discourse has gone from respectful disagreement about issues to personal attacks and outright bullying. Then again, I’m not sure we’ve ever been far from our worst selves. One of my favorite movies, 1776, shows how the first continental congress fought while trying to have a conversation about independence, and it came to blows between John Adams and John Dickinson once they started calling each other names like “coward” and “landlord” and “lawyer.” Not sure if that’s a historically accurate conversation, but it’s sadly not surprising. This past week was the saint day for Hildegard, who was an Abbess, composer, scientist, and visionary in Germany at the start of the second century. The German film adaptation of her life shows how many obstacles were in her way as she tried to deal with the Abbot and find a cloistered place for her sisters, away from the brothers who they shared space with. When her visions were first made known, the higher authorities were terribly nasty to her, angry and jealous because she had a gift they did not have, and they treated her with contempt.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, I think we have a picture of the disciples arguing on the way from much the same sort of fear. Jesus has just told them, again, of his upcoming crucifixion, death, and resurrection. They don’t get it. They don’t understand what he’s talking about, they remember Peter was rebuked and called ‘Satan’ last time he spoke up in confusion, and they are afraid to ask Jesus what he means. After all, the disciples were not exactly the cream of the crop when Jesus called them. If they had been the best and the brightest students, they would have been apprenticed to important Rabbis after they made Bar Mitzvah, and wouldn’t have been working in the family business, or reduced to collecting taxes. If the community had thought these disciples smart and holy, they would have some extra measure of respect, but when Jesus called them they were basically nobodies. 

I posted on Facebook awhile back an article about how little we seem to value labor in our culture. For all of the talk of pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, getting our hands dirty, earning our bread, we have it in our culture that if you want a respectable job you’ve gotta go to college and get a degree and work at a desk. If you work with your hands you don’t get as much respect as if you wear a suit and tie. When I was in High School, I was in honors classes, but wanted to learn how to work on cars my junior year. We had a whole wing of the building for ‘vocational tech’ classes, from mechanics to electrical work to marketing. But because I was on the college track, I was discouraged from those classes. The mocking chant from the geeks to the jocks was usually something about who was going to pump gas for whom when those nerdy kids who got picked on for being smart ended up working for Microsoft. As though there’s a difference in whose job is more important! Or, rather, as though there is a difference in how important a person is, based solely on their job.

The disciples had finally made it, they thought, by being disciples of this very important Rabbi who was shaking everyone up. They had gone from smelly fishermen to sought-after teachers. Except that now, this one lesson their teacher kept returning to didn’t make sense, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant. They didn’t want to look dumb. Didn’t want to make Jesus think he’d made a mistake in choosing them. Didn’t want to be known as hypocrites or frauds.

So what’s the next thing they do? They argue about who’s best. They’ve gotta build themselves up, make themselves more important, prove their worth to the movement, secure their place in the spotlight.

We do this so often when we get wrapped up in every little thing we fight about, don’t we? Do we actually have the answers when we argue about what’s going on in the world, or do we just want to have something to say so we feel important? Sometimes we do need to name big problems, work together toward solutions. When we had the gathering of folks here on Monday to talk about what to do with our local Heroin addiction, we needed to start that conversation, and hope it will continue with some community support for the sake of some much-needed healing. But when we take our public discourse into areas of blame and shame, we lose track of our hearts. Kim Davis has been all over the news for refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This is a problem, now that it’s legal according to the Supreme Court that those licenses be made available, and she does get paid to work for the government. But even more of a problem is the amount of public shaming of Kim Davis that came out of that conflict, and continues still. What good is it to argue that her claim to Christianity is true or false based on how she looks or dresses or how many times she has been married? What good is it to make a mockery of her character for an argument about the right to love another person?

But we are afraid. So afraid that if we don’t make ourselves big and important that no one will notice us or care about us. Afraid that we have to constantly prove our value or we will get thrown away otherwise. That is, after all, the way the rest of the world works. 

But that’s not how Jesus does things. That’s not what the kingdom of God looks like.

In Jesus’ time, children were not really people. Far from the Hallmark vision of adorable, squeaky-clean little cherubs all gathered on his lap with perfect hair and straight white smiles, children ran around like dogs, who also weren’t domesticated pets. Children may or may not live to adulthood, so there wasn’t a lot of energy wasted on them. They had no power. They were raised by women who had no power. They were completely dependent, often thrown away. Remember that slaughter of every child under the age of two after Jesus was born? Children of an occupied people are given even less care. It’s like Lord of the Flies all the time.

Children, however, are the object lesson Jesus gives his adult disciples for what the kingdom of God is like. Welcome this child, and you welcome me, he says. Welcome this one who is socially worthless, this one who is typically ignored if not beaten, this one who still runs wild and cannot be controlled yet by the ‘proper’ way of doing things. Welcome this person who is not yet counted as a person, Jesus says, and that is where you will find God. 

Children just exist, no matter how we try to put them into boxes, market to them, shape them into good little consumers, or bully them out of asking questions. They’re curious and not ashamed about it. They’re themselves even while they imitate the adults around them as they learn how to move around the world. They are dependent for many things, and they can surprise us in the questions they ask and the generosity they model. They can sometimes be little snots, too, and we welcome them anyhow, because we’re just bigger snots.

But more than that. Even in places where children are unwelcome, unwanted, intrusive and only in the way as collateral damage, Jesus is exactly all of those things, too. The Christmas manger and child Jesus in the temple may bring to our minds adorable images, with problems no bigger than a scraped knee, but children in this world are thrown away all the time, which is far from adorable. Children are beaten, mistreated, bullied, abused, neglected, sold, traded, and used for terrible, hurtful things, because grown ups have power and children don’t. So Jesus comes to us as a child. Jesus lives among us as a child. The kingdom of God is right here in our midst in the very ones we so easily discard.

It’s not about proving our worth, or making sure we have the loudest, most important voice at the table. Jesus was thrown away, nailed to a cross for public humiliation, for every time we throw one another away, every time we throw ourselves away into the fray of proving our importance rather than trusting the God who loved us into being. Jesus comes to us as a child who has been beaten. A child who has been bullied. A child who has been ignored. A child who still wakes up every morning, with or without dinner the night before or the promise of breakfast today, just to keep living in this hurting world. Jesus lives among us as that very child, to welcome each and every child who has known the pain of that experience, no matter if that child is five years old or sixty-five years old. If that child wears a suit or a pair of coveralls or the only shirt they own since running away from home. Jesus runs with the children, weeps with the children, laughs with the children, carries the children, died for the children, lives again for the children, loves the children. Jesus welcomes the children. Every last one of us.

Who is Jesus? Who are we?

Isaiah 50:4-9a 

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens - wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my checks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

Psalm 116:1-9

I love the LORD, who has heard my voice, and listened to my supplication, for the LORD has given ear to me whenever I called. The cords of death entangled me; the anguish of the grave came upon me; I came to grief and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I pray to you, save my life.” Gracious is the LORD and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The LORD watches over the innocent; I was brought low, and God saved me. Turn again to your rest, O my soul, for the LORD has dealt well with you. For you have rescued my life from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling; I will walk in the presence of the LORD in the land of the living.

James 3:1-12

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, an dis itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue - a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. from the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

Mark 8:27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

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Addi May and Ella Jayn, you have been joined to Christ today in a way that we have been celebrating for generations. People of God, we have promised today to live that life of faith together in a way that we have been promising for generations. We will spend the rest of our lives together learning what Jesus means in today’s Gospel reading: how to take up our cross and follow. How to save our lives by losing them. How to trust that Jesus is in fact the anointed one of God. Not an easy task, by all accounts. Anyone who has lived will tell you that life can be a mess sometimes, with moments of high victory and moments of deep tragedy. We try awfully hard to stay in those high and happy places, far from the madding crowd, but life doesn’t let us, as much as we strive to avoid suffering. 

So Jesus is talking with his disciples about his reputation. He has healed many sick, fed lots and lots of people, walked on water, already gotten into a few confrontations with the religious authorities, and he wants to know what the people are saying about all of this. One of the prophets, maybe? The prophets were always going on about justice and care of the poor. John the Baptist, maybe? That baptizer got into a lot of trouble for his preaching. But the disciples who have been walking most closely with Jesus, who do they think he is? Well, the Messiah, the anointed one. Any day now going to take back the kingdom of Israel from those Roman oppressors.

Well, they’re only half right, then. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, or the word we use more often is “Christ.” But, no, the baggage attached to that claim is not the work Jesus is about. Ultimate power does not lay in destroying one’s enemies, but in building reconciling community with them so we are enemies no longer. This work of Jesus will lead to his being arrested and killed by the people he loves, and he knows that. The world so full of fear does not know how to reconcile itself to being loved so deeply, and Jesus knows that those striking out in anger and violence will make him their target. Yes, Peter, Jesus is the Messiah of God, but that does not mean what you think it means. It does not mean an end to the suffering of this life.

Because Jesus doesn’t save us from the sorrow of this life. Jesus saves us in all of this life.

Some would say that Baptism has become for most people nothing more than a crude form of ‘fire insurance’, protecting folks from the fires of hell after death. As though a dip in the pond and the right magic words will protect our eternal souls from eternal separation from God and the torment of just punishments for sin. As though this means if we just believe hard enough everything will turn out alright and life will forever be good and comfortable. As though we have made a choice to devote our souls to heaven and forget about what that means for our day to day life because, well, “at least I know I’m not going to hell.”

And they’d be right, but only half right. 

Baptism is a once and done thing. Even if you switch denominations, you’re baptized in the triune name of God, not in the name of the presiding bishop of your church, so you never need be baptized again. And, yes, you are able to point to your baptism as the sign that God has saved you and you will not be spending eternity in the fires of some hell we’ve been told might await those who remain unrepentant. Luther often called on the witness of his Baptism when he felt the devil tormenting him with his unworthiness to be saved. Because it was God’s action to claim him, to claim all of us, in the first place, not Luther’s own choice to sign up. But this is not some magic we can manipulate and control. And it is not disconnected from the rest of this life here and now and in the days to come. It does not mean life will forever be grand, or that we have to pretend it is.

The beloved community of God, into which you Addi May and Ella Jayn, have been Baptized, celebrates together and suffers together. To be a Christian means that we carry each other and allow one another into our lives of ups and downs. It means we are joined together as a people across the world with lives of every stripe and sort. When we are sealed by that Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, it is our constant reminder of the love that first carried the cross for us. That Jesus the anointed one, Jesus the Christ, loves this world with such a fierce and unending love that we didn’t know how to deal with it, so we put him to death, but he didn’t let even that stop him from loving us. This is the promise which claims us, that the love of God will never stop chasing us, never stop calling us, never stop moving us deeper into community with the world God so loves.

Baptized, we live. We will watch these two girls grow. They will help us grow. We will together burrow deeper into the love of God for the world, and that love will draw us into the world, where we will celebrate and weep and ache for one another. Grounded in the deep and abiding and suffering love of Jesus, we will never be alone in our suffering. We will be called, again and again, into the suffering of others through the compassion of Christ. Tomorrow we will open our doors again and reach out to the community of God’s beloved, especially those who happen to be addicts and the ones who love them. We will not fix them, we will not be the answer they are looking for, we will simply be with them, offering what we have and listening as they share. Because the love of Jesus carries us all together.

Jesus does not save us from this life, but in life and for life. Life together with God in the here and now, just as much as life after resurrection. It is given freely, it is not something we earn, it is for the whole world, without reservation. It is the very life of God, given that you might live.

Dogs are people, too

Isaiah 35:4-7a

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.” Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the dead unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.

Psalm 146

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Put not your trust in rulers, in mortals in whom there is no help. When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help, whose hope is in the Lord their God; who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them, who keeps promises forever; who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. The Lord sets the captive free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord cares for the stranger; the Lord sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked. The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations. Hallelujah!

James 2:1-10, 14-17

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or “sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. [For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Mark 7:24-37

Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go - the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Ten Cities. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hands on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

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Sunday morning comics were part of my routine every week after worship. Dad would separate out the ads and sports section and leave the important stuff - front page, comics, Toledo living - so after church we could get to the good stuff. As much as I love reading the comics, I devour graphic novels, which are drawn in lots of different ways but are their own type of storytelling altogether. For example, there is a two volume set of graphic novels called "Maus" which tells the story of a man gathering Holocaust stories from his father who lived through it. I was a little slow at getting the connection when the storyteller and his family are drawn as mice, until the Germans showed up drawn as cats. Of course the Jews would be drawn as mice, because at the time popular media called them rats, so they would be easier to kill.

People are so much easier to dismiss when they’re not considered people. Kim Davis isn’t a person according to social media: she's a bigot and a hypocrite. The people she denied service to weren’t people, they were gays whose marriages were against the law of her god. Then there are the cops, and the bleeding heart liberals, the old dead white guys and the angry feminists, the sluts and the rednecks, the politicians, the tea partiers, the poor, the kids, the grieving, the thugs, the addicts, the alcoholics, the one percent, the government, the IRS, the schizophrenic… the myriad of names and labels we put on one another so we can get away from each other. I spent a summer working as chaplain in a psych ward and was there when one of our people got a diagnosis of schizophrenia - he was crushed. He said, ‘nobody’s gonna hire a crazy schizophrenic’. The occupational therapist reminded him he is a ‘person with schizophrenia,’ and one of the other patients started to list off the names of famous artists and musicians who also had schizophrenic brains. A few days later, while the television in the common room was blaring, one of the other people said we ought to write the network and complain about their Law & Order-type shows, that it was always those mental patients off their meds who were the victims or the criminals, never the heroes or ordinary folks. The labels made it easy to pigeon-hole them, to further feed into the stereotype, to expect that we knew everything about their value based on a diagnosis or cultural background.

Jesus was trying to get away from the crowds and rest awhile, but this foreign woman was desperate to save her sick daughter. Jesus dismissed her outright. He called her a dog, maybe she would go away and bark up some other tree and leave him alone. She wasn’t even one of his own people. Wasn’t a Jew. Wasn’t a man. Shouldn’t have been talking to him in the first place. “Feed the children, it’s not fair to take from them and feed dogs.” My dad used that same reasoning to explain why we would never have a dog at home when I was growing up. Too many kids were hungry to spend money feeding domesticated animals, he said. And that’s all the foreign woman was, an animal. Easy to dismiss, to throw away. Not even ruined goods because you’d have to first be valued goods to be ruined. She just didn’t count in the first place, not being Jewish. Wrong culture, wrong gender, wrong class, wrong time, just wrong. And our dear, sweet, lovely Jesus… well, can you imagine the babe born in a manger using the n-word today? Or any other ethnic slur? Because that’s what he did then. Or maybe this Labor Day weekend we can connect the idea with a factory worker coming to the boss because an 80-hour work-week wasn’t healthy for 12-year-olds who ought to be going to school, and that boss responding with a pink slip.

How have you experienced being thrown away? Being ignored, dismissed, not taken seriously? I know it’s been a rough summer for Fred while the dumpster outside his home is being filled over and over again with a lifetime of collections ruined by the elements. It’s hard to see a loved one put into a nursing home without feeling a little guilty about not being able to do what’s needed to care for them. To complain about being harassed and have no one believe you. To only get your parents’ attention when you’re in trouble and not have your struggles heard or taken seriously because you’re just a kid. To be left outside of the church because you haven’t dressed properly for the occasion, pushed out of worship with disapproving stares because a child is a bit too squirmy or talkative. Physically left out because there isn’t a lift or a ramp for your wheelchair or crutches. Denied access because you don’t speak the language and no one is trying to help you or learn from you.

I imagine this Syrophoenician woman a bit like Moses, calling God to account for God’s own promises and reputation. You say you’re compassionate and merciful? You say you’re bigger than any one country or kingdom? So why should your power to heal stop at the entry gate to the temple? Why should your forgiveness and grace only go as far as the Jews and no farther? Surely even the slightest outpouring of God’s presence on the earth can spill into neighboring territories!

The woman calls Jesus to account. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.” She holds up his own character in sharp relief against the dismissal he’s just uttered. Everyone else already talks like that, calls her ‘dog,’ this man is supposed to be different. So be different, Jesus! Keep your promise, bring the Kingdom.

And he does. The Kingdom spills over even into Gentile territory, freeing that little girl from the power of that demon which held her. Freeing Jesus, too, it seems. In case we might forget that Jesus was also a human being who was part of a particular culture, this story shows a tired and cranky racist who learns from a cultural minority how to open his heart just a bit more.

So it makes a sort of story sense that his next immediate miracle is to open the ears and loose the tongue of a man who can neither hear nor speak well. When the man is brought to him, Jesus takes him aside, away from the crowds, probably still a bit tired himself, and I imagine him thinking of that Gentile woman when he sighs “be opened.” Maybe the kingdom of God is breaking open upon the world, bubbling up from the dreams and the demands of the oppressed and the outcast. Ears opened and tongue loosed, the man is restored to his community and can’t seem to stop talking about how it happened. Just as the prophet Isaiah foretold, the “eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the dead unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

Dry ground will have to break open to the power of water, as dry and tired hearts are broken open in the welcome embrace of Baptism. The solid and too-stiff boxes we stick one another in with all of those labels and expectations, they will melt under the flowing stream, under the waters of grace and forgiveness. Those waters run over us like water over sharp rocks gradually rubs them smooth, tumbling us against each other as we are formed in community, with all of our differences and complexities. We will have some baptisms here next week, celebrating that promise of God to break open our hearts to one another, just as God’s own heart has broken open for us. Water will flow, promises will be made, the kingdom will sigh and expand and grow around us and within us. And just like Jesus, we will learn to listen, and like the man who was healed, we will not keep silent, and just as God has promised, we will be forgiven every time that we fail at this. For we are not the labels we put on each other. Not dogs, not bigots, not progressives or tea partiers or independents, not dismissed as useless or inadequate or irrelevant, but children, all - children of God who feast on the crumbs of Grace at this Table, at the Lord’s own invitation. And the lame will leap and the speechless will sing, for the kingdom of God has come near.

la-la-la-la-la Tradition!

Deuteronomy 4:1-9

So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that Adonai, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of Adonai your God with which I am charging you. You have seen for yourselves what Adonai did with regard to the Baal of Peor - how Adonai your God destroyed from among you everyone who followed the Baal of Peor, while those of you who held fast to Adonai your God are all alive today. See, just as Adonai my God has charged me, I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” For what other great nation has a god so near to it as Adonai our God is whenever we call him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinance as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.

Psalm 15

Adonai, who may dwell in your tabernacle? Who may abide upon your holy hill? Those who lead a blameless life and do what is right, who speak the truth from their heart; they do not slander with the tongue, they do no evil to their friends; they do not cast disc redid upon a neighbor. In their sight the wicked are rejected, but they honor those who fear Adonai. They have sworn upon their health and do not take back their word. They do not give their money in hope of gain, nor do they take bribes against the innocent. Those who do these things shall never be overthrown.

James 1:17-27

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your should. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act - they will be blessed in their doing. If anyone think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Mark 8:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked hi, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to tradition.” Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

*******

Every time this reading comes up, someone in the room starts humming “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof. It’s a common fight fought year after year, whether in the ‘worship wars’ or the ‘spiritual but not religious’ conversation. Why does tradition get such a bad rap? Jaroslav Pelikan, contemporary scholar of the history of Christianity, said that “tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.”

There is nothing wrong with tradition, per se, as much as there is something wrong with losing the heart of its source. For generations, the way that we live, the traditions and practices we hold onto and pass down, remind us of who we are and where we come from. The Sabbath keeps the Jews as much as the Jews keep the Sabbath, they say. When we live in a culture that glorifies overspending and rugged individualism, it’s our tradition of simplicity and community life together that sets us apart, grounds us, helps us make decisions when life gets complicated. That song from Fiddler on the Roof does make me wish for simpler times, when rules and expectations were more clear: Who, day and night, must scramble for a living, feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers? - the Papa! Who must know the way to make a proper home, a quiet home, a kosher home? - the Mama! At three I started Hebrew school, at ten I learned a trade - the son! And who does Mama teach to mend and tend and fix? - the daughter! Oy, vey, if only life were so simple! But for those who’ve seen the musical and know that storyline, tradition and tragedy continue to upset community life when outsiders bring both persecution and new thinking into their village. Who are they, really, without their tradition?

But its when tradition becomes more highly valued than the people who practice it that things get ugly. When, in Martin Luther’s time, the poor mother who cannot afford to feed her sick child gives her last penny to the church for a chance to escape purgatory because it’s been taught as tradition. When, in contemporary times, Lutheran churches hold their Jell-o in higher esteem than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We fight more often over traditions because they give us a sense of comfort, but if we forget where they come from and what they mean, what good are they? When tradition replaces thinking, autopilot takes over in prayer, and keeping the rules means that people go hungry, then we’ve lost the heart of our hope, the reason behind our rituals.

Some would say, for example, that our votive candles are ‘too Catholic’ and shouldn’t be in a Protestant church. But we value the memory of our loved ones who have died, and this is how some of us have learned to pray for them and honor their memory. Because when we have God’s love at the center of our action, tradition becomes life-giving. One of my classmates from seminary is in an inter-racial marriage, which was not an acceptable American tradition until the Supreme Court ruled, in 1967, that enforcing the law of ‘racially pure’ marriage was unconstitutional, even though it had been tradition since before the United States were established as such. Traditions help us remember who we are and where we come from, but sometimes our traditions hold us back from full humanity. Thank God for always reforming us again and again to be so much more than we think we are.

Jesus is rightfully angry with the religious teachers of his day. This interaction reminds me of the First Aid training I received at camp a few years back, requiring us to put on latex-free gloves before helping a child who has fallen and scraped open a bloody knee or elbow. The child needs comfort, and you want me to take the time to sterilize my hands? Now, I know that transmission of disease is important to pay attention to, that those gloves are as much for the kid’s protection as for my own, but the feeling is what I’m getting at. Following the rules only gets you so far until your heart aches to go farther, and then what sort of impasse are we at? Can we break the speed limit if our passenger is a woman in labor and we’re trying to get her to the hospital? How do we make that decision? I mean, calling the police for an escort would probably be a better idea than just flying down the road, but you see how complicated life can get when our hearts and the rules don’t always agree?

Until the rules keep a good hold on the worst parts of our hearts. The anger, fear, and pride which seek to control us need to be kept in check, and we have rules and traditions to try and re-shape those impulses toward less destructive behaviors. We pass the peace in worship as a tradition which helps us learn to reconcile with each other throughout the week. We gather offerings for the poor and hungry each week, as well as to keep the building open and pay for my health insurance, because our tradition reminds us we are connected to and even reliant upon one another for sustenance and blessing. We proclaim resurrection every Sunday, it’s tradition, because we don’t always see or believe that good can come out of evil, that life can return after death. We need the tradition of proclaiming resurrection for and to one another over and over again, whether we celebrate it our doubt it.

Our tradition grows from the promises of God. When we lose that connection, perhaps we need to rethink what we do, what we hold on to. As the letter of James reminds us this morning: “those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act - they will be blessed in their doing.” The law of liberty is the law of love, the law God gives is given out of a desire that we should have life abundant, as Jesus came to give us. We are blessed when we practice that pure religion, caring for widows and orphans in their distress, looking to find God in the hidden places of struggle in our hearts and our neighborhoods. “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances just as this entire law?”

Because the first tradition was set by God - light out of darkness, life out of nothing, order from chaos and resurrection out of death. It is the tradition of God which holds us, always has, and always will. Over and over again, God comes to us, God lives with us, God lifts us up and sends us to be a light to the nations. And as that tradition takes root in our hearts and lives, it feeds us and shapes us in that Image of God we were created to carry, bringing life and light with us from the God who is always near when we call. “Who made the world and set it all a-spinning, put on flesh to live here, makes us holy, too, and who tells the Story of our liberation, bringing hope to all that lives?” So we continue our tradition of celebrating our faith in song: “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” hymn 631 in your red hymnals.

Holy food for holy people on a holy journey

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me any my household, we will serve the LORD.” Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

Psalm 34:15-22

The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and God’s ears are open to their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to erase the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry, and the LORD hears them and delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those whose spirits are crushed. Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the LORD delivers them from every one. God will keep safe all their bones; not one of them shall be broken. Evil will bring death to the wicked and those who hate the righteous will be punished. O LORD, you redeem the life of your servants, and those who put their trust in you will not be punished.

Ephesians 6:10-20

Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

John 5:56-69

Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread what came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

*******

This is our last week in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel. We’ve been reading through this chapter for over a month! It started in July when we met with our Reformed and Methodist neighbors for worship in the park, and we heard the story about the feeding of the five (or six) thousand. Then every week after Jesus has been going on and on about being the bread of life, telling us to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and now he’s gotten all mystical again, telling the disciples that “it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.” I thought he just spent a month telling us to eat his flesh, and now flesh is useless?

As the disciples were saying, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?”

With his talk of blood and bodies, Jesus probably made a lot of people uncomfortable. But remember what crowds he’s talking to. These people gathered to hear him speak yesterday and were fed this miraculously filling meal of bread and fish. Overnight, the disciples got into a boat and went back to the other side of the sea of Galilee, where Jesus joined them a bit later, walking on water, and in the morning, the crowds couldn’t find him. So they made their way to the other side of the sea, looking for Jesus, who tells them not to work for the food that perishes, but to work for the food that endures for eternal life. And off they go for the next few weeks on this topic of Jesus being the bread of life. The crowds ask him for a sign. He sort of waves at them and goes, “Hello, I’m right here in front of you!” Then they tell him to remember the manna in the wilderness, and of course he knows all about that, since it was his Father who gave it to them. Not to mention that, by the way, it’s been Jesus all along, the bread that came down from heaven! Then some of the locals get all huffy that Jesus is making himself so important when they saw him pick his nose when he was a kid growing up in their village. So Jesus has to go over it all again, that he is the bread that came down from heaven, that they have to drink his blood to have life, that God the Father is the one who sent him to them so that they might have life. And they start to grumble and get uncomfortable, and some of them leave.

Which brings us up to date with how we got to where we are today. So I wonder, are we in it for the show? The feeding of the five (or six) thousand was pretty impressive. Are we in it for the miracles? Or are we following Jesus for the relationship with God that draws us to him? Does it really matter, as long as it gets us to Jesus?

I think this is where Jesus’ talk about the spirit giving life and the flesh counting for nothing really comes from. He’s spent too much time on the importance of eating and drinking for life to just dismiss it out of hand as a zinger for his argument. The crowds kept bringing up the manna in the wilderness, but what did they say about the exodus from Egypt or the journey to the promised land? Did they get too wrapped up in the manna to think about what they were being freed from and fed for?

Sometimes we get this way, too. At summer camp we tend to schedule our daily activities around how to get to the cafeteria for the next meal. While working at Target I can tell when it’s time for a break because I get hungry after about two hours. We scheduled a funeral here two weeks ago around the awareness that folks would be wanting lunch around noon, so if we begin at 11AM, guests don’t get uncomfortable and distracted by their hunger. We have real bodily needs, after all. Being mortal means hunger comes with the territory.

But that’s not all there is to us. That’s not all there is to living the life Jesus came for us to have. We are on the wilderness road to the promised land. Jesus told the disciples that the words he spoke to them are spirit and life, that no one can come to him without the Father’s initiative. It’s the same statement of faith we make now in the creed, when we confess reliance on the Holy Spirit for our faith. Luther reads that portion of our confession to mean that “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Christ or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with gifts, and made me holy and kept me in true faith” just as the Spirit does for the whole church.

The same God who has created us, who provides more than enough for life through the whole of creation, created us for more than just existing. Jesus in the flesh lived and died with us for life that is eternal, in the here and now just as much as in the hereafter. We in the self-centeredness of sin have made a world where life has to be earned, or fought for, rather than received as a gift, but Jesus has said over and over again that receiving the gift of life is as basic and simple as eating bread, as uncomplicated and wide open as just believing in him as the one who comes to give us life. 

Too many others promise that they will serve us if only we serve them first, that our lives will be so much better if only we buy their product or try their new program, but, as Peter said in today’s reading, where else can we go for the words of eternal life? No one else but Jesus is the Word made flesh, the bread of life. And we don’t need to do anything for that bread, for that welcome, for that gift of eternal life to be given to us. Now that we have spent so much of our summer in this bread of life chapter, we finally get to the heart of it, that Jesus is himself the Word of eternal life, the Holy One of God, the one who came down from heaven to give life to the world.

This teaching is difficult, but it is so simple. We don’t need to meet any special requirements to be part of God’s eternity. We don’t need to prove our right to be part of the family of of faith. We don’t need to think a certain way or vote a certain way or eat a certain way to belong to the community of Christ. We cannot prove by our behavior or our reasoning that Jesus loves us, because Jesus has already shown that to be true in giving his body and blood for our lives, fully and completely without reservation. Now we get to live with the consequences of life, together with all of creation on this wilderness road to the promised land.

Blood

Proverbs 9:1-6

Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, ‘you that are simple, turn in here!’ To those without sense she says, ‘come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity and live, and walk in the way of insight.’

Psalm 34:9-14

Fear the Lord, you saints of the Lord, for those who fear the Lord lack nothing. The lions are in want and suffer hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack nothing that is good. Come, children, and listen to me; I will teach you reverence for the Lord. Who among you takes pleasure in life and desires long life to enjoy prosperity? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from lying words. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

Ephesians 5:15-20

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

John 6:51-58

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came 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.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the [Son of Man/Human One] and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

*******

For a faith that is centered on the Incarnation of God, we don’t tend to deal well with conversations about flesh. More often than not, if we talk about flesh, it’s in contrast to Spirit, as in ‘sins of the flesh,’ and ‘gifts of the Spirit.’  Throughout Paul’s letters he struggles with this relationship, at least in the way he uses his language to talk about new life in Christ, living by the Spirit and putting away the desires of the flesh. We tend to talk of ‘flesh,’ in ‘church-speak,’ as though it is dirty, and we talk about matters of the Spirit in a way that separates the realm of Sunday morning entirely apart from the rest of our week. But we can’t separate the two, as much as we would like to. We bring the cares of the week into Sunday worship, and the actions of worship - forgiveness, prayer, passing peace around - are meant to be lived out in our Monday through Saturday lives. We recognize the language of flesh and spirit being in conflict, the thoughtless things we want to do working against the nature we might call our ‘better selves.’ It’s why we make children do what they don’t want to do even when they whine and complain, because our actions, as they become habit, feed our values, and our values, as they become second nature, inform our actions. But flesh and spirit are not so easily disentangled from each other. If you ever need to take stock of where your values lie, to clarify what you actually value, take a look at your checkbook or credit card spending. There is clear evidence of what Paul calls ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit,’ right there in hard numbers. Even math and money are spiritual.

Sometimes, though, the talk of these either/or experiences can get a bit… theoretical. A bit oversimplified? A bit… distant. So Jesus switches from talking about his body being bread to telling people they need to gnaw on his flesh like a dog with a bone, and that they need to drink his blood, which is the thing which gives a body life. When Jesus tells his listeners to chew on his flesh and drink his blood, he’s making a pretty disgusting statement. Blood is such a mystery to the ancient people, that it’s considered unclean, it’s forbidden stuff, it’s life energy spilled out of the cut throat of the sacrificial animal. It’s blood on Joseph’s coat that his brothers use to convince Jacob that his son was killed. It’s the first plague on Egypt when Moses confronts Pharoah, and the Nile turns to blood, and all the fish die. The blood of Abel cries out to God from the ground after Cain killed him. This is serious stuff, flesh and blood, and it is the Word made flesh who bleeds it into us. 

When we say someone is our blood, we mean we are family, related through birth, connected genetically, and there’s no getting away from that sort of connection.  When we say someone’s behavior is in their blood, it means that is so ingrained no amount of work will change that person. Bloodlines in ruling families are supposed to be kept pure so that power passed down remains in the family line. And then there is the common phrase, “blood is thicker than water,” meaning family ties are deeper and more lasting than any other relationships.

Except, in the blood of Jesus, as we are drawn into the family of faith through baptism, our blood, our personal blood, is not thicker than the waters of baptism, not thicker than the blood of Jesus. No claim on us lasts longer than those baptismal waters and that blood of Christ. Nothing. Not family of origin. Not membership in any club or organization. Not best hopes or worst disasters. Not great achievements or terrible mistakes.

We are a month away from our event responding to the Heroin crisis in our community. Not only does addiction hold sway over people from all walks of life, but when drugs are shared by needles, blood is passed between people, oftentimes carrying viruses, diseases that can easily do as much harm as the effects of the drug on a body. Then in a person’s own body the blood becomes like a poison, and in the community, the illness becomes a social disease typically treated with shame. When the individual body starts to self-destruct, the corporate body, the community, can either succumb to illness and gangrene as it shuns people with illness, or it can pump new lifeblood socially and spiritually through care of those who are sick and struggling.

And, truth be told, we are all sick. Our common illness is bondage to sin, and we cannot free ourselves, and we need a transfusion. Only the Great Physician, the Author of Life, the Word made flesh, can provide the blood required. Only the Creator can bleed enough to answer Abel’s blood crying murder from the ground. Think about it: the first children on this earth, and one brother kills the other out of jealousy, spilling family blood and leaving home. This is the story we tell about the beginning of civilization, Cain abandoning Adam and Eve with the grief of losing not one, but both of their children in a moment of violent anger. The first lesson in humanity’s struggle with our own: take away the blood, take away the life. So Abel’s blood cried out from the ground, and God’s blood cried out in answer from the cross, as it cries out from this Table week after week, day after day, heartbeat by heartbeat.

Because, brothers and sisters, to eat of the flesh of the Son of Humanity, and drink of His Blood, is to receive Christ on a cellular level. As Jesus, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, has taken our humanity on, even to a cellular level, now the flesh and blood of Christ is alive among us today, walking and breathing and bleeding and blessing. One commentary I read this week said something along the lines of ‘you cannot remove last Tuesday’s lunch from my body any more than you can remove the body and blood of Christ from my body.’  This is our transfusion, our transfiguration, our hope and the promise we are given each time we come hungry to the Table. Jesus Christ, body and blood, flesh and spirit, given and shed, restoring, redeeming, renewing, flowing and pulsing, in and through and for you.

Bread and Bodies

1 Kings 19:4-8

Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

John 6: 35, 41-51

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When my mother’s father’s father first landed here in North America, he made his living as a baker. Or so I’m told. The story goes that he would open a bakery, get it going, and sell it so he could open another one, somewhere in Connecticut. Then my grandfather was the breadwinner, rather than the bread baker, through working in a bank in the city. I remember one of the meals mom would make for us, which was often my favorite, was milk-toast, which is, just as it sounds, toasted bread on a plate with milk poured over, often accompanied with a can of peas. I later found out the other meaning of the word milquetoast, being weak sauce, but when I was a picky eater as a kid, this was one of my favorite suppers. And now that I live on my own, I sort of default to cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, pasta and veggies for dinner. It’s great during running season, all these carbs. I kind of exist on bread and dairy, when I look at my grocery list. I’m trying to add in vegetables more often, and am trying to be more intentional about salads when I have the chance to eat out. I chalk it up to my grandfather’s father. I’m hoping that I might some day have better luck baking bread from scratch that actually turns out to be edible. Lilly is usually first to greet me at the end of the worship service to ask if she can help ‘clean up’ the communion bread that Chet bakes for us. Hard bread and soft cheese is a slice of heaven. Bread fresh out of the oven is one of the best smells on earth. Bread is common to all of humanity, in one form or another depending on the local crops. That’s why it’s a central element to the Sacrament of communion, because it is so very common, so very ordinary, so very basic to survival wherever you go.

But we seem to have this problem of feeding ourselves with food that isn’t bread. I don’t mean gluten intolerance, I mean stuff that’s more chemical than food, I mean food on the run that’s more empty calories than nutrition, I mean food that’s a distraction from whatever else we ought to be dealing with at the moment. Some of you may be following Courtney on Facebook while she does her Beachbody work, posting again and again about making healthy lifestyle choices about food and exercise, measuring progress, being an encouragement to others who want to treat their bodies better. Being a good steward of our bodies, and of the bodies around us and the natural environment that supports life in these bodies, shouldn’t be all that difficult, but we all struggle with it. Whether it’s overeating, wastefulness, violence, sexism, racism, we are all connected by the simple fact that we live in bodies, and when one body hurts we all suffer. A year ago today, the body of Mike Brown was left in the middle of the road for over four hours after he was shot and killed. Female bodies are bought and sold and traded across the globe. Elderly bodies are put into special homes, disabled bodies are treated as inconveniences, young bodies are idolized and pressured into very particular boxes. Black and brown bodies are treated with suspicion and fear. Our bodies and our minds, our emotions and our actions, are too interdependent to try and separate them out. We strike out against other bodies to protect our own bodies, we isolate bodies from each other and we fill our bellies with foods that give us a quick rush but ultimately cannot sustain us and leave us grumpy and hungry again.

Elijah was ready to be done with his own body. He saw terrible abuse of power in his day and he did all he could do to stand up against it, but at the end of the day he was tired, and worn out, and ran away to hole up under a tree and ask for death. Jezebel chases after him to kill him when all he did was call and end to a multi-year drought… and slaughter the priests of Jezebel’s false god, Ba’al. A pretty amazing achievement, yet he still comes away from it feeling like a failure. He does all that God had asked of him, and in return is hunted by the authorities. He would rather die. He tells God as much, as he crawls under a broom tree and goes to sleep, waiting to just die, giving up, throwing in the towel.

But then an angel of God appears and gives him some bread. A warm cake and a jug of water. He eats a bit, then lays back down again… and he just can’t catch a break. The angel is there a second time, with another reminder to eat, to get his strength up for the journey ahead. As though standing up to a king and queen and forty prophets of a false god wasn’t work enough, there’s more ahead for him, and he spends forty days on his way to the mountain of God, Mount Horeb, the mountain where ages ago a bush had caught fire without burning to call Moses into the hard work of standing up to Pharaoh. It’s where Elijah will meet God in a still quiet, a sheer silence. But that is yet to come, Elijah doesn’t know what’s ahead, only that this angel has given him some food to sustain him for the journey. Roused him to move forward when all he wanted to do was die. Intervened in his suicidal thinking and called him into the next big thing, into mentoring the next prophet, Elisha, who will also do great deeds on behalf of the Lord.

That must have been some dense bread to have carried Elijah for 40 days. Though the angel might have been some encouragement, too. Angels usually have to tell people not to be afraid before they say much else. I don’t think Elijah cared enough to be frightened when this angel appeared with bread and water for the journey. He probably wasn’t too overjoyed to be pressed on toward anything else at the moment, either. But God doesn’t promise comfort in this life, only companionship. “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” is what Jesus says when he finally leaves the disciples after the resurrection. Not “Lo, you will never have trouble.” Not “Lo, you will never again doubt or fear.” Not “Lo, life in this world will be a breeze from here on out.”

And he doesn’t just tell us he will be with us always, he actually lives within us, so that there is no place we can ever find ourselves where he will not be also. Strength for the journey. Bread for 40 days worth of wandering, though we eat of it together every Sunday. Real food for real bodies. Real bread for real life. This isn’t some chemical substitute for food, isn’t some pint of ice cream that covers up the pain of daily tragedies in our lives and in the news. It’s not a private party, either. The Lord of Life comes among us as we live in these bodies and gives us his own body as bread for the journey.

The problem we tend to have with that, though, is that somehow we think we know what his body means. He’s the carpenter’s son, after all. He’s a first century Jew, after all. He’s a single man in his thirties, after all. He’s a nerd about the Scriptures, after all. We see bodies and think we know what goes on in the hearts and minds of the people. We think from looking at a person we can tell what sort of person they are, what they value, what they dream of. I just saw in the news this weekend a great story that Target stores are finally doing away with gendered marketing for toys and children’s bedding. Now instead of putting dinosaurs in the boys aisle and unicorns in the girls aisle, it’s all just generally kids stuff. So a girl who likes robots can have robots and a boy who likes rainbows can have rainbows, without being told from the start that they’re wrong. Kids and parents have been complaining for ages about this false advertising, because it’s ridiculous to look at a kid and tell them that because they have certain DNA they are supposed to like Barbie more than football or can’t play with dolls just because they’re supposed to like Tonka trucks. But we see bodies and think we know hearts. We do it to each other all the time, and we do it to Jesus, too.

Because of his body, Jesus was supposed to eat only at the popular kids’ lunch table. He was supposed to disregard female bodies, poor bodies, sick bodies, and was supposed to hate Roman bodies and other Gentile bodies. He certainly wasn’t supposed to eat bread with obviously hungry bodies. But here’s the thing about Jesus: 100% God, 100% human, his body was made up of the stuff he created all of life with in the first place. God sent manna in the wilderness, sent an angel with sustenance for Elijah, and came to us in a body just like ours to take care of our bodies, to feed us and sustain us, too.

When we eat bread we admit that we cannot live on our own. When we drink we admit that we have need and thirst. We eat to live, because without food our bodies will shut down and die. But our body is most alive when all systems are taken care of, well-connected, supported and well rested, on the larger scale of community life together. One body alone cannot survive. The letter to the Ephesians reminds us today: we are members of each other. Christ Jesus is the food that runs in our veins, the true bread from heaven that gives life to the body, the friend and companion who walks beside us and gives us strength for the work ahead of us, the one who breaks the boxes of our expectations and gives us the room and freedom to grow in new life together. We need this bread, this life, this gift, and Jesus is this bread, this life, this gift, broken and poured out for you, for every body, for the life of the whole world.

Thanks be to God.