Welcoming Jesus (A 151st Anniversary Sermon)

 

(Scriptures:  Psalm 103; James 3:13-18; Mark 9:30-37)

 

Well, first of all, let me begin by saying happy 151^st anniversary, Emanuel Church!  One of our windows shows Jesus welcoming the little children. That window was presented by George and Katherine Pfirmann.  While today’s Gospel reading is not the one that inspired this window – you’ll be hearing that reading from Mark’s Gospel in a couple weeks, with the well-known words “suffer the little children to come unto me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven”– the window fits the theme of today’s reading as well.  I also think that window says something about who this congregation has been – we’ve been a place where children are welcome.

In today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel, the disciples weren’t thinking about children – in fact, mostly, they were thinking of themselves, not an unusual circumstance.  Peter, James, and John had just watched Jesus’ transfiguration up on the mountain, when they caught a glimpse of his glory.  Back down in the valley, they had just watched Jesus cast a demon out of a young boy.   Now Jesus had just been teaching the disciples that he would be betrayed, and suffer, and be killed, and rise again on the third day. We’re told that, after they arrived at Capernaum, Jesus asks what the disciples had been arguing about on the road, and the disciples, who had been quite chatty to this point, go silent – full stop.  At the same time Jesus had been talking about his upcoming suffering, the disciples were dreaming of their own upcoming glory.  Clearly they hadn’t heard a word Jesus had been saying, or if they heard, nothing had sunk in.

Jesus recognizes a teaching moment when he sees it, and so he sits the disciples down and tells them, whoever among you would be the first of all must be the last of all and the servant of all.  And then Jesus gives them a mental picture to put with his words – a little child, with the words, “whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the One who sent me.”  It’s a sweet picture – certainly we get warm fuzzies looking at our stained glass window showing Jesus with the children, but what we may miss is that in the society of Jesus’ time, in a society in which status and power and honor were much sought after, children were the lowest status members of the household, considered entirely expendable.  There was no ethic of saving “women and children first” in that culture - after all, it was routine and even expected that not all children would live to adulthood.  So in this teaching Jesus was, once again, turning the priorities of his society upside down, putting the highest value on those whom the surrounding society valued least.

I think that at least part of this teaching has gotten through to our society.  Our society is much more protective of children than that of Jesus’ day.  If you don’t believe that, try passing a school bus with its flashers on while school children are boarding – it’s a major traffic offense.  When a child boards a school bus, all traffic comes to a halt.  And rightly so.

This teaching – “whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me” - also motivated early pastor Emanuel Boehringer, who was not content to wring his hands at the number of children orphaned by the Civil War, but felt compelled to do something to make things better for them.  Caroline Engel was the first of many children welcomed by the Rev. Boehringer and his wife.  When they welcomed Caroline Engel, they welcomed Jesus himself, and when they welcomed Jesus himself, they welcomed the God who sent Jesus.  Almost 150 years later, Bethany Children’s Home is still providing safe space for at-risk children, and welcoming children in Christ’s name.

Over the past 150 or so years, Emanuel Church has seen our membership grow from a nucleus of 34 founding members.  Over those 150 years we’ve welcomed many children – I remember all those many, many confirmation photos – your confirmation photos - over our church’s history, that were shown at our 150^th anniversary last year, with a recording of Florence Werner’s organ music in the background.  For many years, we also had a flourishing Girl Scout program, and the Girl Scouts still hold training sessions here from time to time.  Now we’ve returned to roughly that same number we started with - we have maybe 30 on the membership rolls these days.   It’s been a few years since we’ve had a confirmation class – though I live in hope that I’ll see the day when we’ll once again be ordering curriculum and certificates for confirmation.  But, after a few dormant years, we have Sunday school again…..and so we’re still welcoming children in Christ’s name, even though these days, it’s mostly one or two at a time. 

Our congregation made its most public statement of welcome to children – and therefore of welcome to Jesus - not when the congregation was at its height, but early on, when membership totals were small and money was limited, when we’d just erected this building and were really just getting started.  And now we’ve come full circle – once again our membership totals are small and our finances are limited – so maybe it’s time once again to dream big, like this church’s founders and early pastors did. 

What are your dreams for Emanuel Church?  We can be proud of all we do to care for our graveyard, to honor our foremothers and forefathers, but Emanuel Church is more than a cemetery maintenance society with organ music.  Emanuel Church is not a museum to the past, but a living witness – a living witness - to the Risen Christ, where the fruits of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, and faithfulness – can be found in action.

What would Emanuel Boehringer do if he were pastor here today?  The American civil war is long over, but wars are raging in other places around the globe.  Many children are separated from their parents, not by the war, but by family strife, by alcohol and drug abuse, by an economy that forces both parents to work multiple jobs in order to feed, clothe, and shelter their families.  While we have outlawed child labor in the United States, children live in servitude in other places around the globe, and even in some of the offshore US territories such as the Marianas Islands which have been exempted from US laws prohibiting child labor.  Much closer to home, right here in Pennsylvania, our country’s continuing addiction to fossil fuels threatens the environment, as the process of extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation via hydrofracking has led to unnatural destruction of mountaintops and contamination of wells, aquifers, and municipal water sources, threatening not only natural habitats and home values, but health and life itself.  Right here in Philadelphia, our water supply may be threatened.  Not just parents, but all of us, have cause for concern – into what kind of world have we brought our children?  In what kind of world will our children growing up? What kind of world are we bequeathing our children?

Despite the looming threat of the Civil War, when it wasn’t immediately clear whether America would continue as one country or break into two, a little cluster of 3 dozen or so German Reformed immigrants, barely off the boat, trusted God sufficiently to establish this congregation, to call a pastor, acquire land, and erect this building.  In the midst of the Civil War, in 1863, when the fighting had drawn as close to home as Gettysburg, PA, Emanuel Boehringer and his wife trusted God enough to welcome Caroline Engel into their home, and to share with the congregation their vision for the Orphans Home of the Shepherd of the Lambs – which we now know as Bethany Children’s Home. 

So, in a world full of threats, God isn’t calling us here at Emanuel to solve all the world’s problems.  He’s calling us to welcome Caroline Engel – or Caroline’s sisters and brothers in our midst today.  And by welcoming them in the name of Christ, God is calling us to welcome Jesus.

How can we welcome Caroline Engel?  How can we welcome Jesus?  At the most basic level, we can welcome and be supportive of those families with young children who come our way, and invite others to be with us.   We can continue to support the food cupboard, so that families, with or without children, in our midst can eat. What else can we do to welcome Caroline Engel, to welcome Jesus? Could we host an afterschool program here, or a daycare?  That may be a little ambitious – but not beyond the reach of reality.  If any feel a call to be Girl Scout leaders, I can give you the email and phone number of our former Girl Scout leader – she said that if we could find some leaders, she could help us start up a Girl Scout troop again, and nothing would make me happier.  We could reach out to our local schools to see if some way we could partner with them.   Beyond donating to the food cupboard, we can get involved in neighborhood organizations – maybe the Bridesburg Boys and Girls Club – that improve the quality of life for children.  And as individuals, we can support policies that promote peace and put the long-term well-being of the environment – of the planet, of the world our children will inherit – ahead of short-sighted policies aimed at improving corporate bottom lines for the next quarter.

Then Jesus took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’  May Emanuel Church continue to be, as we have been for 151 years, a place where Caroline Engel and her sisters and brothers are welcome, where Jesus is welcome, and where we continue to welcome all who come our way in Jesus name.  Amen.

 

The Cost and Joy of Discipleship

(Scriptures:  Isaiah 50:4-9a;  James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38)

 

The importance of our personal identity has become one of the pressing issues of our day.  Protecting our identity – our social security number, our credit information – from those who would impersonate us to commit theft – has required increasing levels of vigilance.  We’re a long way from the days when we did most of our commerce on a local, face-to-face basis, in which we shopped on Main Street and we knew the shop owner and the shop owner knew us.  In a world where we can buy from and sell to people across the country and across the globe, the folks we deal with don’t know us as living, breathing human beings, but only as a credit card number and a shipping address, and perhaps a profile of shopping habits compiled from past transactions.  Given the recent passage of Pennsylvania’s voter-ID law, requiring photo ID in order to vote – widely seen as a partisan attempt to disenfranchise elderly and minority voters who may not have reason to carry a driver’s license or other photo ID – inability to prove one’s identity may become a barrier to voting for as many as 800,000 Pennsylvanians, many right here in Philadelphia.   And, in the eleven years since 9-11, we have read of increasing government surveillance of political activity, our emails and even our phone calls.  All of which is to say, lots of people want to know who we are, and with a variety of motives.

Today’s Gospel reading – which asks a number of questions about who Jesus is - marks a turning point in Mark’s Gospel.  Mark begins his Gospel with the words, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God” – but from that point, his presentation of Jesus is almost like that of a detective novel, giving us clues and asking us to draw our own conclusions.  Up until this point, we’ve seen Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, his temptation in the wilderness, and his call of his disciples.  We’ve observed Jesus casting out demons, feeding the multitudes, teaching and healing.  We’ve watched Jesus deal with rejection from the religious authorities, questions from John’s disciples, and even misunderstanding from his own family.  All of which brings us to today’s reading, in which Jesus asks his followers to put together all that they’ve seen so far, and draw their own conclusions.  We’re told that they’re traveling toward Caesarea Philippi, which had been made a regional center of government by Philip the Tetrarch.  First he asks, “Who do the crowds say I am?”.  The crowds know Jesus only superficially, and their answers are superficial – John the Baptist come back to life, or Elijah, or one of the prophets.  Of course, the disciples would have much more personal day-to-day experience of Jesus, and so Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?”   And Peter blurts you, “You are the Messiah.”

Great answer – so far as it went.  Unfortunately, the term “Messiah” came with a lot of baggage.  While different groups of Jews attached different types of baggage to the word “Messiah”, many expected that the Messiah would be a righteous political leader who would rescue Israel from all its enemies and restore independence.  Deuteronomy 18:15 quotes Moses as saying that God would raise up another prophet like Moses.  The book of Malachi ends with the words that before the great and terrible day of the Lord, God would send the prophet Elijah.  The crowd’s guesses as to Jesus’ identity didn’t come out of no-where - the word “Messiah” was weighed down with many expectations.

Perhaps the bottom line is that Peter expected that if Jesus is the Messiah, the road they travel with him would be a road to glory – especially since Jesus waited to start the conversation until the shining governmental buildings of Caesarea Philippi were nearby.  Sort of like our politics – if you’re a crony of the winning presidential or gubernatorial or mayoral candidate, you can expect to get a plum position in the winner’s administration.   Indeed, next week’s reading from Mark includes the argument among the disciples among who was the greatest, so it would appear that they were already lobbying for positions in Jesus’ cabinet. 

Jesus responds by throwing a huge bucket of cold water on all their aspirations to glory.  Mark tells us, “ 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. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”  Hey, Jesus, you’re going way off message with all this talk of suffering and death.  You’re probably just tired.  Maybe you should lay down and take a nap, and you’ll feel better when you wake up.  But Jesus responds sharply: “‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

And Jesus keeps tossing bucket after bucket of cold water on their hopes. Indeed, what the disciples had once hoped would be a victory lap was suddenly looking like a very hard slog indeed.   “‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For 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. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those 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.’ 

These words of Jesus are an embarrassment to much of what goes on in many churches.  The question frequently comes up, “Why are the churches so empty.”  It’s a great question to consider - a question that may cut deeper than we realize.  When we ask the question, we’re asking why the churches are empty of worshippers, why so few come to fill the pews – but perhaps the reason they’re empty of people is they may be empty in other ways – empty of faith, empty of discipleship, empty of sacrifice, empty of cost.  Our society has turned church membership into just another consumer item.  There was once a time when the neighborhood church within walking distance of home was the only game in town, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time.  Church shoppers now have options.  They want a church with a large and expanding Sunday school program, a classically-trained choir – or maybe a praise band – or maybe multiple services with various musical options.  They want a pastor whose sermons meet them where they are every week – despite the reality of a congregation where various people are in all kinds of emotional spaces at any given time.  They want the church to offer professionally-trained counselors to get us through life’s rough spots.  And they’d certainly like a large, well-maintained building to impress our neighbors.  The more items a church can offer on its religious smorgasbord, the better – especially if the church has a large enough financial endowment that the members don’t have to kick in much.  (As a member of a prosperous church in the suburbs once told me, “Our dead members give more to the church than our living members.”)   If the church doesn’t cater to them sufficiently – or as they sometimes put it, “if we’re not being fed spiritually” – and especially if the pastor says something to ruffle feathers – church shoppers will pick up and move on to the next church.  Or they’ll stay home and turn on feel-good religious programming on the radio or the TV, where they’ll hear messages that comfort those who are entirely too comfortable with the status quo, and that afflict those who are already much afflicted at the hands of the powers that be.

Christian discipleship is not a spectator sport.   Going to church and praising God isn’t like going down to Citizens Bank park and cheering on the Phillies.  Hear again these words of Jesus: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  Christian discipleship is not about shopping around for fulfillment, but for laying down our lives to follow God’s call to fulfill the needs of others; not about what we can get, but about what we give; not about what we keep, but about what we sacrifice – not only money, but time and talent as well.  Not for nothing did God in the Old Testament call for a tithe – 10% off the top, not from leftovers - to be offered to the Lord – a tithe, not a tip.  The prophet Malachi accused those who failed to tithe of robbing God.  In the book of Acts, we’re told that early Christians sold their lands and houses and laid the proceeds at the feet of the apostles, to be shared by the church.   Certainly we have no millionaires here at Emanuel Church….but I think we all – myself very much included - can look at our discipleship – not only our giving, but our living, how we live our lives, how we use our time and talent as well as our treasure, in the light of the cross.  I’ll adapt the words of one of our former presidents, which some of you will remember:  “Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church.” 

If all Jesus has to offer is an unending series of demands, why even listen to him, let alone follow him?  Why not look for an easier path through life?   As St. Augustine put it, “God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee.”  There is a God-shaped void in each of us.  The paradox of Jesus’ words is that as long as we are wrapped up in ourselves – our wants, our needs, our comforts, or perhaps our egos, our need for recognition, our need to see our own name in print and hear the sound of our own voice – we will always have a vague sense that something is missing, will always find ourselves wanting something more.  Part of the process of forming a strong connection with other human beings is letting down our defenses and becoming vulnerable to them, being willing at times to let our wishes and our convenience take second place so that the other person’s needs are met.   Certainly those who are raising or have raised children know that with children come with endless demands on time and energy, and yet also comes a sense of fulfillment in bringing new life into the world and nurturing that life to adulthood..  In the same way, those who we find are on fire for God are those who have let down their defenses and opened up their hearts so that following God’s call is primary.  It’s about getting one’s self out of the way so that Christ can live in us.

The German pastor and 20^th century martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book “The Cost of Discipleship”, offers this reflection on costly grace.

“Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.  Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

And, finally, I’ll close with the familiar but life-changing words of the prayer of St. Francis, which show us how to respond to this costly grace:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

 

"Be Opened!"

(Scriptures:  Isaiah 35:4-7a;  James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37)

 

Many of you know that my mother and sister live in the Reading area.  As I drive north from Philadelphia to Reading on route 422, there’s a building with a sign that always catches my attention – “Mary Merritt’s Museum of Childhood.” That sign always makes me ponder, because the words “Childhood” and “Museum” seem to point in different directions.  A museum, of course, is where we go to see artifacts from our past, to remember where we’ve been.  On the other hand, when we are children, we have our whole lives ahead of us, with little memory of the past.  What would a “Museum of Childhood” look like.  I’ve never actually pulled over to see what’s inside - I think it might be a doll museum or some such – but as you can tell, that sign always starts my mind going.

Our “Blessing of the Backpacks” is a small way for our church to recognize and lift up those who have returned to classes this week.  We’re also reminded that our forebears in the faith valued education.  The book of Proverbs tells us “Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding.”  And so we are happy for those students, young and not-so-young, who seek to further their education, to open their minds to new wisdom and new understanding.

The writer of our brief reading from Isaiah spoke words of encouragement to a people who were under threat of conquest by the Assyrians.  Isaiah points past the present danger to speak of better days to come, a time when “the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, when the lame will leap and the speechless sing for joy.”  We see these verses come to life in Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man who was brought to Jesus for healing.  Jesus speaks the Aramaic word “Ephphatha” – in English, “be opened” – and we’re told his ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly.  Those who witnessed the healing said, “He has done all things well, he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

“Ephphatha - Be opened!”  These words are likewise our prayer for those students, young and not so young, returning to class.  “Be opened” – opened to new learning, to new insights, to new ways of seeing the world, new ways of hearing what our neighbors have to tell us – and new ways to proclaim this new knowledge in word and deed.

“Ephphatha - Be opened!”  I believe these are also Jesus’ prayer for us in the church.  On one hand, for our children attending public or private school, we want them to have the most modern facilities, the most up-to-date textbooks, and shiny new sports equipment.  If at school, our children were taught geography from an old, threadbare textbook that said that America had 48 states, and showed the countries of Africa with the names they carried when they were colonies of Great Britain and France and such, parents would be outraged. . On the other hand, in many churches, “newness” of any kind – new hymns, new insights from Scripture, new ways of worshipping – are sometimes greeted with ambivalence.  I’m grateful that at Emanuel, while we definitely treasure our history, those holy moments where God has met us in the past, you’ve also been willing to try some new things.  For God does not call on us to be curators, but explorers.  We may remember that the name of God given to Moses – which in English we may say as “Jehovah” – is usually translated in our Bibles as “I am who I am”, it also means “I will be who I will be.” 

God offers us continuity with the past along with newness in the future – not one or the other, but both.  On one hand, did not Jesus say, “Let the little children come unto me and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven”, and in another place, “those who will not receive the reign of God as a child will never enter it.”  And the writer of I Peter asked his readers to crave pure spiritual milk, like newborn babies.   On the other hand, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”  And the writer of Hebrews implored his readers to move beyond the stage of needing nourishment from spiritual milk, and to move on to spiritual meat.  And Jesus himself called on his hearers, not to try to fit the new wine of his teachings into the old wineskins of longstanding tradition, but to use new wineskins to contain the new wine.  God is gracious to meet us wherever we are – be it ever so humble – but God will not leave us there.  This is not to say that we should go along with every new spiritual fad to come down the pike.  We need to use discernment.  As I John 4 says, “Dear friends, do not receive every spirit, but test the spirits, to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  So on one hand, we as Christians can’t live with our eyes closed and our hands over our ears to block out all new information; on the other hand, we need to engage in discernment over new teachings, to see if they’re consistent with our basic understanding of God, or, perhaps, the new insights are so compelling that they call into question our theological framework.   Sort of like Paul, who before his conversion had his faith all figured out – until God knocked him off his horse with a vision of the risen Christ.

We in the church are called to be lifelong learners.  We here at Emanuel experience some of that through our Bible study which we hold after church.  On the other hand, often our most memorable learning experiences come, not through texts and lectures, but through the people we meet – new visitors, former members returning to active participation.  And, in fact, today’s Gospel reading carries a story in which it seemed even Jesus seems to have experienced a learning moment in his encounter with a Syro-Phoenecian woman – a Gentile, we’re told, an outsider to Jesus’ community.   Mark’s Gospel gives us a very human portrait of Jesus, and this encounter is a very human moment.  We’re told that Jesus tried to keep his presence a secret – it sounds like perhaps he was tired and needed some "down time" – but a woman outside his community knocks on the door and begs for healing for her daughter.  Like we may do sometimes when we’re tired and don’t want to be disturbed, Jesus apparently tries to brush her off with a really insensitive comment about keeping bread for the children and not throwing it to the dogs – basically saying that his primary focus is on bringing good news to the Jews, not to every Gentile who happens to knock on the door.  And yet the woman pushes right back, saying that the dogs eat the crumbs that the children drop, basically saying she’s willing to be content with table scraps, so long as her daughter is cured.  And Jesus recognizes that in her desperation the woman has shown great faith, and cures the woman’s daughter – and in so doing perhaps gained a larger picture of what God was calling on him to do, that the grace he was bringing was not just for his own community, but for all.  It’s interesting that Mark set the story of Jesus becoming open to the plea of the Syro-Phoenecian woman next to the story in which he used the words “Be opened” to restore a man’s hearing and speech.

Our reading from the book of James reminds us in very stark terms that, in the church, we are likewise called to show hospitality to all, also, in its own way, calls on us to “be opened.”  A few years ago, the national offices of the United Church of Christ put together an ad campaign to highlight the importance of welcoming and including of all sorts of people.  It began with a picture of an imposing, tall steeple church with a velvet rope and a couple of bouncers outside, such as you’d find at an exclusive nightclub.  There was a line, and the bouncers were choosing who could enter, and more importantly, who could not.  A white, middle-class couple with children got right in, no questions.  Others – someone of middle-eastern descent, a gay couple, possibly a girl on crutches – it’s been a few years and I can’t totally remember the ad – but anyway, the more motley of the folks in the line were refused entrance.  Of course, the point of the ads is that churches are not like an exclusive nightclub, and we’re supposed to be welcoming to all. 

While the scenario in the ads may seem a little outlandish, the ads were really just elaborations of the scenario set up by James in our scripture reading today:  a rich person with all the bling walks into worship, and the ushers fall all over themselves catering to that person, while a poor person walks in and is all but ignored, certainly not made to feel welcome.  James reminds us that God does not see as we do, that the poor person in his story is rich in faith before God, and that our gatherings must be open to all who come our way.

Jesus said to the man in search of healing, “Ephphatha – Be opened.”  May God open our eyes to the vision of the reign of God to which we are called, open our ears to the cries of need in our community.  And may God loose our tongues so we can praise God’s name and proclaim good news to all who come our way.  Amen.

 

Solidarity Forever - A Labor Day Sermon

Scriptures:  Deuteronomy 4:1-8   James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-23

We’ve turned the page on the calendar.  September has arrived, and with it a new sequence of Scripture readings.  For our Gospel readings, we’ve taken leave of the long “bread of life” discourse in John’s Gospel and are now back in the fast-moving, action-packed Gospel of Mark – where, in the original Greek, the words “kai euthus” – translated to English - “and immediately” – recur over and over throughout. Jesus went here and immediately did this, and immediately Jesus went there and immediately did that. While both John’s and Mark’s Gospel tell us about Jesus, their ways of telling the story couldn’t be more different.  And for our epistle readings, we’ve left Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and embarked on a journey through the letter of James.  James was the brother of Jesus, and was head of the church at Jerusalem.  And the contrast between Ephesians and James is at least as strong as between the Gospels of John and Mark.  While Ephesians offers intricate doctrinal statements of belief and a very high Christology, the emphasis of James is on human deeds and human actions.   You could say metaphorically that James is from Missouri, known as the “show me” state.  At one point, he just about comes out and tells his readers, “Don’t just tell me about your faith, show me.”  James has been categorized as a sort of Christian wisdom literature, similar in style to the books of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes.

James tells us to be doers of the word, and not just hearers.  James compares the word of God to a sort of mirror that shows us to ourselves.  But the mirror provided by God’s word is only effective if we act on what we see.  And what it means to be doers of the Word, James will tell us over the next several weeks.  Today’s reading gives us a few hints:  James speaks of generous acts of giving as coming from above; urges his readers to be quick to listen but slow to speak, and slower still to give in to anger; most of all, James defines pure and undefiled religion as “to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” 

“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.”   The writer of James would probably appreciate Danish pastor Soren Kierkegaard’s famous parable about a flock of geese in a barnyard who had the gift of speech – and so they came together every Sunday for worship.  Every Sunday they would gather, and one old gander would stand up every week and preach about what high goals God had for the geese, for God had given them the gift of wings with which they could leave earth, soar into the air, and fly to distant lands, where they would be at home, for in the barnyard they were only strangers and aliens. And the congregation would listen attentively and then waddle home – on their feet, not their wings.  For while they liked to hear every Sunday about wings and flying, they were none too keen to actually stretch their wings and fly.  Stories circulated about what terrible things befell those geese who actually tried to fly…why, once they took off, they were never seen again.  A few geese took the old gander’s preaching seriously, and began to lose weight and look thin…..and the other geese said, “See, this is what happens when you take all this talk of flying seriously…they’re preoccupied with flying, and so they lose weight and don’t thrive, like us who have become so plump and delicate.  And so the next Sunday they gathered to hear the old gander’s eloquent words about God’s gift of wings and God’s high goal of flying……and so on.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus also has something to tell us about being doers of the word.  Some religious authorities noticed some of Jesus’ disciples eating without washing their hands first, and called them out on it.  Now, let me be the first to say that, as a health measure, I strongly encourage everyone to wash their hands before they eat.  Hospitals these days have very strict hand-washing rules for health care workers, and for good reason.  But the objection to Jesus’ disciples was not on the basis of health or cleanliness, but rather grounded in religious tradition.  Mark’s gospel tells us that the Pharisees had a strong tradition of handwashing grounded in what they called “the tradition of the elders”.  The “tradition of the elders” was instituted over time to apply the Torah to changing circumstances, and to put a sort of fence around the law so that the people would not even come close to transgressing it.  Jesus in turn calls them out on a part of this “tradition of the elders” which gave religious justification for neglecting the duty to care for parents.  He concludes his teaching with a parable:  “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”  Among his disciples, Jesus elaborates on what are the things that come out of a person and defile:  evil intentions and actions such as fornication, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness…a whole laundry list of thoughts and actions that destroyed community.  Failing to wash one’s hands may be inconsiderate, may even spread disease – but nothing on the order of the disease of the soul evident in a society which fails to care for its parents, widows, and orphans.

In both our gospel reading from Mark and our epistle reading from James, the emphasis is on community.  Actions are commanded that maintain and strengthen community – caring for parents, looking after widows and orphans, avoiding careless speech and hasty anger.  These are Scripture readings about where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, about what it looks like when faith in Christ is put into action.  They ask a very basic question:  do we walk the way we talk?  And in these readings, what it means to walk and talk as a Christian is to demonstrate love for neighbor, be it toward one’s own aging parents, or toward widows and orphans with no one to care for them.  It’s about seeking the welfare of the community, about showing solidarity with those in need.

This is, of course, Labor Day weekend.  For many, Labor Day is a welcome day off, but may not have much significance beyond that.  It may be helpful to remember that, along with the Labor Day holiday, many other amenities we take for granted, such as an 8-hour work day, a 40 hour work week, time off on the weekend, health insurance and other benefits, and rules about workplace safety came about through the efforts of organized labor.  Men and women fought and died for these benefits.  There’s little discussion today about long-ago tragedies as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, in which management of a non-unionized garment factory had locked exits and blocked stairwells to prevent unauthorized breaks and therefore cut off all avenues for exit when the factory caught fire.  146 workers died in the fire, and this tragedy spurred the formation of the international ladies garment workers union.  Likewise, we hear little of the Battle of Blair Mountain, which took place in West Virginia in late August/early September 1921, about this time of the year some 80 years ago, in the days in which mine workers lived in company towns run by the mine owners, and the workers were often in debt to the company store.  (You may remember the song “Sixteen Tons”, with the sad refrain: “You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.  St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.”) Anyway, on Blair Mountain, in West Virginia, in the late summer of 1921, gunfire broke out between members of the United Mine Workers struggling to organize and lawmen and strikebreakers sent in by the mine owners to break the union – and before it was over, President Warren Harding sent in the Army to restore order.  Over 100 were killed and hundreds more injured. 

And yet workers persevered.  Solidarity was the glue that held together the union.  One worker acting alone can’t do much to change the behavior of management, but a walkout by every worker on a shop floor will get management’s attention.  As the first verse of the song Solidarity Forever puts it, “Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one / For the Union makes us strong.”

Concern for fair wages and working conditions is a priority, not only for labor unions, but in Scripture.  Our reading from Deuteronomy underlines the importance for the children of Israel of observing the law, saying that even the surrounding tribes would think more highly of the children of Israel because of their embrace of the law.  Shortly after today’s reading comes Deuteronomy’s restatement of the Ten Commandments – which includes an interesting twist on the commandment to observe the Sabbath.  The version in Exodus justifies the Sabbath by saying that God created the world in six days and rested the seventh day.  By contrast, the version in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 reminds the children of Israel that they had been slaves in Egypt, but now God had taken them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and they were slaves no longer.  So in Deuteronomy, neglecting the command to rest on the Sabbath is seen as tantamount to a desire to return to a state of slavery – and for those who work 60 and 70 hour weeks, it can feel like slavery, like their lives are not their own.  Back in the book of James, later on in the book, the writer rails against those who fraudulently withhold the wages of their workers.   

I mention all this because on this Labor Day, many of the gains won by organized labor are in jeopardy.  Here in the States, corporations cut wages and benefits for workers here in the States, cut corners on maintaining workplace safety.  They ship jobs to countries with no labor laws, where garment workers put in long days in miserable conditions for pennies an hour.  And, increasingly, corporations turn to privatized prisons using inmates as a source of cheap labor. The lage scale corporate use of prison labor has been called a new form of slavery. Where does it end?  Will it take another debacle on the order of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire or the Battle of Blair Mountain to change the conversation?   

Solidarity isn’t just for union members.  For those who aren’t union members – for example, accountants like myself just can’t seem to get our act together to organize – solidarity may mean asking questions about the stores we patronize and the products we buy, whether those low, low prices came at the expense of long, long, exhausting, dangerous, poorly paid days of work halfway around the globe. Solidarity may mean looking for the union label, or joining a credit union.  Solidarity may mean shopping sometimes at the mom-and-pop store down the block or buying vegetables from a local farmer, so our money continues to circulate in the local community rather than shopping at the big box store at the mall, where the profits benefit those in some head office located who knows where. Another example: some churches in other cities – it really hasn’t caught on in Philly – make a practice of serving fair-trade coffee, in which buyers are assured that those who picked the coffee beans received fair wages.  In this connection, I would also mention that the national setting of the United Church of Christ has a long record of advocating for the rights of union members, farm workers, and workers in a host of poorly paid occupations – and downstairs I left as an example a few copies of a 2009 statement from the UCC’s Justice & Witness Ministries in support of union organizing.

In loving our neighbor though such acts of solidarity, we act as children of God, who has shown such solidarity with humankind that he sent his own beloved Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.  God, who could have washed his hands of humanity and started over, instead loves us with a love that will not let go.  May we rejoice that we are so loved, and may we help our neighbors to rejoice through our acts of solidarity and love.  Amen.

 

To Whom Can We Go

Scriptures:  Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18;  Ephesians 6:10-20;            John 6:56-71

 A common theme of our three Scripture reading today is the choice to follow Jesus. It’s one of the questions that has perplexed the church through the ages:  Why can a person go for decades seemingly uninterested in the things of the Spirit, and then in one moment their live turns around?  Why are people in one place people are hungry for the Gospel, while in other places there’s no interest at all?  When I was in Cuba, the pastors we met, especially on the very rural western side of the island, told us that there was a real hunger to hear the Gospel…one farm worker told us his conversion story in which the farm worker was so amazed to see a pastor dressed in the same way that the worker was, in overalls and work clothes, the pastor humbly working the land, that the farm worker asked the pastor to tell him more…..and eventually the farm worker became a Christian, joined the pastor’s church – and eventually the farm worker himself received training to become a pastor and was in the process of planting a church of his own.  And we who were visiting marveled among ourselves, and asked why moments like that so rarely happen in our experience.

In our Old Testament reading, Joshua, who had led the children of Israel into the promised land, is now old and gray.  Before his death, he calls all the tribes together one last time, reminds them of all that God had done for them, and then puts the question to the people: “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness, put away to 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 and my household, we will serve the Lord.”   And at that moment, the people clamor, “We will serve the Lord.”  From our perspective, we know that the people would sometimes fall short, would sometimes fall away, and from time to time would have to be called to repent, be called back to faithfulness.  But Scripture preserves that holy moment when all the people were on the same page, united in saying “We will serve the Lord.”

In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus concludes a long teaching discourse about himself as the bread of life.  From the standpoint of numbers – especially in our day of megachurches - Jesus’ sermon was an epic failure: he started with the 5,000 whom he had fed and who were ready to hail him as their king, and by the end of the conversation, he’s down to just the twelve disciples – and we know that even one of those twelve will someday betray him.  The crowd was disgusted when they heard Jesus saying such things as “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.”  From our standpoint, 2000 years later, we know that Jesus wasn’t talking about physically eating his body, but about being sustained by Jesus’ teachings – remember, Jesus told the crowd, “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.  The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”  And of course when we hear Jesus’ words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, we think of Holy Communion.  But the crowds heard Jesus at a very literal level – and what they heard turned their stomach..  And Jesus’ saying that “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” didn’t make the crowds any more receptive.  The crowds whom Jesus had fed no doubt thought that while Jesus knew how to put on an amazing picnic, the guy was a raving lunatic.  If Jesus thought these folks had the least inclination to nibble on his toes or whatever, it was about time for the crowds to find another meal ticket. 

Even over some 2,000 years, you can hear the discouragement in Jesus’ voice as the crowds walk away, and he asks the twelve – “Do you also wish to go away?”  Hey, disciples, I’ve managed to offend everyone else, and they’ve voted with their feet.  If you’ve been looking for a chance to bow out gracefully, now would be the time.  But 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."  Though the circumstances are very different, this story has a lot in common with the story in the other Gospels, when Jesus first asked the disciples, “who do people say that I am”, and after hearing their responses, then asked them, “But who do you say that I am.”  In the other Gospels, Peter answers this second question, “You are the Messiah.”  In John’s Gospel, Peter says “You are the Holy One of Israel.”  In both cases, Peter, speaking for the disciples, expresses loyalty to Jesus.  In our reading from John, more than loyalty – Peter is saying there’s nowhere else to go, no one else to whom they could turn, literally no other options.

So the many voted with their feet to walk away from Jesus, and the few voted with their feet to stay.  Jesus’ words themselves tell us what makes the difference:  Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise up that person on the last day…..no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”  Later on in John’s account of the last supper, in Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples, he returns to this theme: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.” 

How do people come to a place in which they feel compelled to follow Jesus?  Some people grow up in the faith, like a fish surrounded by water, and have really known no other way of being.  Others come to Jesus in a moment of crisis, when they’ve seemingly run out of options and cry unto the Lord, “Help!!”.  So there are different experiences of coming to follow Jesus.  And our two readings, from Joshua and from John’s Gospel, likewise give us two different perspectives, two different ways of looking at the moment of decision.  Joshua urges his followers, “Choose this day”.  Jesus tells his followers, in effect, “No one can choose to follow me unless the Father has first chosen that person.”  I don’t want to use these passages to get into a discussion about predestination vs free will – various parts of Scripture can be interpreted to support both doctrines, and I think both perspectives try to turn the mysterious workings of the Almighty into some sort of simple formula – “if A, then B”. But there’s nothing predictable about it – after all, as Jesus told Nicodemus, “the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes – and so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  After all, we’re not told any more about the crowds who walked away from Jesus.  Did their walking away from Jesus at that moment mean that they rejected his message forever, and that God had rejected them forever?  Or could Jesus’ words have planted seeds in their mind that bore fruit later.  We’re not told.  We just don’t know.  What we’re told is that at that moment, thousands walked away while twelve stayed.

God’s workings are indeed mysterious.  I’ve told some of you that I preached my very first sermon at the church where Isaac, our friend from Liberia, had been worshipping.  That Liberian church, a small independent congregation, was at that moment looking for a denomination in the United States with which to affiliate – and I was invited to one of their worship services to speak on behalf of the UCC.  I told the pastor and Isaac – who was the pastor’s right hand man – that I’d bring greetings on behalf of the UCC.  Isaac replied, “You will preach.”  And I said, “No, I’ll just bring greetings; I want to hear your pastor preach.” And Isaac said, “You will preach.”  And I said, “No, I’ve never preached in my life; please, I’ll just say a few words on behalf of the UCC and then I’ll sit down.”  And Isaac said, “You will preach.”  Well, we went back and forth a few more times, but finally Isaac wore me down and I said, “Oh, all right, I’ll try to cobble some hallucination of a sermon together, and I’ll come preach at your church.  Just please don’t expect much of anything; I’ve never done this before.”  As it happened, the Sunday of my visit was Trinity Sunday, and so I put together what I thought was a fairly coma-inducing sermon on the Trinity.  After my sermon, the pastor did an altar call.  And I thought to myself, “Oh no….”  For the most part, UCC churches, at least the ones I’d attended throughout my life, don’t do altar calls.  But, I figured, my sermon was so awful, nobody would come up – so I was safe.  So, as it happened, a mom with several children came up, with several elders of the church accompanying the family.  The pastor invited me to pray over them – as he said, “since they came forward under your preaching”, and I responded, “Oh, no, this is your church, we’re doing this together!”  And so we both laid hands on the family and prayed over them.

I don’t know what happened to that mother and children who came forward; I’ve lost track of their story.  What I do know, though, is that Isaac, the pastor’s right hand man, responded as well, and I’ve been able to follow his story – and in fact all of us at Emanuel are now a part of it.  Later in the same year after I preached at his church, Isaac accompanied me to Old First Reformed UCC, at 4^th & Race Streets in Old City Philadelphia, where I was an active member at that time.   Worship at Old First is very different from worship at the Liberian church – but Isaac made a choice to stay at Old First.  When I became pastor here at Emanuel, Isaac started visiting from time to time.  And when his wife came over from Liberia, he chose to bring her to join the church here at Emanuel.  Over the past several years, he’s often talked to me about his dream of starting a congregation for the United Church of Christ back home in Liberia.  All of which is to say, God has a way of using the most unlikely moments as turning points, as moments of decision.  Like the farm hand in Cuba who was so impressed by the humility of a pastor who himself was also a farmer, that the farm hand responded to the call, first to become a believer, and then to become a pastor himself.  Like the mother with her children at the Liberian church, who in the midst of a sleep-inducing sermon not only stayed awake, but heard God calling her to new life.  Like Isaac, a strong Christian who in that same hour heard God calling him to serve the Lord in a different congregation, among people he didn’t yet know.  For both the farm hand and for Isaac – I hope for the mother as well - making a choice may have began at a particular moment, but that initial choice becomes the basis for all choices thereafter, until one can truly say, “To whom can I go? Who else will I turn to?  Who else can I trust?  For me, it’s Jesus or nothing.” 

These ongoing choices are the subject of our reading from Ephesians.  Paul writes, “Be strong in the Lord ….put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.  For our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the rulers and authorities and 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….” and then Paul goes on to describe this armor – “Fasten the belt of truth about your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.  As shoes for your feet put on whatever will prepare you 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.”  I struggle with this passage – the word “armor” makes me feel claustrophobic, defensive.  I don’t want to walk around in a clanking suit of armor.  But Paul’s words are a recognition that life can take us to some really scary places, that in our lives we will face threats to ourselves and our loved ones, to our communities, that are deeper and more pervasive than just this or that bad person, in which there is societal evil, systemic injustice, evil on a cosmic scale, that grinds us down in a way that threatens our faith, threatens to turn us against our neighbor, threatens to make us hopeless and bitter, threatens our very will to live. And we need to be prepared spiritually to stand in the face of all that. So Paul’s metaphor of armor, naming each piece, is really about choices, about the way we live.  Will we choose to live in a way that’s grounded in truth, that comes from a place of righteousness?  Are our feet prepared to take us where God wants us to share good news, in a world that’s full of bad news.  Are we equipped with faith, and salvation, and the word of God?   These are the day-by-day choices that come as a result of that initial choice of God to call us, and our choice to respond to God’s call.  After all, getting someone to come forward at an altar call isn’t really all that difficult – a pastor with strong oratorical skills can pile on emotional manipulation until, at least in that moment, a certain number of distressed, desperate souls will say “yes” to just about anything.  But what will happen the morning after?  Will the person ask him or herself, “what on earth came over me” and shrug it off as some sort of emotional meltdown, like someone would shrug off a bad hangover?  Or will their lives change in such a way that they live into the decision for Jesus that they’ve made?  Will their new-found faith go the distance?

About a week ago, I went to a retirement banquet for the Rev. Dr. Geneva Butz, who had served as Associate Conference Minister for the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference – who was my pastor for 20 years at Old First and my mentor even since then, who preached at our 150^th anniversary, and whom many of you have met.  Geneva is legendary for her gift of encouraging and empowering people to step out on faith and try things they never thought they could do.  As part of the retirement banquet, there was a sort of mock exit interview.  The interviewer asked Geneva – what is your favorite word?  And Geneva said, “Yes”.  And then Geneva was asked what was her least favorite word. And Geneva responded, “No.”  And everyone at the banquet laughed, because we had all experienced that once Geneva had some vision in her head in which she saw a role for us, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.  Geneva wouldn’t argue….she’d just persist, just keep on asking, keep on reminding.  She just kept on until she heard, “Yes.”  But many at the banquet also gave testimony to all the doors that opened, all the adventures of faith experienced, as a result of saying “Yes” to Geneva – for example, a church member who said “Yes” to Geneva’s request some years back to host a visiting family from Germany is still in touch with this family, decades later, as they’ve visited back and forth many times. And God is like that.  Those whom God has chosen, God pursues – in the words of the poet Francis Thompson, like the hound of heaven, tracking us down no matter where we hid ourselves, never giving up, never letting go, until God gets us to say, “Yes”.

Do you hear God calling, feel God pursuing you, hear the footsteps of the hound of heaven?  Perhaps you hear Jesus calling you to turn for the first time and follow him?  Or perhaps you heard Jesus calling you to  renew your commitment to following him.  Perhaps there’s some bad habit or besetting sin or rebellion against God that has tripped us up over and over again, that God is calling us to leave behind.  Perhaps you hear Jesus calling you to step out on faith and attempt something bold, when our inclination is to stay within our comfort zone.  Perhaps the Lord has put some person’s name on your heart, to talk to that person and hear their pain, and to share good news.  I’m not going to ask you to come forward, or even to raise your hand – but I would urge you to listen to that voice within you, to that call, whatever it is, and quietly, within your heart, to let your faith in God overcome your fear of the unknown, to say “yes”, to say “yes” to God – as God, who first chose us, has said “yes” to us, as God has said “yes” to Emanuel Church, in the face of many difficulties, over the past 150 years.  May we open our hearts and minds to whatever call God has for us, and may we say yes.  May it be so with us. Amen.

 

Angel Food

 

(Scriptures:  I Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58)

 

Through August, our readings from John’s Gospel have expanded on the theme of Jesus as the Bread of Life.  The readings began on the last Sunday in July with the very concrete account of the feeding of the five thousand.  The crowds, knowing a good thing when they see it, seek to elevate Jesus as their king, their political leader.  The disciples went off across the sea to return to Capernaum – and Jesus walked on the water to join them – and found the same crowds seeking him on the other side of the sea.  In a way, it’s a funny but sad testimony as to how desperate the crowds were, how much they wanted someone to feed them and lead them.  But that will soon change.

Jesus instructs them to seek the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give them.  The crowds ask if Jesus will give them manna, as the Israelites had received in the wilderness.  Jesus responds that the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, and the crowds implore Jesus to give them that bread always.  At this point, the crowds are still with him, more or less.

But now Jesus explicitly identifies himself with the image of bread:  “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”   The crowds begin to grumble – “hey, isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph.  We know his parents.  Where’s he get off telling us he came down from heaven?”  Jesus does not back off, but instead restates what he said even more strongly:  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.   However eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  The crowds grumble still more loudly – how’s he gonna give us his flesh to eat - perhaps he’ll cut off a hunk of his arm and toss it to us?”  And Jesus expresses the same thing still more explicitly:  “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat of the flesh of the son of Man” – the Greek word translated as “eat” means to gobble down food, like an animal – nothing the least bit dainty about it – “unless you eat of the flesh of the son of Man and drink his blood, you will have no life within you.”  Now the crowds think Jesus has taken leave of his senses, especially since eaten flesh with the blood was explicitly forbidden even in the time of Noah.

What’s going on here?  Some commentators note that in John’s Gospel, the center of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples is not the breaking of bread and drinking of wine – there’s no language of that type in John’s account of Jesus’ last meal with the disciples – but the washing of the disciples’ feet.  So, perhaps, where the other Gospels put the institution of the Eucharist near the end of Jesus’ ministry, John uses Eucharistic language very early on in Jesus’ ministry.  Certainly it’s hard to read this passage and not think of holy communion. 

Other commentators connect the crowds’ reaction to Jesus’ words to the behavior of the crowds who followed Moses in the wilderness.  Remember that in the time of the Exodus, the crowds grumbled that they were hungry.  Moses prayed to God, and God sent down manna – and the crowds who followed Jesus remembered this story very well.  But later on, even though God was feeding them day by day with manna in the wilderness, the crowds still grumbled – “oh, it’s the same thing, day after day….manna morning noon and night, we’re sick of this manna.”  And when the crowds who followed Jesus spoke of manna and Jesus compared himself to manna – the crowds who followed Jesus grumbled.  So there’s a kind of ironic humor in this story from John’s Gospel – the crowds ask Jesus to re-enact the miracle of the manna, and when Jesus offers himself as manna, the crowds unknowingly re-enact the grumbling that took place against the manna in the wilderness.  You can almost picture John the Evangelist, the writer of this gospel, standing off to the side shaking his head saying, “Some things never change.”

Perhaps this is one of those stories that we shouldn’t analyze to death, but rather just taken in, as we would take in bread and wine.  Clearly, Jesus is offering himself – his life, his ministry, his death, all of himself, everything he has to offer - to sustain those who trust in him.  Jesus offers to feed us, to meet our needs, through the gift of himself.  The image is not that of some wealthy bazillionaire tossing some tiny fraction of his excessive and possibly ill-gotten income, tossing some pocket change, to set up a soup kitchen.  Jesus’ image is much more personal – you might think of a mother offering her milk to feed her child.  The offering of himself of which Jesus speaks is a very personal, even intimate self-giving – it doesn’t get much more personal than to offer your own flesh and blood to sustain someone else.  I included in the bulletin the words, with translation, of St Thomas Aquinas’ poem “Panis Angelicus”.  As I read it, one line made me stop in my tracks, makes me want to gasp: “The Lord becomes our food: poor, a servant, and humble.”   Roll that around in your mind a bit….”The Lord....becomes... our food.”  And these words lead me back to the words of the first chapter of John’s Gospel, what has been called the Prologue:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people…..and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”  In today’s Scripture reading, John returns to this image of the Word became flesh, and expands on it – the Word not only became flesh and dwelt among us, but offered that flesh as living bread to feed his people.  Grace and truth indeed!

When we meditate on the complete self-giving of Jesus, really, all there is to do is to give thanks.  To give thanks for a God who even bothers to take us seriously, let alone offer Godself for us.  To give thanks for a God who feeds us, even when we grumble, who made an immeasurable sacrifice to give us eternal life, not just in some far off world to come, but in our lives here, today.

And, perhaps, one other response would be to tell our hungry neighbors where they can be fed.  D.  T. Niles described evangelism simply as “one beggar telling another where to find bread.”  After all God has done and is doing for us, it would be the height of selfishness to simply take it all in without sharing with others.  May we at Emanuel Church always feed on this living bread, never seeking any other source of sustenance, and may we share this living bread with our neighbors who are hungry.  Amen.