Year B - Proper 15 - August 19, 2018

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN

Year B - Proper 15 - August 19, 2018

Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

I once knew an Italian man that lived in our small neighborhood back in Delaware. This man owned the local restaurant on the main street and freshly baked all of the bread that he served. The small restaurant was always full of the wonderful aroma of freshly baked bread… You know the smell… 

It literally absolutely heavenly! He would even make those little Italian “bread knots” which are tied pieces of dough painted with a mixture of garlic butter and herbs. 

I can see him behind the counter now, adding just the right amount of ingredients, mixing it up, kneading the dough… All of the things that he made were just perfect and they were extremely delicious… 

We were frequent visitors to that small restaurant, we often went there several times a month and sometimes even several times in a week. Once we left Delaware, Kelly and I caught ourselves comparing other restaurants to that tiny little hole in the wall we found in Delaware with the wonderful fresh baked bread. We continuously notice ourselves looking for that perfect bread.  Even thinking of that little restaurant today makes me extremely hungry. We had found other bread in our travels, but we were still hungry for that freshly baked bread by that Italian man in that little restaurant back in Delaware.

Now, I know that bread has been around for a very long time… 

It is hard to imagine that they had bread that good 2000 years ago. We have to remember that bread was THE staple food it was a major part and sometimes the only part of every meal, it was made from scratch and it was a big part of everyday life. Bread required a lot of work to prepare.

The “good” bread (often called ‘clean’ bread) was mostly eaten by the rich, and it was made with sifted flours which were usually milled at night. It took over three hours just to prepare. Then it was baked in an outdoor oven. As good as this bread must have been, this wouldn’t have been the bread that Jesus was talking about in today’s Gospel lesson. 

The bread that Jesus was speaking of isn’t the “good” bread or the clean bread – eaten by the rich. Nor is it the modern fresh baked bread made by that wonderful little Italian restaurant in Delaware, it isn’t even the bread of Angels… which was the “manna” provided by God to the Israelites who were roaming around in the wilderness after they fleed from Egypt. 

But – Jesus is offering the bread of everlasting life! So – what is this bread of everlasting life? And why are we all now so very, very hungry for it??!? The crowd that Jesus was teaching was completely full! – or were they? This passage occurs just after Jesus had just fed them all – over 5000 people with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, then the disciples filled up the 12 baskets with the leftover scraps.

Now, it’s the very next day and the Jews are still following him around waiting for and wanting more signs. He tells them that they are working for the wrong bread. They are working for bread that causes death when they should be working for bread that gives eternal life. Then Jesus tells them that they must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man in order to have everlasting life.

Jesus once again turns the understanding of Jewish law on its head. The Jews had strict laws about how blood was to be handled. Blood was considered the “life-force” for the Hebrew people and therefore, had an essential role in sacrifices which were fundamental in Hebrew society. Drinking it would have been completely repulsive and an abomination against God and God’s law and completely negate the Ritual purity of the food and the standard by which the food had to be kept!

The clean animals were prepared so that all of the blood was drained a certain way. So – if they had all these rules that governed blood and the preparation of animals… Eating the flesh of a human was completely unheard of… And yet, now they are being told by Jesus to eat his flesh and drink his blood. People back then – and even some people today, find this passage very difficult to listen to and even harder to understand. 

“Eating Flesh? and Drinking Blood?” They just don’t get it and we just don’t get it! Like the ones who are following Jesus around, we are still looking for “real” bread instead of focusing on what Jesus is saying and what he wants us to learn. 

This is a far cry from some restaurant that contains all of that wonderful baked bread. We should understand that there is much... so much more to what Jesus is saying than eating flesh and drinking blood… This play on words today helps us understand the true humanity of Jesus – Jesus was fully human, complete with a body of flesh that could be broken and blood that could be spilled… Yet, at the same time it explains the divinity of Jesus – 

Unlike the manna that came down from heaven in the wilderness, He now is the bread that has come down from heaven and offers all those who eat of it - eternal life. Only the physical body of an animal, in this case, the human being of Jesus Christ, has flesh and blood… and it is the physical incarnate life and death of Jesus that is our life-giving food. And Jesus gave up his life, his human existence, for the life of the whole world…  Jesus offers forgiveness of our sins and new life… His life for our life… Only God can do that!

His flesh had to be broken, and his blood had to be spilled… and in that way – in that sacrifice, we are to be nourished with this awesome gift of Jesus’ whole self…

Little did the those that were gathered know what Jesus was preparing himself for. Jesus was preparing himself to suffer death, a humiliating death on a cross, and offer himself as a whole, complete and sufficient sacrifice for the whole world.

So, what are we to do now? How can we get this life-giving bread?

At a meal with his disciples in the upper room the night before he was taken to the cross, Jesus took bread, and after he had given thanks to God, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said “Take, eat, this is my body that is broken for you, do this in remembrance of me.”

And after they ate he took the cup of wine after he said the blessing, he gave it to his disciples saying, “Drink this all of you, this is my blood of the new covenant that is poured out for you, drink this in remembrance of me.”

We all need this food that Jesus is offering… it’s not just merely some optional gift that we all can ignore, because apart from the life that Jesus offers us… we are all dead. We come to the table in this Church week in and week out in order to share the meal of the body and blood of Jesus. 

We call it a Sacrament because it is for us, the most prophetic… the most profound and powerful outward and visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace, that love from God that we receive from Jesus. Taken, broken, poured out and freely given to us…

Not because we did anything in this world to deserve it, but because God loves us completely and unconditionally – so unconditionally that God gave us his only Son so that we could believe... so that we could be forgiven of our sins and so that we could have a chance to be reconciled to God.

We are all hungry… 

But, not for the freshly baked bread of this world from some bakery in Delaware (as good as that sounds)... that will never fill us... and we're not hungry for the manna in the wilderness, but for the bread of everlasting life that only Jesus can offer us.

I encourage you then to come forward to the table this morning and feast on Jesus… Feast on that spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of God’s Son, our savior, Jesus Christ. and be filled with life… but not just life, his life.... life everlasting…

Year B - Proper 14 - August 12, 2018

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN

Year B - Proper 14 - August 12, 2018

1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

In today’s readings, we continue to be bombarded with the symbols and images of bread. It must be important because the symbol and image of bread are used over and over again in scripture. It is especially strong in John’s Gospel. Jesus even refers to himself as the bread of life. And the phrase that we left off with last week, we begin with this week. Jesus said, “I am Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

So let’s talk some more about bread, and about how bread gives us eternal life. A simple food made of grains… a food that carries us from death to life. 

Elijah the Tishbite was fleeing from one of the most wicked people in Scripture. Her name was Jezebel. Jezebel was Ahab’s Queen in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. It is very clear that Jezebel was the one with all the power, and she has focused it all on Elijah… setting out to destroy him and his God, and to establish the worship of Baal in place of the worship of the One true living and loving God. 

Elijah was fleeing from Jezebel and went south into the Sinai desert. He had only gone about a day’s journey, but in the heat and dry of the desert, he was exhausted. He had used up all of his resources… and food or water he had taken with him for the journey was gone. It was at this point, Elijah considered himself a great failure, so he gives up and he throws himself down under a tree to die. 

While under that broom tree, that provided him very little shade from the heat of the desert, he begs God to take his life before Jezebel does. Then he falls asleep. An angel wakes him up, but in his dreaming, the angel feeds him bread and water, and he falls asleep again. The angel kicks Elijah awake, and now shocked out of his dream world into this one, he finds real bread and water, and it sustains him on a journey all the way to Mount Sinai, where he will hear the voice of God.

The point is that Elijah's clever wit could not save him from Jezebel. His own strength couldn’t get him far away enough to protect him from her, even the truth of his message didn’t help him. 

What carried him out of certain death into life was the food that only God could give. The food which nourishes and provides for us at those times in our life when we think that all is lost. God’s food that is the life of God carrying us to God’s self. 

Jesus says to his disciples that he is the true bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world. He is the same providential nurturing bread of God that carried Elijah to Mt. Sinai. He, Jesus, is the living bread through which the eternal life of God wells up in us and God takes us to himself, where we may for once be still and know that God is God.

The point for us is very clear. The things that we want to rely on to carry us into eternal life won’t get us there. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves and get us eternal life. Our good deeds won’t do it, our intelligence or understanding won’t do it, our plain goodness won’t do it; even our faith in God through Christ won’t do it. Only Jesus the Christ can carry us and sustain us into eternal life. The only real food worth having is Christ’s undying affection for us. All we need to do is wake up and eat it. It is broken and poured out… prepared for us.

In the second part of today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” One of the great gifts of the Book of Common Prayer is that in 1979, the breaking of the bread was restored as a distinct moment within the action of the Eucharist. We take it very seriously… we even pause for a moment of solemnity and sing a short anthem in response. I think we take it seriously for a good reason. See, the only way that we can receive Holy Communion is if we break the bread up into pieces. This is especially true when we use a large wafer or a single loaf. 

The gift of eternal life can come to us only through the broken body of Christ on the cross — only through his death there for us; death dealing with love and affection for us. We find eternal life broken open for us, not by Christ’s great power and strength, but by his humility, weakness, and sacrifice. By giving of his whole self entirely away.

You have no doubt encountered the opposite in this world… You have in no doubt encountered the opposite in some folks who are self-indulgent, entitled, greedy, individualists. You may have encountered some folks that have more think that they have received more as a reward from God…  But that’s not how it works. The cult of individualism is a heresy, Christ’s greatest strength was his weakness. His richest gift to us was himself, his life, freely given, on the cross on a garbage heap outside of the city gates. 

His glory and radiance was his total dependence on God. Jesus never received the gift of worldly abundance as a blessing or a sign of God’s favor. The miracle of the bread, the feeding of the five thousand, was that the meager gift of a few loaves and fish fed EVERYONE.

Yes, those who have a job are blessed. But, those who have lost their job are equally blessed and loved by God. The homeless man on the street is just as much loved by God as the wealthiest. We are all saved by what we may think are the small and insignificant things of the world that are revealed as being the priceless treasure and beauty of God. We are saved by the broken body of Christ which for us the eternal bread of life.

There is an old story…

At the foot of a mountain lived a father and his three sons. They were a simple and loving family. The father noticed that travelers came from far and wide to climb the mountain, but they never returned. It was rumored that the mountain was made of gold and its streams flowed silver. The father warned the sons about the dangers of the mountain, but they climbed it anyway.

Along the way up the mountain, under a tree, sat a beggar, but the sons ignored him in their eagerness to ascend the mountain. One by one, the sons disappeared: one into a house of rich food, one into a house of fine wine, one into the gamblers’ den where promises of vast wealth hung on the throw of the dice. Each became a slave to his desire and forgot home.

Meanwhile, the father was heartsick. He yearned for his lost sons. “I must climb the mountain. I must risk the dangers.” The father searched the mountain. Indeed, the mountain was solid gold and the streams flowed silver, but he hardly noticed; he was so determined to find his sons. He failed to find them, but on his way down the mountain, he met the beggar and asked his advice. 

“The mountain will give your sons back only if you bring them something from their true home that will awaken your love in them.” The father raced home and brought back a loaf of bread. He gave the beggar some in humble thanksgiving. He found his sons, one at a time, and carefully placed a piece of that bread on the tongue of each. Each awoke to discover their foolishness and to embrace the love of their father. They returned home together to the simple and loving life that brought them happiness forever.

That one small humble piece is here. May we all be awakened to the eternal and humble sacrificial love that it represents. May it stir up in us the flame of love which burns in the heart of Jesus as he bore his passion and let it nourish us for our journey to eternal life.