Online Sermons
11th Sunday in Pentecost (proper 15): August 16, Melody Rockwell
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsAs we prayed in todays collect: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of Jesus Christ’s redeeming work, and to follow daily the blessed steps of his most holy life. Amen.
Our lectionary for this eleventh Sunday after Pentecost ranges widely from the Hebrew Testament account of Solomon asking God for wise discernment to a psalm of thanksgiving and praise. We then hear Paul telling the Ephesians (and us!) to choose congregational singing and praise over drunken debauchery. And in the gospel, Jesus gives us a powerful recipe for bread that will provide eternal life.
There are many ways these different scriptures might be tied together, but this is the theme song singing out to me today: focus on what really counts; pay attention to what really matters: connect with God and the community of God.
Solomon, at least in this scriptural moment of his encounter with God, gets his priorities straight as he humbly asks for wisdom in ruling his people, for understanding to discern what is right. He is focused on what really matters. Though he later proves to be more foolish than wise in his political alliances, marriages and lavish lifestyle, Solomon’s prayerful petition, as recounted in 1 Kings, purely and truly connects with God on behalf of the people of God. Psalm 111 echoes this focus on wisdom attained through an intentional relationship to God in praise, thanksgiving, obedience and deep remembrance of the God connections, the salvation history experienced by the Hebrew people.
In Ephesians, Paul asks people to make wise choices; to redeem time by focusing with understanding on the will of the Lord. The Message [Bible] states: “So, watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times.” Paul calls for authentic worship that begins with our hearts; that seizes the day with the core of our being and equips the saints in right relationship with Jesus Christ.
And how do we focus? Paul prescribes community singing of psalms and hymns as a way of being infused with the Holy Spirit and connecting spiritually with one another. Singing hearts, shaping attitudes: “It is a right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, O Lord.”
The gospel today institutes, incorporates, incarnates an all-consuming focus. The words Jesus speaks in today’s reading from John’s gospel were shocking -- scandalously so, in his time. Jesus proclaims that his own flesh is the bread of heaven, and all should eat his flesh to gain eternal life. Disputes break out among his listeners, who become even more alarmed when Jesus states that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will have no [real] life in you.” For Jews in Jesus’ time, this claim was horrific: to drink blood or even to use blood in cooking was absolutely forbidden. Even today, for vegetarians in our midst and others as well, this graphically carnal language is unsettling.
Why on earth, or even in heaven’s name, would Jesus speak in such sharp contrast to the religious standards of his day? What was the point of inciting fierce opposition among the powerful religious leaders, who were already threatening him with heresy charges? And this morning [evening], what are we to make of this scripture reading in the 21st Century? Is it relevant to our lives?
Yes! When Jesus defines himself as ‘the living bread of life’ in flesh and blood terms, he adamantly makes it clear that he is not talking about the ordinary, sustaining daily bread made of flour, water and yeast. John’s gospel not only sets forth in understandable terms that Jesus, the “living bread from heaven,” is fully divine. Jesus teaches us that he is fully human. This is no ethereal, distant, other-worldly divine being. This is Jesus with us! The Word made flesh!
Desmond Tutu notes in God Has a Dream, a 20th century non-Christian incarnational example, a story from the Holocaust: “A Nazi guard was taunting his Jewish prisoner, who had been given the filthiest job, cleaning the toilets. The guard was standing above him looking down at him and said, ‘Where is your God now?’ The prisoner replied, ‘Right here with me in the muck.’”
Tutu concludes: “And the tremendous thing that has come to me more and more is the recognition of God as Emmanuel, God with us… God is there with us in the muck.” And, here I amplify on Tutu’s words: God is with us in chemo treatment, in loneliness, homelessness and unemployment, when we experience anxiety, grief, depression, or chronic pain and in all the other latrine mucking times in our lives. Tutu says, “God… bears [our suffering] with us and strengthens us to bear it.”
This is the enormous treasure of God with us that Jesus offers in today’s gospel, but it has a new twist. Jesus proclaims that his embodied presence is the way of real life, eternal life. This is the radical gift of the new covenant; Jesus will abide in us and we will abide in him. We have the joyous opportunity to live in a completely integrated, internalized and externalized relationship with Jesus. And extraordinarily, Jesus likens our relationship with him to the way he lives in God the Father.
Theologian Dominic Crossan emphasizes that this “does not mean, simply, that the soul or spirit of Jesus lives on in the world. And neither does it mean, simply, that the companions or followers of Jesus live on in the world. It must be the embodied life that remains...”
Madeline L’ Engle in her book, Glimpses of Grace, explains that in embodying the gospel, “It is who we are that is going to show the love that has brought us into being, that cares for us all, now and forever. If we do not have love in our hearts, our words of love will have little meaning. If we do not truly enjoy our faith, nobody is going to catch the fire of enjoyment from us. If our lives are not totally centered on Christ, we will not be Christ-bearers for others, no matter how pious our words.”
This embodiment of Christ, this incorporation of Jesus into our very beings, breaks out and flows beyond the walls of our church home, as each week we “go forth to love and serve the LORD. Thanks be to GOD!” But, wait! There’s more! First, that we are mindful as a parish family at Christ Church to feed our hearts with the flesh and blood, the bread and wine, the embodying nourishment of Jesus through worship, service, and the way we live together in mutuality. While we enjoy gifts of spirited and spiritual hospitality, we work to keep our focus on what really matters.
What a rich and nurturing tradition, we share in the Holy Eucharist. ‘Eucharist’ is the Greek word for thanksgiving. Each time we gather at the altar, our thanksgiving table, the imagery that Jesus provides in today’s gospel comes to life: “the body of Christ, the bread of heaven; the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”
It is true to a large extent that we are what we eat, and I believe this maxim is never more true than when we absorb this holy food from God. This consuming, ingesting and vein-flowing intake of Christ offers us an experience of intimacy with God that transcends the blessed moments when we receive communion. If we savor this offering of our savior, if we participate with rapt attention to the importance of this incarnational celebration and treat it as more than a fast food experience, the Holy Eucharist fortifies us for the trials in our lives and sustains our joy as we live in Christ and extend the love of Christ into every facet of our lives. We are infused with Paul’s proclamation (Galatians 2:20): “no longer I… but… Christ who lives in me.”
As we actively participate in the Eucharist, we find that courage, joy and love are ignited in unexpected ways that permeate our lives in the pews, at coffee hour, at home, work and play. At its embodied best, we become involved in ubuntu, a delicate network of interdependence. Desmond Tutu describes this South African concept in this way: “Ubuntu speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in yours. It speaks about wholeness; it speaks about compassion. A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, and do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole.”
In these desperate times, these times of acute and often painful dissension, I pray that we will increasingly incorporate the practice of ubuntu into our community; that embodied with Christ, our worship, communion, singing and working together will continually activate our listening hearts, and we will know surely, as Desmond Tutu says, that we “may disagree -- and yet continue to love one another, to care for one another and cherish one another and seek the greater good in one another.” Amen.