Bread: where earth and heaven meet

Proper 16 B

Aug. 26, 2012

1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43

Psalm 84

John 6:56-69

You are not alone in thinking that the images Jesus uses are indeed, as he asks his disciples in today’s gospel, offensive. Drinking blood and eating skin – not a pretty picture. Bread? Yes, wonderful. Wine? Yes, as well. Communion? Yes, we those we get. But body and blood? Why such a sacrifice? Why such a commitment? Why such a risk?

What is shocking about today’s gospel is that Jesus lets a whole lot of his disciples go. For these folks, this imagery is just too much. Is it the grotesqueness? Is it the commitment? Is it the allusion to sacrifice and death? For whatever reasons, they walk away, and Jesus gives even his inner circle that option, too. Just how convincing is Peter’s answer? “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.”

One of the earliest images of Jesus, from the earliest days of the Christian community, are images of Jesus sharing bread with his friends. They are depictions of communion, of the Last Supper. It was not until centuries later that Christians dared depict Jesus on the cross – remember that many of those early Christians faced martyrdoms and deaths of their own. Perhaps in the early days of the church they were living the scandal of the cross – of the God made human – sharing all too closely in his life and death – to want to reflect on it in art or symbol. We, now free from danger of crucifixion ourselves, can find the cross a meaningful symbol of the God who walked among us as one of us.

Our English word “companion” has relevance here. Its roots “com” meaning “with” and “pan” meaning “bread” imply that a companion is one who is with you with bread. A companion is one with whom you share your bread, your nourishment, your life, as you walk along your way. And indeed, Jesus, our divine companion, continues to share the bread of his eternal life with us, even if we, like Peter, are not always absolutely convinced that walking along with Jesus is a wise thing to do.

Full confidence in the faith is hard. Oh, that we had the confidence of Solomon, to build that Temple for God, the confidence, even to be humble enough to ask God for wisdom and not only glory. Yet to be honest, we must admit that the sayings of Jesus are difficult, and the life that Jesus bids us live carries with it costs and sacrifices.

Maybe the best we can do is eat the bread. To stand in line with everyone else, put out our hands and take a piece of that bread in faith. Maybe the important thing is getting up week after week to do this: to listen to the scriptures, to spend some time in quiet prayer, to worry about how hard it really is to follow Jesus, and then, nonetheless, get up in that line anyway and put out our hands, take the bread and eat it.

That’s the power of the sacrament, and the power of the community. We are not in this alone. On any given day, when the words of Jesus are just too hard to understand, or too difficult to follow, someone next to us will be able to. We are in this together: that is the essence of communion, of COMMON prayer, of companionship. We take, we eat – we may not be able to “get it” that day, or every day, but by taking, by eating, we DO “get it” – it’s not so much the eating, but the abiding – the Christ dwelling in us and we in Christ that happens when we stand here, side by side, hands outstretched, ready to take Christ into our selves, our souls and bodies ,whether we know what we are doing or not.

The bread of life and the cup of salvation, broken and shared, Holy Manna, bread from heaven, where earth and heaven meet.

The Wisdom of Solomon, or how are you going to live YOUR life?

Proper 15 B - August 19, 2012

1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Ps. 111; John 6:51-58

God is giving King Solomon the equivalent of the pep talk right before the Big Game. God here is Solomon’s life coach, his mentor, his personal trainer and inspirational speaker. Tell me what you need, God asks Solomon.

Solomon then speaks, we can surmise, from the heart: he does not ask for riches or personal gain – he’s not just out to win the game. He asks for wisdom, discernment, the ability to know right from wrong – gifts which God places in his heart. Then we read something about God’s character as a coach. God is not one of those “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing” kind of mentors. You can see from the advice God gives Solomon that God is in this for the long haul. HOW Solomon lives is God’s “everything”, God’s “only thing”, God’s goal: “If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments … then I will lengthen your life.” God is assuring Solomon that he will succeed: that he will be wise and discerning and rule over a great kingdom – but what is really important to God is HOW Solomon lives his life, how he stays in relationship with God and with the kind of life God wants him to live.

So, was Solomon BORN with this ability to be King? Yes, his wisdom was a gift from God, but even the question Solomon asks reveals this quality before God grants it. Was it a product of his nurture? Was it his privilege as a king’s son? Was he sent away to the ancient equivalent of the playing fields of Eton?

In some research[i] I came across about education, the headmaster of an elite prep school and the principal of an inner-city charter school worked together to try to understand the influence of character on their students’ lives: other than high test scores, what factors could reasonably predict whether students would get in to college – and not only get in to college, but lead lives that were not just successful or even happy, but meaningful and fulfilling. Character, these educators determined, could be nurtured and developed – skills could be learned and practiced as math problems and grammar and critical thinking could be learned and practiced. In some of these traits, the children from the charter school had more “character” than the children in the elite school – more resilience, more learning from hardship and disappointment, more experience in picking themselves up and succeeding after a set-back.

The educators’ goal for these children was more than just getting them into college: it was the quality of these children’s lives. It was how they lived, what meaning they made – to paraphrase God’s blessing of Solomon, it was the HOW of life that mattered.

This kind of wisdom is sometimes not about being literal. In the Gospel, are the people around Jesus really so dense as not to understand a metaphor? Are they really so thick and rule-bound and goal-driven not to see that Jesus is talking about the HOW of life?

All summer, it seems, we have been hearing about bread from Jesus: the feeding of the 5000 with baskets left over, the bread of life, the living bread, the bread from heaven. So much bread, so much abundance – God will, God does satisfy our needs.

But that then raises the HOW question for our own lives: we have the living bread; now what do we do with it? How do we increase it, share it, multiply it? What does it mean in our own lives to be blessed with such abundance? If we give it all away, won’t there still be enough to go around?

In that story of the rich kids from the prep school and the poor kids from the charter school we note that all of those students had some measure of abundance. They all had some piece of what Jesus would call the living bread. The amazing thing is that their teachers began to see those children as more than their test scores or their parents’ income or the differences in where they went on their summer vacations. Their teachers cared about developing their characters – about increasing that life-giving “how” at the center of what it means to be human. Who knows if those teachers were “Christians” or not – probably not; but what they shared with their students was a piece of the living bread.

We all know places – people – in this world, places and people both near and far – who could use some of this living bread. Week after week we are reminded of this bread, of how precious it is and how much of it there is to go around. In our individual lives, and in our parish life, as we “get back into” the busy-ness of the church year, where will we share our bread, the bread that has been given to us, the bread that brings life to the world?

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[i] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=magazine

King ... or President?

For more about how Solomon got to be king, view this video from the Odyssey Network, with commentary on 1 Kings and reflections on how it might apply to our current climate of political campaigning and vying for power.

The Bread of Compassion

Proper 14-B
August 12, 2012

2 Samuel 18:5-9,15,31-33
Ps. 130; John 6:35,41-51

We delude ourselves, don’t we, when we think we live in a world of justice, a world that has “progressed” beyond the blood vengeance of the honor-shame cultures depicted so shockingly in our Old Testament readings this summer.

We read horrible stories about women who have “dishonored” their families – thereby justifying their killing by their own brothers – stories from “far away” places like the Middle East or Afghanistan. We are appalled: how can “honor” be more valuable than a person’s life – than a woman’s life?

But how much more shocking is it that six Americans at prayer in their house of worship in suburban Milwaukee are gunned down – allegedly because someone thought they were Muslims – Muslims, our “enemies,” who have brought “shame” to America. In that horrible scene, remember, there was an example of heroic justice. The Sikhs praised the Wisconsin policeman who risked his own life to prevent more tragic deaths, the policeman who knew right from wrong and acted without thought of himself to aid the people he was sworn to protect and serve.

When we read Bible stories like these from the Book of Samuel, we are tempted to draw a line between them and us: those pre-Enlightenment days were violent and cruel; men with power acted capriciously. Today we are judicious and reasonable; we are governed by law, not ruled by force.

Like the shootings in the Milwaukee, the news reports are full of examples that the capricious use of power and violence are with us still. Even the most “enlightened” of our leaders love to rattle swords. But just as we saw that moment of heroic justice, in the actions of the policeman in the Sikh Temple, even the power of King David at his most self-centered and brutal is tempered by the judgment and justice of God.

The background of today’s story of the death of Absalom begins with David’s dishonest dealings to gain Bathsheba, the woman he loves. The story of how he arranged for the death of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, must have been well known in Israel – disapproving gossip was a common then as it is today. David also allowed his oldest son, Amnon, to rape his own sister, David’s daughter, Tamar – and when David took no action to avenge this terrible act, Absalom did so on his own. He plotted and killed his older brothers, and took advantage of growing discontent with David’s bloodthirsty rule to build an army to rebel against his father, and to replace him himself as the King of Israel. That is the cause of the battle that opens our reading today. David, full of military power, defends the throne, but David, full of humanity as well, still does not want his rebellious but beloved son killed. David’s generals, fighting for their king, find it foolish to let the leader of the rebellion to live, and Absalom is killed.

David rules Israel as King, not as God’s puppet. He came to power with Yahweh’s favor, but he makes his own decisions, some good, some not so good. At several points in the story, we read of God’s great displeasure, and the consequences are not good for David. His beloved sons are killed, he must fight and scheme to stay on the throne, and what he wanted most as the crowning achievement of his reign, the building of the Temple, is denied to him. Even David, beloved of God, has offended God’s justice. There is more than honor and shame and vengeance; there is right and there is wrong, and the heroic ones act in God’s name to restore God’s justice.

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus offers what God has been offering all along: life. Not vengeance or jealousy or violence or brutality – not hunger or thirst or want or deprivation. God offers life. God also offers freedom – God created humans with the ability to do things – with agency. People may do terrible things, as David did, but people can also do wonderful things, like cultivate wheat, and make bread – bread that is made by human hands is so wonderful that when Jesus tries to describe to his followers what the love of God is like he uses bread. You ask what I am like? I am like bread. I am bread. The bread of life.

But curiously, bread is a completely human creation. Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her close observation of nature, that if the human race were to die out, so would wheat.

“Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most people,” she writes, "although it is really as unnatural and freakish as the Frankenstein monster; if man were to die, I read, wheat wouldn't survive him more than three years."

Wheat, it seems, must be cultivated to produce grain to make bread. Wheat left to its own devices produce smaller and smaller grains, unable to support itself, much less the human race.

God gives us the wheat, just as God gives us love and justice and compassion and courage and the ability to know right from wrong. It is up to us to take those gifts, to cultivate them as carefully as we do wheat, and to use them, as God intended, to bring life to the world.

Nameless women and powerful men: do not fear; only believe

Proper 8-B     July 1, 2012

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalm 130

Mark 5:21-43

What can be more American than a patchwork quilt? The 1929 book, Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them, by Ruth E. Finley, opens with a story appropriate to the 4th of July Weekend:

… it has been suggested that Mistress Betsy Ross did not make the first Star-Spangled Banner. There is evidence that she did; at least she was an accomplished needlewoman, and her dead husband’s uncle, the Honorable George Ross, a signer of the Declaration, was a member of the flag committee. But whether she did or did not, the fact of the flag remains; it was made by someone, and that someone was a woman. Some woman’s hands, proficient in the art of patchwork, pieced together its Stripes and appliquéd its Stars. [i]

Some woman, nameless – perhaps identified only by her father or her husband or brother: I think there must be more nameless women in history than nameless men. In today’s Gospel, we encounter two of them.

They have a few things in common in addition to their namelessness. In the stories about Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the issue of blood, both characters show both faith and fear. Both are called “daughter,” a relationship which implies love and the duty of care and protection. Both, of course, are ill, are made unclean by their disease, and are healed by Jesus at his touch. Touching these unclean females was a defiant act for Jesus, something decent men, who were not priests, would never do.

Look, also, at what separates these two unnamed, and unclean, females: one is an older woman, one a girl. One has status, by virtue of her powerful and important father, who speaks up for her, begging for her health. She has resources, a family identity if not a name of her own. The woman with the issue of blood is only that: she has no status, no one to speak for her, no protector or caregiver or supporter. No one has called her daughter, one imagines, for a long time. No one has been able to touch her for years.

We’re back in Galilee, in the symbolic countryside favored by the Gospel of Mark, that place full of detail and meaning. Jesus has just crossed over the Sea of Galilee, coming from the land of the Gentiles, those outside the covenant, to the land of the Jews, those who live by the covenant with God. This is where Jesus’ ministry of teaching and healing is most powerful and challenging. He breaks through every barrier: of custom, of sex, of uncleanness, of poverty, of namelessness, to touch, and by touching to heal this girl and this woman. Not even the rules of nature – of what is life and what is death – can stop him. Jairus’ daughter is even raised from the dead.

The contrast is rich with the story of David mourning the deaths of Saul and Jonathon. In Second Samuel we read of men, (as well as women: nameless daughters of Philistines, nameless daughters of Israel.) – but lots of men, powerful, important men, with names and legacies. They are men whose power and strength, however, cannot save them from death.

Stories like this one are not “saints tales,” for these characters hardly lead exemplary lives. But, as someone once said, Saul and Jonathon and David live “large lives … the live in the largeness of God. … God is the country in which they live.”[ii] These characters may not show us how to live, but they do show us living itself – living and being human in all its complicated, powerful, messy, loving and jealous aspects. When Saul went into his final battle, he was nearing the end of his reign as King of Israel. He knew David was anointed, was his younger and stronger rival, David the beloved of God. David was actually in hiding from Saul, who was jealous of his rivalry. Despite this complicated relationship, David praises Saul, and has a deep friendship with Saul’s son, Jonathan, someone he loves more closely than a brother, more closely than a spouse. This messy, violent, complicated and love-sick terrain is God’s country, the background against which God plays out his love story with the people of Israel.

Nameless women and powerful men: everyone knows the depths of grief, despair, and fear. Everyone is vulnerable to the ravages of illness and death. David gives voice to the lamentations of the ages, Jairus begs like any father for the health of his beloved child, the woman with the issue of blood is so desperate for any healing and hope that she pushes through the crowd even to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment.

We are all afraid, we all face death, we are all in need of healing. Those are the barriers Jesus breaks when he heals the sick and raises the dead. “Do not fear, only believe,” Jesus says. That’s what it means to live in the largeness of God, with powerful men facing death and mourning those they love. It’s the motto those nameless women stitched into their samplers and spelled out with their patchwork, and passed down to us, mother to daughter, to the ages of ages.

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[i] Ruth E. Finley, Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1929), p. 19

[ii] Eugene Peterson, quoted in UCC website “Samuel” – sermon and lectionary helps for year B

Jesus calls us - into turmoil

Proper 7-b; June 24, 2012

1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 19-23

Psalm 9:9-20

Mark 4: 35-41

During the summer, the lectionary takes us on two different train rides, on two different tracks. We travel along at the same speed on each of them, so there is the possibility that we can talk across the rails time and again. It may make for some interesting conversation, but you might just be interested in where one lesson-thread is going, and not pay that much attention to the other one.

So the lectionary gives us highlights from the life of King David for most of the summer, and today, we have this extraordinary story of David and Goliath. I am glad the lectionary gives us this opportunity to catch up with these old Bible stories – for the last time some of us read this story, we were small children ourselves. The characters in this story look very different to children – isn’t David like us, we used to think. Ruddy and handsome. A superhero at a young age. Confident and assured not only of his abilities, but that he is loved by God.

But think of Saul and Goliath, warriors in mid-life, at the height of their powers – men of power and ability, brought down – in different ways --  by this young whipper-snapper. By changing times and circumstances. By someone whose star is rising while theirs is falling. Do we, people “of a certain age” think differently of Goliath’s experience than we did when we were children? Are we now perhaps not so ready to toss aside Saul as little more than yesterday’s news? Are we not able to see more shades of gray in such tales of triumphant heroes? David may be perfect now, but later, as we shall see, he gets into a lot of trouble.

At whatever age, to be called by God to take on some task can be difficult. It seems to be God’s aim to get us to put it all on the line, to put even our lives at risk. The disciples cannot even go sailing – they cannot even ply their trade as fishermen – without Jesus leading them into treacherous waters.

“Let’s go over to the other side,” Jesus says. “The other side” in Gospel of Mark talk means the other side of human experience – the gentiles instead of the Jews, the foreign instead of the familiar, the unknown and alien. Mark’s Jesus preaches a critique of the established order. His Good News is that there is a way to live that is not dominated by Roman oppression or life-less religious observance. He breaks down that old order as he seeks to build a new one – and to understand what he has in mind perhaps we have to get over to the other side and look back on what we could leave behind forever.

But where does Jesus take us? Into the whirlwind, into chaos and danger. “Jesus, wake up! Don’t you see we are dying here. We don’t want to know about the other side if this is the price we have to pay. Let’s go back – to the familiar shore, to the way things used to be, to the way things are supposed to be.

Change is never easy – unless you are young. Think about all those graduates at this time of year – commencing on to the next phase in their lives. Legions of young Davids ready to replace those outmoded Sauls and take down the Goliaths in their paths. Change is all around us, upsetting every imaginable apple cart. Our boats seem to be riding on endlessly stormy seas, and not even Jesus seems to care. Jesus has even called us into this turmoil – taking us to “the other side,” to see who is on the other shore. People are there, people we do not yet know, waiting to hear some smidgen of good news, astounded to see the storm subside, and the seas grow calm, wondering just who could be in that boat.

To be human is to embody music

Memorial Service
June 23, 2012

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17
John 6:37-40

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

This passage from the First Letter to the Church in Thessalonika is about the future. It describes what the Christian believes will happen at the end of days. It depicts something which must be terrifying but also glorious, as all who will then be alive will be reunited with all who have gone before. It is a scene of great drama, and of great movement, and of great sound. It cannot be a surprise to us humans that the end of days is accompanied by great music.

Anthropologists frequently describe “the thing” that humans are made for: the animal who thinks. The animal who remembers. The animal with the opposable thumb. But this passage indicates that the human could be named “the animal who sings.” The human body itself is made to be an instrument. When we make sound, it is never just blah blah blah. It has meaning and structure. The tones are connected to each other in precise relationships. The sounds we make not only make sense, they make beauty. We know this, in our very bones.

About a year ago, a movie came out about some of the ancient cave painting in southern France. The paintings are astounding, and date from 37,000 to 11,000 years ago. But the movie showed something of human creation even older than the paintings: a flute, carved from the bone of a bird, from a cave in Germany, that was 40,000 years old. One of the scientists made a meticulous replica of that 40,000-year-old flute, and discovered that it plays a perfect pentatonic scale. In a pentatonic scale, the notes are precisely one-fifth apart.

This is not a coincidence, in a 40,000 year-old flute, carved from the bone of a bird. The person who made this flute already knew music, already understood the relationships between tones that made sense, that made beauty, that were pleasing to the ear. The person who made this flute already knew what it sounded like to make a note one-fifth higher than the one she had just sung. The person who made this flute did not invent the pentatonic scale any more that Stravinsky invented the 12-tone scale. The person who made this flute already heard that music, deep inside her or his own bones, and used the material at hand to fashion an instrument to amplify the sounds of her or his own body – the very essence of what it means to be human – out into the world. From that ancient flute until the last trumpet sounds, to be human is to embody music. It is the gift of the creator, embedded in our very bodies, one more sign of the incarnation, God not only with us, but within us.

I was not here, Peter, when you and Judy were parishioners at St. David’s, but many people have told me stories of your time here, and what an important and beloved part of this community you both were. Many of these stories involve music. Many were told with love and compassion about being with Judy as she retreated deeper and deeper into herself, not always sure where she was or what she was doing. But it was the music, one friend said, that always caught her attention, that brought her back to herself and to you, Peter. She could hear the music, she could recognize your voice. From deep inside the core of her being, she heard that music and she knew that she was alive, and that everything made sense and she was loved.

Judy died on Easter Day. The voice of the archangel, and the trump of God were just too alluring to her – she could no longer resist their call. You have gathered all of us here today, Peter, to remind us of that – to remind us that the music God gives us is at the core of what makes us human, and what connects us to God. It is what has tied us all together for thousands of years, and will tie us all together in the life to come. 

Paleontologist Wulf Hein playing a replica of the 40,000-year-old flute

from The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a film by Werner Herzog