Proper 14 / Ordinary 19 / Pentecost +12 Year B August 12, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
1 Kings 19: 4-8 + Ephesians 4:25-5:2 + John 6:35, 41-51
Beloved community, grace and peace are yours through the one who is the Bread of Life, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
A few weeks ago we received an invitation left on our porch, inviting us to the annual Neighborhood Night Out. The organizing neighbor noted this: “Sharing food helps to foster great neighborhoods.”
Jesus said “I am the Bread of Life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry”
The importance of shared meals is bearing fruit, if you will, throughout our city. The Seattle Times reports that a movement is taking root called “Make America Dinner Again.” This nationwide organization brings people of divergent political opinions together for supper and conversation.
Jesus said “I am the Bread of Life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry”
This is the third week that we’ve had some reminder from Scripture that Jesus is the bread of life. And after today, we have two more to go. For the writer of the Gospel of John to spend this much time on a subject that seems, at the surface, just an easy metaphor, invites us to a deeper look.
The John texts for these five Bread Sundays are paired with a variety of texts from the Hebrew Bible and from the Epistles. But the basis is the same….Jesus is the bread of life. The way we arrive at that conclusion is the invitation and the delight of spending five weeks on the subject.
Last weekend Bruce and I celebrated the marriage of our middle child…Robby married Haley on a bright, clear, beautiful day in the middle of a lavender farm in Kingston. Their friends came from far and near to celebrate. Family, too. There was a lot of dancing and laughter and many toasts to love. But it occurred to me as I was reading today’s texts in the afterglow of that weekend, that almost everything we did was bookended by a meal. We gathered, many times, at the table. We shared a cookout as we all began to arrive at the destination on Thursday….hamburgers and brats and the party potatoes that signal a special celebration in our family. Breakfast the following morning was a southern table….country ham and scrambled eggs and biscuits and mimosas and the tiny homemade cinnamon rolls I made every Saturday morning when the children were growing up. The rehearsal dinner was a wondrous feast and when I noted that I’d not thought to provide music, Taylor’s boyfriend said “Listen! That’s the music of these people who love Robert and Haley having a good time.” And the reception dinner was the love from the night before times a hundred.
It’s tempting for me today, then, to take Jesus’ declaration “I am the Bread of Life” and note that meals are where we gather and bring our best selves. That meals invite love to pull up a chair and fill its plate. But how many of us have sat through an awkward meal? Or in the stony silence of anger when it’s served along with the main course? How many of us have had to drag ourselves to the table because we are too beaten down by the day to really care what’s being served? How many of us have had to sit with a toddler who will not eat their vegetables, engaged in a battle of wills that makes mealtime take four times as long as it normally does?
Jesus was looking for a way to both identify who he was and his place in Creation AND looking to do so in a way that would carry a multitude of meaning for the people. And so he turns to the most basic of things….bread. Bread that will satisfy our deepest hungers. Living bread. Bread of heaven. Bread that is even more satisfying than the manna YHWH sent to your ancestors.
Jesus said I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry.
Jesus as bread of life….abundant, fulfilling, satisfying, enriching, nourishing….it’s not hard to get on board with that. It’s the symbol and sign of the Eucharistic feast. It’s what draws us joyfully to this table every week, hands outstretched, waiting to receive that very bread of life.
But what do we do with the story from the Hebrew Bible that is offered for this day? Because the truth is, for every day that we dance joyfully to this table there are days that we feel very much like Elijah….who having literally run for his life, sits under a solitary broom tree, an ugly tree, and wishes that he might just die. For every wedding banquet there is a broken heart. For every neighborhood gathering there is a meal eaten in loneliness. For every Make America Dinner Again, where people can share their divergent political views, there is the meal eaten in uncomfortable silence to avoid saying the wrong thing or the meal that ends with your crazy uncle shouting his crazy viewpoints at you from across the table.
Jesus says …I Am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry.
Elijah, although he is forlorn and afraid and without hope, is not alone there under the broom tree. The text from 1 Kings tells us that an angel of the Lord came and waited upon him…touching him and encouraging him to eat the bread that had been unexpectedly and mysteriously provided for him and to drink the jar of water. Otherwise, noted the angel, the journey will be too much for you. Otherwise, the journey will be too much.
And then the angel sends Elijah on his way. Back into service to YHWH, back into community, back into the world. Somehow, some way, unexplainably fortified for a forty day journey with bread and water.
On the Friday and Saturday nights just past, Bruce and I sat at a quieter feast, at a far smaller meal. And we recounted the joyfulness of the rehearsal dinner and the wedding banquet. We remembered small details of both. And as I prepared for this sermon, I was reminded of the many many meals we have enjoyed together, here. Of anniversary celebrations and pot lucks and goodbyes and helloes. Of annual meetings and forums. Of summer breakfasts and Advent soup suppers. Friends, we have been the recipients of some amazing feasts! But the truth is, with few exceptions, (and those are mostly Gordon’s amazing meals) I don’t remember the food at all. I remember the community that gathered. When we come together we re-member the Body of Christ. Jesus. Who said “I am the Bread of Life”.
And we do this every Sunday. We take bread, and this is why I strongly prefer actual bread….and we hear the words that remind us of how beloved we are by God: This is the Body of Christ. This bread. Christ’s body. Given for you. This is the blood of Christ. Poured out. For you. It is this feast that binds us with the whole world. Theologian Gordon Lathrop reminds us that Christians share a “hungry feast” that recognizes that Christ stands in solidarity with the hungry of the world. We are transformed at this table, to see the web of interdependent relationship and begin to know that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored all rejoice together with it. And this is why the poor, the lame, the oppressed and the persecuted take seats of honor at the banquet. This is why we are invited with our own brokenness, our own poverty of spirit or purse, to a feast whose beginnings were in the very word of God.
Jesus said I am the Bread of Life. Those who come to me will never hunger.
Feast on him, dear ones and live in love, as Christ loved us and
gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Thanks be to God, and let the church say…Amen.