Sermon for August 18, 2024

Readings:

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

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TN1m5hfTgyU%3Fsi%3DR5hqix1A0D-IzYog%26start%3D835

Few things in this world can compare to the glory of a good church potluck. You might think I am being a little tongue in cheek, but this is not completely a joke. These things can be miraculous you know. Think for a second about a good church potluck. First of all, it’s basically free. You may have to pay for the food you are bringing, but for the most part you stand to get way more than you give. And I’m willing to bet that you could probably get away without bringing anything without getting the evil eye from too many folks. Second, you usually have so many types of different foods that almost everyone can find something that they like, or that they can eat. There are amazing new things to try and you always seem to end up with way more food than you need. Third, no one person is burdened with doing all the work. Fourth, everyone has the opportunity to show off their culinary skills a little if they want to, and you know folks like to do that, myself included. Fifth, you can actually enjoy the food because you don’t know how much sugar and fat is in it and there are no labels telling you if these vegetables are organic or if this beef came from a happy grassfed cow from upstate. You don’t know how many calories are in that piece of cake, you just get to eat it, and that is a beautiful thing. A good church potluck is a beautiful thing. It can be an encounter with God’s grace.

If the church had spent the last 50 years working on improving its potluck game rather than endlessly tinkering with the liturgy and trying to serve as political action committees for either the right or the left, we would be in a much different place today, and so would our nation and our world. We are in desperate need of the relationships that are formed at church potlucks. The church likes to go out and talk a good game about reconciliation and bringing people together and building up communities…well do you know what the most fundamental and basic way to bring people together is? Food. I know y’all are used to me being food-obsessed, and I know I preached last week about the importance of having a snack, but I don’t think I can overstate this. Food is a critical way that relationships are built. It is responsible for shaping families and communities. It is the magic ingredient. It is so simple that we overlook it or ignore it. If you want people to come to a church service or function, feed them. Why do you think we have the meal on Maundy Thursday? Yes, there is religious significance to it, but also, how else am I going to get folks to come to a weeknight service? The same goes for the soup and scripture series and for the children’s prayer breakfasts. Feed people and they will come. Food brings people together.

And I hasten to add here that this isn’t a gimmick or a ploy. It is simply a recognition that relationships are formed around food. We all have this basic human need to eat, but somehow when we do it together, when we eat with each other and serve food to each other, something else happens and we walk away with something more than just food in our bellies. God has the power to do more through food than just fuel our bodies.

Relationships are formed around food. It is such a common thing that I think we often fail to realize just how powerful it is. But there is power, real power in feeding people. You give them a bit of yourself. Part of you becomes a part of them, even across seemingly uncrossable barriers. I think of this, not every time, but often when I sit down to eat my favorite vegetable. Now my favorite vegetable is something that many of you probably find repulsive, because its okra. If you didn’t grow up eating okra, if you don’t know how to cook it or if you aren’t familiar with the texture, then you may not be able to stomach it. But I love it. I love the flavor of it. We used to grow it in the garden growing up, so it has always been a part of my life. My ancestors have eaten it for hundreds of years. But we know precisely where okra comes from. It comes from Africa. The reason my ancestors ate it was because slaves grew it and fed it to them. So the food that you are eating may be telling a more complicated story and may represent more relationships than you can even imagine. We are often so focused on the more obvious power dynamics in this world that we often miss or misunderstand the real power there is in feeding people. 

But this is something that scripture makes clear to us over and over again. God is regularly described in scripture as one who feeds. One who feeds. THE one who feeds. The ultimate source of that which fills us and makes relationship possible. Scripture is filled with this image:

The food in the garden of eden. 

The manna in the wilderness. 

Psalm 23: thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

Our reading from Proverbs this morning: God’s wisdom has set herself a table and sent servants out inviting people to come and eat. 

This is what God does. God feeds people. Not just in overly spiritualized and symbolic ways, but in actual concrete ways that feed the body, but do more than feed the body. What God gives us is more than just food, but it isn’t less than food. Actual food is a part of the equation. Does that make sense? What I mean to say is that I often hear Christians talking about food, real food, as if it isn’t really that important itself, but only insofar as it represents something spiritual. And I’m here to reject that way of thinking. The daily bread that I pray for every day may be more than just a mixture of flour and water, but it isn’t less than that. When we pray for daily bread we aren’t just praying to be filled spiritually. We are human beings, we need real food. You may recall that I had my jaw wired shut for six weeks a few years ago. You may recall that fondly. But let me tell you, by week two I wasn’t hoping for God to give me some nebulous form of enlightenment, I wanted real bread. Yes, I wanted all of the spiritual benefits of knowing that God was the ultimate source of my food, that’s wonderful, but I wanted the real food too. Real food matters. Feeding people real food is a powerful thing that can change their life and yours.

What is one of the first things you do when you want to have a relationship with someone? You feed them; take them out to dinner. In John’s gospel, at the end, after the Resurrection, what does Jesus tell Peter to go and do? Feed my sheep. Repeatedly, Jesus tells Peter, if you love me, feed my sheep. It is what God does. God is the one who feeds. God’s servants are called to feed too. Now, God has more than just food to offer us. Man does not live by bread alone. God offers us relationship and wisdom and life that transcends this physical world, at least the world as we understand it. But that relationship, that life, often begins with and is sustained by actual eating and the many, many relationships that are formed around the table. Any table.

It is only natural in a church like this, a church that celebrates communion every Sunday, to hear Jesus talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in the gospel this morning and think that he is referring to the Eucharist. Every week we recall Jesus saying “this is my body” and “this is my blood” over the bread and the wine, and we come forward and receive them at the altar, the holy table. We say that Jesus is spiritually present in them. So in this context, it is easy to hear this morning’s gospel and think that is what Jesus is talking about. Simply taking the host and wine of the Eucharist like some sort of medication divinely engineered to prevent death. But I think there is so much more to Jesus’s self-offering here than just what happens at the Last Supper and in the mass. In the first place, Jesus is speaking well before the Last Supper at this point in the gospel, it hasn’t happened yet. In the second place, this is John’s gospel and it doesn’t mention the bread and wine at the Last Supper at all. That comes from the other gospels. So I think Jesus is talking about more than the mass here.The Eucharist is definitely a way that God offers us his life. But I think we need to think bigger. Holy Communion is special, but can God feed us in other ways and at other meals? I think he can. I know he can. I might not be willing to hold up a casserole and say “the body of Christ,” but I do think that a relationship with God can begin around any food. It is how many people come to faith, through relationships formed over meals, and it is how many people hold on to faith during those times when God seems distant or irrelevant. The relationships and the meals keep people coming back. 

Yes, I believe that Jesus is present in the bread and wine that we bless at the altar, but that meal reminds me that in a different way, at different tables and with different food and different people, Jesus feeds us and offers us his life and his body at other meals too. Especially at Church potlucks. Now we just have to have more of them, and invite others to come.

Sermon for August 11, 2024

Readings:

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

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cw9xu4EKJYo%3Fsi%3DFi1u8OW67P5lgR9f%26start%3D880

In the Book of Kings this morning we find the prophet Elijah sitting by himself under a tree and having a pity party. 

Elijah is exasperated; ready to quit; ready to die. The leaders of the land have had their values all screwed up, he tried to correct them, and they didn’t take too kindly to it. There is a part of me that doesn’t blame Elijah for being frustrated; but then there is another part that wants to say to Elijah, “well, what did you think was going to happen?” Did you think that human beings were all of a sudden going to just open their eyes one day and start behaving? I want to ask Elijah, “why did you think you were better than your ancestors and the prophets who came before you?” That is foolishness. Do you not know your own history? 

If you sit down and read the Book of Kings sometime you will see that things had been bad for a very long time before Elijah came along. One horrible leader after another. It’s funny, the Book of Kings is really all about how bad kings are. And I say this as someone who you all know is a big monarchist. “King” is not a dirty word for me. But I can certainly recognize that some kings are better than others, some rulers or leaders are better than others, and all of them, at some point, are going to disappoint you. 

Just as a side note here, I am going to save you all some grief right now. Whoever you are planning to vote for in November, prepare to be disappointed! He or she is going to disappoint you!

Anyways, the Book of Kings points out just how disappointing leaders can be. Even wise old Solomon and good King David, they had major flaws, and made major mistakes. And now, in Elijah’s time, after a trail of bad kings and wars, the old kingdom of David has been split in two. Society has been split in two. The laws, and the values and the traditions that people used to care about have been forgotten. The King and the Queen where Elijah is living, in the North, are corrupt politicians that have made all sorts of shady foreign alliances. They brought in prophets that worship different Gods than the God of Israel and have different customs and traditions. Why have one God when you can have lots of Gods? 

And you may think, so what? Big deal! That’s like living in New York. That’s just multi-culturalism and diversity, right? Well diversity is great when you have some common values that make living together possible. But what if those values disappear and it just becomes every man and woman for him or herself? Diversity is great when you have a strong unifying core; when you have commonality. But without that strong core, diversity just becomes division.

Elijah is looking at a kingdom that has been divided over and over. It wasn’t a community of people with a common goal and purpose; it was just a collection of individuals all looking out for what is in it for them. He, Elijah, wants them to return to the worship of the one true God. The God of Israel was that unifying core that had been holding the kingdom together. Elijah wants to revive and restore the worship of God. But it’s not an easy task. How do you refocus people on God? How do you restore those “common values?”

You know, the Book of Kings spends plenty of time talking about King Solomon’s faults, but it spends even more time, way, way more time actually, talking about the good thing that Solomon did. And the greatest thing that Solomon did, that outshined his many faults, was build the temple. It was the greatest thing he did, because not only did it give glory to God; it also brought people together. It was a focal point of unity, even for the folks who didn’t live in downtown Jerusalem. It meant so much, but now, during Elijah’s time, the temple was in a different Kingdom altogether that had split off. And all around the North were these shrines and high places and altars to other Gods, particularly a Canaanite god named Baal. The prophets of Baal, many of whom had been brought in by that shady Queen Jezebel (and yes, that is where that name that we associate with wanton women comes from), those prophets were going around selling a lie. Pay us money and Baal will protect your crops, give you good weather, make you fertile with strong children, and on and on. And Elijah knew this was a lie, and he challenged those prophets to a duel or a contest to prove which god was real, and Elijah won and people saw it. The story of the contest is a great story, but I’m not going to tell it now. You will have to go home and look it up if you don’t know it, but let’s just say there was undeniable evidence that Elijah was telling the truth, and that the God of Israel was alive and well. So why is Elijah running for his life now instead of leading the nation in a giant act of repentance and renewal? 

Because no one likes to admit that they were wrong. Our relationship with truth as human beings has always been very selective. There are instances of communal repentance in the bible. People CAN change, communities can change, and renewal does happen, the Holy Spirit does work, but it rarely happens on our timeline. Elijah must have thought that it was going to be one and done. Win one battle and the war is over, but sadly life just isn’t that way. It’s like trying to keep this building going. Fix the steps today and tomorrow the air conditioning will break. Recover from covid and then hurt your back mopping the floor. Life brings with it new struggles every single day. Progress is never a one-way street, and if that is true for physical things, then it is especially true for less physical things like human nature. 

We cannot be naive about human nature. Elijah came to the realization that he was no better than his ancestors and it came to him like a slap in the face, but it doesn’t have to come to you that way. Don’t be naïve about human nature and human sinfulness. It is never a one and done battle. We may get a little better about one sin while we let ten more run rampant. We may shuffle the deck on our sins every generation, but we still hold all the same cards. We are still sinful. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment, humans don’t always embrace the truth. 

If you read through the Book of Kings, society doesn’t just get better from one King to the next; it gets worse a lot of the time. Good king, bad king, good king, bad king. Elijah thought that he could call on God and it would all just be settled. Well, he did call on God, and God answered, but he still had a new battle the next day. And when Elijah complained to God, what was God’s response to Elijah’s moment of despair?

Get up and eat. 

Seriously, that was the angel’s message to Elijah. Get up and go eat something. It was such good advice, he gave it twice. Two times the angel said to Elijah, get up and eat something. Perhaps Elijah was expecting a more profound, sympathetic response from God, since he was God’s servant, but that is the response that he got. Get up and eat. 

Don’t underestimate that advice though. God understands human nature better than we do. God knows what we need. God knows that our lives aren’t just one big battle and then peace and happiness. Our lives, human lives, are a million little battles, one after the other. From one king to the next, from one generation to the next, from one moment to the next. A million little battles. We don’t get to just give up and die, like Elijah wanted to do. God’s instruction was to get up and go on. Get up, have a cookie, and move on to the next battle. God knows that Elijah isn’t going to finish the job. God isn’t asking Elijah to save the whole world. God is simply telling Elijah to get up and go on to the next battle. That is what victory looks like: resilience. And eat something. The answer to your prayers might be right in front of you and it very well might be a cookie. God’s grace comes in many forms and sometimes that form is food. 

All human beings have to eat in some way. And every culture has its special and unique foods. Many faiths have foods that have particular religious significance. But for Christians, food has a place in our most sacred rituals. Jesus referred to himself as bread; something that nourishes and feeds us on a daily basis. He made a reference to bread in the central prayer of our faith, the Lord’s Prayer. He fed people in miraculous ways. The bread that he blessed at the last supper, he said was his body. And we believe that there is real, spiritual power and grace in the food that we receive at the altar today, only please don’t call it a cookie. We believe that Christ meets us there to share his life with us and to give us grace to go on and fight the next battle. It is, and always has been, central to our life as a community. It is one of our common values. Just like the Jewish community in ancient times was focused on the altar and the worship of the temple, the early Christian churches were focused on the table and Christ present among them in the breaking of the bread. And boy was that community diverse. Read any of the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, and you will see just how diverse the Christian community was, but for that community to hold together, people would have to learn to hold on to the core beliefs, values, and behaviors that would keep diversity from becoming division. Paul understood that. He knew that Christians learning to hold on to God and hold on to each other, would have to fight a million tiny battles and that is as true today as it was in the first century, or indeed, even in Elijah’s time. 

Sometimes the battle is listening, sometimes it is forgiving, sometimes it is speaking with grace and sometimes it is shutting up…with grace of course. Following God, being faithful to God is not a one and done decision that you make, it is a million tiny battles. Some of them you win, many of them you lose, but you get up and go on to the next battle. Resilience. That is the victory of faith, and that is what God is feeding us for here. God gives us the strength, and the grace, that we need to get up and go on to the next battle.