Perhaps it didn’t happen exactly that way. Scholars are never sure with the Hebrew Scriptures, since they were edited and reworked more than once, especially during the Exile. Even so, let’s imagine ourselves into the scene at Shechem. There you are standing with the crowds. Perhaps you’re one of the representatives of the Benjaminites. And there’s your buddy over there with the Ephraimites. Oh, and your sister married into a Reubenite clan. Are you one of the judges or officers? Perhaps you’re a respected elder of your clan – at least some of us here could play the part of “elder!” Your great, great grandparents were among those whom Moses led out of Egypt with God’s help. They agreed to live as God expected, and especially to worship only Yahweh. Your ancestors wandered around the Sinai desert. Moses died before the tribes reached the Jordan River and the land that God had promised to Moses. Joshua took Moses’s place, and all have finally reached the Jordan and received their promised allotted portion.
Now here you are. Joshua is about to “sleep with his ancestors,” and reminds you of the promises the tribes made along the way. “You have a choice,” you hear him say, “you can worship the old gods your ancestors worshipped in Egypt, you can worship the gods that other people in this land worship, or you can worship the one true God, Yahweh, who liberated us from Egyptian slavery. You can choose to do the hard work that God expects of you, or not. I know what I expect of my own family, but what about you?” So, is it an easy choice for you? The way the crowd responds it sounds like it is. “… we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God,” the people answer. Well, yes, but are you really ready to give up those sacred statuettes you smuggled out of Egypt in your trunk? Are you sure? Couldn’t that one of Isis still have some power in it? And what about the Baals of these Amorites, and the Canaanites’ Astarte? Is Yahweh more powerful than they? Are you sure you don’t want to hedge your bets and worship them all?
Now, fast forward a millennium or so. Crowds again. Only this time it’s that itinerant rabbi who’s been performing all these miracles and talking about “signs.” Where in the crowd are you this time? Were you among those who were amazed when he somehow managed to get a lot of people fed with very little? Did you rush across the Sea of Galilee to catch up with him at Capernaum and get some more of that miraculous food? Did you hear him talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood? Yech, who wants to do that? What kind of strange cult is this? Or maybe you’re part of the group travelling with the rabbi’s closest friends. Perhaps you’re one of those wealthy women who’ve been bankrolling his ministry. Or maybe you’re just an ordinary shepherd or farmer or housewife who finds Jesus so compelling, so life-giving. Is Jesus a little shaken when people call his teaching “difficult” and begin heading for home? Is that why he offers his friends the choice of also leaving? And are you surprised when Peter answers, “Hell no! Where else would we go? You’re teaching us what we need to hear.” Is that your answer also? There’s no one else to go to? Shouldn’t you be tending the crops or the animals, or schmoozing with the fish wholesalers? Who knows about what wool is getting this season? Wait, we need to get ready for our trip to the in-laws’ house. And whom can we approach to help us dodge the taxes we owe? If we could just get the Romans off our backs …. Is Jesus really the only choice?
Fast forward to today, or maybe yesterday. Jesus has come back and called all of us who claim to be his disciples to hear his latest teaching. We’re part of a large crowd, say at the county fairgrounds, or maybe even the Marshall Football stadium. We’re listening to him. Strangely, his message sounds familiar. “You have a choice, folks,” he says. “You can give up your old ways of doing things, you can refuse to do things just because everyone else does, and you can take on my lifestyle of living and dying for others. What are you going to do?” Are we still yearning for those old gods that we’ve carried here from the 1950s? Do we think that if we could just recreate Leave it to Beaver, the pews will be filled to overflowing, and all the confusion and disorder of our lives will disappear? Are you sure? Do we really want to return to the Cold War? Do we really want to return to the time before the ordination of women, when women couldn’t sit on vestries, be delegates for General Convention, or, even in some parishes, even read the New Testament lesson?
Or perhaps the neighbors’ gods are calling out. Perhaps we’d rather worship the almighty dollar. There’s always another one to be made. How about military heroes? Perhaps if we worship them, they will keep us safe from all those terrorists. Or maybe sports stars are the ones we truly worship. Yes, Jesus, you were right to gather us together in this stadium. You know only too well that, if a visitor from outer space were to alight today, there would be no doubt in its mind that many more people have professional spectator sports as their dominant religion than the way you taught.
But the bottom line is, Jesus, your way of life is difficult. Your way of life is difficult not only because you want to nourish us with your Body and Blood. We accept that we don’t completely understand the mystery of communion, but we accept your willingness to feed us that way. Your way is difficult because we know that it involves dying. We believe that your way also will lead to resurrection. Even so, in the meanwhile, dying to old ways, changing the parts of our lives that distance us from you, and keeping you as our model, as we make choices in stores, in voting booths, in our use of money, and in our relationships with others, is so difficult! Yes, you give us a choice, a choice to love and serve you or not, but it’s a difficult choice!
It was June, 1939. German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was spending the month in New York City.1 “I do not know why I am here,” he wrote friends, as he pondered his difficult choice. As a leader of the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer had publicly defied the Nazi government. Hoping to save his life, his American friends had arranged for him to serve as a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. Yet, after only a few weeks in New York, Bonhoeffer decided to return home. “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “if I do not share the tribulations of this time with my people.” Bonhoeffer did not return to Germany seeking martyrdom. In fact, he used family connections to land a position in military intelligence. Despite the danger, Bonhoeffer then chose to use his position to advance the underground conspiracy to assassinate Hitler that was led by his brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi.
In 1943 both Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested. They were held for eighteen months in a military prison. When the Gestapo learned the full extent of the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer was sent to Buchenwald and finally to Flossenburg prison camp. On April 9, 1945, he conducted a prayer service for the other prisoners. Then he received the summons to prepare for death. He hastily told the others, “This is the end, for me the beginning of life.” He was hanged the next day with five other resistance fighters. The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”2 Today, despite having died at the age of thirty-nine, more than sixty years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of the most widely read Lutheran theologians, and his works have inspired millions.
We may not face the choices that Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced. But, as professed followers of Jesus, we too have difficult choices, and we too acknowledge “the cost of discipleship.” It’s not easy to give up our attachment to old ways of life. It’s not easy to forsake the pleasures, the political stands, the self-absorption, and the neglect of the needs of the poor that others embrace so easily. It’s not easy to commit ourselves to one whose way of life was so radically at odds with the values of his own time and of ours. But that is the call that we accepted when we strode through the red doors. We choose to follow you, O Lord, to the Cross and beyond.
1. The following account is based on Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 160-2.
2. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 927.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
You Are Invited
[Hand out printed invitations to God’s banquet.] You are invited! You are invited to God’s banquet. You are invited to get to know God more deeply. You are invited to grow in wisdom and in the understanding of your faith. You are invited to partake of all the depth, the richness, the sacrifice, the joy, and the immeasurable love that God offers us. You are invited. You are always invited. All you have to do is let God know that you’re coming.
You can’t miss the invitation to God’s banquet in today’s Scripture. Indeed, the invitation to a rich feast is a common image in both testaments. And no surprise. Hunger is often an image for human dependence on God. Think of the end of Job. After Job has endured testing and torment, and God has restored double all of Job’s fortune, Job throws a great party for all his family and friends. Think of Isaiah 25. “On this mountain,” the prophet declares, “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines….” Or Isaiah 55. “…you who have no money, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…. Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” In the Gospel according to Matthew, the parable of the wedding banquet figures prominently. All four Gospels recount both the miraculous feeding of the crowd and Jesus’ last gracious meal with his friends before his death. After his resurrection, in Luke’s telling, Jesus appeared to his friends during a meal and was known to them “in the breaking of the bread.”
So we should not be surprised to be invited to God’s party in today’s Scripture. The invitation in our first lesson is not one we hear very often. Snippets of the book of Proverbs appear mostly in year C, once here, and occasionally on special days. Actually, this collection of sayings, lectures, speeches, and advice is well worth reading. Having grown up over time, as Jewish teachers began to ponder the covenants and the laws, the book of Proverbs represents a compendium of what was considered essential for the life of an individual and the community. In order for us to understand the content of the second two thirds of the book, the first third introduces us to the figures of Woman Wisdom and Woman Folly. Woman Wisdom functions as a guide, especially to the young, whom she invites to partake of her rich feast. Here she especially invites them to feast on her fare and gain spiritual maturity: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live and walk in the way of insight.”
God’s invitation to greater wisdom and deeper knowledge of God is equally apparent in our Gospel lesson. We have been hearing for the last month Jesus’ promises in the Gospel of John to feed us with the bread of life. You may remember my mentioning to you last month that often in John Jesus demonstrates his identity through a sign, as he did here with the feeding of the five thousand. The sign is then followed by his explanation of the sign to the crowds and then by disputes with the religious leaders about the meaning of the sign. Today we are in the middle of the dispute. As is usual in John, Jesus and the religious leaders are talking past one another. Jesus speaks on the spiritual plane. The leaders hear him and respond on a literal plane, as they express their dismay at doing something forbidden by Jewish law, i.e., eating the flesh of another and drinking blood. For the hearers of John’s Gospel – both the original hearers and us – those who hear with their spiritual ears hear a different message in Jesus’ invitation. In Jesus’ assurance that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them,” we hear Jesus’ invitation to take spiritual nourishment from him, to feast on the manna that he provides, to join the banquet that he hosts, and to grow spiritually. We also hear his promise of eternal life to those who feast at his table: not “pie in the sky when you die,” but lives so rooted and grounded in the risen Lord here and now that they continue forever, even after physical death.
God’s invitation to us is an ongoing invitation. God’s invitation does not expire, and we do not have to reply by a specific deadline. We do not have to come to a specific place to receive God’s nourishment. God’s invitations truly are infinite in number. However, we are finite creatures. We need specific ways to hear God’s invitations more clearly and to continue growing into spiritual maturity. Certainly, God speaks to you through your own private prayer and study. Even if you give God only five minutes of attention a day – although God would assuredly like much more than that – God will find a way to slip a word edgewise into that crack. God will find a verse of Scripture through which God can speak to you. Clearly too the Eucharist is a place in which God has promised to feed us. As we are nourished with Jesus’ body and blood in the bread and wine, his life takes hold in us, deepening our ties with him and ever more firmly rooting us in him.
But there is more to our spiritual lives than Sunday morning or Wednesday evening, important as the Eucharist may be. God also invites us into deeper relationship with God and into greater spiritual maturity through joining with other members of the Body of Christ in Christian formation and prayer. Beginning last Lent, we have followed our Wednesday evening Eucharist with a light supper and interactive class. The first series was an introduction to or a refresher course in the history and practices of the Episcopal Church. The second series was an introduction to some simple contemplative prayer practices. I propose to continue the Wednesday evening classes, beginning after Labor Day, and I invite your suggestions as to what topics and approaches might interest you. One topic on my mind right now, given the recent violence at a Sikh house of worship, is an introduction to the other world religions. Secondly, some of you may remember the Listening Group that I began as part of my Shalem program. A few people, at that time from both St. Peter’s and Grace, met for two hours a month to share their spiritual journeys and to experience different forms of prayer. I propose to revive this group and to open it to all who may be interested, both inside and outside this parish. At the moment, I am considering the afternoon of the second Sunday of the month as a possible meeting time. I invite your suggestions about such a group.
We can choose to accept or decline God’s invitations to us. God cares about the choices we make, but God will not coerce us into any choice. God passionately wishes to be in relationship with us, but God is also patient. God will not love us any less if we find it difficult to accept God’s invitations, and God will wait until we are ready. Neither the Proverbs reading nor the reading from the Gospel of John contain any threat about what might happen to those who decline God’s invitation. However, if we decline, we miss the opportunity to grow into the people God has created us to be. If we refuse to grow spiritually and remain stuck in a primary school version of religious experience, we are like adults continuing to ride children’s tricycles. If we decline God’s invitation, we miss out on the joys that God has prepared for us. And most important of all, we miss the opportunity to follow Jesus in sharing God’s love with our neighbors.
In a few moments we will recognize those who are returning to school. We will demonstrate God’s love for them, as they accept God’s invitation to continue growing intellectually, by blessing their backpacks and school bags. For the rest of us, the start of the academic year, with the beginning of some of our fall activities, is a good time for all us of to look at our own responses to God’s invitation. “Am I pursuing the life of wisdom,” we might ask ourselves, “or am I spending my time on worthless trifles?” Perhaps as a parish we can ask ourselves if we embody a mature faith, or if we are still stuck in what we learned long ago? To what is God calling us now, and are we open to God’s invitation?
Ever-loving God, your Son gives himself as living bread for the life of the world. Fill us with such a knowledge of his presence that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life to serve you continually, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.1
1. Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 2011), 251.
You can’t miss the invitation to God’s banquet in today’s Scripture. Indeed, the invitation to a rich feast is a common image in both testaments. And no surprise. Hunger is often an image for human dependence on God. Think of the end of Job. After Job has endured testing and torment, and God has restored double all of Job’s fortune, Job throws a great party for all his family and friends. Think of Isaiah 25. “On this mountain,” the prophet declares, “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines….” Or Isaiah 55. “…you who have no money, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…. Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” In the Gospel according to Matthew, the parable of the wedding banquet figures prominently. All four Gospels recount both the miraculous feeding of the crowd and Jesus’ last gracious meal with his friends before his death. After his resurrection, in Luke’s telling, Jesus appeared to his friends during a meal and was known to them “in the breaking of the bread.”
So we should not be surprised to be invited to God’s party in today’s Scripture. The invitation in our first lesson is not one we hear very often. Snippets of the book of Proverbs appear mostly in year C, once here, and occasionally on special days. Actually, this collection of sayings, lectures, speeches, and advice is well worth reading. Having grown up over time, as Jewish teachers began to ponder the covenants and the laws, the book of Proverbs represents a compendium of what was considered essential for the life of an individual and the community. In order for us to understand the content of the second two thirds of the book, the first third introduces us to the figures of Woman Wisdom and Woman Folly. Woman Wisdom functions as a guide, especially to the young, whom she invites to partake of her rich feast. Here she especially invites them to feast on her fare and gain spiritual maturity: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live and walk in the way of insight.”
God’s invitation to greater wisdom and deeper knowledge of God is equally apparent in our Gospel lesson. We have been hearing for the last month Jesus’ promises in the Gospel of John to feed us with the bread of life. You may remember my mentioning to you last month that often in John Jesus demonstrates his identity through a sign, as he did here with the feeding of the five thousand. The sign is then followed by his explanation of the sign to the crowds and then by disputes with the religious leaders about the meaning of the sign. Today we are in the middle of the dispute. As is usual in John, Jesus and the religious leaders are talking past one another. Jesus speaks on the spiritual plane. The leaders hear him and respond on a literal plane, as they express their dismay at doing something forbidden by Jewish law, i.e., eating the flesh of another and drinking blood. For the hearers of John’s Gospel – both the original hearers and us – those who hear with their spiritual ears hear a different message in Jesus’ invitation. In Jesus’ assurance that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them,” we hear Jesus’ invitation to take spiritual nourishment from him, to feast on the manna that he provides, to join the banquet that he hosts, and to grow spiritually. We also hear his promise of eternal life to those who feast at his table: not “pie in the sky when you die,” but lives so rooted and grounded in the risen Lord here and now that they continue forever, even after physical death.
God’s invitation to us is an ongoing invitation. God’s invitation does not expire, and we do not have to reply by a specific deadline. We do not have to come to a specific place to receive God’s nourishment. God’s invitations truly are infinite in number. However, we are finite creatures. We need specific ways to hear God’s invitations more clearly and to continue growing into spiritual maturity. Certainly, God speaks to you through your own private prayer and study. Even if you give God only five minutes of attention a day – although God would assuredly like much more than that – God will find a way to slip a word edgewise into that crack. God will find a verse of Scripture through which God can speak to you. Clearly too the Eucharist is a place in which God has promised to feed us. As we are nourished with Jesus’ body and blood in the bread and wine, his life takes hold in us, deepening our ties with him and ever more firmly rooting us in him.
But there is more to our spiritual lives than Sunday morning or Wednesday evening, important as the Eucharist may be. God also invites us into deeper relationship with God and into greater spiritual maturity through joining with other members of the Body of Christ in Christian formation and prayer. Beginning last Lent, we have followed our Wednesday evening Eucharist with a light supper and interactive class. The first series was an introduction to or a refresher course in the history and practices of the Episcopal Church. The second series was an introduction to some simple contemplative prayer practices. I propose to continue the Wednesday evening classes, beginning after Labor Day, and I invite your suggestions as to what topics and approaches might interest you. One topic on my mind right now, given the recent violence at a Sikh house of worship, is an introduction to the other world religions. Secondly, some of you may remember the Listening Group that I began as part of my Shalem program. A few people, at that time from both St. Peter’s and Grace, met for two hours a month to share their spiritual journeys and to experience different forms of prayer. I propose to revive this group and to open it to all who may be interested, both inside and outside this parish. At the moment, I am considering the afternoon of the second Sunday of the month as a possible meeting time. I invite your suggestions about such a group.
We can choose to accept or decline God’s invitations to us. God cares about the choices we make, but God will not coerce us into any choice. God passionately wishes to be in relationship with us, but God is also patient. God will not love us any less if we find it difficult to accept God’s invitations, and God will wait until we are ready. Neither the Proverbs reading nor the reading from the Gospel of John contain any threat about what might happen to those who decline God’s invitation. However, if we decline, we miss the opportunity to grow into the people God has created us to be. If we refuse to grow spiritually and remain stuck in a primary school version of religious experience, we are like adults continuing to ride children’s tricycles. If we decline God’s invitation, we miss out on the joys that God has prepared for us. And most important of all, we miss the opportunity to follow Jesus in sharing God’s love with our neighbors.
In a few moments we will recognize those who are returning to school. We will demonstrate God’s love for them, as they accept God’s invitation to continue growing intellectually, by blessing their backpacks and school bags. For the rest of us, the start of the academic year, with the beginning of some of our fall activities, is a good time for all us of to look at our own responses to God’s invitation. “Am I pursuing the life of wisdom,” we might ask ourselves, “or am I spending my time on worthless trifles?” Perhaps as a parish we can ask ourselves if we embody a mature faith, or if we are still stuck in what we learned long ago? To what is God calling us now, and are we open to God’s invitation?
Ever-loving God, your Son gives himself as living bread for the life of the world. Fill us with such a knowledge of his presence that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life to serve you continually, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.1
1. Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 2011), 251.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Manna
“He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round us ….” In the opening sequence of Dickens’s Great Expectations, Pip has brought food to the escaped convict whom he had met by the churchyard. The famished convict wolfed down Pip’s food so quickly that he scarcely knew what he was eating, only stopping to take a hurried swig of the brandy Pip had brought. Have you ever known such hunger? Have you ever been so famished, have you ever gone without food so long that you could eat everything in sight? We see such hunger frequently in nineteenth century novels, especially those of Dickens. Today, many of those who go to the Outreach Center, come to the Lutheran Social Services food giveaway, or join us at Loaves and Fishes know real hunger. And in some parts of the world, hunger is still a daily fact of life. Most of us have never experienced that kind of hunger. We may diet, we miss a meal, we may even fast intentionally, but we can be pretty sure the next meal is out there when we’re ready for it. How about spiritual hunger? Have you ever felt spiritually hungry? Have you ever felt such a deep yearning for God’s presence that you’re ready to try anything? Have you seen that yearning in anyone else? Some may disagree with me, but I think that spiritual hunger, a desire for closeness with God, runs deep within our culture, among those who are separated from family, among those who face crises in their lives, even among those who have been abused by the church, and perhaps especially among those who claim to be “spiritual but not religious.”
So, here’s the good news right up front: God is ready to meet all our hungers, both physical and spiritual! The message that God pays attention to our needs and feeds us generously couldn’t be clearer in the Scripture lessons you’ve just been fed with. Far from the cooking pots of Egypt, the Israelites were hungry and restless. Although God had already demonstrated God’s care for them by providing abundant water in the Sinai desert, the people complained again to Moses. “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites,” God responded, raining down quail in the evening and causing manna to form in the morning. Were the quail and the manna natural phenomena, as some have suggested? So what? The message is still clear: God provides. God meets our needs. And what should be our response? Accept God’s gifts gratefully. If the Exodus lesson doesn’t convince you the psalm reiterates the message: “So they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved.”
Fast forward to the Gospel of John. The scene picks up where last week’s action left off. Remember that the central question in John is always, “Who is Jesus?” The answer is always the same, the Word made flesh, but the gospel writer uses many different images, including images from Scripture, to help the hearers of the gospel grasp the reality of Jesus’ identity. “I am like manna,” Jesus proclaims. “Just as God fed the Israelites spiritual food in the wilderness, so the Father has sent me. I can give you physical food – I just did – but that’s not who I am. I’m not a political messiah, and I’m not someone whose purpose is to fill your stomachs. The primary reason I am here is to give you spiritual food, to satisfy your spiritual hunger, just as God gave the Israelites manna, and I gave you bread. Now I give you spiritual bread, which you need even more than physical bread.”
And here’s the real miracle: we continue to receive that spiritual bread. We too receive the manna that God provided the Israelites and that Jesus provided to the crowd. As individuals, we receive that manna Sunday by Sunday, every time we come to the holy table and receive Jesus’ Body and Blood. And what a miraculous gift this is! For Christ’s Body and Blood become part of our bodies uniting us more closely with Jesus and continuing the process of transformation into his likeness. As Martin Luther reminded us, “When we eat Christ’s flesh physically and spiritually the food is so powerful that it transforms us into itself.” “When we eat him,” spiritual writer Lisa Dahill explains, “his body transforms us, via this process of divine metabolism, into his own life in, with, and under ours. Deep in the flesh, we taste and receive and experience the indwelling divine life of Jesus Christ himself….”1 As a parish too we receive God’s manna: as we come together and share the many gifts that God has given each of us. Just as God continues to care for us and feed us spiritually, God continues to endow us with gift upon gift. Perhaps, as we share our Common Ministry exercise, we will be able to see more clearly all the manna that God has lavished upon us as a parish!
Are there strings attached to all these gifts from God? You bet there are! At the very least, God expected the Israelites to understand the source of the quail and the manna: “You shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Later on, as the Israelites circled the Sinai desert and received the law, God stated God’s expectations clearly: they were to keep God’s covenant with them by following God’s law. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ gift of himself is not limited to the Jews. Indeed, Jesus reminds his hearers, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” But, whoever receives the bread from heaven still has a charge: to “work” for the food that endures for eternal life” and, more important, to “believe in him whom [God] has sent.”
If we are truly Jesus’ disciples, then the same obligations fall on us: to know that God is the source of all our gifts, physical and spiritual, personal and corporate, and to continue to deepen our relationship with Jesus and our reliance on him in all aspects of our lives. But there is more. In allowing ourselves to be baptized, we have become part of the Body of Christ, the continuing presence of Christ on earth. If we have read Scripture carefully, then we know that, as Christ’s Body, we also must share God’s gifts with others. The manna that God has given us, the skills and competencies we own, the resources that we possess, even the spiritual gifts that we can point to, have all been given to us for a purpose. Our spiritual needs are met, we are given gifts, the writer of the letter to the Ephesians reminds us, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God….”
What does this mean in real life? To begin with, using God’s gifts for the sake of others means helping to meet people’s physical hunger. You’ve already heard about the need of the Outreach Center for non-perishable food, and I hope you have contributed and will contribute to meeting that need. You know about Loaves and Fishes: we always need volunteers and contributions to that meal. But I think we can go a step further. Right now, one person from this parish has largely taken responsibility for running Loaves and Fishes. I’d like to see it be a team effort on the part of this parish, one in which many of us together offer our hospitality. And what about meeting the need for sustainable food sources in another part of the world? Could we have a mission team to mobilize our gifts and plan for all these efforts?
What’s more important, Jesus charged us with helping to meet the spiritual hunger of the world around us. I believe this means intentionally committing ourselves to helping St. Peter’s become a more vital, more active parish. One important way of addressing spiritual hunger is supporting adult formation, i.e., continuing to grow in our own understanding of the faith. Another way is having vital, attractive worship. Another way is to pray for two additional families to join us this year. And yet another way is to take seriously our responsibility for the growing children that God has already given us.
How to begin doing all this? I’d like to suggest some other teams that can help revitalize St. Peter’s. We can build on our Common Ministry effort, which will continue this year. I’d like to see us add two more people to the Common Ministry team. In addition, I also suggest that we create teams committed to working on youth ministry, worship, and financial solvency. With a team for mission, that’s four teams in all. Among other things, this coming week during my retreat I will be praying about who among you might be able and willing to serve on such teams. And I also ask your prayers this week, that God will enlighten all of us as to how we might better share the richness of God’s gifts with others.
God hears our complaints and our cries for food. If we let him, Jesus continues to be manna for us, continues to make God’s love manifest to us. As his Body, can we follow in his footsteps and nourish the world around us? Please join me in this prayer, and please continue to pray it all this week, “O God, eternal goodness, immeasurable love, you place your gifts before us; we eat and are satisfied. Fill us and this world in all its need with the life that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.”2
1. Lisa E. Dahill, Truly Present (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2005), 86.
2. Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2011), 245.
So, here’s the good news right up front: God is ready to meet all our hungers, both physical and spiritual! The message that God pays attention to our needs and feeds us generously couldn’t be clearer in the Scripture lessons you’ve just been fed with. Far from the cooking pots of Egypt, the Israelites were hungry and restless. Although God had already demonstrated God’s care for them by providing abundant water in the Sinai desert, the people complained again to Moses. “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites,” God responded, raining down quail in the evening and causing manna to form in the morning. Were the quail and the manna natural phenomena, as some have suggested? So what? The message is still clear: God provides. God meets our needs. And what should be our response? Accept God’s gifts gratefully. If the Exodus lesson doesn’t convince you the psalm reiterates the message: “So they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved.”
Fast forward to the Gospel of John. The scene picks up where last week’s action left off. Remember that the central question in John is always, “Who is Jesus?” The answer is always the same, the Word made flesh, but the gospel writer uses many different images, including images from Scripture, to help the hearers of the gospel grasp the reality of Jesus’ identity. “I am like manna,” Jesus proclaims. “Just as God fed the Israelites spiritual food in the wilderness, so the Father has sent me. I can give you physical food – I just did – but that’s not who I am. I’m not a political messiah, and I’m not someone whose purpose is to fill your stomachs. The primary reason I am here is to give you spiritual food, to satisfy your spiritual hunger, just as God gave the Israelites manna, and I gave you bread. Now I give you spiritual bread, which you need even more than physical bread.”
And here’s the real miracle: we continue to receive that spiritual bread. We too receive the manna that God provided the Israelites and that Jesus provided to the crowd. As individuals, we receive that manna Sunday by Sunday, every time we come to the holy table and receive Jesus’ Body and Blood. And what a miraculous gift this is! For Christ’s Body and Blood become part of our bodies uniting us more closely with Jesus and continuing the process of transformation into his likeness. As Martin Luther reminded us, “When we eat Christ’s flesh physically and spiritually the food is so powerful that it transforms us into itself.” “When we eat him,” spiritual writer Lisa Dahill explains, “his body transforms us, via this process of divine metabolism, into his own life in, with, and under ours. Deep in the flesh, we taste and receive and experience the indwelling divine life of Jesus Christ himself….”1 As a parish too we receive God’s manna: as we come together and share the many gifts that God has given each of us. Just as God continues to care for us and feed us spiritually, God continues to endow us with gift upon gift. Perhaps, as we share our Common Ministry exercise, we will be able to see more clearly all the manna that God has lavished upon us as a parish!
Are there strings attached to all these gifts from God? You bet there are! At the very least, God expected the Israelites to understand the source of the quail and the manna: “You shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Later on, as the Israelites circled the Sinai desert and received the law, God stated God’s expectations clearly: they were to keep God’s covenant with them by following God’s law. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ gift of himself is not limited to the Jews. Indeed, Jesus reminds his hearers, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” But, whoever receives the bread from heaven still has a charge: to “work” for the food that endures for eternal life” and, more important, to “believe in him whom [God] has sent.”
If we are truly Jesus’ disciples, then the same obligations fall on us: to know that God is the source of all our gifts, physical and spiritual, personal and corporate, and to continue to deepen our relationship with Jesus and our reliance on him in all aspects of our lives. But there is more. In allowing ourselves to be baptized, we have become part of the Body of Christ, the continuing presence of Christ on earth. If we have read Scripture carefully, then we know that, as Christ’s Body, we also must share God’s gifts with others. The manna that God has given us, the skills and competencies we own, the resources that we possess, even the spiritual gifts that we can point to, have all been given to us for a purpose. Our spiritual needs are met, we are given gifts, the writer of the letter to the Ephesians reminds us, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God….”
What does this mean in real life? To begin with, using God’s gifts for the sake of others means helping to meet people’s physical hunger. You’ve already heard about the need of the Outreach Center for non-perishable food, and I hope you have contributed and will contribute to meeting that need. You know about Loaves and Fishes: we always need volunteers and contributions to that meal. But I think we can go a step further. Right now, one person from this parish has largely taken responsibility for running Loaves and Fishes. I’d like to see it be a team effort on the part of this parish, one in which many of us together offer our hospitality. And what about meeting the need for sustainable food sources in another part of the world? Could we have a mission team to mobilize our gifts and plan for all these efforts?
What’s more important, Jesus charged us with helping to meet the spiritual hunger of the world around us. I believe this means intentionally committing ourselves to helping St. Peter’s become a more vital, more active parish. One important way of addressing spiritual hunger is supporting adult formation, i.e., continuing to grow in our own understanding of the faith. Another way is having vital, attractive worship. Another way is to pray for two additional families to join us this year. And yet another way is to take seriously our responsibility for the growing children that God has already given us.
How to begin doing all this? I’d like to suggest some other teams that can help revitalize St. Peter’s. We can build on our Common Ministry effort, which will continue this year. I’d like to see us add two more people to the Common Ministry team. In addition, I also suggest that we create teams committed to working on youth ministry, worship, and financial solvency. With a team for mission, that’s four teams in all. Among other things, this coming week during my retreat I will be praying about who among you might be able and willing to serve on such teams. And I also ask your prayers this week, that God will enlighten all of us as to how we might better share the richness of God’s gifts with others.
God hears our complaints and our cries for food. If we let him, Jesus continues to be manna for us, continues to make God’s love manifest to us. As his Body, can we follow in his footsteps and nourish the world around us? Please join me in this prayer, and please continue to pray it all this week, “O God, eternal goodness, immeasurable love, you place your gifts before us; we eat and are satisfied. Fill us and this world in all its need with the life that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.”2
1. Lisa E. Dahill, Truly Present (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2005), 86.
2. Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2011), 245.
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