My Blog

Tag: Eucharist

  • A Topic for a Month of Sundays

    In Year B of our Eucharistic Lectionary, the semi continuous reading of the Gospel of Mark is interrupted by a sequence of five excerpts from the sixth chapter of John on the Bread of Life. This happens once every three years and when it does, people in the pews ask why we spend so many Sundays hearing about Jesus Christ as the Bread of Life.  It’s a great question and I hope my attempt at an answer will be almost as great, or at least helpful.

    Each one of the three synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – has its own year in the three-year Revised Common Lectionary.  John is sprinkled around during Lent, Christmas, and a couple of other times.  Because of this, there is no really suitable niche for the important teaching on the Bread of Life.  Since our lectionary is a Eucharistic lectionary, it would be inconceivable for those who developed the lectionary to omit this important discourse in the three-year cycle.  They decided to interrupt the semi continuous reading of the Gospel of Mark at the point when Mark is about to recount the story of the feeding of the multitude in order to give us John’s more elaborate account.

    We are a Eucharist-centered Church and we need the instruction provided by the Bread of Life Discourse of John’s Gospel in our Eucharistic lectionary.  It is so important and so powerful that we have devoted five Sundays in a row to explore the depth of its message.

    Last Sunday, we read the account of Jesus’ feeding of the multitude at the beginning of the sixth chapter.  As we continue to read from this chapter for the next four Sundays, we will examine John’s indirect account of the Eucharist. Bear in mind that in John’s report of the Last Supper there is no mention of the bread and wine.

    The crowds that both witnessed and participated in the miracle of the loaves and fishes didn’t really understand that Jesus came to give more than the bread that satisfies physical hunger.  In this discourse, he refers to himself again and again as “The Bread of Life.” 

    Jesus is inviting everyone to eat this living bread.  The bread our Hebrew ancestors in the faith ate in the wilderness sustained them in their journey.  The Living Bread, Jesus Christ, is food that sustains the cosmos – not just our tribe, or race, or nation, but the cosmos!

    That means that if we feast at the table with The Bread of Life, we are not the only invitees.  There are others, many of whom are not like us, some of whom we don’t like, and plenty with whom we will disagree.

    Several years ago when I was a Canon at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, Texas, I was giving a tour to a confirmation class from one of the parishes in the Diocese of Texas.  We were exploring the Chancel and the Sanctuary when some of the youth spotted the needlepoint cushions on the Altar rail. I asked if they could figure out the meaning of the symbols on those cushions.  One boy said, “That cross and crown in the middle is probably Jesus and the other twelve symbols represent his disciples gathered around the table with him.”  That seemed like a pretty satisfactory answer, until a girl pointed out that one of the symbols looked for all the world like the symbol for Judas Iscariot.  “He doesn’t belong here?” she said.  “He betrayed Jesus.”

    I pointed out to the class that a number of ladies from the Cathedral had painstakingly and lovingly applied every single stitch by hand on those cushions and that I would be very cautious about telling them that one of the symbols didn’t belong there.  “If that’s Judas and they went to so much trouble to include him, I wonder what that might mean for us?”

    After some conversation, one young man said, “Maybe it means that God’s love big enough to include Judas along with the rest of us.”

    My response was to suggest that there will be times when we come to the Altar to dine with Jesus, the Bread of Life, and notice someone we can’t abide kneeling beside us or across from us.  “When that happens,” I said, “remember this moment and remember that the same divine Love that welcomes you to this feast welcomes others who need it just as much.”  After all, as someone has said, the bread that Jesus gives for the life of the universe (John 6:51) is multigrain.

    John 6:51 says that those who eat of this bread will “live forever.”  That is the consistent translation in almost all the versions of the Bible.  However, some scholars point out that the literal translation of the Greek text says we will “live into the age.”  The “age” – eternal life, abundant life, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven – is a state of being where we live with God who is both in and beyond time and space.  When we feast upon the Bread of Life, we are living into this divine cosmic reality.  It nourishes us for the ways we touch and change that reality.

    So, in this banquet, we all become one body not because we all agree or because we all are alike.  We become one body because we share in one bread – the Living Bread, Jesus, who is present for us in a wonderful and mysterious way in this banquet that is happening in the here and now and at the same moment in the age into which we are living, with faith, hope, and love.  This Bread of Life is our true sustenance.  As we are fed, so we are sent to feed others.

    It really is going to be good to spend a month of Sundays on this topic!

    Ron Short Sig Blue

  • One Thing in the Universe That is Not Up to Us

     

    Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.  – Luke 24:36b-42

    An advertisement for a guest speaker at a Houston, Texas church announced that the speaker’s topic was “Activating the Presence of Christ.”  That put me off and I’ll tell you why.  The presence of Christ is not something that is “activated” by individuals or even groups of individuals.  You don’t “make” Christ present in your home or workplace and I don’t “make” Christ present in the bread and wine at the Altar.

    God’s presence isn’t dependent upon our subjective awareness.  We can be grateful for that!  In a world where we can control and manipulate so many things, it is really a comfort to know that God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all life, is constantly fulfilling the covenant promise to be with us no matter what.  The divine presesnce is not dependent upon our consciousness.  It may be the one thing in the universe that is never “up to us.”

    Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung discovered a statement to this effect among the Latin writings of Desiderius Erasmus.  Erasmus, the Renaissance scholar and humanist, said the statement had been an ancient Spartan proverb. Jung popularized it, having it inscribed over the doorway of his Zurich home to remind those who entered that "awe of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalms 111:10).  The phrase is also inscribed upon Dr. Jung’s tomb. Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. (Bidden or not bidden, God is Present.)

    We are all aware of the idea that God in Christ never forces his way into our lives.  That theme, and the related theme of the free will of the individual, are artistically expressed in Holman Hunt's famous painting, "The Light of the World."  The latch on the door is on the inside, not on the outside where Christ, the bearer and embodiment of light, stands knocking.  But note that Christ is present.  His presence may be acknowledged, welcomed, resisted, denied, or ignored, but not “activated.”

    Luke 24:36b-42 is one of several readings used in the Easter season that provide an account of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples.  Jesus stood among them and spoke to them.  They were startled and thought they were seeing a ghost.  There was no knocking at a door.  There was no “activating” his presence.  He was there by his own will.  Moreover, this gospel writer and others go out of their way to make it clear that this was no ghost.  He was corporeally present.  He invited them to touch him, he ate with them, and they heard his voice. 

    No doubt by the time the epistles and gospels were written, several decades following the resurrection, it was important to the bearers of the apostolic witness to counter certain Christological positions that were gaining in popularity.  The Gnostics and others believed in a docetic Christ.  In their thought, Christ only appeared to have lived and died, since a god would never defile himself by taking on human flesh and blood.  Others taught that the resurrection appearances were “spiritual” experiences and tried to reinforce the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul, wherein we are just passing through.

    Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead, not into a spirit world.  Luke’s resurrection appearance is a way of saying “no” to a spirituality that says the body and all things physical are inferior and evil.  The resurrection completes the incarnation and declares in the clearest of terms that God values and loves all that God has created.

    The Risen Christ continues to be present with us in physical ways, principally in the Eucharist. The season of Easter was always used in the early church as the time to instruct newly baptized people in the sacraments, which they were now able to receive. This practice is still carried on frequently in the contemporary church. It is helpful, because all of us need to be reminded of the meaning of our sacramental relationship with God in the Eucharistic Meal.  We come here not to “activate” the presence of Christ, but to experience him in the table fellowship.  Then, we are sent into the world to be an extension of the experience of Christ’s living risen presence to others in touchable, tangible, real ways that make a difference.

    St. Augustine, a fourth century bishop in North Africa, put it this way in an Easter sermon: "You are the body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken; you are to be blessed, broken, and distributed; that you may be the means of grace and the vehicles of the eternal charity."

    It is true today.  As we know Christ we understand that we are to make Christ known when we walk out of the church into the mission field at our doorstep.  We have been fed so that we can feed others who are hungry, as are we, for that which satisfies the deepest hungers of our lives.

  • Sermon at Church of the Good Shepherd ~ July 31, 2011

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    Listen to the Sermon for July 31, 2011 ~ Proper 13A

     

    Read the Sermon for July 31, 2011 ~ Proper 13A

     

  • Gathering around the family table is good for us!

    Many of us have just spent some time gathered around the table with our
    families and close friends for a Thanksgiving feast.  This may be a
    teachable moment, when we can connect the dots that form a picture of
    family life and family identity.

    Families seem busier now than
    when I was a child.  It's easy to understand, particularly with more
    two-career households, more activities for children and youth, and
    significant shifts in cultural values.  When something has to give,
    family meals may fall by the wayside. And yet, family meals are not
    only a time for strengthening family ties and keeping track of your
    children's lives, they can actually lead to better physical and mental
    health for your children and for the entire family.

    Studies in
    recent years have concluded that family meals are a central feature in
    better nutrition, mental health, academic achievement, vocabulary,
    parenting, and family life in general.  Many of us can recall how we
    learned the story of our family and came to an understanding of our
    place in that family while sitting at the table with our families.

    Have
    you noticed that as the trend away from family dining has increased,
    worship patterns on Sundays have also changed?  I suspect the same
    factors that make it more difficult to gather the family around the
    dinner table also make it more difficult for Christians to gather
    around the Lord's Table.  I invite you to consider that the health and
    well-being of the Church is impacted by regular worship in ways that
    are similar to ways our families are impacted by regular family meals. 
    When God calls us together as to recall the family story and share in
    the family meal, we are nourished and formed as Christians.  We remember who and
    whose we are.

    Maybe the adage, "The Family That Prays Together
    Stays Together," is not so trite after all. I do understand that many
    people do not have good memories of family and home.  Many have not
    found the church family all that wonderful either.  However, there is
    universal hunger for a sense of belonging and identity that we might
    call "family feeling."  Those who have found surrogate families will
    tell you how much it means.  Those who have returned to their church
    families or found new ones will tell you how it has impacted their
    spiritual journey.

    Now is a good time to pause and reflect on
    the busyness of our lives and consider what valuable times with our
    families and our church family have been crowded out.  If we are too
    busy to gather around the table – at home or at church – maybe we are
    just too busy for our own good and the good of those whose lives are
    closely linked with ours.  At home and at church, we need that time
    together!

    Ron