Sermon: Food for Thought

Sermon of the Week:
Food for Thought–Bread of Life

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 1, 2021.

Part three of a five-week sermon series about Food and the Christian Faith, called Food for Thought.

Special Music: In the Garden
Hymn: Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken

Keywords: Sacrament, Communion, Bread of Life, Jeremiah Wright, Faust and the Devil. #pcusa

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
and John 6:24-35

So last week we looked at the story of
Jesus feeding the Multitude
And how ritual,
repeated practice,
helps shape our faith and our perspective,
how it can open us up to seeing something important,
how it can nurture within us a way of life
that shares the love of God.

In that story, Jesus commends hospitality.
When he fed the 5000, or more,
people who had gathered to hear him,
hospitality, and particularly a genuine concern
for the material well-being of others,
was the point.

You give them something to eat, Jesus said,
And they did.
They gave what they had,
A few barley loaves and some fish
And everyone ate,
And there was more than enough.

I was reading this week about today’s scripture reading
The one from the Gospel According to John that I just read
Which is immediately after his version of the feeding of the 5000,
And I found Christopher Morse ask an interesting question.[i]

Morse wants to know if the people’s hunger was filled, or fulfilled.

You might think that’s a distinction without a difference,
But Morse doesn’t think so.
Hunger, in the gospels, often comes in various forms,
Not just the physical needs of the stomach
But also the spiritual and emotional needs of the whole person,
those deeper longings and more existential needs that we all have:
To belong, to be loved, to have meaning and purpose in our lives.

The feeding of the multitude operates at both levels, right,
Even if, by outward appearances,
it appears to be about just people’s basic hunger, and hospitality
Something that bread and fish can satisfy.

But we remember why all of those people are there…
Because they saw something in this Jesus
And experienced something, in Jesus…
Something that had them chasing him
all over the Galilean countryside
Trying to grab a little grassy spot to cozy up on and sit
While Jesus was preaching.

In each version of that story,
in all four of the gospels,
The text says that the people’s hunger is SATISFIED,
A word that, Morse suggests,
Means something more than just having that hunger filled.

The ordinary sense of ‘being full’ takes on a depth of significance here.

It is certainly about actually helping hungry people no longer be hungry
But it is also more than that.

It is about doing something loving for someone else,
Particularly someone, in need, right in front of you.

It is about connection, the relationship that is formed
when people break bread together, share a meal together.

It is about realizing that we’re all in this collectively,
Rather than a ‘have everyone go fend for themselves’ mentality.

This is what St. Augustine meant, Morse says,
When he calls this a magno sacramento,
A grand symbolism.

///
That Latin phrase Magno Sacramento
Rings more loudly on a day like today,
As we prepare to share the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
a bit later in our service.

You can already tell from that phrase
Where we get our English word Sacrament.
It traces back through Latin to mean
A solemn symbolic thing,
And ultimately has roots
In words that mean “to hallow,” and “to be sacred.”
It also was the word that Latin used to translate
the Greek word mysterium,
The word for mystery.

We Presbyterians talk about the sacraments
as a Sign and Seal of the grace of God—
Something that God does,
Has already done, and continues to do—
It is a God thing, something through which
we experience God’s welcome and God’s nurture.
Baptism is about belonging,
Celebrating our welcome in God’s big family, the church.
Communion is about how Jesus is the Bread of Life
How, through Jesus, God nourishes our spirit
In a deep and profound way,
and gives us a purpose and a mission.

So sacraments work like ritual, but
they are more than your ordinary ritual, really,
Or maybe it is better to call them
“super-special rituals,”
Things we do as a church regularly,
something that forms us,
Thanks to the Grace of God,
To help sustain our faith,
rooted in God’s amazing love.

We Presbyterians have these two sacraments—.
Other branches of the Christian family may have more,
and what works for them works for them. Terrific.
For us, we celebrate these two, baptism and communion,
Because they were given to us by Jesus, are rooted in holy scripture
And have been sustained through the history of the whole church.

Pat read for us the earliest biblical words we have about communion,
These three verses from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth.
It predates the gospels by maybe twenty or thirty years.

Those words are often called the Words of Institution,
And we recite a version of them every time we share the Lord’s Supper.
They help us remember Jesus’ life and ministry,
His selfless love,
His salvific ministry.

We didn’t ask Pat to read the context of that reading,
In part because that context is a bit of a downer
And I didn’t want to get off track to have to go into all of it.
The short version is that
this whole letter, First Corinthians,
you might remember,
Is Paul’s appeal for concord, for kindness,
To a community that is in disarray.

Paul founded the church there,
Got it going swimmingly,
And then left to go set up another church somewhere else.
And after he left, other people came by
People who challenged Paul’s work
And who started dividing the people into factions.
And once divided, the people started fighting
and the whole thing threatened to fall apart.

This whole letter is about not letting those divisions win.
That’s why we have that whole section, again, you might remember,
About how, among the faithful,
there are many gifts, but the same spirit,
How there many different things we can do,
but we all do it for the same Lord
The hand and the nose and the arm all need each other
And all are needed to make up the body of Christ.
That’s Paul, here in First Corinthians.
The very next chapter, actually, after what Pat read.

But the context in which Paul quotes
the earliest version of the words of institution
Shows Paul critiquing the Corinthians.

They’re not doing it right.
Instead, apparently, some people were going to the meal,
which was more of an actual meal back then, you know,
and they were eating all the food before others even got there.
They didn’t wait.
They didn’t care about the needs of the other people.

Paul told them that this Lord’s Supper was more than a church pot luck.
This was a sacrament.
It wasn’t merely about our bodily hunger, about being filled
But about our spiritual needs, too, about being fulfilled.
Eat at home before-hand if you’re so hungry
That you can’t come to this sacrament and share with others.

And with that, Paul senses something really important about this meal.
It is about what John calls The Bread of Heaven.
Where God feeds us, and gives us something more:
Belonging
Welcome
Purpose
Hope
And Love.

This is why we insist on communion being a public thing.
There are no private sacraments.
It is something for all of us to share,
During worship
Where everyone is invited
All who turn to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

///
The Bread of Heaven meets a deep need within us
Feeds us in a way that is both real, and spiritual.

My favorite story about the power of the Bread of Heaven
Comes from the Rev Jeremiah Wright
Who told of the time[ii] of a time he traveled to Cuba
to take part in a gathering of theologians from around the globe
meeting to honor the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wright had been invited to deliver the sermon
at the worship service that concluded their week-long meeting.

The interesting part of this whole experience was the relationship
he formed with the translator assigned to assist him for the week.

Wright learned that this young woman had just made application
to the communist party in Cuba.
She did not grow up in the church—she was born after the blockade—
–She had never heard the story of Jesus.

She knew about Martin Luther King, from her studies.
She knew about Hegel, and Stalin, and Marx.
She knew about Trotsky—but she did NOT know about Jesus…
[But she was open, and interested]
…So every time during that week they went anywhere,
he would sit beside her and tell her the story of Jesus.

[As the week went on], the translator
began to pester him for his sermon manuscript—
so she could prepare, you know.
And Wright said, “Okay…”
and then he continued to tell her about Jesus.

The next day, she said, “I still need your manuscript”
and he just told her about Jesus.

Finally, the day before the service,
the young translator insisted:
“I just MUST have your manuscript.”

Finally, that night, he gave her the manuscript.

He told her there were no complex theological words—
so she could relax.
Though, he did add: “Now, during the sermon,
I might say something that is NOT on the paper.”

“Why?” she asked.
“Well,” Wright said, “what I am trying to do
is serve the bread of heaven.
The world is hungry for the living bread.
And in trying to serve the bread of heaven,
God will sometimes give me something right out of the oven!”

And she looked at him funny
….and he told her the story of Jesus.

///
During the service, Wright was down to his final point.

He was trying to explain that,
to African Americans, on April 4, 1968,
when King fell dead on the balcony
of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis—
–it looked like the struggle for civil rights was OVER in this country.

The drum major for justice,
the one who taught non-violence,
the one who preached peace…
was DEAD…
it all seemed OVER.

But all he was getting was BLANK STARES
from his mostly non-North American audience.

They did not understand the context in which he was speaking.

BLANK STARES was all he was getting…
…when all of a sudden…
some BREAD came out of the oven!

He turned to the translator and said “FAUST.”
[She turned back, and] gave him this puzzled look.

She looked down at her paper,
That word FAUST wasn’t there,
but he [quietly] told her
that this might be one of those times—
–so she turned away from her paper
and [turned] toward him…to translate.

[Wright was talking about the German author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [Guta’s],
And his story Faust and the Devil,
Where Faust sells his soul to the devil]
That theme is captured in a famous painting
That hangs in the National Gallery in London.

It is called “Checkmate”
And It shows Faust on one side of a chess board,
and the Devil on the other side.
Faust only has a pawn, a bishop, a king and a queen left.
The Devil, on the other hand, has almost ALL his pieces.

The Devil is grinning and leering,
because there is no way out for Faust.
Faust is sweating and studying the board—
–wishing he had NOT made that deal!

Now, every day, as tourists go through the gallery,
the tour guide stops at each painting,
explaining who the artist was,
when it was painted,
how it was done…

On and on they go, moving from painting to painting.
NO ONE noticed when,
as one group moved to the next painting—
–ONE of the members of the group
stayed there and studied “Checkmate.”

He kept pacing back and forth in front of the painting.

The group moved two paintings down,
three paintings down,
four paintings down—
–and this one tourist just stayed in front of that painting,
staring at the chessboard…

They had moved into the next room
and then were TWO rooms down when suddenly
they heard his voice,
BOOMING down those marble corridors,
hollering, at the top of his lungs:
“It’s a LIE!”
“It’s a LIE!—The King has another move!”

To the average eye—it looked like checkmate.

No one knew that in this group of tourists, however,
was this international chess champion from Russia.
To the master’s eye—he could see a move
that the ordinary player could not see!

Now remember, the young translator
has been translating all this to the audience,
as Wright concluded:
“Well, the same thing happened on that night in April, 1968.
when King fell dead—it looked like “checkmate”
But just as it looked like it was ALL OVER—
–God yelled down from heaven—“It’s a LIE!”
“There is another move!”

And she translated that…
But Jeremiah Wright continued.
“But it gets better than that. On one Friday afternoon”—
(Now he had been telling her about Jesus all week…)

“On a hill outside of Jerusalem called Calvary,
when Jesus breathed his last—it looked like CHECKMATE.”

“All night Friday night—as he lay in the tomb—it looked like Checkmate”
(And she translated that…)

“All day Saturday—it looked like checkmate” (And she translated that…)
“All night Saturday night—it looked like checkmate.
But early on Sunday morning
booming down across the corridors of time
there came a cry from eternity, saying:
“It’s a LIE…It’s a LIE!
The King has another move!!!” (And she translated that…)

To people who think their life has no meaning,
people who think it’s all over—God has a word for you—
–The King of Kings and Lord of Lords ALWAYS has another move…

Well, at this point, people in that service were standing on their chairs
and shouting and crying out—
–except somewhere in the middle of all this—
–the preacher noticed…that no one was looking at him!

Everybody was waving handkerchiefs and pointing at the young translator.
Even after Wright stopped preaching—she kept right on talking!
She wasn’t translating his sermon anymore!

She had MET JESUS in the middle of that sermon
and was standing in that sanctuary—praising God for [hope]!

Through the foolishness of all our efforts—God stills saves people!
Still offers hope for the hopeless.
Still punctures the despair of this age with words of hope.

///
Wright calls experiences like this Bread from Heaven
The Bread of Life
Something new out of the oven.

I love that.

Jesus, on that hillside, talking with his followers about their hunger
Invited them into something deeper, something more profound
A way to follow God and never be “hungry” again.
Because following God on the way of Jesus
Gives us hope,
And belonging,
And purpose.

And we believe that, through the sacrament of communion,
We remember all this, we are gifted with THIS
And we are filled with good food.

This sacrament,
This thing that we do
Reminds us that God always has another move
And we share that, with each other,
Because that message itself is a gift from God
It is Bread from Heaven, Bread of Life,
Which can fulfill our restless spirit
With an assurance that we are loved
An invitation to share in the beloved community,
A family of faith where all are welcome,
And a calling to serve one another with the same love
That Jesus gives to us.

It was that message that inspired the crowds
to chase after Jesus in the first place.
It is a message of salvation for us, and for the world
And it is a reminder that God is always doing something new.

So may we, dear friends,
Remember that our concern is certainly to fulfill real hunger
But it is also to find, in God, a way of life
Where we know, deep in our bones,
That we are loved,
And may we sense that every time
We break that bread
And share that cup
And remember the one who invited us into this life,
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

May it be so.
Amen.

——

[i] See David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Eds., Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3 Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Louisville, Kentucky; Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), “Theological Perspective for John 6:24-35” p. 308-312

[ii] This story adapted from a sermon preached on July 22, 2012 entitled “Another Move” by The Rev. Mark Ramsey at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Ashville, North Carolina.

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