12 Pentecost, 2024-B: The gift and power of Communion

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

En el nombre de Diós: creador, redentor, y santificador... In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.  

 Going to church every Sunday was something my Roman Catholic family did – no questions, no options. We sat in the front row on the left. Always. The one in front of the statue of Mary.

My father, who had a bellowing baritone voice, couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but that never stopped him from singing with gusto, searching for the notes as he sang. I was equally embarrassed and awed by that.

My father was a high-strung, volatile, pre-Vatican II Irishman. He grew up in an Irish gang that ran roughshod over his neighborhood in Washington Heights in NYC.

He was a short man with a powerful presence, who owned every room he walked into, including at church. My father rarely showed emotion – unless it was anger. My sisters and I learned quickly that if Dad’s upper lip disappeared, we’d better get out fast (if we could), because his anger was about to blow.

I’ll never forget this one Sunday when I was 5 years old, I witnessed something incredible. During the consecration of the elements, I saw my dad look up at the altar. An unfamiliar look came over his face and I saw that his face practically glowed with what I can only call a mix of peace and joy. He looked like a different person.

I followed his gaze to see what he was looking at. The priest was elevating the bread, then the wine as he prayed the Eucharistic Prayer. I kept looking back and forth from the altar to my Dad’s face, and I knew deep within me that this thing that was happening up there must be really important because it was having this noticeable effect on my father. I watched this happen regularly – not every Sunday, but many of them.

Communion remains the only time I ever saw my father truly humble himself. It’s the only time I ever saw him willingly surrender the strength of his personality to anything. Not even at his AA anniversaries (which I attended as his AA baby). Not even at the deaths or births of family members. Only at Communion.

I invite you to think about and remember the first time you realized that something powerful was happening at Holy Communion and consider sharing those stories – at coffee hour, or in a Formation event. These stories are inspiring and can be transforming.

Admittedly, some people are put off by the language of the Communion prayers: eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood, so it’s important for us to remember that this is the language of ritual. Jesus was a rabbi, who presided over many ritual meals. Orthodox theologian Joseph Martos says ritual meals, “affirm and intensify the bond of unity among the participants.” (Doors to the Sacred, Joseph Martos, 213) That’s what Jesus was doing then and what we do now in remembrance of him,

The letter to the Ephesians affirms this saying, “we are members of one another.” We can be angry, but we must not let that anger cause us to break our communion with one another or with God. When we speak, we are to say only that which will give grace to those who hear us. When we tear down another member or speak ill of them, or when we cling to bitterness and anger, we do damage to that bond of unity God is forming among us.

Martos says that in ritual meals, like the Jewish Passover and our Holy Eucharist, the events we remember “become real and present to the people who share it.” (Martos, 213) As Episcopalians, communion isn’t just a memorial for us as it is for many Protestants. It’s a present reality. Christ is truly present, and we don’t just remember that, we live it, again and again.

When we hear the words, “do this for the remembrance of me” I hope we hear the voice of our Savior inviting us to come back into unity with him. Re-member… Be at one again…

It’s a full-body, full sensory experience for us. We walk our bodies up to the communion rail and stand by someone we may or may not know, someone we may or may not like. We reach out our hands and take the bread and wine of Holy Communion into our mouths.

We taste the bread of communion as it melts on our tongues and that too becomes a signal to our bodies that we are choosing this holy thing to happen within us. We chew the bread and swallow it and its substance literally becomes part of us, part of the cells of our bodies.

The smell of the wine, whether on the bread or in the cup, greets us as the sharp flavor of it stimulates our glands. signaling our saliva. In a very real way, water and wine are mixing within us, echoing the water and wine that flowed from Jesus’ wound on the cross for our sakes, making manifest the union of our bodies to Christ.

When we eat the bread of life and drink the cup of salvation, we are inviting God to enter us, to become one with us, and make us one with God and each other. It’s such a powerful moment, a moment of pure joy as we remember, even for just this moment, that we are beloved and forgiven. It is a moment of deep peace as we remember that by this spiritual food we are renewed, strengthened, and made whole again. When we choose to take Holy Communion, we are intentionally receiving its power to unite us to God and to one another in love.

Our daily lives can drain us. The world can drain us. Our Christian life should drain us. We should be giving out love and prayer and offering words of hope to someone every day. There are so many who need it and we can give it away continually because we believe, we know there is always more ready to fill us up again.

This journey is too much for us unless we are continually nourished and renewed by our spiritual food: the bread and wine of Holy Communion. This journey is too much for us to travel alone, so we must continually affirm our bond of unity to God and one another. This journey is too much for us unless we stop the world, come into the presence of God, and remember that we are beloved, forgiven, and sanctified, that is, we are made holy, unified to Christ in whom we are all made whole.

Remembering that gives us strength to go out to the world, again and again, as living locations of the love of Christ in the world. That is the gift and the power of Holy Communion. Thanks be to God. Amen.

11 Pentecost, 2024-B: Strengthen our belief

Lectionary: Exodus 16:2-4,9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35 

En el nombre de Dios, creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen. In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen. 

My daughter and I moved to south GA from NJ when she was 3 years old. Having left a traumatic situation, my daughter was insecure about her safety – and rightly so. Our lives were threatened in very real ways for 9 years after I left my abusive first husband, her father.

Since I was working full-time, my daughter went to a wonderful 7th Day Adventist day care, where Miss Martha became her person. If I wasn’t around, my daughter felt safe with Miss Martha, which was vital to her healing.

In our culture today, for lots of reasons, many people are in a near-constant state of fight, flight, fawn, or freeze – typical trauma responses to threat. This is especially true for people of color and undocumented people here in the US, and people suffering war or famine around the world.

People need to feel safe and loved. When we do, we can relax. Unless we are able to relax, a continual state of excitement will wear out our hearts, elevate our blood pressure and sugars, and ruin our digestion. We may experience constant anxiety and even lapse into depression. This is trauma response 101.

As people of God, prayer and presence enable us to relax. Prayer and being regularly in the presence of God enable us to shift from our normal state of awareness of the things of earth to a grace-filled consciousness of the heavenly realm.

In our readings from last week and this week, we learn how to make this shift. Jesus says it simply: believe.

In today’s story from Exodus, Moses and his brother Aaron have led the people into the wilderness. They’re hungry and afraid, so they complain, “Why did you lead us out here… to die of hunger?” This isn’t a short-sighted complaint. It’s a real one.

We often picture the exodus of the Israelites in the wilderness as we see it depicted in art - which is interpretive, not historical. There were actually about 650,000 people following Moses and Aaron. That’s more than twice the current population of St. Louis, which is 277,000.

Imagine two men trying to organize the daily feeding of 650,000 people in the desert. It’s an impossibility. This is similar to the impossibility Philip mentioned to Jesus when Jesus told them to feed the 5,000 men, which meant about 20,000 people, in last week’s gospel story. “Six months wages wouldn’t be enough to buy the food we need,” Philip said.

In both stories, we hear they were being tested. Would the disciples be able to shift from their earthly awareness to a heavenly consciousness? Did they believe?

The answer is kind of... Sound familiar? So, God showed them – again – just as God did in Exodus and in story after story in our Testaments, Old and New, that God would take care of them because they were beloved of God.

These stories teach us that our security is found only in God. We may think we can take care of ourselves and do things that will ensure our safety, but all of our efforts guarantee us nothing and what we end up with is no more life-sustaining than fouled manna full of worms.

Last week we heard that after feeding the people, Jesus walked on the water to the disciples who had left on their boat headed for Capernaum. Jesus wasn’t on the boat with them because he had gone off to a mountain by himself.

When the disciples saw Jesus walking toward them on the water, they were terrified. Jesus assured them of their safety, and “immediately,” their boat reached land, that is, their anxiety was calmed.

Today’s gospel picks up this story the next day. The people whom Jesus had fed were looking for him again. They followed the disciples across the sea to Capernaum and there they found Jesus too.

When did you come here, they asked. They knew he didn’t get on the boat with the disciples, so how did he get here? It’s a reasonable question, from an earthly perspective.

Jesus answers, however, from a heavenly perspective. You came looking for me because you want more of that food you had yesterday which satisfied your belly but somehow left you wanting more. Seek the food that satisfies your soul, food that endures for eternity. That food will be given to you by the Son of Man, on whom rests the seal, which means the security, of God.

Their next question seems strange: “What must we do to perform the works of God?” The Greek says it like this: What do we do to bring to pass the works of God?” In other words, how would this covenant work? What’s our part in it?

Jesus’ answer shifts them from earthly awareness to heavenly consciousness. The work of God is this: that you believe in the one whom God has sent.

They’ll consider it, but they need a sign. Moses gave our ancestors manna in the wilderness, they said. What will you do?

Jesus answers them, Moses didn’t give our ancestors manna, God did.” The true bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

We want that bread, they say. I am that bread, Jesus says.

As Sujanna+ reminded us last week, ‘I am’ is the name God calls themself when Moses asks God, what should I tell the people when they ask who sent me, and God says, Tell them I Am sent you.

In today’s gospel, Jesus claims this name and the life-giving power of God saying, “I am the bread of life.” Jesus is the food that gives life to body and soul and endures for eternity and whoever believes in him will never hunger or thirst again.

Here is the ultimate shift from earthly awareness to heavenly consciousness. Jesus, the Messiah of God, didn’t come as a political Messiah to liberate the Jewish people from Roman occupation. Jesus came to liberate the whole world, all people, in every time and place, from the power of sin and death and to give us eternal life; life in the eternal presence of God.

We, who believe, have this life in us because this life is Jesus who dwells in us. What must we do for the works of God to come to pass in our time? We must believe. Do we believe?

When I ask, do we believe, I’m not asking do we assent to, or even acknowledge this truth. That would be nothing more than an earthly awareness. When I ask do we believe, I am asking, do we know and feel in every cell of our being, beyond our comprehension, that God is in us, working through us because we are beloved of God?

The letter to the Ephesians reminds us that we are called to live as Jesus did, humbly, with gentleness and patience, “bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Living like Jesus is servanthood. The quintessential image of this is Jesus with a towel wrapped around his waist, washing the feet of his disciples saying, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (Jn 13:14-15) This is how it would look if we lived as one body, one spirit in Christ.

We have been uniquely gifted by God to accomplish this in our lifetimes. God gathers us together into the part of the body of Christ we call “our church” to equip us to do the work of ministry. It is in community that our individual gifts come together into a powerful whole that none of us has on our own. This is the synergistic reality of being the church.

We walk together, as a church community, into Christian maturity, a maturity where we can love our enemies, not vilify or kill them; a maturity where we don’t shoot children because their blackness scares us; a maturity that has compassion for, not judgment against, those who are hungry or afraid or strangers among us.

The dream of God lives in us because God lives in us, the church, and ourselves as individual members of it. Trusting that God will provide all we need to do the work They call us to do, we learn and practice together, as a church community, how to represent Christ in the world, gently, humbly, with our metaphorical towels wrapped around our waists.

We practice first in here with one another, then we take it out there, into the world, until the mission of the Church, which is that the whole world is restored to unity with God and each other in Christ, is accomplished. (BCP, 855)

We cannot rely on our own strengths or smarts to do this. We may, at times, feel insecure or afraid, attacked or abandoned. That is why it’s so important to nourish ourselves continually with holy food of Communion, the bread of life and cup of salvation, to strengthen us, body and soul, so that God can work with us, through us, and accomplish all God has promised.

Let us pray: O God, our source and our life, in you alone is our safety and security. Strengthen our belief by your continual presence, that we may faithfully serve others guided by your goodness and mercy, all the days of our lives. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.