Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19, Year B

Finding God in the Ordinary

When I was growing up, my mother baked all the bread for our large family. Saturday morning was bread-making day, and I can remember the delicious odours that came from her kitchen. As children, we were not always very appreciative of mother's efforts. When Sunbeam came out with a big advertising campaign, we longed for that over processed white bread. I remember asking mother if we could please have some "real" bread for a change.

My mother talked about how her mother, my grandmother baked bread back in Wales. They lived in a terraced home with a small oven, not large enough for baking bread for the large family. At the end of their terrace was a communal oven, in which the local families could bake their bread. Grandmother would make huge loaves of bread, each with her particular marking – as I recall it was a knob on the top of the loaf – to set her loaves apart from those of other people, and then take them to the oven to be baked.

I have carried on the family tradition and become a bread baker. I do not bake all of my bread. I find that when I do so I eat too much of it. So now I bake bread for the most part to give away. I made some yesterday as I wrote this sermon. I have tried many kinds of bread from bagels to sourdough to rye. I even tried rice bread. However, I forgot the rising properties of rice. I had to keep separating the dough into different bowls. The bread was good, but there was far too much of it.

Bread is ordinary, everyday food. Most people think that unless you have a bread machine it is difficult to make, but in reality it is quite basic. It is made from simple ingredients – flour, salt, yeast, water, sweetener, (I use honey!). Truly it does take time and patience. It needs to rise. One gets a good workout kneading the dough until it is lovely and smooth. But it is not difficult to produce good results.

In its many forms, it is the most widely consumed food in the world, eaten by people of every race, religion and culture. It is the food of rich and poor alike. Bread has been around for thousands of years. Evidence from thirty thousand years ago in Europe found starch residue on rocks used for pounding plants. In all likelihood, starch extract from the roots of plants, such as cattails and ferns, was spread on a flat rock, placed over a fire and cooked into a primitive form of flatbread. Scripture refers to bread as the staff of life. God provided manna in the desert for the Hebrew people. Bread is a relational food. Breaking bread together is a universal symbol of peace. It is ordinary, everyday food.

Jesus broke bread for a crowd of hungry people. He took a few small loaves and some fish, blessed it, and fed the people who had followed him out into the wilderness. But they got hungry again. They kept coming back for more. Their expectation was that Jesus would keep giving them free bread. In reality he offered them far more. “I am the bread of life,” he told them. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” He was offering them not free food, but spiritual food. He explained to them that giving them bread and fish would not solve their problems. He asked them to make him and his way of living the “bread and butter” of their daily lives. Yet they could not accept it from him. They could not see beyond the Jesus they had grown up with. They saw the carpenter's son. They saw Joseph's kid. They did not see what he had to offer them. In fact, it was unthinkable. How could anyone as ordinary as Jesus, someone just like them, be the bread of life, the Saviour?

The crowd is expressing a reasonable human feeling on any number of levels. If you are hungry and you suddenly find a source of free food it is difficult to give it up. It is like winning the lottery. But how much more difficult it is to change one’s vision of someone we know, someone we have watched grow up. Yet when you think about it, it is in the ordinary, in people like you and like me, that God chooses to make a dwelling. God only knows why. And then God comes to us in so many disguises. Honestly, some of them can be terribly offensive. Old age, ugliness, poverty, leprosy, woundedness! It is a divine paradox, isn’t it? Our part in it is to look beyond it all to the source.

We too are offered that same spiritual bread. Jesus offers himself to us as bread from God, as grace for our lives, the bread of life. We are offered that choice. But there are many kinds of bread offered to us by the world that, while far from nourishing, are very tempting. They hold great promise. They promise wealth. They promise success. They promise an easy existence.

On the other hand, Jesus offers himself as the life of the world, the life of all of creation. He is our creator. He is our sustainer. God has chosen, through Christ, to be involved in our world. That is a choice that we too must make. For that choice is what makes atonement a possibility. That is what is offered to us in the Bread of Life passages of John's Gospel. Our responsibilities, our choices, are very real. We are offered a conscious choice to see the evidence of the risen Christ in the world around us. We need to see, not simply Jesus, Joe and Mary’s son, but to see Christ, to be, as Paul says, "imitators of God", to emulate Jesus, to follow him. We are called to demonstrate God's love to others through the way we speak and act, through the company we keep, through everything that we do.

Is it possible to be united with Christ through baptism, to confess our sins and receive absolution, to go through the motions of worship, and still fail to comprehend what it really means to believe in Jesus Christ? God has given us grace. But it is a two way street. I remember something that Corrie Ten Boom said in a talk that has stayed with me throughout the years. God has no grandchildren. We must choose to be children. We must choose to be beloved of God. We must hear the word. We must accept it. We must feed on the bread of life. We must appropriate it for ourselves and consciously accept God into our lives. Take God into the centre of our being. Become one with him through Christ. In that way, his life becomes our life. His love becomes our love. His purpose becomes our purpose. His goal becomes our goal. We are redeemed. We communicate his love and become broken bread to those around us.

Think what kind of a world we would live in if we accepted Jesus’ lifestyle and adopted it as our own. No child would ever die of hunger. No senior citizen would be lonely. AIDS would be wiped out, because we would not be hoarding needed drugs out of greed. We would be using good stewardship of the resources of the world. We would be attentive to one another, using the gifts that God has given to us. We would be serving at the table of the world.

Every time we say the Lord's Prayer, we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." Are we like the crowds that followed Jesus? Are we asking for a free meal? Are we asking merely to have our material needs met? Or are we asking to be fed, to be nurtured spiritually by the true bread, Jesus Christ? Perhaps we simply rattle it off, not even conscious of what we are praying.

I am going to make a challenge to you. This week take those words and let them speak to you. Every day this week pray the Lord’s Prayer. Really pray, thinking about what it would mean to a hungry world to be fed those words of life. Think about it. We would die but not remain dead, because we would have eaten the bread of life. We would be like Jesus was, is and will be forever.

That is the Christian message. It speaks about sin and salvation, about death and life, about dying to sin and coming alive to God, about creation and redemption. What God has done in Christ affects not only us, but also the whole of creation. It is a call to renewal, to work with God to discern God's presence. It is about doing God's will, so that we can be transformed and then go on to be transformers in society.

What happens in the Eucharist happens on behalf of the whole world. The bread set before us brings the starving into our presence. It brings the joyless, the sick the suffering. For it is a reminder that what we hold, we hold in trust for all. So let us break bread together. Let us eat. Let us be bread for a broken world. Amen.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19, Year A

The Calm After the Storm

Readings: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45c; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

Karl Barth writes about fear: “Fear is the shock caused by the supposed knowledge that I shall not be able either to be or to do what I should be and do in face of that which gloriously and fearfully confronts me.” We have all faced times of fear in our lives, events that made time seem to last forever, when we thought that our very lives were in the balance.

I think of the times that I have been most fearful. One is the event that led to my learning to swim. I was four years old and at a camp where my father was the chaplain. I did many of the activities of the campers, who were, of course, quite a bit older than I. Each day I would go swimming. I would paddle in the shallow water and play in the sand. I watched the children in their free time going down a slide into the water. I longed to try it out. So one day I asked the swimming instructor if I could go down the slide. “Of course!” she said to me, not thinking about how small I was, or the fact that I couldn’t swim. I flew down the slide and out into water that was quite deep. I felt myself sink below the surface and was filled with fear and panic. In my panic I thrashed around for what seemed like hours but must have been less than a minute. Then I became calm. I remember thinking, “This is what it is like to die.” And suddenly I was buoyed up by the water and bobbed to the surface. Realizing that I could float, that I could trust the water to hold me up, I began to dog paddle to shallower water.

It was a good learning, because trust, that sense of calm, is what it takes after all when we get into that state of fear. And fear can easily take over when life seems out of control as our world so often does these days. It seems we live in a world filled with fear. It is often through fueling that fear that people come to power. We are faced with so much violence; war, terrorist acts, strange viruses and other health issues, economic and environmental issues. Consider what is going on in the world today with the bombastic rhetoric between President Trump and Chairman Kin Jung-li. Guam must be a very fearful place to live. Fear takes over unless we remember just who is in charge. We trust, knowing that God is as good as God’s word.

It seems to me that it is fear that is at the centre of the stories in Scripture today. There is first of all the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. Joseph is the baby of the family. Being the youngest, he is a favourite with his father. To make matters worse, he makes a bad report to his father about one of his brothers. They fear the power and influence that he has over his father. They wait for an opportunity to get back at him. It comes. They are looking after the sheep in a remote place. Joseph comes out looking for them. They conspire to kill him. Reuben, one of the brothers persuades them not to kill him, but to put him into a pit. His intention is to come back and rescue him. Then they seize upon an opportunity. They sell their brother to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt where he faces slavery and imprisonment. This new saga in Joseph’s young life must have filled him with fear.

Then there is the gospel for today. Jesus performs miracles. He feeds the crowds. Their curiosity satisfied for the moment he sends them off to their homes. He also sends the disciples out in a boat. Meanwhile he heads away by himself to pray. The Sea of Galilee is known for its sudden fierce storms. This day is no exception. The disciples are far from the shore. The winds come up. The waves toss the small craft about until they are sure they will all drown. Towards morning they see Jesus walking on the sea. It is not a reassuring picture. They think that Jesus is a ghost. In fact, the storm becomes less threatening to them than the sight of the ghost. And Jesus speaks those reassuring words. “Take heart. Don’t be afraid!” They trust him. They trust the calm and peace that his words bring.

The ever-brash Peter gets out of the boat and walks across the water towards Jesus. What is he thinking? Does he think he can walk on water? Maybe he hopes that by stepping out on the sea it will be the act of courage he needs to find faith. Maybe Peter wonders if he will be convinced of Jesus’ promises if he thinks big. Perhaps he thinks that he will believe in himself if he is able to do what Jesus does. Whatever he is thinking, he gets distracted by the gusts of wind. He becomes frightened and begins to sink beneath the waves. Just as he thinks that all is lost he remembers. “Lord, save me!” he calls out.

We have all been there, haven’t we? We have all been out in those heavy waves, blown about by fierce winds. Life produces strong and daunting waves. We can all look back at times when we have felt swamped. We have felt totally inadequate. We have felt helpless. We have let our fears and worries take over. We have felt as if we are sinking. We want to believe, but our faith is fragile. Just when we think all is lost we remember. We cry out, “Lord, save me!”

Peter called out to Jesus; Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. They made it back into the boat safely. The storm ended. All was well.

When have you experienced inner calm and strength amid external turmoil? What was the source of your strength? What does it mean to trust God? How do you nourish your faith?

Some of you may be in the midst of a storm at this very moment. You may be buffeted about by the wind. You may fear the difficulties that you are facing in your life. You may be wondering how you can face another day, how you can ever trust again. You may be facing sickness, your own or that of a loved one. You may be unemployed, wondering where God is leading you. You may be facing a broken relationship.

Others could no doubt tell us about overcoming those same fears and inadequacies. You can tell us of the miracles that have unfolded for you in your lives. You can tell of the storms that you have walked through, knowing that God was ever present with you on your journey. You can tell us of sicknesses overcome, of answers to prayer, of help in time of need, of unexpected miracles.

Jesus asks Peter, “Why did you doubt?”

Faith, he is saying to Peter and to us, means living out of your heart. Fear destroys. Trust yourself. Trust that what you do and say makes a difference. Trust that Jesus is with you and trusts you. There are times when you will feel as if you are walking on water. There are other times when you feel yourself sinking beneath the waves. Both are times to put your trust in God. Daily life is not extraordinary acts of faith, but hoping for enough faith to give us courage to face life’s difficulties.

I can’t always say that I am glad to be one of Jesus’ disciples. There are times that I would like to be left alone. It is too overwhelming. There is too much going on in my life. Jesus is asking too much of me. My cross is too heavy. My faith is too weak. I have nothing more to give. All I have to support me is my weak faith. At such times it is all that I can do to pray, “God, help me! Give me the ability to reach out to you even though I have only my faltering faith to support me.” It is then that I hear that invitation that Jesus extended to Peter. “Come! Don’t be afraid. Reach out and take my hand.”

And I reach out. I acknowledge my helplessness. It opens some gate in me that accepts help. It opens the way for others to respond to my need. I experience God’s love and forgiveness and healing and challenge. I am able to see Christ in others and allow them to see Christ in me. Amen.

Proper 19, Year A

Facing Our Fears

Readings: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45c; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

Karl Barth writes about fear: “Fear is the shock caused by the supposed knowledge that I shall not be able either to be or to do what I should be and do in face of that which gloriously and fearfully confronts me.”

I think of the times that I have been most fearful. One is the event that lead to my learning to swim. I was four years old and at a camp where my father was the chaplain. I did many of the activities of the campers, who were, of course, quite a bit older than I. Each day I would go swimming. I would paddle in the shallow water and play in the sand. I watched the children in their free time going down a slide into the water. I longed to try it out. So one day I asked the swimming instructor if I could go down the slide. “Of course!” she said to me, not thinking about how small I was, or the fact that I couldn’t swim. I flew down the slide and out into water that was quite deep. I felt myself sink below the surface and was filled with fear and panic. In my panic I thrashed around for what seemed like hours but must have been less than a minute. Then I became calm. I remember thinking, “This is what it is like to die.” And suddenly I was buoyed up by the water and bobbed to the surface. Realizing that I could float, that I could trust the water to hold me up, I began to dog paddle to shallower water.

It was a good learning, because trust, that sense of calm, is what it takes after all when fear takes over. And fear can easily take over when life seems out of control as our world so often does these days. We are faced with so much violence; terrorist acts, strange viruses and other health issues, economic and environmental issues. The list could go on. Fear takes over unless we remember just who is in charge. We trust, knowing that God is as good as God’s word.

It seems to me that it is fear that is at the centre of the stories in Scripture today. There is first of all the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. Joseph is the baby of the family. Being the youngest, he is a favourite with his father. To make matters worse, he makes a bad report to his father about one of his brothers. They fear the power and influence that he has over his father. They wait for an opportunity to get back at him. It comes. They are looking after the sheep in a remote place. Joseph comes out looking for them. They conspire to kill him. Reuben, one of the brothers persuades them not to kill him, but to put him into a pit. His intention is to come back and rescue him. Then they seize upon an opportunity. They sell their brother to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt. This new saga in Joseph’s young life must have filled him with fear as well.

Then there is the gospel for today. Jesus performs miracles. He feeds the crowds. Their curiosity satisfied for the moment he sends them off to their homes. He also sends the disciples out in a boat. Meanwhile he heads away by himself to pray. The Sea of Galilee can become quite stormy. This day is no exception. The disciples are far from the shore. The winds come up. The waves toss the small craft about until they are sure they will all drown. Towards morning they see Jesus walking on the sea. It is not a reassuring picture. They think that Jesus is a ghost. In fact, the storm becomes less threatening to them than the sight of the ghost. And Jesus speaks those reassuring words. “Take heart. Don’t be afraid!” They trust him. They trust the calm and peace that his words bring.

The ever-brash Peter gets out of the boat and walks across the water towards Jesus, but he gets distracted by the gusts of wind. He becomes frightened and begins to sink beneath the waves. Just as he thinks that all is lost he remembers. “Lord, save me!” he calls out.

We have all been there, haven’t we? We have all been out in those heavy waves, blown about by fierce winds. Life produces strong and daunting waves. We all have times when we feel swamped. We feel totally inadequate. We feel helpless. We let our fears and worries take over. We feel as if we are sinking. We want to believe, but our faith is fragile. Just when we think all is lost we remember. We cry out, “Lord, save me!”

Peter called out to Jesus; Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. They made it back into the boat safely. The storm ended. All was well.

When have you experienced inner calm and strength amid external turmoil? What was the source of your strength? What does it mean to trust God? How do you nourish your faith?

Some of you may be in the midst of a storm at this very moment. You may be buffeted about by the wind. You may fear the difficulties that you are facing in your life. You may be wondering how you can face another day, how you can ever trust again. You may be facing sickness, your own or that of a loved one. You may be unemployed, wondering where God is leading you. You may be facing a broken relationship.

Others could no doubt tell us about overcoming those same fears and inadequacies. You can tell us of the miracles that have unfolded for you in your lives. You can tell of the storms that you have walked through, knowing that God was ever present with you on your journey. You can tell us of sicknesses overcome, of answers to prayer, of help in time of need, of unexpected miracles.

I can’t always say that I am glad to be one of Jesus’ disciples. There are times that I would like to be left alone. It is too overwhelming. There is too much going on in my life. Jesus is asking too much of me. My cross is too heavy. My faith is too weak. I have nothing more to give. All I have to support me is my weak faith. At such times it is all that I can do to pray, “Lord, help me! Give me the ability to reach out to you even though I have only my faltering faith to support me.” It is then that I hear that invitation that Jesus extended to Peter. “Come! Don’t be afraid. Reach out and take my hand.”

And I reach out. I acknowledge my helplessness. It opens some gate in me that accepts help. It opens the way for others to respond to my need. I experience God’s love and forgiveness and healing and challenge. I am able to see Christ in others and allow them to see Christ in me.

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19, Year B

Real Bread

Readings:
2 Samuel 18:1,5,9-15; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

When I was growing up, my mother baked all the bread for our large family. Saturday morning was bread-making day, and I can remember the delicious odours that came from that kitchen. As children, we were not always very appreciative of mother's efforts. When Sunbeam came out with a big advertising campaign, we longed for that over processed white bread. I remember asking mother if we could please have some "real" bread for a change.

Later on, my sister and I became the bakers of the family bread. We baked enough, not only for the family to eat for the week, but enough to sell around the neighbourhood for spending money for ourselves. It did not matter how much bread we baked. We could always sell it. People valued it. They valued its nourishment. Bread became a significant factor in our lives. We got creative in trying new kinds of bread, buns and rolls, and then sweet breads that people were willing to pay much more for. It became a vocation for us.

There is an old Chinese saying that goes something like this. When you want to help feed people, don’t give them a fish; teach them how to fish. Anyone who has ever worked in a food bank knows the truth of that saying. If you offer only food, the line forms every day because people get hungry again.

Jesus took a few small loaves and some fish and fed a huge crowd of people. But they got hungry again. They kept coming back for more. Their expectation was that Jesus would keep giving them free bread. In reality he offered them far more. He offered them spiritual food. He explained to them that giving them bread and fish would not solve their problems. He asked them to make him and his way of living the “bread and butter” of their daily lives. Yet they could not accept it from him. They could not see beyond the Jesus they had grown up with. They saw the carpenter's son. They saw Mary's kid. They did not see what he had to offer them.

We too are offered that same spiritual bread. Jesus offers himself to us as bread from God, as grace for our lives, the bread of life. We are offered that choice. But there are many kinds of bread offered to us by the world that, while far from nourishing, are very tempting. They hold great promise. They promise wealth. They promise success. They promise an easy existence.

We live in a technological age, a secular age. Many of the choices that we are offered every day are far from life giving. Many choices are destructive to the world in which we live. They are destructive of people and of things, of relationships, of resources. I think of just a few of the life and death issues of our age, genetic manipulation, cloning, euthanasia, abortion. The list is endless. And the problem is that when it comes to ethical decisions there are no easy answers. Life is not black and white.

That came to me very clearly as I read a novel by Judi Foucault this summer. “My Sister’s Keeper” is the story of a girl who gets herself a lawyer so that she can stop being an organ donor for her sister who is suffering from leukemia. The story is told from many points of view and offers many choices of how to live. There is Anna, the girl who was conceived to be her sister’s donor. She wonders whether she is loved for herself or simply because she can keep her sister alive. There is the sister who is dying of leukemia who struggles with pain and suffering and sometimes wishes it would simply end. There are the parents who try to make decisions for all of their children. There is the brother who feels left out and neglected and who acts out his frustration. There is the lawyer that Anna hires to represent her who has his own problems. And at the end of the story you are still left with the dilemma of wondering who is right.

How does that connect to Jesus, the Bread of Life? He offers himself as the life of the world. Not our life only, but the life of all creation. He is our creator. He is our sustainer. God has chosen, through Christ, to be involved in our world. That is a choice that we too must make. For that choice is what makes atonement a possibility. That is what is offered to us in the Bread of Life passages of John's Gospel. Our responsibilities, our choices, are very real. We are offered a conscious choice to see the evidence of the risen Christ in the world around us. We need to see, not simply Jesus, Joe’s son; we need to see Christ. To be, as Paul says, "imitators of God", to emulate Jesus, to follow him, to demonstrate God's love to others through the way we speak and act, through the company we keep, through our ethical choices, through everything we do.

Is it possible to be united with Christ through baptism, to confess our sins and receive absolution, to go through the motions of worship, but still fail to comprehend what it really means to believe in Jesus Christ? God has given us grace. But it is a two way street. I remember something that Corrie Ten Boom said in a talk that has stayed with me throughout the years. “God has no grandchildren,” she said. “God only has children.” And that is a choice we must make for ourselves. We must choose to be children. We must choose to be beloved of God. We must hear the word. We must accept it for ourselves. We must feed on the bread of life. We must appropriate it for ourselves and consciously accept God into our lives. Take God into the centre of our being. Become one with him through Christ. In that way, his life becomes our life. His love becomes our love. His purpose becomes our purpose. His goal becomes our goal. We are redeemed. We communicate his love and become broken bread to those around us.

We should “eat” him. Think what kind of a world we would live in if we accepted Jesus’ lifestyle and adopted it as our own. No child would ever die of hunger. No senior citizen would be lonely. AIDS would be wiped out, because we would not be hoarding needed drugs out of greed. We would be using good stewardship of the resources of the world. We would be attentive to one another, using the gifts that God has given to us. We would be serving at the table of the world.

Every time we say the Lord's Prayer, we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." Are we like the crowds that followed Jesus? Are we asking for a free meal? Are we asking merely to have our material needs met? Or are we asking to be fed, to be nurtured spiritually by the true bread, Jesus Christ? Perhaps we simply rattle it off, not even conscious of what we are praying.

What if, for this week, we tried to take those words and let them speak to us of our human condition? Every day this week pray the Lord’s Prayer. Really pray, thinking about what it would mean to a hungry world to be fed those words of life. Think about it. We would die but not remain dead, because we would have eaten the bread of life. We would be like Jesus was, is and will be forever.

That is the Christian message. It speaks about sin and salvation, about death and life, about dying to sin and coming alive to God, about creation and redemption. What God has done in Christ affects not only us, but also the whole of creation. It is a call to renewal, to work with God discerning God's presence. It is about doing God's will, so that we can be transformers in society.

What happens in the Eucharist happens on behalf of the whole world. The bread set before us brings the starving into our presence. It brings the joyless, the sick the suffering. For it is a reminder that what we hold, we do so in trust for all. So let us break bread together. Let us eat. Let us be bread for a broken world. Amen.