17th Sunday after Pentecost
September 16, 2018

²⁷Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” ²⁸And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹Jesus asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
  ³¹Then he began to teach them that the Son-of-Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
  ³⁴Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son-of-Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” – Mark 8:27-38

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks. It’s a brave question, because it’s not always good to know everything that people are saying about you when you aren’t present. The disciples give very obedient answers, truthful ones, probably. There are likely people trying to understand Jesus’ ministry, and they are looking to the models from the scriptures like the promised return of Elijah or from people whose ministry they have known personally like John the Baptist. But these are the quintessential Sunday School answers. What the disciples don’t say is that some people snicker behind his back. Some people think he’s a charlatan or just another guy in a whole line of others with a savior-complex. Some people think he’s just an interesting rabbi. And still others think he’s downright subversive – a rabble-rouser who has no business disrupting the order of things.

But Jesus knows all that already. So he asks them what he reallywants to know, “Who do yousay that I am?” And this isn’t a pop quiz. It’s not about getting the exact right answer. It’s an important question to Jesus because the answer says a lot about what kind of relationship someone has with him. It’s not ultimately about what they think about Jesus but about how the disciples choose to be in relationship with him. Are they merely curious, are they eager to learn, are they holding back until they know a little more?

Peter gives his very bold answer – Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one, theone God has chosen to lead and deliver God’s people in this moment. The answer speaks one important truth about Jesus, but more than that is speaks to Peter’s bold willingness to put his all behind Jesus.

So…the question is, “Who do yousay that Jesus is?”

Sometimes we think of Jesus as a warm and friendly companion. Think of all the times Jesus welcomes children, the comparison to a good shepherd who tenderly cares for the sheep who know his voice. This is an image we like to put out as the church – come and experience the warmth and care of Jesus who will comfort you and care for you. As a church community we live that out in the ways we visit the sick with communion, in the ways we sit down for a chat at coffee hour, the way we tend to the needs of our companions along the way.

Sometimes we think of Jesus as a social justice advocate. Think of all the parables in which the rich and powerful are turned on their heads, the song of Mary that even before Jesus’ birth proclaims food for all the hungry, all the times Jesus asks the rich to share their wealth, the oppressed people to whom Jesus proclaims freedom. As a church community we seek to be present with people who are suffering – in small ways with food drives like our pasta and sauce collection happening this month and in big ways like Lutheran Disaster Response which is supported through our network of ELCA congregations ready to help with post-hurricane recovery in the Carolinas and with other disasters. And we speak with power to our elected officials about things that affect the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities.

Sometimes we think of Jesus as the one who can rescue us from the worst that life has to throw at us. Think of all the stories of Jesus healing people, the times he restored people to community, the calming of the storm when the disciples were terrified. When we identify Jesus this way we lift up our prayers to be delivered from illness and injury, to be protected for the day and through the night. We engage the world trusting that God will hold us and keep us one way or another.

But what we don’t usually put on our church sign or on the front of our bulletins or in our first pitch to a neighbor who might be interested in learning more about the church or about Jesus, is exactly what Jesus describes after the disciples have answered his question: that Jesus is the one who suffers and dies. Like Peter we often skip over this troubling detail except, maybe, on Good Friday, or if we are really penitential through the season of Lent leading up to Easter. But the answer Jesus gives to his own question goes right to this very point. He is the dying one.

A disciple that calls Jesus the dying one is prepared to follow in those footsteps. Recognizes that we, too, are dying. That we are dying every day to our own selfish desires, dying to our self-centered living. We are people who face loss head-on, who recognize that all of us are dying one way or another. We recognize that suffering is real, and try our best not to sugar-coat the realities of our lives and our world. We don’t glorify it, but we name the truth of a suffering world.

And we accept that we are a dying church. Now hear me say this – I did notsay a closing church or a powerless church or an irrelevant church. But every church of Jesus is a dying church. Not just in the sense that over time the generations turn over, but in the sense that we are always leaving behind what has been, experiencing the losses that come in the course of a congregation’s ministry and life – dear saints who have shaped the church and gone on to the heavenly feast, thriving programs that have run their course, hopes and visions for what might have been. Churches are always facing hard decisions and tensions between members that need working out.

But we are also, like Jesus, rising from the dead. Individually we experience new opportunities and new ventures, opportunities to begin again. We live in the promise of resurrection from the dead. As a church we are always experiencing anew the grace of God – always an opportunity to learn from failure, to rebuild broken relationships, to begin a new opportunity for ministry, to discover something new that God is doing in our community.  And we live in the promise that the church will persist by the grace of God even when our best efforts are imperfect and even, or especially, when they fail.

But what poor Peter, and truth be told we too, cannot understand is that the rising is only possible when we experience the hardship and dying first. He’s ready to call Jesus the savior, but he isn’t yet willing to accept the truth of the dying that comes first. And who can blame him? It’s much easier and more pleasant to talk about the other parts of who Jesus is. It’s much more pleasant sometimes to deny the reality of our dying world in order to pretend that things are ok. But Jesus keeps interrupting us when we do that, asking us to look hard at the question of just who Jesus is in our lives.

And maybe when we have a hard time giving that hard answer, we can turn the question back on Jesus: Who do you, Jesus, say that Iam? And he will remind us that we are the dying and rising ones. We will hear him name the depth of the suffering we experience, acknowledge the pain of our dying and having to face death. Perhaps we will hear in Jesus’ answer the kind of truth-telling that we long for, the kind of words that cut through our defenses and our walls to acknowledge our reality. And then we will hear the end of the story that from death and dying is the rising again. And perhaps we will hear when we are scared and afraid, when we do not yet know where to turn next, Jesus answer our question with the words, “You are my beloved ones whom I have redeemed, my beloved ones with whom I share all your suffering, my beloved ones whom I raise up with me from the depth of despair and death.” Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 16th Sunday after Pentecost
September 8, 2018

The book I and many other pastors have often used for communion instruction with young people is called A Place for Youby Daniel Erlander. It details the many times that Jesus sits down for a meal. He eats with his disciples, with rich people and poor people, with social outcasts. He sets a feast of bread and fish for thousands. He eats a last meal with his disciples, except that it’s not his last with them because after he rises again he comes back again and again almost every time at a meal. And as the book details all these meals that Jesus participated in, on every page is a place for you. A gap in the simple and beautiful line drawings of these meals where you can draw yourself into God’s welcome feast. It’s a way of welcoming to the table young and old alike who long for the grace offered at the Eucharistic table and ultimately at God’s great eternal feast. And I think it captures one of the key truths of scripture.

But perhaps as you might guess, today’s gospel reading is notamong the meal references included in the book. Because this time Jesus says to a desperate woman begging for healing for her daughter, “Actually, there isn’t a place for you at the table.” At least not until everyone else takes their place first. Jesus is very clear, if there’s room after the first group has gotten a seat and eaten their fill, you can have what is left over – the crumbs that fall to the dogs. Jesus himself is an outsider in this territory – he has traveled outside his native Galilee and says to this woman of a different ethnicity, a woman from a different people, to someone in her own hometown no less, to wait her turn…with the dogs.

There is really no explaining this away. Jesus does not proclaim an open welcome, does not jump to heal, does not immediately exude God’s expansive grace. Jesus reflects back to us in this story the all-too-human response to outsiders and people in need. It’s as if in this moment Jesus’ humanity shines through and we see for a moment the ugly reality of our world in which people are too often denied a place at the table. We see here the language of calling other human beings dogs. Language that continues to find a place in othering people who are different from us, especially, as in the case of the Syrophonecian woman, people whose ethnicity is not that of the dominant group. These are the words of Jesus according to the gospels, and yet it isn’t consistent with the core of the gospel message that Jesus is otherwise teaching.

Yes, God chooses to work through a particular people in the Hebrews and a particular human incarnation in Jesus, born in Bethlehem, in order to break open the story of salvation to the world. But from the beginning God reminds them and us that the alien in their midst, the outsider, the vulnerable, the refugee and immigrant, the poor and hungry, the orphan and widow are to be given a place at the table. From the beginning God’s love is for the whole world.

In this story, the one who clings to that legacy of grace is the woman in need. As is sometimes the case, the person experiencing great and desperate need has the most profound words of gospel. She responds boldly and confidently that even the dogs get crumbs that fall from the table. And in her statement is the fundamental belief that despite what Jesus has just said to her that even a crumb of God’s grace is enough to transform her deepest need and fill her and her daughter with abundant life. She comes as a beggar and she demands what she knows is hers – the love and grace of God. She knows that is what she needs. And she stays until Jesus grants it. And from there Jesus goes on to heal and minister in more places outside of his own territory, as if her words have helped open Jesus’ ministry to the nations.

But we should pause to say that while God will use a mere crumb to accomplish the world, crumbs are simply not enough when others are feasting. It is not enough to say that the people in need to wait their turn. We ask people to wait their turn to get their basic needs. We tell people demanding justice and basic rights just to be patient while we continue to enjoy the things they don’t yet have. We ask people to stand in long lines and give up their dignity in order to access basic food and healthcare. And we justify it with our language that calls them less than human. And whether we seek to walk alongside them in solidarity or whether we in any given moment are the ones ignoring the needs of others, we often discover not that we bring the gospel to them, but that they proclaim the gospel to us, that they surprise us with words of grace that open us to the gifts of God for our lives. That everyone has a place at the table means that even Jesus gets surprised by the profound new ways the gospel is proclaimed by those who join the feast.

As much as we want people to come into our community, our congregation to see the tremendous gifts of God offered here, as much as we want to offer others a place at this table, we remember, too, that we must go out to discover the ways in which God’s gospel is already out there in the community in ways that we need to hear, in ways that will transform and change us and open us to new ways of understanding the expansiveness of God’s love, in ways that will maybe even push usas the seats at the table are rearranged to make a place for everyone. That is the work of God – overcoming our sometimes all-too-human responses of exclusion. When we recognize everyone’s place at the table, we prepare ourselves for the opportunity to hear the gospel from every person’s perspective. We open ourselves to hear the rich diversity of ways that God’s love is expressed and even demanded.

Because all of us are in need of a word of grace. Sometimes we are the ones who think we have the gospel all figured out until someone steps in and expands our understanding of God’s grace even further. Sometimes we are the ones who are begging. We are the ones who are desperate for hope and healing, desperate for our place at the table. Sometimes all we need is a crumb of good news, a morsel of hope, a tiny piece of the feast. Sometimes all we need is a tiny piece of bread and a sip of wine to renew and heal our own deepest need. Always we are the beloved of God who have a place at the table for the never-ending feast of grace.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

15th Sunday after Pentecost
September 2, 2018

²²But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
  ²⁶If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. – James 1:22-27

¹Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, ²they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. ³(For the Pharisees, and all the Jewish people, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) ⁵So the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” ⁶He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
 ‘This people honors me with their lips,
  but their hearts are far from me;
 ⁷in vain do they worship me,
  teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
⁸You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
  ¹⁴Then Jesus called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
  ²¹For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” – Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I would like to invite you, as you are comfortable, to close your eyes for a moment. Make sure you are sitting comfortably on your pew. Take a deep breath in and slowly let it out. Then let yourself breathe normally. And without judgment or a need to fix or change anything, begin to bring your awareness to your body. Notice the feeling of your feet on the floor.

Notice the way in which the pew is supporting your seat and your back.

Notice the feel of your clothes on your skin.

Again without judgment or need to fix it, notice anything that is tense or anything that hurts or just doesn’t feel comfortable.

Notice how your breath feels coming in and out of your nose or mouth, how it feels in your lungs.

Notice how the air around you feels on your skin.

Pause in that feeling of awareness of your own body…And before you open your eyes again, pause in gratitude to God for your body. Amen.

Maybe for some of you that was a new experience, and maybe for others something you’ve done before. I hope that it was helpful to you, though I recognize that not everyone will respond to the same types of practices like that. But the first time I experienced something like that I was pretty blown away by how different I felt, body and spirit. And I felt more connected to and aware of God’s presence with me. I think before and even since I am sometimes slow to pay attention to what my own body is telling me and how that affects my thoughts and feelings and even my sense of God’s presence.

I share it with you today because our readings this morning are all about embodied faith. They are about what we do with our bodies and with other people’s bodies in the practice of our faith. Jesus and the Pharisees are having an argument about hand washing. James is entreating us to act out the word and not just listen and think about it. And even in the first reading we hear an exhortation to abide by God’s guideposts for living, which at its most basic broad strokes and in its finest details affects how we treat our own body and the bodies of others.

But it is appealing sometimes to dismiss the physical, embodied practices of our faith and instead imagine that we are really just spirits trapped in a physical body. Perhaps it elevates us a bit in our own thinking. It gives us the sense we can escape the limitations and failings of the body. When we realize that our bodies will eventually begin to age and to break and fail and even die, it’s appealing to focus on some other part of ourselves. When our bodies hunger or thirst or shiver or ache, we might wish to be really something apart from our bodies. When our bodies lead us into temptation or leave us too tired to do the things we know we ought to do, it might be a comfort to think that we are really something other than our bodies.

People of faith have too often been guilty of offering a prayer or blessing in place of giving food or water or shelter. Not that we shouldn’t also offer prayers and blessings, but they should not be an excuse to ignore the physical, embodied needs of those who are hungry, in prison, sick, wounded, and oppressed. It is tempting sometimes to think that our faith is really about our non-physical selves communing with God, and that our messy, imperfect bodies that have to eat, and rest, and, yes, even go to the bathroom, are merely an impediment to communion with God.

But our readings today root us back in our bodies. Jesus is having an argument with some of the religious leaders about hand washing. They had expanded the religious law from the ritual hand washing of the priests to everyone washing their hands before a meal as a way of reminding people of the sacredness of our daily lives, the sacredness of every meal, the sacredness of bodies that need to wash and eat. One could read this text and on first hearing think that Jesus is dismissing all that, pointing people to some kind of higher plane of being. But I think Jesus is saying that they, and here we might place ourselves along with them, haven’t gone far enough. They have done a good thing in reminding people of the sacredness of daily living, if sometimes a little too legalistically. But they have not moved from that to the kind of whole life transformation that practice ought to bring. It is not that the tradition itself is bad, but that they are too busy policing the tradition while ignoring the embodied daily-life kind of needs of the people around them.

This is what James is speaking of when he talks about true religion – not one that remains in the realm of disembodied beliefs and thoughts, but one that is expressed in care for the bodily needs of the vulnerable. It is not just about hearing the word, but about doing the word. And that goes all the way back to the instructions given to the people in Deuteronomy to keep the commandments. Not to please God but to live in ways that embody God’s love and grace in the world.

What I think is at the heart of our readings today is the need for faith to be lived out in embodied practice. It means that if we believe in the power of baptism to bestow grace and forgiveness that we do it and experience it in worship with abundant water. And that when we encounter water in our daily lives that we use that opportunity to rememeber God’s love washing over us. And that when we live in the world we not only offer a cup of cold water to a thirsty neighbor but that we are mindful of caring for the waters of our planet and that we make every effort to ensure all people everywhere have access to clean water. Embodied faith in worship and in the world.

It means that if we believe in the power of Holy Communion to share the presence of Christ, that we do it regularly in our worship with singing and with thoughtfully prepared bread and wine and that we share it in a way that gives everyone access to the table. But then it must shape our living so that when we eat at our own tables we pause in gratitude for what God has done for us and not just share food with a hungry neighbor but also care for the earth that produces our food and work to make sure that every person has access to enough to eat. Embodied faith in worship and in the world.

It means that if we confess in the creed every week the resurrection of the body, that perhaps we pause there to honor our embodied selves, just as they are. Some of us make the sign of the cross on our bodies at that moment to bring home those words and the way in which God has claimed our embodied selves with love and life. But then those words should take us into the world to care for hurting bodies and for bodies that have been marginalized and oppressed, imprisoned or beaten, detained or demeaned. It should shape our living. Embodied faith in worship and in the world.

What we do with our bodies in worship matters because it affects how we live in the world. And how we live in the world with our bodies matters because it affects how we understand God’s love and grace. One always informs and shapes the other.

But more than anything, it matters what we do with our bodies in worship and in the world, because God showed us just how important human bodies are by taking flesh. God doesn’t merely inhabit a human frame but becomes in Jesus a fully embodied human being, taking on all its frailty and limitations. And in doing so redeems them. Redeems our embodied lives. Redeems all the times we fail to honor the bodies we are and the bodies that others are. Redeems the whole embodied world in all its glorious messiness. Redeems you and me.

So pause, once more, closing your eyes for just a moment if you wish. Breathe deeply, and bring awareness to your body. And know, down to every cell, the God whose love embraces you. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

14th Sunday after Pentecost
August 26, 2018

¹⁰Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of the Lord’s power. ¹¹Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. ¹²For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. ¹⁴Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. ¹⁵As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. ¹⁶With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
  ¹⁸Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. ¹⁹Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak. – Ephesians 6:10-20

A suit of medieval armor weighs anywhere from 25 pounds for a simple chain-mail shirt up to as much as 110 pounds for a full-on suit of armor.

A modern foot soldier in Afghanistan wears an average 63 pounds of gear and armor to do his or her duty.

And a firefighter’s gear for going into a fire weighs somewhere around 45 pounds and in certain cases as much as 75 pounds.

These people past and present have managed to accomplish a great deal while being weighed down under their protective armor, but when I hear those numbers I want to crumple under the weight, just thinking about it. I imagine trying to move about, especially in a suit of rigid metal like a medieval knight, and I can only imagine mustering a few stiff, awkward movements.

It’s that image and that feeling of weight that comes to mind as I read the description of the full armor of God in our Ephesians reading today. Of course I stand for truth and righteousness and faith that this armor is supposed to represent. Of course I covet the sense of protection that armor brings. But my experience in the world is one of bearing the heavy weight of all those things, that it’s hard and sometimes challenging work to wear that armor. On top of all the other weight we carry around, I find myself crumpling under the thought.

Because already I am weighed down by the endless violence that takes place around the world. With admiration for those who have been willing to risk their lives for their country, I worry about the way in which all around the world we have become used to solving our problems with the violence of endless wars. I worry about the way in which we are so used to it that we cease to pay attention to the catastrophic war taking place in the Congo, the ongoing devastation in Syria, the perpetuation of conflict in Afghanistan. Collectively we put on the heavy armor of battle, trusting in the power of violence to save us.

And we can get weighed down by all the walls we try to put up to keep us from people who are different from us. We put up defensive walls, literal and metaphorical, to protect us from people we perceive to be other. People whose skin is a different color, whose primary language is different from our own, whose socioeconomic status is different from ours. It’s hard work to bridge differences, and as heavy as they can be, putting up walls and defenses are often easier. I sometimes let myself take that easy road and end up walled in and weighed down in my own little bubble.

And I worry that we even wear our faith in ways that weigh us down. Sometimes we wear our religious practice as a shield against the world. Or we put our trust in the protection we think will come by believing the right things or doing the right things. I have sometimes been guilty of reading this passage from Ephesians as yet another thing we need to do. We better make sure we tell the truth perfectly, live righteously always, proclaim perfectly a gospel of peace, and maintain faith free of doubt. If we can do all that then we have kept up the armor, and we have defended ourselves from the forces of evil, all the things that threaten to tear us down. While our faith does and should call us to transformed living and challenging work, we can easily weigh ourselves down with the burden of saving ourselves and the world. Wearing that kind of armor causes us to lose the flexibility and freedom that Christ offers us. And it isn’t the kind of armor that saves us.

This passage is describing something quite different from this heavy armor we too often try to put on and clumsily wear around. The kind of protection God gives from the world isn’t in the form of chain mail shirts or Kevlar vests. It’s more like the waters of baptism. Rather than a heavy metal suit, which weighs us down and walls us off, imagine a fluid watery covering that surrounds us in the promises of God. In baptism we put on Christ – the truth, the righteousness, the peace, the faith of Christ. Forever after we wear that watery garment, which reminds us against all the evil we encounter, against all the powers that rebel against God, against all the forces within us and beyond us that threaten to tear us down, that God’s love is stronger than anything.

Unlike metal armor, this watery protection is permeable. It flows and allows us to give and receive. But because it assures us that God’s love is stronger even than death it allows us to be vulnerable to the world in ways that open us to both the love and the pain around us. It allows us to care for others and to take in the care of others. It keeps us connected rather than walling us off. And in its permeability and transparency it manages to remind us of the ways in which our trust in weapons and armies, our trust in walls and armor, our trust in our own power is so much weaker than we realize in comparison to the incredible power of unlimited love and grace.

Unlike metal armor it is flexible and mobile. It allows us to let go of the rigidity with which we so often approach things, to let go of the ways in which we can be afraid of and anxious about change and things that are new. It allows us as people and as the church to adapt to new ways of God’s love being shared in the world. It washes away what needs to be cleansed and carries forward into the future what is needed for new life and growth.

And though water is actually quite heavy, unlike metal armor is has the capacity to lift us up. To float us forward. To carry us through all those other things that make us weary and leave us crumbling under the weight of the world. This watery armor carries us from the font to the grave and into God’s life forever always holding us in that love that knows no bounds.

So you who are baptized and you who long for the waters of baptism, feel the full armor of God washing over you, lifting you up, connecting you to the source of all life. Feel the power of God’s love forever surrounding you. Know the power of God’s having claimed you and called you beloved. Know that protection now and always.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

[Jesus said,] ⁵¹“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
  ⁵²The Judeans then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” – John 6:51-58

What have you consumed already this morning, just in the time since you woke up?

I’ve eaten scrambled eggs, toast, and a large travel mug full of strong green tea. But I’ve also been consuming all manner of other things from the moment I woke up. Before even getting up, I took in brief news headlines that popped up on my phone overnight. Before leaving the house I took in an image of myself in the mirror to make sure there wasn’t anything glaringly out of place. I listened to a podcast on the drive down from Amherst this morning. Much as I try to avoid them I took in the large advertisements that line parts of the highway. I’ve subconsciously taken in who knows how many brand names and images. Maybe you’ve read the newspaper, watched the tv, or taken in the fresh air on a morning walk.

We live in a consumer society, where moment by moment the culture around us invites us to not just to want but to crave, to need more, to take into ourselves more. We are promised that the next version of the iPhone, the next fad diet, the next new car, the next promotion or raise, the next lifestyle change, the next bite of food will bring us the happiness and satisfaction that we crave. And as a result we can hardly get through a morning without being offered choice after choice of thing to consume. Sometimes I fear that those very things we seek out start to consume us.

We take in airbrushed images and magazine headlines that tell us our bodies aren’t good enough, thin enough, beautiful enough. And we are told to change what we eat and how we live to achieve the unachievable. And the images we have taken in begin to shape what else we consume in unhealthy ways.

We eat up only the news and conversations which reinforce our existing world view such that we learn to fear and demonize those who think differently. Before we know it we have divided the world into us and them and we begin to lose our creative power to see something deeper than our differences. The ideas we take in shape us and form us.

Maybe just as insidious we take into our own heads the voices that tell us we are not enough, the voices that tells us to be ashamed of who we are, the voices that keep us from loving and forgiving ourselves. We too easily hear criticisms and dismiss praise, taking in even unwarranted negativity in ways that shape our thoughts and actions.

We can cultivate other ways of being, but I think there must be something deep in our beings that is susceptible to the messages we simply cannot help but eat up. The things we consume seep deep inside us, become part of us. They shape us, they mold us, they create part of our identity. The things we consume so readily, begin, I’m afraid, to consume us.

So I’m skeptical when Jesus invites us to consume him, not just living bread, not just bread that is shared and bread that feeds body and soul but, as he repeats over and over in our gospel reading: to eat, to chew up, to gnaw at the very flesh and blood of Jesus. I’m not skeptical like a friend of mine from high school who was totally turned off to Christianity because she thought we were cannibals for eating Jesus’ flesh and blood. I can trust something about the mystery of Christ’s presence in all that. But I’m skeptical because I know what happens when you consume something. It becomes a part of you. It gets taken in to every cell, finds a way to touch each part of you. It begins to shape something about who you are and how you live.

And I’m not sure I want Jesus quite that close, at least not all the time. There are parts of me that I’d rather Jesus not see and touch. The parts of me that get impatient, the parts of me that are uncharitable and less than generous with others, the parts of me that are happy with the ways I enjoy privilege and power. I don’t really want Jesus knowing every last part of me, because not every last part of me is so great. And I’m not sure I want Jesus to know that. So consuming Jesus, when I really think about it, feels a little threatening, let letting Jesus in a little too close.

I’m also not sure I want Jesus changing me. Because when Jesus enters people’s lives he calls them to some pretty hard stuff. He calls the rich to give up their wealth for the sake of the community, he calls the meek to lead out in front, he calls the religious leaders and political leaders to make way for God’s movement in other people and places, he calls the disciples to go out without any provisions and to go into hostile territory to proclaim good news and to forgive with abundance. If we consume Jesus I worry that Jesus might start to shape and mold me into something I admire but which I am scared sometimes to actually become. I’m afraid consuming Jesus will lead me to take risks and to do some uncomfortable things for the sake of loving my neighbor.

When I read today’s gospel, something about it makes me ponder all those reasons I’m hesitant to consume Jesus. But I keep coming back every week because it’s in this meal that I have most clearly and most often tasted grace. In seminary when I wasn’t sure if I was welcome in the church I heard the proclamation that this bread, this Jesus is “for you,” and I felt that welcome down to every cell. When I cannot let go of a sense of shame for things I’ve done and left undone, it’s the bread eaten in community that sinks into my body and loosens the things I’ve held too tightly. When I haven’t been able to let go of my anger or grief or pain, it’s consuming Jesus that somehow has a way of wrapping that anger, grief, or pain in God’s gentle embrace.

The thing is that in consuming Jesus, Jesus doesconsume us. Not in the way that so many other things do, not in a way that eats us up or breaks us down or makes us less ourselves. But rather when we consume Jesus, Jesus wraps every last little bit of us in love and acceptance – the parts we are proud of andthe parts we might want to hide from God. Jesus swallows us in a blanket of grace that honors our imperfect selves just as they are. And Jesus does transform our lives, sometimes in ways that challenge and scare us, but always in ways that help us andour neighbors live more fully into God’s reign of peace and grace, to live into God’s eternal life.

So come now to the table. Come to receive what Jesus offered the hungry crowds and the questioning disciples, and even the skeptical bystanders and cranky religious leaders: the living bread, Christ himself. Come consume and be consumed. Come know the profound grace that is offered, and the joy of being formed into God’s holy people.

-Pastor Steven Wilco