THE PULPIT: look at the bread (a tribute to the W&W team 2004)!!!
One of my favorite things is a fresh snowfall. Whether in the morning or late at night, the stillness of a snowy day is one of life’s greatest thrills. As a child, there was no excitement like that of a winter morning waking to the whiteness of winter’s wonderland, and finding that there was no school! I had the privilege of spending two years working outdoors on the nightshift. Trudging through the powdery drifts, all alone, in the stillness of the wee morning hours made for some of the best times of thinking and reflecting about my life and my faith.
I think my favorite snow-covered memory was not too long ago. It was Christmas morning. Antonina and I had been married just six months before. Those months had been some of the busiest of our lives. We got married, went on our honeymoon, moved her into my apartment, moved our apartment to Kansas City, found jobs, started school, and now we were back in Ohio for Christmas with family. The whole drive home we listened for weather reports, not knowing whether to hope for no snow and good driving conditions, or lots of snow and a white Christmas. We found no one who was calling for more than a few flurries. We went to bed late, after attending Christmas Eve services. When we awoke we looked outside and to our surprise, there was over a foot of snow on the ground. Like children, we hurriedly bundled up and ran outside to greet the morning. We threw snowballs, made snow angels, and even stood with our heads tipped back and our mouths open as wide as they would go, trying to capture those gigantic puffy flakes on our tongues.
Snow like that is almost mythic. Songs like “White Christmas,” movies like “Rudolph,” “Frosty,” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” and even untold works of art idealize winter scenes and promote the heroic nature of snow. Children run and play like at no other time. Temperature does not seem to matter when there is snow on the ground! Its very presence stirs a gloomy soul to life!
I can imagine little Israelite children having a similar reaction when the manna started to fall. They had been wandering hungrily through the desert for some time. Their hunger was almost unbearable. After hearing His people murmuring and grumbling, God provides bread for his people. Can’t you just see the people, led by their children, coming out of their tents to find the ground covered with flakes of bread? Everyone scrambles to eat his or her fill. Everyone scurrying with mouths wide open to capture the last of the fluffy flakes on their tongues. Maybe the children even have manna-ball fights and make manna angels! Who knows?
I can imagine the scene as Jesus had been teaching the thousands upon thousands of people all day long. They had been listening so intently that they never heard the rumbling of their stomachs at mealtime. But now Jesus was finished, and the people’s stomachs begin being heard. Again, people begin to murmur and grumble. Again, a loving God miraculously meets the needs of His people. Just a few loaves of bread, taken, blessed, broken, and distributed by Christ assured that all had plenty and there was even some left over. The people must have been overjoyed to experience a miracle first hand. Then Jesus begins to teach.
Read John 6:51-58: "(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.” (52)The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (53)So 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. (54)Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; (55)for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. (56)Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. (57)Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. (58)This 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.”
“I am the bread of life.” “I am the living bread.” On the heels of a great miracle involving bread, Jesus claims he is the bread. With the smell of bread lingering…you know the smell…Jesus claims to be the true and living bread. He even appeals to their national identity claiming to be the bread sent from heaven. No doubt they would have thought immediately of the stories of the manna. Manna was the stuff legends are made of. Long past their desert wanderings, a jar was kept as a reminder. It is what kept them alive. It was God’s provision. Manna was as much a part of their national identity as Apple pie is a part of Americana. But Jesus turns the tables on them. What they thought they knew turns out to be incomplete and misses the target all together. They had many experiences with bread including the manna and the feeding of the five thousand, but they had always missed the point.
We all tend to miss the point frequently. We love the wonder of the snow, but how quickly it melts and leaves the world a muddy, slushy mess. There is no telling how many times in my life I have sat alone wondering where God is. Usually it is in the big trials of life when I notice the difficulty of finding God. Perhaps in the death of a loved one. Perhaps in the suffering of a friend. Perhaps in my own suffering when life take me down a rough and rocky road. Whatever the case, I tend to realize I have difficulty finding God in the extraordinary situations in life.
This passage came alive to me one very ordinary day. I was in Mount Vernon watching an Ohio State game with a very good friend. It was a cold November day with some small snow flurries. The game was so out of hand that at half-time, we put on our waders, grabbed an ultra-light rod and reel, a couple jigs, and set out for a favorite smallmouth hole. I do not know how long we fished, or how many we caught, but I remember one fish distinctly. I have no idea how big it was, it certainly was not an extraordinary fish by fishermen’s standards but that did not matter. As I held that fish up, and the sun shined on its brilliant colors there was an amazing transformation. That ordinary fish was suddenly made extraordinary.
I have talked with Ryan about that day and he certainly found nothing extraordinary about my fish, but I learned a lesson that day. The lesson I learned waist deep in frigid November water, holding a smallish smallmouth in the blustery wind was the same lesson Christ taught that day in the Synagogue at Capernaum.
Brother Lawrence called it “Practicing the Presence of God.” A very close mentor of mine calls it living “sacramentally.” Jesus said, “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. … Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
And so, we now come to the inevitable. This passage has obvious similarities with our Holy Sacraments. In fact, many claim that Holy Communion is what this teaching is all about. While the other Gospel writers deal with Communion at the Last Supper, St. John addresses it here. They interpret the passage to say, “Those who partake of the Sacrament, particularly Holy Communion have eternal life.” However, I find that such an interpretation actually reduces the value of the Sacraments. This passage is certainly about Holy Communion, but its lesson teaches us about far more!
So what is this lesson? It is one of the simplest lessons I have learned, but also one of the profound and life changing. Bread was perhaps the most common food of the day, and eating is something common to everyone. Christ does not claim to be gold, or diamonds, or anything extraordinary. Rather, He says, “I am the bread.” All things, even the simplest, most common, most ordinary things in creation point us directly to the Creator. Christ’s identification with bread shows us just how present Christ is in everyday life. Ordinary things like fish and bread have the fingerprints of the Creator all over them. What are the fingerprints? Those fingerprints are grace! Christ is God’s fingerprints! There is grace to be found in all of life. When we learn to see Christ in the ordinary, then all of life becomes extraordinary.
This is the lesson that the Israelites missed in the desert. This is the lesson that the people missed that day in Capernaum. This is the lesson we all tend to miss regularly. Manna was not just manna that sustained physical life; it was a sign. It was given to point Israel directly to Christ who sustains all of life eternally. It was a means of experiencing the presence and the grace of God in a real and tangible way. Bread and fish were not just bread a fish given to nourish bodies; they were a sign. They were given to point the people directly to Christ who nourishes souls. They were means of experiencing the presence and the grace of God in a real and tangible.
The life of holiness then is a life of continual “eating.” It is about receiving and savoring, consuming and being nourished. It is about being sanctified. One author observed, “For those who receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from a believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can be plucked from one’s body.”
This passage is about being transformed by the ordinary. The Sacraments are the most ordinary of things made extraordinary by the grace of God. There is nothing of value in water and oil or in bread and wine. They are the most common elements of life. Yet they have eternal value in that they point to true life. When we gather around the table of the Lord, we receive the sustaining, nourishing grace of God. We are brought into the very presence of the Creator, our Lord. We receive Christ in a real and tangible way! The Israelites were given a sign: Manna and Quail. Their bodies were nourished, but they missed out on the fullness of God’s grace because they saw it only as manna and quail. The Jews were given a sign: Bread and Fish. Their bodies were nourished, but they missed out on the fullness of God’s grace because they saw it only as bread and fish.
We too are given signs. We call them Holy Sacraments. In the waters of Holy Baptism and in the bread and wine of Holy Communion we reenact, remember, and participate in Christ’s life, death and resurrection, and we look forward to His coming again. We are given the ordinary and basic elements of life. They are the most real and profound means of God’s grace for those who are open to see and receive Him. It is my prayer that we will not be like the Israelites in the wilderness or the people in the synagogue at Capernaum, but rather that we would see Him to which the signs are pointing; that we would experience the depth of the love of a God who would rather die that to live without us; that we would learn together to live life sacramentally, experiencing the extraordinary grace of God in the most ordinary encounters of every day life; that we would be transformed and sanctified by that grace … by Christ … into the Holy People of God. To the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I think my favorite snow-covered memory was not too long ago. It was Christmas morning. Antonina and I had been married just six months before. Those months had been some of the busiest of our lives. We got married, went on our honeymoon, moved her into my apartment, moved our apartment to Kansas City, found jobs, started school, and now we were back in Ohio for Christmas with family. The whole drive home we listened for weather reports, not knowing whether to hope for no snow and good driving conditions, or lots of snow and a white Christmas. We found no one who was calling for more than a few flurries. We went to bed late, after attending Christmas Eve services. When we awoke we looked outside and to our surprise, there was over a foot of snow on the ground. Like children, we hurriedly bundled up and ran outside to greet the morning. We threw snowballs, made snow angels, and even stood with our heads tipped back and our mouths open as wide as they would go, trying to capture those gigantic puffy flakes on our tongues.
Snow like that is almost mythic. Songs like “White Christmas,” movies like “Rudolph,” “Frosty,” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” and even untold works of art idealize winter scenes and promote the heroic nature of snow. Children run and play like at no other time. Temperature does not seem to matter when there is snow on the ground! Its very presence stirs a gloomy soul to life!
I can imagine little Israelite children having a similar reaction when the manna started to fall. They had been wandering hungrily through the desert for some time. Their hunger was almost unbearable. After hearing His people murmuring and grumbling, God provides bread for his people. Can’t you just see the people, led by their children, coming out of their tents to find the ground covered with flakes of bread? Everyone scrambles to eat his or her fill. Everyone scurrying with mouths wide open to capture the last of the fluffy flakes on their tongues. Maybe the children even have manna-ball fights and make manna angels! Who knows?
I can imagine the scene as Jesus had been teaching the thousands upon thousands of people all day long. They had been listening so intently that they never heard the rumbling of their stomachs at mealtime. But now Jesus was finished, and the people’s stomachs begin being heard. Again, people begin to murmur and grumble. Again, a loving God miraculously meets the needs of His people. Just a few loaves of bread, taken, blessed, broken, and distributed by Christ assured that all had plenty and there was even some left over. The people must have been overjoyed to experience a miracle first hand. Then Jesus begins to teach.
Read John 6:51-58: "(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.” (52)The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (53)So 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. (54)Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; (55)for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. (56)Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. (57)Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. (58)This 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.”
“I am the bread of life.” “I am the living bread.” On the heels of a great miracle involving bread, Jesus claims he is the bread. With the smell of bread lingering…you know the smell…Jesus claims to be the true and living bread. He even appeals to their national identity claiming to be the bread sent from heaven. No doubt they would have thought immediately of the stories of the manna. Manna was the stuff legends are made of. Long past their desert wanderings, a jar was kept as a reminder. It is what kept them alive. It was God’s provision. Manna was as much a part of their national identity as Apple pie is a part of Americana. But Jesus turns the tables on them. What they thought they knew turns out to be incomplete and misses the target all together. They had many experiences with bread including the manna and the feeding of the five thousand, but they had always missed the point.
We all tend to miss the point frequently. We love the wonder of the snow, but how quickly it melts and leaves the world a muddy, slushy mess. There is no telling how many times in my life I have sat alone wondering where God is. Usually it is in the big trials of life when I notice the difficulty of finding God. Perhaps in the death of a loved one. Perhaps in the suffering of a friend. Perhaps in my own suffering when life take me down a rough and rocky road. Whatever the case, I tend to realize I have difficulty finding God in the extraordinary situations in life.
This passage came alive to me one very ordinary day. I was in Mount Vernon watching an Ohio State game with a very good friend. It was a cold November day with some small snow flurries. The game was so out of hand that at half-time, we put on our waders, grabbed an ultra-light rod and reel, a couple jigs, and set out for a favorite smallmouth hole. I do not know how long we fished, or how many we caught, but I remember one fish distinctly. I have no idea how big it was, it certainly was not an extraordinary fish by fishermen’s standards but that did not matter. As I held that fish up, and the sun shined on its brilliant colors there was an amazing transformation. That ordinary fish was suddenly made extraordinary.
I have talked with Ryan about that day and he certainly found nothing extraordinary about my fish, but I learned a lesson that day. The lesson I learned waist deep in frigid November water, holding a smallish smallmouth in the blustery wind was the same lesson Christ taught that day in the Synagogue at Capernaum.
Brother Lawrence called it “Practicing the Presence of God.” A very close mentor of mine calls it living “sacramentally.” Jesus said, “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. … Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
And so, we now come to the inevitable. This passage has obvious similarities with our Holy Sacraments. In fact, many claim that Holy Communion is what this teaching is all about. While the other Gospel writers deal with Communion at the Last Supper, St. John addresses it here. They interpret the passage to say, “Those who partake of the Sacrament, particularly Holy Communion have eternal life.” However, I find that such an interpretation actually reduces the value of the Sacraments. This passage is certainly about Holy Communion, but its lesson teaches us about far more!
So what is this lesson? It is one of the simplest lessons I have learned, but also one of the profound and life changing. Bread was perhaps the most common food of the day, and eating is something common to everyone. Christ does not claim to be gold, or diamonds, or anything extraordinary. Rather, He says, “I am the bread.” All things, even the simplest, most common, most ordinary things in creation point us directly to the Creator. Christ’s identification with bread shows us just how present Christ is in everyday life. Ordinary things like fish and bread have the fingerprints of the Creator all over them. What are the fingerprints? Those fingerprints are grace! Christ is God’s fingerprints! There is grace to be found in all of life. When we learn to see Christ in the ordinary, then all of life becomes extraordinary.
This is the lesson that the Israelites missed in the desert. This is the lesson that the people missed that day in Capernaum. This is the lesson we all tend to miss regularly. Manna was not just manna that sustained physical life; it was a sign. It was given to point Israel directly to Christ who sustains all of life eternally. It was a means of experiencing the presence and the grace of God in a real and tangible way. Bread and fish were not just bread a fish given to nourish bodies; they were a sign. They were given to point the people directly to Christ who nourishes souls. They were means of experiencing the presence and the grace of God in a real and tangible.
The life of holiness then is a life of continual “eating.” It is about receiving and savoring, consuming and being nourished. It is about being sanctified. One author observed, “For those who receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from a believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can be plucked from one’s body.”
This passage is about being transformed by the ordinary. The Sacraments are the most ordinary of things made extraordinary by the grace of God. There is nothing of value in water and oil or in bread and wine. They are the most common elements of life. Yet they have eternal value in that they point to true life. When we gather around the table of the Lord, we receive the sustaining, nourishing grace of God. We are brought into the very presence of the Creator, our Lord. We receive Christ in a real and tangible way! The Israelites were given a sign: Manna and Quail. Their bodies were nourished, but they missed out on the fullness of God’s grace because they saw it only as manna and quail. The Jews were given a sign: Bread and Fish. Their bodies were nourished, but they missed out on the fullness of God’s grace because they saw it only as bread and fish.
We too are given signs. We call them Holy Sacraments. In the waters of Holy Baptism and in the bread and wine of Holy Communion we reenact, remember, and participate in Christ’s life, death and resurrection, and we look forward to His coming again. We are given the ordinary and basic elements of life. They are the most real and profound means of God’s grace for those who are open to see and receive Him. It is my prayer that we will not be like the Israelites in the wilderness or the people in the synagogue at Capernaum, but rather that we would see Him to which the signs are pointing; that we would experience the depth of the love of a God who would rather die that to live without us; that we would learn together to live life sacramentally, experiencing the extraordinary grace of God in the most ordinary encounters of every day life; that we would be transformed and sanctified by that grace … by Christ … into the Holy People of God. To the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
posted by EF + at 1:13 PM
2 Comments:
I get this more now that I got to read it than just hear the cliff notes verision. Good title. Fun times. The teen takeover was at Saint Paul's Sunday. The same Sunday as your first Sermon at your new Church. I began to think before I got up there to preach; Eric's up there at his new Church, preachng at the same time I'm preaching. I thought that was funny. Meagan sang a solo song which was good and Andy and Crissie read riveting scripture. The Music was lead by Meagan(Of Course), a new girl Victoria, and a very nervous Crissie. I did ok. I wish that you could have heard me. Some guy(who had gone to the Church for a long time but didn't even recognize me) after I was done said that I could take over for the big guy(Pastor Caleb) anytime. I thought that was funny. Hope everything is well where you are, aand hope your doing OK and getting acculamted. I'm praying for you.
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Neat sermon!! We had Bible Study last night. We just finished getting a new roof on the church by God's grace. While working on the roof, the pastor had the opportunity to get to know a man better, who has been at church now for 2 years. He is not saved yet. For some reason the topic of communion came up. The man told pastor that he didn't understand what communion was about. Pastor thought it was strange because every time we do communion the sermon revolves around it. I believe once he is saved, that ordinary grape juice and bread will then have an extraordinary meaning for him. We will pray that time comes soon. I think sometime we don't see the extraordinary because we don't slow down. I have to be reminded to slow down and "smell the roses" alot of time.
I will have to get some suggested readings from you. I read the Brother Lawrence book years ago. In fact we had a ladies Bible Study on prayer using the book.
Have a great week.
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