bread – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

Give Them Something To Eat

Posted on August 3, 2014Leave a comment

On Friday nights, I get a little homesick.

For the past seven or so years, every week we gathered at my sister-in-law’s house for dinner with her husband and children. At 6:00 every evening we’d walk in the door and be greeted with gigantic hugs and shouts of joy.

We’d place our offering for the meal – of warm garlicky bread or some other carb-loaded treat on the table – and we’d all sit down to dig in.

We’d fight over who got to sit by whom.

We’d tell stories and giggle.

And the kids were always so proud of what they helped to make for the meal.

The family dinner table is one of the most powerful analogues we have for what it means to be the people of God. As we gather around the communion table each week, we gather with familiar faces for a familiar taste of grace. We sing those same old songs and we feel warm and comfortable and welcome.

Some of my most powerful experiences of communion were in intimate and small groups of people.

My call to ministry was found around a table in the tiny basement chapel at Simpson College where we began sharing weekly communion. As we broke bread around a circular table, we looked into one another’s faces. You could feel the love and grace and peace of God.

The bread at that table was lovingly baked every week by Patty LaGree – whose husband Kevin is a United Methodist pastor and at that time was the President of Simpson College. It was nutty and sweet and hearty and crumbled a little bit in your fingers.

Far from home, that community that broke bread together became a family. An intimate, holy, close-knit family.

I’m sure that’s the kind of experience the disciples were hoping for in our scripture this morning.

Their friend, their colleague, John the Baptist had been executed. And in his grief, Jesus got in a boat and needed to get away and have some alone time. He had planned to spend time in prayer and mourning, just him and God.

The disciples took the long way and planned to catch up with him that night and have their own time of retreat. A time like many of us seek here on Sunday mornings. A couple of hours to regroup and get spiritually renewed so we can head back out into the hustle and bustle.

And they brought just enough food for their little group. They wanted to break bread together as their intimate, close-knit family.

But when the disciples get to that meeting place, they found thousands of people all pressed into the valley listening to Jesus’ words and waiting to be healed.

You see, as soon as Jesus had stepped off of his boat, the people flocked to him.

He had needed time to be alone and pray, but the people needed him more.

The scriptures say he “had compassion for them,” but those words don’t quite do justice. In greek, the word is “splanchnizomai” (splank-nid-zo-my) which means he felt for them in his gut. He ached with and for these people.

Max Lucado wrote, “once he felt their hurts, he couldn’t help but heal their hurts… He was so moved by the people’s [needs] that he put his [needs] on the back burner.” (The Eye of the Storm)

All day this goes on, Jesus healing and teaching and praying, and then the disciples show up. They brought a little basket of food for their quiet family dinner…. The bread they were hoping to share with one another and they urge Jesus to send the people back to the villages so they can find food.

They want their time with Jesus.

But Jesus, still aware of the people’s hurt and hunger cannot send them away…

“You feed them,” he tells the disciples, “Give them something to eat.”

Just like the disciples were invited to offer up their five loaves and two fishes, we bring this bread and this cup to the table. These elements aren’t here by a miracle, but people from our church have faithfully offered them up to God.

I once worshipped and shared communion with a church in Nashville called Edgehill UMC. They call themselves “the church on the edge” because they straddle the border between extreme wealth and poverty… with Music Row on one side of their block and hungry people on the other.

Much like Trinity/Las Americas here in Des Moines, Edgehill is a church of great diversity… with persons of all sorts of different ethnicities, educations, ages, and orientations gathered in their church. As nearly one hundred people gathered for worship that morning, communion time came and everyone stood up and formed a circle around the sanctuary.

Their sanctuary is flexible space and so during the week, tables are set up for their after school tutoring and meal program and their Free Store.

As we gathered to break bread, we formed that circle, and we were able to look into one anothers faces across the church. We talked about all of those who would be fed in that space this week. We asked God to bless the community garden this church started. We prayed for those who were hungry and were not gathered in the circle this morning. And then, we each received and gave communion.

There was a second loaf of bread and another pitcher of juice on the table… holy communion that was meant to be shared and that would be taken out into the community to the shut-ins and those who couldn’t make it.

This wasn’t an intimate, private family dinner… this was a never-ending feast… a banquet that was meant to be shared. When we broke the bread in that circle, we were invited to draw the circle ever wider and to take that bread with us when we left, feeding others along the way.

Two loaves of bread, offered faithfully to God, became the source of this church’s ministry in their neighborhood.

In our scripture, Jesus invites the disciples to offer up what they had, as well.

A picnic dinner, and a meager one at that. Two fish for thirteen guys? It was all they had.

Jesus took their bread, gave thanks, and broke the bread and gave it to the twelve… not so they could have that intimate, private meal they had been hoping for…. but so they could serve.

They looked around at the men and the women and the children. The people who were hungry for grace and healing and forgiveness. The people who were hot and tired and physically hungry after a long day of waiting and standing around in line to see Jesus.

One by one, the disciples fed the people.

One by one, their small private meal became a kingdom feast, a never-ending banquet, a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

An ordinary thing like a loaf of bread becomes the answer to our deepest hungers in God’s presence.

If you get a chance, I highly recommend you read Sara Miles book, “Take This Bread.” It is the story of her conversion and how God found her at the communion table. In it she writes: The bits of my past- family, work, war, love – came apart as I stumbled into church, then reassembled, through the works communion inspired me to do, into a new life centered on feeding strangers: food and bodies, transformed. I wound up not in what church people like to call “a community of believers” – which tends to be code of “a like-minded club” – but in something huger and wilder than
I had ever expected: the suffering, fractious, and unboundaried body of Christ.

Her experience around the communion table led her to start a food pantry and feeding program for strangers that were hungry. As she was fed, she heard God’s call to feed others.

“You feed them. Give them something to eat.” Jesus commands.

When we come forward to partake in this holy meal and break bread together, we bring our gifts and we bring ourselves.

We might not have a lot to give. A five dollar bill. An hour of time. We might look at what we have to offer as a small and ordinary thing.

But as we participate in the breaking of bread, right here, in this very room, extraordinary things happen.

Your gifts are transformed into meals that feed hungry families and help keep the lights on at places like Edgehill and Trinity/Las Americas. All of these gifts added together help this church do ministry in our neighborhood at Hillis Elementary and sends communion to our homebound. They provide the support for the love, service, and prayer we are called to live.

But this bread also has the powerful potential to do extraordinary things in YOUR life. Just as my first call to ministry came in the breaking of the bread, God just might stir in your life today. Today, God might open your eyes, as God did with the disciples, and help them to see that this meal is not about you… it is about the people God loves.

The hungry.

The lonely.

The sick.

The sorrowful.

We sometimes get focused on what we have been given and want to share it with our friends and our family, but here at the table, God invites us to give our gifts and our very lives to any who would become our friends and our family.

When we come forward to partake of this holy meal and break bread together, this is not a private, intimate experience.

This is an invitation to a radically public life.

This bread will send you back out into the world and comes with a powerful challenge.

“YOU give them something to eat.”

Repent…

Posted on August 17, 2009Leave a comment

(these are the notes for this mornings sermon… structure provided by www.creativeprayer.com)

Scripture: Isaiah 6:5-7, 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13

Confession is tricky business. Like King David, sometimes we have to have the injustices we have committed shown to us in a new light before we even understand that we have done anything wrong. While it is easy to point out the failings of others, it is difficult to see the brokenness in our own.

I pray that none of us have committed the kinds of grievances that David did. He was in a position of power and in the minds of many probably used that power to sleep with Bathsheeba. Then when she was found to be pregnant, David tried to trick her husband and then ended up having him murdered. That’s quite a few sins wrapped up in to one big mess!

Because some sins seem so large, because we are here in the church and we know that Christ died for us, sin doesn’t seem to be such a big problem. In part, maybe that’s because we don’t really understand it. It is difficult to accept that even when we are trying to be good; there are areas of our life that remain against God’s ideal for us. We may still harbor lusts, or tell lies, or make hurtful comments to others.

In the S.A.C.C. group on Tuesday mornings we have been looking recently at the 10 commandments. James Moore suggests that instead of saying we have “broken a commandment” we should rather say that we have been broken. When we let greed take over our life, there is nothing about God’s word that comes apart… but our lives do. When we let anger take over our life, God’s word remains firm… but our lives crumble. When we worship false gods and idols, God remains steadfast… but our lives teeter on the unshaky ground that we have chosen to rest upon.

We all have places in our lives where we are not fully living the life God has in mind for us. And as hard as it is to accept our failures, it may be even harder to confess them – to name them – even privately in prayer to God. However, that is what God asks us to do:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Today in worship, we remember that confession is one of those four basic elements of worship. We remember that Isaiah stood before the throne of God and said out loud that he was a man of unclean lips… that he lived among a people of unclean lips.

So we too, need to stand before our God and confess our sins. We will take the next 20 min. in silence to do this in a tangible way. As you may have noticed, there are buckets of sand around the room. When our time of reflection starts, you will go to a bucket, no more than 3 people to each, and you will read the directions for that specific bucket. When you have finished at that bucket move to another bucket and do the same process over again. Keep doing this until I bring us back together here before the cross.

(prayer stations – for specific questions, see the link above)

I want all of us to stop where we are and to hold your bag up with both hands. We each lug around these sacks full of sand and we are weighed down by them. They represent all of the ways that we are broken, and ways that we have broken others. There is nothing we can ever do to repair the damage we have done. Left on our own – we would cry out with Isaiah – Woe is me! for I am lost!

But we are not left alone. The God who has always been with us – always gently reminding us of the paths of righteousness – came down to be among us. God came down to show us how to live and to love… and came down to offer us life and life abundant.

In the gospel of John we hear these words:

JOHN 6:48-58
48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; 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?’ 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 for ever.’

Christ came to offer us life and life abundant. Here at the cross, we are invited to set our bags down – to let our sins go – to say out loud like David – “I have sinned against the Lord,” but to also hear the words of grace and mercy and forgiveness. “The Lord has put away your sin… take, eat of this bread, and you shall not die.”

As we sing “Come, Sinners, to the Gospel Feast,” I want you to think about what it means to say yes… what it means to carry these confessions to the Lord. And then as we continue to sing… and as the music continues to play… carry your sack to the cross and leave it there, and take a piece of bread from the loaf – knowing that all who eat the bread of heaven will have life and life abundant.

Let us pray:

O God, make of every thing and judge of all that you have made, from the dust of the earth you have formed us and from the dust of death you would raise us up.
By the redemptive power of the cross, create in us clean hearts and put within us a new spirit, that we may repent of our sins and lead lives worth of your calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (#353 UMH)

Who is Missing

Posted on August 3, 2008Leave a comment

Last week while on vacation, I got to spend a lot of time with my neice and nephew. My neice is three and my nephew is almost seven years old. And whenever you spend so much time around little ones, you are guaranteed to hear the cutests and darndest things.

As we began to make our long journey back home, our car pulled out onto the highway right behind a logging truck with eight foot, freshly cut logs piled high in the back.

We pointed out the logs to my neice, who immediately wanted to know why the trees broke. We tried to explain that they had been cut down, but her only response was, “tell me the truth, guys!”

We went on to share how those tress would be made into things like toothpicks and tables and paper, but after every explanation, every description that seemed completely logical to our adult minds, she looked at us, with a face of pure unbelieve and shouted back, “That’s not true! Tell me the truth, guys!”

Her little mind hasn’t yet formed the connections between a tree growing in the forest and the paper she colors on every day. The ability for one thing to become another isn’t a concept she can comprehend yet. And so she thought we were all lying to her. Me, her huncle, her father, all of us. And it only got worse the more we laughed and smiled – not because we were fibbing, but because of how adorable she was.

My neice didn’t believe us because she couldn’t yet, but there are times in our lives when we have something deeply true and important to share and when no one believes us it can be very painful and frustrating. As we explore both of our scritpures this morning, we fill find both those who don’t believe and also the longing to include them on this journey of faith.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans this is more obvious. He writes to his fellow Israelites – those who have grown up reading the same scriptures – who understand the same prophecies – to those whom God has chosen – and Paul is in anguish over the fact that his brothers and sisters of Israel don’t believe him. No matter how many times he shares his store, they don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah they have been waiting for. But still, Paul never gives up and keeps writing to them, trying to share what he has found. And he keeps praying and rusting in God’s promises to Israel, to us all.

In our gospel lesson this morning, the unbelieving ones anre a bit harder to find. When Jesus needs some time away – som rest and a space to grieve the death of his friend, John the Baptist, he tries to leave quietly in the morning. But the crowds of followers watch his every move and they all gather together at his destination before he even arrives.

Now – having just been on vacation, I can assure you – as much as I love all of you – if you had journeyed up to Northern Wisconsin and were waiting beside my cabin when I pulled up last week – I might have been pretty upset. I probably would have ordered you all back hom, or I might have hopped back in the car and tried to find a better hiding place.

In any case – I don’t know that I could have mustered up the compassion that Jesus had for all of those men, women and children who had journeyed out to that deserted place to be with him.

So moved was Jesus that he spent all day moving among the crowds and healing those who were sick. He set aside his own plans for the day, his own need to grieve, and he ministered to their needs.

After hours upon hours of these acts of sacrifice, mercy, and compassion, his tired disciples come up to Jesus and begged him to send everybody home.

“There is no food here,” they cried.

“It’s hours past supper time”

“My blood sugar is running low,” they chimed in.

“My tummy is rumbling.”

“Send everyone back to the towns so that they – and we – can get some food!”

I can just picture the mischevious, knowing smile that comes across Jesus’ face as he responds, “No need to send them away – you give them something to eat!”

Because, you see, Jesus already knows the disciples are thinking about scaricty – about how little they have -the few loaves of bread and fishes they brought with them that morning for a meager lunch they didn’t have time to eat. And Jesus knew that what sometimes looks tiny and insignificant can be full of life and life abundant.

So in front of all of those people, all of those faithful crowds who followed Christ into the wilderness, he took the bread of his disciples, blessed the bread and broke it, then gave it to his closest followers so that they could serve the many.

All of those who gathered to see Jesus – to hear him speak and maybe ever tho be healed – got so much more than they were bargaining for that day. They didn’t just catch a glimpse of Christ and spend some time at his feet… they caught a glimpse of the last supper. They got a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. They witnessed a radical outpouring of life and generosity and abundance like hadn’t been seen since the days of the prophets or since Israel journeyed in the wilderness and the people were fed by manna from heaven.

All who were gathered there ate and were filled. Filled with life, filled with hope, filled with the love of Christ, who shared himself with them in the breaking of the bread.

Now all of that is well and good, but like Paul Harvey – I want to know “the rest of the story.” You see, in the “rest of the story” my mind sees unbelieers. In the rest of the story, I feel my heart breaking like Paul’s because I think about all of those people who didn’t show up, who stayed home to mow the lawn, who didn’t think they were worthy or welcome, who were too sick to come.

I think about all of those people today who don’t believe God is real, who can’t understand that God loves them and who live their lives empty of that reality. I think about them and I understand Paul’s frustration.

And you know what, I re-live that feeling each month when we gather around this communion table. I re-live that pain and longing because I know that there is enough here:

enough bread and enough juice
enough love and enough grace
for all to come and be filled.

There is more than enough here, and yet there are many who won’t taste this meal today.

Maybe they are family members who are too busy for church. Maybe they are co-workers that you have never thought to invite. Maybe it’s the person down the street who lives along and longs for a place to belong… but who doesn’t know we exist.

Each time we gather around the communion table, I have asked you to look around and notice who is not with us. It is not a typical part of the litany – but something that one of my pastor’s shared with me that really rocked my world.

Before that, the communion table was about my own personal relationship with God – it was a private act done in a public place. But then, I realiced that this is a table set not just for me, or even just for those in this room, but this is a table set for all. Everyone is welcome here. Everyone will be fed here – if only they are able to gather around the table.

I want us to take a few minutes this morning to think about “who is missing” more seriously. Who in your life, who in this community, is NOT gathered with us or other people of faith around the table?

Here are some slips of paper and I want to invite you to prayerfully write down the name of someone you know, someone you want to invite to join us on this journey. I also ask you to include your name, so that together you and I can reach out to that person or family. When we take the offering after the message, place those names in the offering plate.

My prayer is that when we gather agian around this table next month, that some of those people for whom our hearts break might be able to share in this amazing feast with us.

Over the next few weks we will explore ways to share the love we have experienced with each of these people. Some may simply come and are eager for the invitation. But we might find that there are others to which we have to go – to take the church to them – to gather around other tables in other places. But let us remember that Paul never gave up on his message – and while people may not believe us or won’t come at first, God does and through his power others will too.