August 13, 2006

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 10     Deuteronomy 8:1-10     
John 6:35, 41-51

It is late afternoon in the office. Ian and Linda are trying to be productive, Nelson and Cardy are just being bad, giving each other a hard time, laughing a lot and generally being disruptive. Linda continues against all odds to finish her task. “I'm updating the website calendar, who's preaching when?” Glynn says, “Good question.” Picking up the lectionary starts thumbing through it. “What are the worse lessons I can find to give Nelson.” I groan with my eyes rolling heavenward.

Now I know he was kidding, but he did pretty well putting it to me with today's Gospel -- not that I realised it at first.

“I am the bread of life” is a pretty familiar passage to most of us. Nice imagery. John's metaphor hearkens back to the story of manna from heaven feeding the Hebrew people in the wilderness. Our daily need for it is tattooed on our consciousness thanks to the Lord's Prayer. We hear it echoed as we are given communion, “Te taro o te ora” -- “The bread of life.”

I've preached on it many of times. I'll just go back to the barrel and see what I can rework from an old sermon.

Let's see, there is the “What have you done for me lately?” sermon. Yesterday, John tells us, Jesus fed five thousand people who had just dropped by without bringing a plate. They were impressed with how far he could stretch a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread, but that was yesterday and they are hungry again today. That sermon reminds us that we are not an easily satisfied people with our endless needs. God knows, its all about us.

Ok, what else is there in the barrel?

If I hadn't just preached on it, the grumblers in the Gospel give another opportunity to preach the prophet is without honour sermon. “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?” As you remember that sermon points out that finding the extraordinary in the everyday, common and mundane aspects of life is not our strong suit as human beings.

Then there is the history lesson sermon. I do love that sermon. It gives me a chance to be erudite and show off my theological training and it does make a good point. The Eucharist has been evolving, taking different forms and meanings, since before the Gospel writers had Jesus saying, “Do this in remembrance of me.” By the time John wrote this reflection about who Jesus was, identifying him as the main course of the heavenly banquet, Christians had been celebrating the Eucharist for about 70 years. But for most of that time it was celebrated on Friday or Saturday night as part of a potluck at their local synagogue. Instead of the traditional Jewish grace praising God for the creation that provided them the meal and thanking God for saving them in the rough patches of the past, they would remember Jesus' death and resurrection as they waited for his imminent return.

The problem with the history sermon is I can't find a way to make a discourse on how Holy Communion has subtly evolved over two millennia into a life changing moment for you today. Even the clergy listening to me would check out as soon I start talking about the theological fine points of anamnesis and epiclesis. At that point I'll only be talking to myself and I won't be sure why.

Getting near the bottom of the barrel, I find a dusty sermon on the Holy Mysteries. Hmm, that should make it a memorable morning for the congregation. I know they dragged themselves to church this morning to hear about a mystery made up of mysteries. I'm sure as you ate your Weetbix and Vogel slathered in Vegemite, you wondered if Clay was finally going to answer those nagging questions: How does bread and wine become the mystical body and blood of Jesus? What happens to us when we receive the heavenly Word made flesh into our bodies? How does it bring our souls to a supernatural life of grace that entitles us to see God on the last day and assures us that our bodies will be raised up on Judgment Day? Sounds like a sermon guaranteed to take the life out of a life-giving sacrament to me.

At this point I now know there is nothing in the barrel, I'm going to have venture out into new territory without a map. Thanks Glynn.

To help you understand the scope of my problem, I'd like to ask you to take a risk -- a small one but a risk all the same. You don't have to play if you don't want to. I'm going to ask you in a moment to raise your hand. I'm not going to try to make you look foolish, like then having you raise your other arm and shout. “Alleluia!” I want to give you an opportunity to examine your beliefs. The risk is inviting you to do it somewhat publicly. It will give you a little idea of what it is like to be up in the pulpit without leaving your pew and all you will have to do is put your arm up or take it down. If you are willing to live dangerously raise your arm now and leave it up until invited to put it down.

I appreciate your bravery. Ok, let's begin.

If you think Darwin 's theory of evolution is more reliable than the account of creation in Genesis, leave your hand up. If not, you can put it down.

OK, now if you think of God as an objective, physical being —someone like Michelangelo painted on the Sistine chapel who listens to and answers our prayers, you can put your arm down.

If you believe heaven is a physical place you can put your arm down.

If you believe that God required the sacrifice of his son so we could be saved from our sinful nature you can give your arm a rest.

If you disagree with the premise of my recent sermons that Jesus embodied love, life and being, but was still biologically just a homo sapien sapien like you and me, you can put your arm down.

If you believe that Jesus was physically resurrected to heaven you can put your hand down.

Now for those of you who still have your arms up, we admire your upper body strength, but you are clearly heretics. If that bothers you, you may put your arm down. Are you sure? This is your last chance.

OK, this sermon is particularly for you. Those of you who put your arm down earlier don't particularly need it, for there is no disconnect between your world view and the central event of Christian worship. But the rest of you have a modern secular world view and the Eucharist, as we presently celebrate it, presents some major challenges.

John and the church's view requires having a personal God. John's Jesus was the Word of that personal God who came down from a physical heaven like manna to save a corrupt human race by becoming a once and for all sacrifice to his father God. Unlike the manna in the wilderness that lasts for only a day, Jesus is eternal bread. He has no expiry date. He is eternal because after meeting the need for a blood sacrifice he overcame death and was physically resurrected back to heaven to await his return in glory. We participate in this event according to John by not just eating bread and sipping wine, but by chewing the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood. By this act we become one with Jesus and will be taken to heaven when he returns in glory to destroy evil and establish God's realm.

Even if John was being purely metaphorical, the church became quite literal about this over time. While there would be arguments about whether the bread and wine were literally or spiritually Jesus, the rest remains the orthodox position.

None of this makes sense literally or metaphorically to a modern secular view. So what are people with a secular view doing in the church anyway?

It would probably surprise most who consider themselves orthodox that our secular society emerged from the radical notion of putting flesh on God, an idea that offended and still offends Jews and Muslims. We call this idea the Incarnation which is the focus of our Eucharist where we consume the body of God to become one with God. That is where the idea that the material secular world could be sacred began.

As long ago as 1891, Anglican theologian J.R. Illingworth was warning Christians not to regard secular thought as the enemy of Christianity. In his words, “Secular civilisation has co-operated with Christianity to produce the modern world. It is nothing less than the… counterpart of the Incarnation.”

Lloyd Geering explains the Incarnation eloquently “as the humanisation of God, the secularisation of the divine and the earthing of heaven.”

That the secular world is the offspring of the Christian west may be a shock, since it swallowed up and eliminated the idea that the world was divided into the supernatural and the natural, but in return it gave us an awe-inspiring physical universe full of mystery as revealed by the Hubble telescope. It has given us a new appreciation for the mystery of life as uncovered in the double-helix of DNA.

While the Incarnation has resulted in consigning an objective personal God to the pantheon of history, it has still left us with values we attributed to that God. Values like love, compassion and justice. We now just refer to them as human values. Modern secular Christians see Jesus as historically the fullest embodiment of those human values.

This is not as radical as it may sound. While eventually Christian orthodoxy would see only Jesus as God “enfleshed”, Paul reveals that first generation Christians saw Jesus as the new Adam. Meaning, Jesus encompassed the entire human race. Jesus gave us a new understanding of ourselves. In Paul's language, in Christ we are a new creation. All humanity is part of the incarnation of the divine.

It is this understanding that preserves the importance of the Eucharist for the secular world. It celebrates the best of our humanity as revealed by Jesus.

It reminds us daily that it is not all about us and challenges us to ask what have I done today to meet the world's continuing need for the pursuit of truth, the practice of justice and the nurture of compassion, freedom and peace.

It invites us to find divine attributes in the world and people around us and in our very selves, no matter how ordinary and mundane they may seem. We are no less ordinary than bread that sustains life.

The mystery and power of this secular Eucharist is that those of you who were left with your hands up and those of you who had put them down can still join hands to receive the bread of life and be one. It also invites those who are outside of our tradition to eat at the table for they share the human values we celebrate and nourish.

In a little while from now, when I give you bread and say “Te taro o te Ora,” I'm not only describing that which I give you, I am addressing you with honour. You are the Bread of Life for which I give thanks.

Now in case you think this is the last word on the subject, let me share with you how clever, if not devious, your Vicar is. When Glynn skewered me with this Gospel lesson, he knew that John's discussion on Jesus as the Bread of Life continues next week. He has saved the last word for himself. Don't miss it. I know I won't.

I didn't notice. Was his hand up or down at the end?