"EAT MOR Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, Colorado
10th Sunday in Ordinary Time
5 August 2012
Day Texts: Exodus 16.2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78.23-29
Ephesians 4.1-16
John 6.24-35
(Audio available at end of text)
~
Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into the many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don't worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it was all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.
-Mary Oliver, "Logos"
-So I cried myself to sleep this past
Wednesday. I wish I could say it
was only because it’s my last week at
HFASS. Because I shared with you
in an email that, after tomorrow, we’re going to be out of touch for
awhile. I wish I could say it was
only because I am so grateful for the gift of getting to spend a year with you. And that’s all true, of course.
-I was also thinking of what I should preach
about today, on my last Sunday. So
I picked up St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, our first reading for today
and read the following: “I therefore, the
prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you
have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with
one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in
the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to
the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” And that’s
what made me cry.
-And it wasn’t just because curmudgeony old Paul
can say such beautiful things on occasion. It’s because, after all the drama surrounding who was eating
which chicken sandwiches and who was going to kiss who and where - and after
all the posts on facebook commenting and criticizing and crying out in triumph
and in pain about said drama – I read those beautiful words about “One body?" "One Spirit?" "One Lord, one faith, one baptism?” And they didn’t seem so beautiful anymore.
-Because it feels like, for all their hope and
promise, they’ve never really come true.
And after two thousand years of church, it doesn’t feel like they’ll
ever come true. Feels like the
only thing we’re good at as Christians is treating each other exceptionally
horribly. Like Paul’s exhortation
to “bear with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace” is just a sick joke to mess with us, a bit of
gallows humor said tongue-in-cheek by a man who spent his life dealing with,
you know, Christians.
-It feels like there has never been, and may
never be, “one body.” Looking at
the ways we argue and disagree with one another, I’m not really sure any of us
really want one body. I’m someone who will not be stopping to
“eat mor chikin” on my long drive back to New York. And while I am committed to non-violence and church unity
and all those nice-sounding things, I can’t promise you I won’t feel a pang of smug
self-righteousness every time I speed past a cartoon cow with a paint
brush.
-It just feels easier to have enemies. It feels
more exhilarating to launch verbal missiles across the social media warzone
than to have to sit down with the folks taunting us with their waffle fries and
actually talk with them. It feels more righteous to claim Jesus
for whatever version of good and evil or justice or truth we’ve concocted, then
to actually have to see Jesus in our
enemies – let alone, be Jesus’ body with them.
-It’s so tempting to leave it at that. To just accept the division as an
inevitability, and so settle for choosing a side – hopefully, the side that’s going
to win, or at least give a sense of purpose and something to post online. We make division the starting point,
the origin. And see, I think that’s
where the thing goes to pot. It’s
where hope dies. Where nihilism
begins. Where anger, violence,
reactivity, and retaliation follow.
Where warfare between brothers and sisters is never ending.
-But see, here’s the thing. St. Paul’s claim that we are “one
body,” that wasn’t him giving his personal opinion. Paul was not offering one option among many. Paul did not say, “first assess your
personal religious, social and political views, and if you find that everyone
thinks exactly the same as you, then you
are one body.” Paul was not
offering a choice. Paul was
proclaiming a truth, the truth, about
how reality actually is in the shadow
of Jesus’ cross, and in the light of Jesus’ resurrection.
-Christ was crucified, not to give us a new
political agenda -but, as you may recall, as the result of the violence of human political agendas
and divisions. But in his death on
the cross, Christ also revealed God’s true agenda. And that agenda, that politics, is the way of
forgiveness. It is at the cross we
learn what God’s love looks like. It
looks like this: while we were still God’s enemies, Christ died for us. For you. For me. For the entire world. God’s love is always love for God’s enemies.
-That, declares Paul, is what makes you “one
body.” We are all God’s enemies,
who have been reconciled to God when we least deserved it. Whether we live like it or not, we are
bound to one another, not with the ties of tribe or politics, but with the
cords of God’s love for the world in Christ Jesus. We are one
body. The old has passed away.
Everything really has become
new.
-This disturbing truth was brought home to me,
six years ago, back when we lived in Denver the first time. We were attending Our Savior’s Lutheran
Church, where HFASS sings Holden Evening Prayer during Lent and where we say
matins each Wednesday. Our
Savior’s is a lot like House – there’s a lot of gay folks, and recovering
addicts, and people with tattoos and so forth. It was the Sunday after it was revealed that conservative Colorado
Springs mega-church pastor Ted Haggard, a vehement opponent of homosexuality in
the church, had repeatedly cheated on his wife with a variety of male
escorts.
-Progressive smugness was running high that
weekend; people were relishing in the exposure of Haggard’s hypocrisy. Then Pastor John Baeke, a strong
advocate of gay rights who had spent much of his ministry living in community
with AIDS patients, took the pulpit.
And the first thing he said was, “let’s make sure we’re all praying for
Ted Haggard and his family this week.
He’s our brother in Christ, and he’s going through a difficult
time.”
-Ted Haggard, our brother in Christ? And we get to pray for him? The Gospel is that we’re one body with
that…hate monger?
-But see, that’s the kind of craziness that can
happen when we start with Christ, and not with ourselves, our divisions, or our
agendas. That’s the new reality
Jesus has won for us. That’s the
freedom of the Gospel. To be freed from having to hate and react. To no longer have to see ourselves as
divided. To be enemies who have given
back to one another.
-And I wonder what that looks like today. Maybe that scene from last week’s
Gospel is a clue. Where Jesus took
loaves and fishes and blessed them, broke them, and gave them to a whole crowd
of hapless sinners. Maybe it looks
like folks with their bag of waffle fries and folks with their home-packed bag
lunch getting together at a park.
Maybe it looks like us sitting together, and receiving the Bread of
Life, Jesus Christ, at the Eucharist. You know, the meal of grace God makes for God's enemies, to bring enemies together, out of the body we break?
-Maybe it looks like talking, listening, lamenting, arguing,
struggling, disagreeing, praying for one another. But doing these things together, under Christ’s cross,
around Christ’s table, feeding on Christ’s body. Where the invitation is not to “eat more chikin” or to “post
more stuff on facebook,” but to “EAT MOR JEEZUS.”
-Eat more Jesus. If I could train my chickens to paint billboards, that’s
what I’d have them write, from here all the way to New York. So I could be reminded, every time I’m
tempted to believe the lies of division and despair, that there is a deeper
magic, a better reality, a bigger family.
So I could cry, not only because of the ugliness of humanity, but also,
because of the beauty of God’s Gospel of grace.
-Eat more Jesus. There is nothing else and no one else that can make us one
body. There is nothing else and no
one else who can make all things new. There is nothing else and no one else that will satisfy us. There is nothing else and no one else worth being about as a
church. That’s what you’ve taught
me this year as your Vicar. Now,
as I leave you, I offer that back to you, as my prayer for you, for me, and for
all the body of Christ.
-Eat more Jesus.
-Amen.
