Look at the Children

Text: Mark 9:30-37

As Jesus starts talking in Mark’s Gospel about being first and last, there is a shift of character. If you listen carefully, you might hear it. If you were reading along you might have seen it. Jesus starts talking about servants but ends up talking about children. Hardly a big deal. But people have made much of this small change and have tried hard to reconcile it. They point out that the one who is the servant of all is even the servant of servants, and therefore the lowliest of all. And they point out that Jesus speaks often about his ministry to the poor and the outcast. And they point out that children, too, were considered the lowliest of all. Children had no stake, no power, and no voice in the culture of the age. In that sense, the servant and the child must be the same.

This sort of works. It fits in the context of the disciples’ chatter, which has been all about who is the greatest. (At least they were embarrassed about it when Jesus caught them.) Jesus tells them: stop it! You are being stupid and you do not get it. Jesus is all about turning things upside down (or upside right, as my son used to say). That is certainly true, but an interpretation like this brings to it things we already know about Jesus and and which influence our reading and hearing. We just assume it applies here. Which it does not.

Jesus tells the disciples two different things. First, he tells them they have to become servants. Second, he tells them that they have to welcome children. He does not say that servants and children are the same thing or stand for the same thing. He does not tell them they have to be like servants or that they have to be like children. But if he is not talking about general purpose lowly people when he talks about welcoming children, then what could he be talking about?

Children are different from adults. That is a pretty modern notion, but even in Jesus’ time children started out as children—not just little adults—and eventually became of age. Children are not different because they are small; there are small adults. Or poor; there are poor adults. Or disenfranchised, or illiterate, or hungry, or poop in their pants, or have lots of energy. Adults are and do all those things, too. What makes children different most of all is that adults are old and children are new. Like Christina, for example.

We see children as innocent, meaning un-poisoned. We know children are not always sweet or kind. But they do not have that air of having been corrupted, as adults usually have. We see children as prone to making errors, but that’s OK because they are just children. We forgive them easily. And we see them as having finite but unlimited potential. Against this we see adults as jaded, blameworthy, and reprehensible. And we see them as having diminished potential. All things are possible for children but for adults fewer and fewer things are possible. Or so it mostly seems. A life renewed in Christ is a life re-opened to possibility.

Jesus says that whoever welcomes a child such as the one who sits in his arms at the moment welcomes Jesus. Or to turn the phrase around a little, one way to welcome Jesus is to welcome such a child.

Jesus doesn’t actually quite say Welcome. It is not like we are welcoming a child into our house for a nice dinner as we might welcome a friend. The word Jesus uses here means Receive. As receiving a gift. Or receiving an assignment or command. Or receiving someone into your care. It is more than welcoming, which can be of the moment and impersonal. When we receive a child we become responsible and engaged with the life of that person. To receive a person as Jesus talks about is to accept that person into our life in some way.

We receive children, or hope we do, generously, compassionately, and forgivingly. We give them the benefit of the doubt and and our hearts favor them. And we receive children, or hope we do, with thanksgiving. Not with thanksgiving for anything special that they accomplish or promise, even, but simply for their being. We are thankful that they exist. And once we have received them, we are thankful that they exist in our lives. And having received them, we feed them and protect them, play with them and teach them.

Children force us to focus on someone besides ourselves. Unlike the disciples, who were much more interested in themselves than in one another or even in Jesus. The disciples act like children. Children do think of themselves most of the time. The disciples in Mark are infantile. When Jesus tells them here a second time that he will be executed and rise again, they mumble and shuffle their feet. They argue over which one of them is better. They quibble and quarrel.

Jesus does not invite them to come to him as a child might. They are already doing that. He tells them that while children think of themselves, the job of a disciple of Jesus is to think of the children. The job of a disciple is to offer hospitality. To receive others as Jesus does. To receive others as we receive a child. To be generous. To be compassionate. To forgive. And to care for.

We are to be gracious hosts, putting those who come to us first, to provide for them first, to make allowances for them, and to put ourselves last. To be servants not as the most lowly but as the most giving and most receptive—welcoming. The gracious host is the one who serves others first and him- or herself last.

The church is by design and intent a place of hospitality. There is good news to be heard in the church, but the first bit of it is that those who show up at the door are welcome. It starts there.

It is often hard to be hospitable. Children are cute; adults, not so cute. But these verses from Mark do not portray some sentimental scene with lovely children in the lap of Jesus. We are not called, at least not here, to be children. We are called to be adults. Not to be welcomed but to welcome.

Followers of Jesus—Christians—are by declaration and by intent people of hospitality. Not because people are so great—though they mostly are—and not because they are so accomplished, but simply because they exist. Like children.

We receive them because Jesus told us to. We receive them because to do so is to receive Jesus. And to receive Jesus is to receive God.

The Self of Jesus

Text: Mark 8:27-38

Oliver Sacks, the observant neurologist, has spent most of his life trying to discover what it means to have a self. What is it about our selves that makes them seem to be continuous? What is it about our selves that makes them seem to be ours, to belong to us? If someone cannot remember anything that happened more than five minutes ago, does that person have one self or many? If someone can only remember what happened long ago, is that long-ago person the same as this present person? If someone who could speak now cannot, is that the same person as before? What if someone goes crazy? What if someone is drugged? What of someone loses part of his or her brain? What if someone, as a person Sacks describes did, mistakes his wife for a hat. What is a person? What is a self? What is our self?

This is not an academic question. Who are we? Are you the same person you were ten years ago? Do you feel the same, think the same, have the same desires and fears? If you are the same person, do you rejoice at that or mourn? And if not: same question. Are you responsible for things you once did? What happens to you when you are married? When you have a child? When you get very sick? Or wounded? When you lose someone you love? Do all these things of our lives belong to us, the same person, throughout? If not, if we are sometimes divorced from our former selves, then what makes us one being?

People sometimes speak of life as a journey. It has been a long road, you might say, looking back. Just starting out, you might say, as if you knew where you were going. There is a path on which you walk, you might say. People in religious circles talk particularly about one’s faith journey. As if it were one continuous thread. Or they talk about faith development. As if faith were like a photograph being gradually revealed, or a like a souffle gradually rising. And as if your self, the center of your being, were not transformed.

Jesus asks his students, his disciples, “who do people say that I am?” Why is this question here in this story? It is not enough to say that Jesus said it and therefore it is here. A Gospel writer makes decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Of all the things Jesus said or was reported as saying, why did Mark include this thing, this strange question? Is it a rhetorical device, a way to set up Peter and his passionate answer: you are the Messiah. Is it there to show that people outside the inner circle were talking about Jesus’ ministry? Is it there to foreshadow Jesus’ inevitable death?

Or rather is it there because Jesus really wanted to know? Is it possible that Jesus was not sure who he was? Or that he had moments when he was not sure? Even though divine—as we profess—as human didn’t Jesus wonder from time to time what he was? Which of us humans knows our selves for sure, or the self we are about to be? Even the most confident and certain of us is uncertain sometimes. Who do people say that I am, I wonder? It would be helpful to know.

This story in Mark is about a turning point in the life of Jesus. Up until now Jesus has been known as a healer, a teacher, and someone who ruffles the feathers of those in authority. Like Elijah, or John the Baptist, or a prophet, as people describe him, according to the disciples. But it is increasingly clear that Jesus is trouble, and Jesus is in trouble. You don’t have to have pre-knowledge to know that he was likely to be caught and tried and punished. Now Jesus stands on the cusp.

In terms of the story of Jesus, there is no logical necessity that he be crucified. (Though maybe the necessity is theological). Perhaps he could continue to teach and heal, and in his old age someday to sit in a rocker on the porch with Peter and tell stories about the good old days. Of course, we might not be here then, in a Christian church, but maybe we would. God is powerful.

I bring this up because I’m convinced that that is what Peter is thinking. What he was thinking when Jesus tells Peter that he, Jesus, is about to go to his death. (It is pretty clear that Peter does not hear the part about rising again.) Don’t do it, Jesus. Stay here with us in our little band of disciples. Peter is Jesus’ friend. Peter does not want to lose his friend. And maybe Jesus does not want it, either. Jesus is tempted by Peter’s remarks. Jesus is tempted to turn his back on the resurrection, to succumb to Peter’s vision of the future. Get behind me, Satan! thinks Jesus. You are thinking of human things, he says. And so Peter is, being human and all. And so, perhaps, is Jesus. Maybe Jesus is talking to himself a little. Who will Jesus be? Will Jesus save his self, the person he has been, or will he lose it, becoming someone different. Not a healer, but Messiah, and therefore certain to go to the cross. You might say he has no choice, but he has the same choice all humans do. That we all do.

We sometimes ignore how intertwined the story of Jesus is with the story of Peter. But the story of Jesus is not the story of a lonely leader and a bunch of clueless followers. Peter is there. Clueless like the rest, maybe more so, but close to Jesus. Peter is more than a sidekick. They say you are Elijah, or John the Baptist, the disciples say. Yes, but what do you say, Peter? If Peter had answered differently, would the world have been different? You are the Messiah, says Peter. And Jesus knows who he must now be. I must go to Jerusalem, he says, and be killed, and rise again.

Our steps towards one’s future are less like a journey than a series of shocking transformations. Peter is changed by Jesus, Jesus changed by Peter. That’s how it works with us, too. It is like a dance, a series of proposals, tentative or bold, a series of responses, timid or passionate. Our partners are often other people, but sometimes events, positive or not—illness, accident, birth, inheritance, addiction—invite us forward or they lean too close. With God, we are in a faith dance, more than a faith journey. Wondering, questioning, accusing sometimes, yelling, loving, thanking. Sometimes taking a rest.

Who are we? We are dance partners with God, and with God’s creation. The person we once were and the person we will be are joined together in the dance. Our selves are defined not by our memories or our abilities or the consistency of our thoughts. We propose to God and respond to God’s steps. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes foolishly. But on we go. Dancing. We in God’s arms. God in ours.

Justice First

Text: Mark 7:24-37
Other texts: Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146

Matthew steals this story from the Gospel of Mark. Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and this stealing from him is common. Both Luke and Matthew take Mark as one of their major sources of information. And both then often modify what Mark has to say. As it happens here.

People have had a hard time reconciling the sweet compassion of Jesus with the angry words he uses with the woman. After she asks for healing for her little daughter, Jesus answers that “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Meaning, everyone assumes, the woman and her suffering daughter. But in the end, of course, Jesus relents.

Matthew adds a line to the story that is not in Mark. In Matthew, after Jesus first rejects the woman’s petition, she cries out, “Lord, help me!” You might therefore think—and maybe this was Matthew’s purpose—you might think that Jesus changed his mind because he was moved with compassion. That would suit us, who imagine Jesus to be always even tempered and helpful. And sometimes Jesus is, even in Mark. In one of the first healing stories in Mark, Jesus was so overwhelmed with compassionate feelings that it says his stomach turned over in sympathy. But that is not what happens here. Here Jesus is turned not by his empathy but by God’s constant requirement for justice.

We have polluted this word “justice” in our times. It has become a synonym for retribution, for payback. Justice has come to mean “get what you deserve.” So when we talk about making sure justice is done we often as not mean “let’s find those guys and make sure they are punished.” But that is not what justice means in the Bible.

In the Bible, justice means “restoration.” Our world gets broken. The world is wounded. God’s design is frustrated. And justice is the world healed. Things set right again. The word justice in the Bible has overtones of joy. You know the essence of justice when you are in exile and can finally come home again. When you are in prison and can be back with your family. When you are hungry and get a good meal. When you are homeless and can finally be in a bed of your own. “My beddy, my beddy,” as my son used to say when he was little and tired and ready for sleep. He had a bed. Justice is the freedom from oppression. A conversion from suffocation to free breathing. From sickness to vibrant energy. From slavery to freedom.

In the world of the Bible, in our world, things are out of balance. The poor suffer while the rich gloat. People go hungry while others are gluttons. People are oppressed while others profit from oppression. Justice is done when those things that are broken are restored.

God is powerful. But our God is strange, favoring the weak and on the side of the poor. A God of the outcasts, God comes to us as Jesus, a poor vagrant who hangs with those who disgust others. God frees the people of Israel from Egypt because they are slaves. God’s identification is with justice. I am that God, God tells the Israelites, that God who brought you out of slavery. That one.

Yet the longing for justice lives in the powerful and the wealthy as well as in the weak and poor. So even the well-off find the songs we heard today from Isaiah and the psalm to be good news (oddly, since on the surface these verses condemn them). Partly that’s because everyone has felt oppressed from time to time. But it goes deeper than self-interest. It is mostly because injustice is evil. And that people feel that. Oppression is not from God. Injustice harms our souls as well as our world. Whether or not we benefit, we know that something is wrong.

When the psalm describes God’s power—the God who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them—it is a God who restores justice. “He gives justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry,” so we recited today. The law of Israel starts with justice. The life and teachings of Jesus embody it.

In the Gospel story we just heard, a mother approaches Jesus while he is trying to get a little break. He is a celebrity by then, and Jesus had a hard time finding some private time for rest. He’d been running all over the countryside. So he’s a little crabby when, like an ancient-day telemarketer ignoring the do-not-call list, she interrupts his dinner. He tells her, in essence, to get lost, take a hike.

She argues with him. But instead of appealing to his compassion for her or her sick daughter, she reminds him of his call to do justice. “Even the dogs do not go hungry,” she says. Poor people were allowed to glean, or collect, the wheat from the fields, to gather a little of the produce there. It is an act of justice: the owners of the fields left some grain un-gathered for the poor. When the woman says to Jesus, Let me collect what you do not eat, Jesus remembers his call to do justice. You speak well, he tells her. It is her argument for justice, not her sad condition, that moves Jesus. Maybe Jesus doesn’t like the woman. It doesn’t matter. It is justice, not compassion, that moves Jesus.

We are called to love our neighbor. But this is a call to action, not a call to sentiment. To have compassion for another’s suffering is not enough. As far as justice is concerned, neither our feelings nor our beliefs are germane. We cannot control our feelings. We cannot force ourselves to love someone. But we can act as if we do. We can be just.

It does not matter whether we are pure of heart or soft-hearted or have a bleeding heart or a heart of stone. It does not matter whether we like our neighbor or despise our neighbor. What is more important: that Jesus liked the woman—or that he healed her daughter? Our motives are not the point. We feed hungry people and we treat the sick not because we are good but because they are, not because we love them but because God does, not because we like to but because we have been told to. We forgive those who sin against us not because we have forgotten those sins, but because we follow Jesus.

It is helpful to be reminded, as we have today by these readings, that social justice and the suffering of the poor is central to Christianity. What got the Pharisees mad—mad enough to kill Jesus—was not his compassion. They could not have cared less. What got them mad was his demand for justice.

Justice is not an optional add-on to religious fervor. For many, whether the church is good or is not is measured by whether it has been just. For many others, doing justice has been the path to knowing God. While finding faith is a gift of the Spirit, doing justice is something we can choose.

We are rightly humbled by knowing that without God we are lost. But that does not mean that we are helpless. Just because we cannot do everything does not mean we can do nothing. Just because we are always accepted by God does not mean that nothing is expected of us. Just because we have limited capacity does not mean we are incapacitated. Being a Christian is hard work, but good work. Our weakness calls for God’s salvation. But God’s justice calls for our strength.

The prophet Isaiah sings a song about the time when there is no more injustice. Listen to his words: Rejoice, blossom, be opened, leap like a deer, sing for joy, break forth,

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. …. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. Waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.

Let us pray that we may stand for the poor, fight for oppressed people, speak for the frightened, be bold on behalf of the timid, be stubborn against the powerful. Demand justice for all people, likeable or not, admirable or not, good or not.

Let us pray that with God’s blessing we may see that justice is done and the broken world restored.

You Forget Yourself

Text: James 1:17-27

A young woman, speaking on the floor of the Lutheran national Assembly last week, said that the church is losing young members. She meant not just the Lutheran church but most Christian churches. She said that the reason that was happening was because too many Christians seemed to be hypocritical. “We have very good hypocrisy detectors,” she said. She was talking about a particular and common hypocrisy. She was talking at the time about how often church preached love for neighbor and enemy, and how often at the same the church excluded whole populations and turned them away for one reason or another.

Churches do this commonly, and mostly always have. There are other hypocrisies of Christians. And others, not just young people, who therefore reject the church. Jesus holds his followers to a high and difficult standard. Jesus preached against the grain of the culture. Jesus preached a new world in which things would be different. Very different. But for many who watch the way Christians behave, the new world looks just like the old world. Or worse. Christians spend a lot of time talking about Jesus, but not so much time doing as Jesus said to do. Yes, Jesus loves us, but Jesus talked less about how he and we love each other and more about how we might love others. Jesus’ love for us is love for people and his exhortations to us are to love people as he did. That is hard, which I’m sure you know because I’m sure you have tried it. Often. The hypocrisy that people see in Christians (and Christians see themselves)—the hypocrisy people see most is a lot of yak, yak, yak and not much love, love, love. That, at least, is what James saw. James, the one who provided us with the scripture reading for today.

Martin Luther, chief reformer and a man of strong opinions, hated James. He hated James because at one point (in chapter 2, verse 24, to be exact) James wrote that “by works a person is justified, not by faith alone.” Since Luther pretty much built his career and the church on saying the opposite, he thought James was off the mark and that he should have been kicked out of the Bible. Really. He thought this epistle of James should not have been in the Bible. But, three things: first of all, fortunately, it was not Luther who got to decide what was in and what was out. Second, many other churchy thinkers, from the second century onwards, have liked James a lot. And third, a lot of what James wrote fit in exactly with what Luther said. Luther was a man whose faith powered him to radical and transforming actions, just as James said our faith should power us.

James was an exhorter. He liked to tell people what to do. That can be good. It can be good in the way James did it. What James did was to remind his readers—us, among others—of things they already knew and maybe had forgotten. And the main thing we forget is that our faith calls us to act, to do things.

People spend a lot of time looking into mirrors, James says. And when they leave, he says, they forget what they were like. You can interpret this two ways. You could think that when they looked into the mirror they saw who they really were. But they had very very short memories. As soon as they turned away, they forgot. Forgot immediately, as James says. Or, which seems more likely to me, they used to know who they really were. But something about looking in the mirror made them forget. It was an amnesiac. So, we might think about why mirror-looking might do that to us. And we then might think about who we really were before we forgot.

There are two problems with looking in a mirror. The first problem is that we are doing the looking. And the second problem is that what we are looking at is us.

When we look into a mirror, we bring all our baggage with us. It is hard to be objective. Impossible, really, since we are both the subject and the object. We are judges of what we see. On the one hand, for example, it turns out that 85% of Americans think they are more handsome and beautiful than average. We see ourselves better than perhaps we are. On the other hand, many of us see only flaws in ourselves. We think we are too much one thing or another, or too distorted, or unlovable. So when we look into a mirror, we have a hard time seeing ourselves as others see us. Which is probably some combination of big-time jerk and really nice person.

And the other thing is that when we look in a mirror, we are paying a lot of attention to us. To Me, with a capital M. The object of our gaze is Me. What an interesting person in the mirror, we think. Not everyone—hard to believe—looks as closely at us as we do ourselves. They have their own stuff to worry about. But we, looking in the mirror, don’t really see anything about them. Nothing about the sorrow or happiness or concerns they might have. “Me” is pretty distracting. So when looking in the mirror, we are partial and prejudiced judges who at the moment are oblivious to others.

It is hard to reconcile that with the teachings of Jesus.

So James reminds us. James pulls us away from our enraptured captivity in front of the mirror. Like Meg does Charles Wallace, if you have read Wrinkle in Time. James saves us. Remember! James says. Remember who you are, my brothers and sisters. You are God’s. The God who gave us birth. God who created us as God’s creatures. God who is the source of every good gift—meaning every thing—the source of all reality. And James also reminds us that life with God is covenantal. That is, we have an agreement, or covenant. We made a deal about being God’s people and doing what God says.

Lots of religious folks these days are spending a lot of time telling everyone else about themselves, about themselves the religious folk. They are ranting and raving, really, and speaking very loudly. It seems as if they are speaking about God, but they are usually speaking about how good for them God is. It is good that God is good, but the emphasis here is on whom God is good for, which is that Me person again.

And they are very angry. At pretty much everything. It evidently is OK to do that. Years ago I attended a lecture in which the instructor gave us a short bio of his life. He drew a long timeline on the blackboard, and in the middle wrote a caption: Years of anger and rage. Everyone thought that was cool, because it was cool at the time to be in a rage about things. And about people. So rage was in then, and it still is. We hope when being rage-full to enlist God on our side. Somehow people think that God likes people to be angry. But it is arrogant to think that because you are angry that God will be angry, too. Maybe God does get angry, I’m not sure. But if so or if not, it is not because you think God should be. Be slow to anger, writes James. Your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Or another way to say it: your anger does not affect God’s opinions much.

James says we should not talk so much. Be slow to speak, he says. Be quick to listen. And once we’ve done that, which is hard enough, do more than listen. Don’t just listen, do something. Be doers of the word—doers of the word, mind you, not just any doings—be doers of the word and not merely hearers. (I have to add here that he also says to rid yourselves of “all rank growth of wickedness”; but the King James Version of the Bible puts it more colorfully as “superfluity of naughtiness.”) It is not enough to take all these words of Jesus into ourselves and have nothing good come out. Later in the epistle James says, “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” What good is it? Religion that does nothing is, James says, worthless. It is empty. It is a non-starter.

Do what your faith professes. Walk the walk if you are going to talk the talk. And the talk, James reminds us, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress. Which is Bible shorthand for “take care of all people.” And also to keep oneself unstained by the world. The world stains through pride, power, fear, selfishness. But the law of God, according to James—and Jesus—is the love of one’s neighbor. Humility (what James calls meekness), servanthood, peace, and compassion.

The word of Jesus is grafted onto his followers. It is implanted in us. We are changed by it. But that change is not in theory. It does not lead to a theoretical understanding of God and us. It sits in us, a reminder of who we are and who made us and who, besides us, that creator loves, and what we should do about that.

Listen to James: Don’t forget.

Eating. A Difficult Teaching.

Text: John 6:51-69

Let’s be perfectly clear. As if that were possible.

We would like to be clear about doctrine. How does salvation work, for example? We would like to be clear about morality. What is good behavior and what is not? We would like to be clear about ethics. What is just? We would like to be clear about the future. What will happen to us and when? We struggle, sometimes, to make sense of things. We would like to understand how things work. In light of what we would like, today’s Gospel reading is difficult. That’s what many of the disciples thought. “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?” they said.

Over the past few weeks we’ve heard a lot about bread from our friend John, the Gospel writer. This whole section of the Gospel of John, chapter six, is called the Bread of Life Discourse. It starts with a story of how the stomachs of 5000 people were filled with just five loaves of barley bread. It ends today, with a teaching about bread and flesh that most disciples can not stomach.

It is not clear exactly what John is trying to do here. It has been unclear from the very beginning. If you find it confusing, you are not alone. The earliest church thinkers did not agree how to interpret what John wrote about what Jesus said. Some thought that Jesus meant that the bread he is talking about—the bread of life—means his teachings. For those thinkers, this discourse has a lot to do with believing, and in particular believing the right thing. For them, when Jesus says “whoever believes has eternal life”—that is the key message. But others thought that Jesus was clearly speaking about the Eucharist. For those thinkers, this passage is John’s equivalent of the Last Supper story in the other Gospels (there is no Last Supper scene in John). For them, when Jesus says “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not live”—that is the point. And some, of course, say both interpretations are right. Or wrong.

Either way, it is hard not to be moved by what Jesus says. Both the power of belief and the power of the sacrament of the Eucharist have moved people of faith for millennia. But while the believing section has been relatively easy to swallow, the bread and flesh part has not. At least intellectually, if not liturgically. For many people this passage is the make-or-break part of Christianity. For some it is the most difficult and creepy part of Christian teachings and practice. For others, it is the most powerful and nourishing part.

Nonetheless, there is no way to get around this eating-flesh scene. People do try. In the Reformation, 500 years ago, Martin Luther had a famous debate with another reformer named Zwingli over whether Jesus was really, truly, in the bread. Zwingli was squeamish about it. He said that Jesus did not really mean what he said. In the Eucharist, which is what they were discussing, Jesus was in heaven and the bread was here on earth. It was just bread. Folks were not really eating Jesus. Luther, as usual, interpreted things in an earthy and common way. I am the bread, says Jesus. This is my body, says Jesus. Flesh. It may not be understandable, Luther said, but it is certainly clear.

Christian churches choose sides more or less with either Zwingli or Luther. Lutherans and others say, when distributing the bread, “the body of Christ, given for you,” or similar words. But not all churches do. At a church nearby, the people complained that the body and blood talk made them feel “deeply alienated” and therefore when they shared the bread, they said “because you are, I am.” You can think what you like about that. But in any case, what Jesus said makes people squeamish. It always has and it still does.

Theology has been called the endeavor of “faith seeking understanding.” And liturgy means “the work of the people.” There is a nice balance in Christian life between faithful thinking and faithful doing. There is no requirement by Jesus that we understand all about our faith. There is a requirement that we do some things, like share in the Lord’s Supper. And to gather together. And to pray. And to serve others. Sometimes our understanding leads us to do those things but just as often, if not more often, doing those things leads to an understanding.

The danger of all of us who long for clarity and certainty is that we ignore the squeamish and icky and mysterious parts of the teachings of Jesus and substitute in their place an intellectualized version of him. A colleague of mine wrote that sometimes we imprison “Christ inside our minds, turning him over and over like a rock in a tumbler until he is polished and smooth, pleasing and easy to believe in.” But Jesus is not so easy.

There is a lot of talk by Jesus about food. (Some people conclude that therefore Jesus must have been a Lutheran.) Eating, for all it is so commonplace, is mysterious. Eating merges things together that are otherwise separate. It does this in a social way, as when Jesus insists on eating with the wrong sort of people. Or as it does when we all gather to eat with one another here at Faith and become more connected. Or as it does in Faith Kitchen, when eating reconciles people—even if temporarily—people who are otherwise unfriendly.

But eating also merges things in a more physical and animal way. Things we eat become part of us. Those vegetables become us. That chicken becomes us. These mushrooms become us. It is a little creepy. Eating takes parts of other living things and creatures and makes them into parts of us. If it were not so necessary for life, it, too, might make us squeamish.

John’s understanding is that the power and effect of Jesus is that Jesus and we are somehow intertwined. In the words of Jesus as quoted by John, Jesus abides in us and we abide in him. This mutual abiding-in appears all over John, and it appears in this chapter. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them, Jesus says. We may not understand how this all works—Luther said to leave that all to the philosophers—we may not understand how it works, but we can see immediately how it is something like eating. Eating makes things be a part of us. And eating something together makes us part of something. Eating does away with distinctions that otherwise seem so clear and permanent. Eating, to say the obvious, is organic. In the real world, things are less separate than we usually imagine, and things become parts of other things.

It is not just that eating is a metaphor for Jesus and us. Jesus does say in this passage, “my flesh is really food and my blood is really drink” And he says elsewhere that we must eat and drink bread and wine which he says is his body and blood. But as far as understanding goes, these words are better than other words might be. They are a way to explain what is going on. It is not enough to believe something about Jesus. You have to devour him. To join in him in some way, which way we are not required to figure out exactly what. To have Jesus not only in our thoughts, but in our brains, our body, our being.

This discourse in John starts with the feeding of 5000 people with just a little bit of bread. Yet each of them were filled with, it says, as much as they wanted. They were satisfied. Jesus, especially in John, promises abundance. The people who stayed with Jesus by the end of this passage longed for that rich and satisfying life.

The ones who stayed were the twelve, meaning the twelve disciples. This is the first time in John that the disciples are described this way, as a band of twelve followers. The disciples were the ones who stayed in spite of Jesus’ difficult teaching. The rest went away. The disciples stayed not because they had the strongest stomachs. Not because they were the cleverest and most understanding thinkers. The ones who continued to follow Jesus were not the ones who understood things most clearly. They were the ones who had the strongest need for life. They were the ones who had the greatest hunger.

The Christian Quest and Getting to the Future

Text: Luke 17:11-19

A visitor to Faith Kitchen last week asked how we preserve faith in humanity. It was an odd question, since it seems to me that Faith Kitchen is a good example of human activity. People were feeding people. People who might otherwise be crabby with one another were getting along just fine. People who might have crossed to the other side of the road to avoid one another were sitting down to share a meal. This is loving your neighbor and also loving your enemy. It builds faith in humanity. So that’s what I told the visitor.

But that’s not what he meant. He wasn’t talking about the people at Faith Kitchen. Not about the people eating or the people cooking or the people who had brought food or the people serving food and cleaning up and organizing the meal. He wasn’t talking about the people who didn’t have much but were generous with their time.

He was talking about some other people. People who have a lot but who fail to share it with people who don’t. People who don’t even see hungry people, or don’t see people who live in substandard housing, or no houses, or who are sick and cannot get medical care. He was talking, as Mary mother of Jesus calls them, about people who are proud in the imagination of their hearts. Or, as another person translates it, people who are arrogant in attitude.

Don’t the events these days, he asked, make you despair about the world? How can so many people be so self-centered? How can they spare so little for others? How can fear or greed so consume them that they would let people go hungry and sick? In their personal and political decisions and in the words they speak, people have abandoned their neighbors. Why do you buy that which is not bread? asks the prophet Isaiah. I always thought he meant bread for ourselves. But maybe he means also bread for others. Why, the visitor asked, are people not buying bread for others? (And we are buying a lot of not-bread.) This is not a new question. The visitor knows that. Isaiah wrote a long time ago, and so did Luke, who quotes Mary’s song. Will things always be this way? Is there no hope for the world and its people?

There are lots of answers to this question. Like: many people are generous. Or like: that’s the way it always has been. Or like: we should be more giving. Or like: poor people are a lot better off now than in the time of Jesus.

But today I’d like to talk about whether there is a particular answer that Christians might give, based on their faith.

The passage in Luke’s Gospel is commonly called the Magnificat, after the Latin word translated “it magnifies,” which is what Mary says in the first verse. Mary was poor. She was young. She was a member of an oppressed people, the Jews in Palestine who were subject to Roman occupiers. When Mary hears that God has planned for her child to be a king, she figures that is pretty terrific. Kings are rarely born from peasants, then as now. God must have something really amazing planned. She sings a song, as others in the Bible sing when confronted with good news. She sings a song praising God’s intervention in the world.

At first, her song is all about Mary. God is good, but God is good to and for Mary. I am the God-magnifier, she says. God is doing great things for me, Mary. God is favoring me, Mary, just a lowly servant. The actor is God, but the beneficiary is Mary.

But gradually the song changes. Surely God is working through Mary, but the purpose of this work is to change the world. It is not just Mary, but Mary’s people that God cares about, she realizes. Those who are powerful, rich, and proud will be brought down, scattered, sent away with nothing. The arrogant of heart will lose their control over every thing. The hungry will finally be fed. The impoverished will finally share in the abundance that God provides. All of Israel will be saved. And even more than that, all of descendants of Abraham. And even more than that, all people.

What a great hymn. But when we read or hear verses like this, what are we supposed to do with them? Do they change the world for us in some way? Are we different after knowing them? Or are they just sentimental supports that make us feel good about God?

These are powerful words. Do the proud and greedy tremble when they hear them? Do the poor take heart? Or is it a false promise to the poor, who after all have heard words like this for at least 2000 years. Are they cheap comfort to the comfortable, who are thankful that God will take care of things and has let them off the hook? Do they mean anything at all? To us, they do.

The Christian life is a quest. Much of what we do, in worship, prayer and meditation, service, and study prepares us for this quest. It takes continuous and faithful practice and training to equip us, as many quests do. The quest has two parts. Two goals. Both goals are hard to achieve in the face of the world. The quest’s goals are not the same as the world’s goals. But they are in the world. They have to do with the world.

The first part of the quest is the quest for hopefulness. In this quest, we search for the conviction to say to the Faith Kitchen visitor that things will not always be bleak. We read in the Bible about resurrection, about a new Jerusalem, about a re-balancing of fortunes, about the spread of compassion to all people. And our quest is to believe that with all our hearts and to reflect that belief in all our actions. One thing we might mean when we say we believe in Jesus is that we believe with hope in the picture of the world that Jesus paints. When Mary sings so enthusiastically, she is overflowing with hopefulness. God is good.

And the second part of the quest is the quest for selflessness. In this quest, we search for a way of being that takes us out of the center of our own concern. We read in the Bible about humility and obedience, and we practice thanksgiving. We act as if, and sometimes it is true, to care for others more than ourselves, or at least as much as ourselves. Our quest is to put the community of humanity first. Be as a servant, Jesus says. Feed my sheep, Jesus says. Forgive those who harm you, Jesus says, seventy times seven times.

These two quests are connected. They are connected in the way that Mary connects them. The hoped-for world is about all people, but it is also about each of us in particular. The messed-up state of things is not good for anyone. Everyone will benefit from the world that we hope for. And, as Mary saw instantly, each person is a part of the world getting there. But our part hinges on selflessness. It does not work if each of us grabs all we can and ignores others.

Our quest as Christians is not to be better people. Or maybe it is sometimes, but that is not what Mary is talking about. This magnificent passage is not about what we should do. It is not a chore. It is not law. It is not commandments. It is instead about what we should hope for.

Our quest is not an easy one. That’s because hopefulness that is not sentimental and humility that is not cynical are things the world mocks.

Hopefulness and humility are Christian virtues. They are not worldly virtues. That’s the reason we who live in the world have to practice them. But they are not the cause of our faith but a result of it.

Mary sings not because people are so great, but because God is. To answer the visitor: yes, we have faith in humanity. Not because we trust in the goodness of people, but because we trust in God’s desire.

Food, Glorious Food

Texts: John 6:1-21, 2 Kings 4:42-44, Psalm 145:10-19

Last month marked the eighth anniversary of Faith Kitchen [Faith’s community meal program]. On that day eight years ago, three folks from Faith and one guest sat at the table where we now serve Sunday coffee hour. At the next meal a month later, on July 26, there were no guests. But within six months Faith Kitchen was serving 30 people at each meal.

Since then, about 9,000 people have come for meals and over 150 different helpers have bought, prepared, cooked, and served food for dinner. Four different worshipping congregations have helped regularly. Folks from Temple Beth Shalom and from Calvary have been essential Faith Kitchen leaders. Food comes mostly from the Greater Boston Food Bank plus contributions from Carberry’s at first and now HiRise Bakery. Meals have been donated by local restaurants, especially East Coast Grill and recently Oleana. The food is almost always great and there is always plenty of it. The goal of Faith Kitchen is “no one leaves hungry, no food goes to waste.”

Why do we do this? Why do all these people gather twice a month to spend time feeding people they don’t know? (Or that they don’t know for long, because many guests come back over and over.) Why does the church, why does Faith, spend money, time, prayers, and energy feeding strangers?

Partly we do it because our faith calls us to do it. We read in the Bible that the people of God feed one another. We hear in the Gospel of Matthew that feeding hungry people is like feeding God. We see that Jesus fed the crowds rather than sending them away, and that Elisha did the same before him. We know that Abraham fed the strangers who were God in disguise. We know that Jesus told his disciple Peter to feed Jesus’ sheep. People of the book feed other people. That’s the rule.

Partly we do it because it is a fun activity. It provides camaraderie. Faith Kitchen is full of crazy chaos, and it is always an adventure to see what will happen between 5:00 p.m. when people gather and 6:30 when people eat. A month ago we had a fire in the stove and had to call the fire department. They threatened to condemn the stove temporarily. Instead of serving fifty pounds of prime codfish filets, we’d would have been serving sushi. Fortunately, the damage was minor and they gave us the OK to cook. Last week, as if to compensate, the ovens refused to light. One day last year we expected fifty people for a cookout; instead 100 people showed up. You never know.

Partly we do it because the people are good company. The gathering at Faith Kitchen includes the guests who come to eat as well as those who come to cook. There are Faith Kitchen regulars who have been coming for years. And at every meal there are some new folks. The ones who are talkative have stories to tell. Some help out with the cooking and cleanup. The cooks sit and eat with the guests. It is a community of people brought together through food. And also through their affection for and interest in each other.

But mostly we do it because it because it is a natural pleasure to feed people. Or to put it a different way, to feed people is to praise God.

All your works praise you, begins the psalm reading for today. God is powerful and splendid and glorious and everlasting, sings the psalm writer. God lifts up those who have fallen and is always nearby. Fine and grand words, these. But when it comes time to be specific and personal, the psalm sings: You give to all creatures food in due season. You open your hand and satisfy the needs of every creature. Food comes first.

Chris Schlesinger, the owner of East Coast Grill, stood some months ago watching the folks at Faith Kitchen eat. He had just made everyone steaks on grill and mixed grilled vegetables. He had provided a bounteous meal. And looking around at all the tables, he said “I just love to watch people eat.” He is in the right business. He loves to feed people.

But we are all in the feeding business. God feeds God’s creatures, says the psalm. There is a satisfying pleasure in the words of the psalm. Partly the pleasure comes from knowing that as creatures we will be cared for. And partly it comes from knowing that God loves to watch people eat. This psalm understands that God takes pleasure in giving us good things, good food. And that we, made in God’s image, being God’s children, have inherited that pleasure.

To eat is to constantly be thankful. But to feed others to constantly praise God. Eating reminds us of both our hunger and the goodness of creation. But feeding others reminds us of God’s abundance.

We feed others whether we have a lot or a little. Sometimes we have a lot, like the man who brings the prophet Elisha twenty loaves of bread and and a sack of newly harvested grain. Sometimes we have next to nothing, like the few people who could only scrape together five loaves of bread and two fish to give Jesus. Hospitality requires that you feed others before you feed yourself. But strangely, doing so is not a chore. It is a pleasure. Partly it is just the pleasure we get from watching creatures eat; when I was growing up I used to love feeding the horses. And partly it is pure generosity; it always makes us feel richer to give to others more than it does to get things for ourselves.

But mostly when we give to others first, it reminds us that we can expect God’s continuing blessing. There will be enough for us, too. It reminds us that God is the source of all things.

People hear the stories we just heard about Elisha and Jesus, and it bothers them. How did that fish-multiplying thing work? Did people secretly add food that they originally held back when the disciples were collecting donation? Did new bread magically pop up in the baskets when no one was looking? Was it a miracle of physics or a miracle of sociology? But these stories are not about God’s magic. They are amplified examples of what God does all the time, which is to give all creatures the things needed to sustain life. This is not theology, really. We are constructed to live on what God provides. It is a blessing, for sure. But it is a greater blessing is that we love it so.

This Tuesday at Faith Kitchen we are having rolled sole filets stuffed with lobster and crab, salad, and fresh-baked bread from the HiRise bread company. Ice cream for dessert. Like all Faith Kitchen meals, this is a lot like stone soup. Gather people together. See what’s in the pantry that someone has given us. Figure out who is there to help and what skills and temperaments they bring. Mix and cook.

Then everyone sits down to eat. We say a prayer of thanksgiving. Then we serve the meal, praising God all the while.