2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4: 25-5:2
John 6: 35, 41-51

Bread of Life

Tell me about bread!

Flour, water, yeast, sugar, and salt! That’s all it takes, in the right amounts to make my Mom’s own old fashioned white bread. Of course, you can get fancy! Raisin and cinnamon bread. Brown bread. 12 grain bread. Rye bread.

Tell me what the phrase ‘home-made bread means’! It may mean hot, fresh-from-the-oven, bread covered with lots of melting butter on cold days. Or, it may have to include a generous coat of butter and peanut butter, or raspberry jam, or molasses, or honey or cinnamon. It may mean a warm comforting smell as you return from a long day working in the fields.

Typically, kids who have to take home made bread to school envy the kids with white store bought bread; but those white bread kids may well envy the home-made bread; especially if they rarely have any, hot, right out of the oven.

Real estate agents tell those wishing to sell their house to leave a bread-maker going when they temporarily vacate the house for a prospective buyer to tour it - because the smell of baking bread leaves positive memories of the house in the minds of those prospective buyers.

Church suppers and charity bake sales advertise ‘home-made’ bread because it is a best seller, the prime attraction.

Bread isn’t hard to make, there are plenty of things harder; but it does take time; time to mix and to knead and to form, but also time to wait. You can’t rush bread; the yeast must be given time to work and to interact with the rest of the ingredients so that the bread will rise properly. Sometimes though, it has too much time. One day, about 10 years ago, I took one of my bible study participants out to lunch. Just as we finished a leisurely lunch, her eyes went blank and she gasped. She had forgotten her bread - timed to rise until her expected arrival home from Bible Study, well over an hour earlier! When we arrived at her house, the bread had risen out of the bowl, pushed the towel aside and was cascading down onto the counter and heading toward the floor! She pushed it all back into the bowl and set the timer for another rise! I gather that it turned out just fine! One good thing about bread is that it is very forgiving.

In most cultures, bread, or its equivalent means the difference between hunger and a full stomach; between death or life. Cooked in wood stoves or brick ovens, over open fires or in state of the art kitchen ranges or in the large kitchen of a professional bakery, bread is the stuff of life! At home we were encouraged to eat a piece pr two of bread if we were still hungry and there was no more meat left. It was that or potatoes!

When John’s gospel describes Jesus as the bread of life it is making an important theological and spiritual statement. John is trying to convince his hearers that, in Jesus, believers had found an essential ingredient in their relationship with God. In Jesus, believers had met God. In Jesus’ life they had found what was essential to truly abundant life.

In a great way, the statement “I am the bread of life” is the primary statement in the passage I read earlier in the service, while the rest of the verses elaborate on what that means. As Jesus’ hearers, and later, John’s readers, contemplated the connections between bread and the life of faith, Jesus drew some of the connections for them. In this passage, Jesus makes a direct allusion to the manna that fed the people of Israel during the wilderness wanderings. According to the story as outlined in great detail in the book of Exodus, the people of Israel awoke each morning to a fresh batch of a substance they called ‘manna’ lying on the ground. There was no use stocking up because it only lasted a day before spoiling. One biblical tradition tells us that the manna gathered on the day before the Sabbath lasted two days, because none fell on the Sabbath. While it was clear to all that this manna was a gift from God, it was also quite apparent that the factor of human response was also important. It seems that Jesus is talking about manna that lasts a lifetime; once you eat it, you’ll never be hungry again! Some days, especially these hot and humid ones, it would be nice not to have to cook, or go to a restaurant, or get take out! I don’t think food delivery is available in Rexton! I’d go for that - permanent food! And it is a gift, to boot.

Of course, like most of what Jesus says, it is misunderstood. They were thinking of things quite literally. They knew whose child he was. They had watched him grow up. Their kids had played pranks with him and his brothers. Jesus was fron next door, not heaven. And that stuff about Jesus being bread must have really confused them. Of course, Jesus is NOT literally bread, any more than he is a light, or a road, or any of the other objects or things he is recorded as using to describe himself in the gospels. Of course these were metaphors to describe truths that could not really be put into words.

Yet there was something larger that was likely bothering some people. They were not so much worried about a literal comparison with bread as they were with the particular form of the verb, “I am”. In the words so simple to us, I am, they heard the great words of God on Sinai, spoken to Moses. When Moses asked God who to tell Pharaoh had sent him, he was told to tell Pharaoh that “I am” had sent him. Those first listeners also heard a kind of connection with the power of God that, in their minds, no truly religious person should ever claim.

Yet, here we are, all these years later. Here we are with these metaphors and these claims. Who is Jesus for us and how does he function in the life of faith?

Just as bread is not made up of one ingredient, or even two, the importance of Jesus for the Christian life does not rest on only one or two aspects. When Jesus spoke of eating this bread he used a very graphic verb that can probably be better translated as “to chew” “From The Mystical Way in the Fourth Gospel” by L. William Countryman, Trinity Press ISBN 1-56338-103-6 which gives me, at least, the impression that this is not something simple, soft and sweet, like a croissant or like ‘boughten’ white bread, but like a thick crust of good, old fashioned, home made! The life of faith is something we need to stick our teeth into, something we may need to struggle with, something that will take us a while to process. The life of faith cannot be consumed in one meal, a once and for all experience, but it comes to us, over a lifetime of encountering the presence of the living God as found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and in the encounter with the Spirit who is always with the church.

Of course, the most obvious connection is the service of Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper. Some churches call it ‘Eucharist’ which is a word which is much more evocative of thanksgiving than it is of death and mourning. In ‘communion’ we remember that it was not just that Jesus gave up his life on the cross, it was that he gave his life to the world. It is his whole life we remember as we take the bread in our hands; his teachings, his actions and the power of God which showed that his was the way of truth and abundant life. In contemplating the living bread witch which Jesus compares himself, we are called to experience the power of God which brought him from death to a new life, a life which could never be taken away.

Today (This morning) in St Andrew’s we (will celebrated) (celebrated) the sacrament of baptism. Three sets of parents brought their daughters for me to welcome them into the community of faith. As I pour(ed) water on their heads we (are) were all participating in the ages old rite of welcoming and belonging. It was and is also a rite through which we proclaim our beliefs about Jesus, the Christ, and act on them. As a community of faith we welcome those who proclaim that Jesus is the way of life and faith.

Like bread is to our bodies so faith in Jesus is to our souls. In Jesus we have found life and found it in great abundance. It is too much to explain with mere words. We cannot hold it all in our minds at once. We need to grasp it with our hearts; the same heart that can contemplate a parent’s love for his or her child. It is a love which can’t be counted, proven or even seen, but it is very real because we know its results.

In our Christian life together and when we are apart from one another, we proclaim that, in and through Jesus, God has acted in a unique way to save the whole world. We accept this love and this promise when we eat and drink in the sacrament of communion and when we gather around the font of baptism. We accept this promise when we look at life as a people nourished by this bread of life. We know that we are a community who have received great gifts from God and we share them and allow them to be multiplied by the abundance of God’s grace.

Let us at all times give thanks to God for abundant gifts.

Amen.

1 Kings 2: 10-12, 3:3-14
Psalm 111
John 6: 51-58

I grew up watching reruns of “I Dream of Jeanie”, you know the one with Larry Hagman, later of JR Ewing fame. In one particular episode the astronaut, Maj. Tony Nelson who has a genuine genie for a wife, has an important assignment and needs to get Jeanie out of the way so as to avoid any embarrassment. Jeanie is always wishing to please her ‘master’ so in this episode he takes her up on her offer. He invents several outlandish requests in order to keep her busy. As I remember them, the tasks involve things such as making it snow in the Sahara desert and turning the North Pole into a tropical paradise. Of course, Jeanie gets it done in jig time and Maj. Nelson has to come up with another plan.

What would having your own genie be like. You could have anything you wanted, anytime you wanted it. Money! Fame! Companionship! Chocolate!

Did you hear the story about the man who found an odd shaped bottle on the beach in Toronto. Lake Ontario is not the cleanest so the man has to wipe off the bottle. As he was wiping the bottle on his shirt out popped a genie. The genie immediately said, “O you are my master. Since you have released me from my one thousand year bondage I will give you three wishes!

The man thought for a few minutes and then said, “ I would like the following three things to happen this year: The Leafs must win the Stanley Cup, the Raptors must win the NBA title and the Blue Jays must win the World Series.”

The genie thought for a moment and then said, “Hey, the last thousand years wasn’t so bad. And he jumped back into the bottle! Thanks to Jeeva Sam of the ‘Midrash” preaching list for that illustration! Of course, there are plenty of genie jokes, but you get the point, I’m sure

Now we all know genies don’t exist! Don’t we? WELL. If we cant use genies to get what we want why not try prayer. I’ve heard that works!

If I could carry a tune, I’d sing you a song. But I can’t and I wont; I promised (Gloria) (Rod) The organists - My inability to sing in tune has become a running joke with a succession of musicians with whom I have had the pleasure of working!!!! BUT, if I could song it would go like this:

 Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz? 
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. 
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends, 
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz? 
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color TV?
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me. 
I wait for delivery each day until three, 
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color TV?

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town?
I’m counting on you, Lord, please don’t let me down. 
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town?

I guess Janis Joplin had a different mother, and different Sunday School teachers, than I did. WHEN I WAS A CHILD I was taught that it was completely inappropriate to pray for ‘frivolous items’, or to pray for ‘big ticket items’. I wasn’t supposed to show God that I was greedy. I was told that God didn’t listen to greedy prayers!

During my first year at Mount Allison I took an introductory course in biblical studies. Dr Charles Scobie, the professor, a somewhat dour Scotsman and Presbyterian minister, was also the Dean of Arts. In the middle of the second semester he had to go to some kind of Maritime Deans’ Meetings in Halifax. Dr Colin Grant, a United Church minister with a very dry wit who was the professor who taught the ‘theology’ type courses took the class. His comment was: ‘today we are studying the wisdom literature and Dr Scobie called on me - after all, what would the Dean of Arts know about wisdom!” I’m told that he used the same joke the next year when the Dr Scobie had to go to the same meetings and he again called on Dr. Grant to do the lectures on Wisdom literature.

No, Dr. Grant was not slighting Dr. Scobie, but merely making the point that wisdom and “book learning” are two different things. One can indeed have one without the other.

While today’s Old Testament lesson is in the History section of the Bible, not in the ‘Wisdom Literature’ section, it does refer to wisdom. In today’s reading from the book of Kings we find the new King, David’s son Solomon, praying for wisdom. It is as if he can have anything he wants but he prays for discernment and an ability to govern wisely and well We are told by the writer of 1 Kings that since Solomon chose wisely we are told that God declared that he was indeed to be given this as well as riches and honour.

Solomon, it is said in many places in the Bible, had great wisdom. I’m sure we have all heard the story that comes after this one in the bible. Two women come to Solomon with a dilemma. Apparently each of these women has a son of about the same age. One has died in the night, either from accidental suffocation or possibly what we know as crib death. What Solomon has on his hands are two women claiming the same child. It seems to be a case of one woman’s word against the other so he orders the living child cut in two and a half given to each woman. Immediately one woman objects saying that she would rather the other woman have the boy than see him die, while the other woman is willing to live with this solution. Solomon discerns that the first woman is the real mother because of her willingness to give up the child in order to save his life and presents the still living son to her. We are told that people came from far and to partake of Solomon’s wisdom. The wisdom of this long ago king has also become part of our everyday vocabulary. Even today, people throw up their hands in the midst of a difficult dilemma and say, “You’d have to have the wisdom of Solomon to solve this!”

From time to time I catch glimpses of several of the many “judge shows” on tv. In each episode “ Judge Judy” or “Judge Jo Brown” must determine the truth between two often wild and crazy stories and dismiss the case or award damages accordingly. It is usually frustration and rarely easy.

Wisdom, as I said, is not the same as learning. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary lists one of the definitions of wisdom as “experience and knowledge together with the power to apply them critically or practically” Oxford University Press, Toronto 1998

Once upon a time in a convent far, far away, the Mother Superior was dying. The nuns gathered around eager to fulfill any request. She raised her head and said, “May I have a drink of warm milk, please”. A young nun immediately ran to the kitchen to heat up some milk. As she was putting the milk in the saucepan she noticed a bottle of whiskey that someone had given them the previous Christmas. After hesitating only a moment, she added a little to the milk, then a little more and then still more. When the milk was warm enough she took it to the Mother Superior who sipped at it at first, then drank it all in great gulps. She signed, laid back on the pillow and closed here eyes. One of the younger nuns said, “Do you have any words of wisdom for us, Reverend Mother?”

“Yes I do,” she said, raising her head off the pillow, “Whatever you do, DON’T SELL THAT COW!” From AHA! a magazine published by Woodlake Books

Sometimes wisdom is very ‘homespun and practical.

The problem with Solomon was that his wisdom lost its practical application. Parts of the biblical story make it quite clear that Solomon was NOT a wise king. We are told of his massive building projects and the construction of them is outlined in great detail. However, genies were not used to build these mammoth structures whose specifications are outlined in the biblical record, they were build with conscripted labour and financed through war and heavy taxation. Solomon ended up as a cruel and heartless king who forgot that his kingship was a trust and responsibility. No doubt the glory of his building projects blinded him to the hardships that the construction created.

How do we avoid the dilemma of Solomon? Well, of course, none of us are King Solomon, nor do we have anywhere near that kind of power. But we are faced with very similar dangers as we seek the wisdom of God in our lives.

As I said one of Solomon’s problems was his oppression of his own people so that the glory of his reign might be increased. The more we look into it, the more we, in the western world, are faced with the fact that much of our wealth comes as a result of the poverty elsewhere. While we, as individuals are hardly responsible for it, many of our tropical fruits and products such as coffee, sneakers and clothing, come from sweatshop labour and exploited peasant workers. Our consumption and wealth depend, at least in some measure, on their poverty. As a people of faith we should seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit so that life, for all of God’s people can be more like God intended.

I think that one of the root causes of Solomon’s dilemma was his self-centeredness. His concentration on the wealth of the kingdom was in reality a concentration on his own glory, and not on the well-being of all the people who were his responsibility. He had great gifts and talents at his disposal but he used them for selfish ends and not for others. When we forget that we are called to serve and to proclaim the Good News to others we are in danger of losing our grip on the wisdom of God.

The passage from Ephesians tells us that, as Christians, we always live in contrast to the dominant culture. To use a different metaphor, ‘we march to the beat of a different drummer’. While the call of a Christian is to allow the Spirit to dwell in our innermost being, it is not just our personal salvation, our personal relationship with God and our personal gain that we are gifted with. We are given a great trust and responsibility. The scriptures tell us that the ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fearing God is not the same as being afraid, but rather living in the awareness of the great power and mystery that is God. We are called to respond to God’s love, God’s call, and God’s gifts to us by reaching out to those in need, by living lives that show that God is at the centre of our lives. We are to apply all of our intellectual abilities to our faith but also to guide and direct the focus of our efforts toward the living our of the Gospel call to live out the Good News in all that we say and do.

Prayer is not like finding our own personal genie. When we pray we should not be asking for things which will feather our own nests and which will take away from us the call to act in responsibility and love toward those around us. We can enter into prayer with the hopes that our renewed and strengthened relationship with God will make us wise. And when we have a connection with God’s wisdom we will be led and enabled to be the people God calls us to be.

Amen!

1 Kings 8: 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6: 10-20
John 6: 56-69

Every so often in my hospital visitation I encounter a patient whose visitors are required to wear protective clothing before visiting. Sometimes its for my protection; I might catch what the patient has. At other times it is for the patient’s; he or she might catch a simple cold and become very ill because of a severely depressed immune system.

We’ve all seen the medical shows in which the surgeons scrub their hands and arms almost raw before donning gown and gloves before surgery. That is for the patient’s protection.

Several years ago, Katherine, my niece, who was about 5 at the time, went over to her grandparent’s house to show Grammie the contents of her hockey bag, most of which were handed down from her big brother. Out of the bag came all of the items designed to protect the hockey player engaged in a fast paced, rough and tumble sport: helmet, shin pads, shoulder pads, neck and elbow guards and, of course, an athletic support and “cup”.

Driving down the road, we are protected by seat belts, and air bags, and crumple zones. Canadian Standards Association rules and regulations, which govern just about every product on the market, are designed to ensure the things we buy are as safe as possible.

If you watch any TV news at all these days you can’t help but see and hear stories of the continuing conflict and unrest in Iraq and the suicide attacks in Israel. Terrorist attacks are on the rise and while the UN led forces are much better equipped than the civilian population, there is no final guarantee of safety for anyone in that war zone. A deadly attack on the headquarters of the UN just this past week has shown that!

In today’s passage from the Epistle of Paul to the church at Ephesus, we heard Paul exhorting the believers to be strong in the faith. He is telling them to be strong because they really needed to be, as Christians they faced considerable opposition. In order to talk about the nuts and bolts of this ‘strength’ he uses images that would have been all too familiar to them, that is, the armour of a Roman soldier.

A number of years ago, during the unrest in China and the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, a reporter for a major Canadian networks was on assignment in Beijing. He was driving one day and was stopped at a checkpoint by a young soldier who looked very scared and held in his shaking hands a large machine gun. He asked for ID and the reporter, not wanting to surrender his passport, handed him his American Express Card. You probably know that ‘traditional’ American Express cards have an image of the Roman soldier on the front of the card. The soldier apparently looked at this card and then back at the reporter several times before returning his card and waving him through the checkpoint. Glad he didn’t leave home without it, the reporter was glad to be through that confrontation as easily. He knew that, given the level of unrest at that time , being killed could happen all too easily, despite the protection afforded by a Canadian passport and considerable public profile. This story was told to me by the reporter’s father.

In first century Palestine the Roman soldier may have been held in awe by small children but for anyone else they were held in well-founded fear and no small amount of contempt. They had a great deal of power over the population and, as usually happens, some soldiers, no doubt, took full advantage of this power.

I think that for an oppressed people to use these images is a whole different thing than a nation or group of nations with an overabundance of military might who know that they will certainly win, and will fight till that win is achieved, no matter how high the body count. The difference is that the people of the early church lived with great oppression. For them to speak of the armour of God meant a whole different thing. They were not the aggressors, they were the defenders; they were not stomping all around the world, but finding ways to maintain integrity of faith and action and still live and raise their families and proclaim the Good News. If their lives in the community were threatened by the powers of government whose power was mostly by force it was not at all surprising that their metaphors for fighting the powers of cosmic evil would use the same military images.

Despite these negative associations Paul equates the equipment needed for a Christian’s struggle against evil with the armour of the soldier. We must avoid a direct association of this struggle with actual warfare. If there ever was a time when we as a planet needed to find a new way of securing peace it is now. While the so- called ‘Cold War’ is over, we know that we are a world that is a long way from peace. We may argue that the UN military presence in Iraq is a direct and reasonable response to the devastating events of September 11, 2001, yet there is no denying that these attacks were in and of themselves a response to the middle eastern policy of western nations. You see, it’s a true chicken and egg dilemma. One punch means another will soon fly because, “We can’t let them get away with that!” and violence escalates to such a level that no one is truly safe.

I believe that as followers of the Prince of Peace we have to realize that while this passage uses what would have been a commonly understood set of images with which to compare the struggles against evil, these verses do not constitute a sanction of the means and actions of war. If you read the passage it becomes ironic and even comical that he talks about a soldier’s sandals being strapped on, not to walk to war, but to proclaim gospel of peace.

What does he speak of in this passage as the means of struggling against evil? He speaks of TRUTH, and RIGHTEOUSNESS. AS I said, he speaks of the GOSPEL OF PEACE , of FAITH and of SALVATION and the power of the presence of the SPIRIT through PRAYER lifted up not just for oneself but for all of the faithful.

It is clear in this passage that being Christian is not a way to win friends and influence people. In fact it may be a way to lose friends and to lose social standing and status. As I said, the first Christians lived with great persecution. It was costly business to proclaim faith in Christ. Then the Roman Emperor became Christian and the persecution of Christians soon became the persecution of others by Christians. Somewhere in the distant past Christianity and culture became synonymous. Then as culture changed and grew farther and farther away from the gospel Christians forgot that they might have to make a choice, that they might actually have to stand up and risk being different, to stand up and be counted. They forgot that a follower of Jesus of Nazareth has always been asked to view the world through his or her understanding of the will of God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. They forgot that it was God’s strength they were to rely on and not their own. In a way, the early Church had it much better; they knew that it was God’s power which saw them through, they had no illusions about their world and the forces of evil which they encountered at every turn. We have it a little harder in that way. We can fool ourselves into thinking that being ‘law-abiding’ and productive Canadians and go to Church is all that we need to do to be ‘good Christians’. The kind of life that is talked about here is more than that; it goes beyond that which is expected of us by our culture. The words ‘truth’ and ‘righteousness’ speak to me of a lifestyle which seeks these things above all others, especially above personal gain, or safety, or image or position. The shoes speak to me of journey, of effort, of actually taking steps or taking a stand for something.

When we look at this passage we realize that it is talking not just about confronting problems or misfortune, but evil. Before we imagine a little guy in a red suit running around and discount that as “hokey” I would suggest that evil is far more insidious than we really want to admit. Sometimes, oftentimes, the evil is written off as practicality or survival or normalcy. Often we don’t realize that our actions or attitudes speak louder than our words and actually negate the faith we profess.

One day a nice church-going woman was stopped at a red light behind a large station wagon. The light changed to green but the car did not move. After about 20 seconds she beeped her horn. Still the car did not move so she honked her horn, LOUDLY. Then the light changed to red. When it changed to green again and the car still did not move she honked her horn loudly, yelled, “move it, stupid”, and beat on the steering wheel. Then there was a tap on the window and she looked sideways to see a police officer. She was arrested and taken to the police station. Was she arrested for yelling at another driver and pounding her steering wheel? No! Not exactly. You see she had a cross hanging from her mirror and a fish symbol on her bumper. The police officer saw her behaviour and assumed that she was not the owner of the car. From the Internet

As a people of faith we are called to look around us at the evils of poverty and homelessness and addictions and prejudice and name them for what they are, even if we have to name ourselves as perpetrators. To give just a few examples. How do our actions and attitudes keep other people poor? How do our actions and attitudes allow people to discriminate against others because of prejudice or fear or social convention? Just because its never been done before does not make it wrong, and just because its always been done that way does not make it right.

To avoid jumping on every bandwagon and beating the drum of every fad we need to be immersed in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth before we act or speak and as we continue to act and speak. We need to open ourselves in prayer to the winds of the Spirit. We need to get up and walk and work and struggle with those whom we encounter. We need to engage our faith and engage others as we seek God’s will and as we seek to make faithful decisions. It’s not about us and our comfort. It’s not about affirming what we’ve always believed. It’s about the life giving winds of a loving God being allowed to blow freely through our hearts and through our communities and allowing them to make us into the people God would have us to be.

Jesus said , “I have come that you might have life and have it in all abundance.” So in the Spirit and love of God let us put on truth and righteousness and all of the other clothing appropriate to this struggle. Let us proclaim Christ in all that we say and do. Let us proclaim with our very lives that the God of life can and will defeat every evil.

Amen.