august 2, 2009

Anna Blaedel
First UMC, Osage
August 2, 2009
Ephesians 4:1-5,11-16
John 6:24-35

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This is the beginning line and the underlying premise in Michael Pollen’s new book, In Defense of Food. And this prescription has something to do with this morning’s lectionary texts. And, of course, what better time to talk about food, real food, in worship, than when we are celebrating communion, preparing for and participating in a feast of food and faith.

Let us pray: O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing to you, our strength and our redeemer.

Bread. Bread is one of the most important symbols in our Christian scripture. In fact, one can trace the history and meaning of salvation unfolding in the Judeo-Christian tradition simply by noting how this word, bread, is used. Listen to this litany of Bread, beginning with Exodus, moving through to the Gospels…

“I will rain bread from heaven…You shall eat bread and be full…the land will have plenty of bread…I will satisfy the poor with bread…Bread is made for laughter and for wine…Cast thy bread upon the waters…If you are the Son of God command these stones to become bread…We do not live by bread alone…How shall we buy bread to feed these people?...You give them something to eat…On the first day of unleavened bread they went to an upper room…He took bread, broke it, blessed it and said take, eat…Their eyes were opened and he was known to them in the breaking of the bread…How do we show our care for you, Lord? And Jesus answered, Feed my sheep…Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the 5,000 who were seated…So they gathered up the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, and they filled twelve baskets…I was hungry, and you gave me food…For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world….I am the bead of life…”

The lectionary texts today, from Ephesians and from the gospel according to John, tell us something about returning to the core. To what is really real. To what matters most. To that which can be counted on to sustain and nourish us. Food. And faith community.

The theme running throughout Ephesians is God’s desire for reconciliation. Between all humans, and with all of creation. With God, and with every creeping, crawling, walking, running thing. Not by removing our differences, but by appreciating them, and seeing how, when we put the fragments of our lives together, we can together be made whole. Hear the words of scripture…”I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called…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…one God and Creator of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

Ephesians was written in a context of conflict, fear, and division. As more cultures and communities and colors began coming together under this newborn Christian faith, fear and suspicion ran rampant. These early believers fought bitterly about how to blend their differing beliefs and backgrounds. Which doctrines required adherence? Which practices were crucial to carrying on the faith tradition? Which scriptures should be considered authoritative? Contention and bitterness threatened to divide this early Christian community almost before it could form.

So into this context this text from Ephesians speaks: We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speak the truth in love…we must grow up into the whole body, joined and knit together …building itself up in love…

Go back to what is essential, the scripture says. When you don’t know which doctrines are important, return to what you know is essential. Love. Connection. Food. If you put these at the center of all you do, the rest will work itself out. Be real, and seek out that which is real: Love. Connection. Food. The Spirit of the one God, who is above all and through all and in all. Feed each other, and be fed.

Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love says it this way: “In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted…And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.”

Knitted together in one universal body, eating is no longer an individual act. Eating bread is a social act, a communal act. The prayer Jesus taught does not say give me this day my daily bread. No. Give us this day our daily bread. Bread is to be shared. Sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.

In the good news according to John, Jesus says that true faith springs from food. “You are looking for me,” he tells the disciples, “because you ate your fill of the loaves.” The bread of heaven…manna in the wilderness…bread of life. The bread from heaven is both spiritual and material. In John’s gospel, “eternal life” does not speak of immortality or a future life in heaven. It is a metaphor for living now in the unending presence of God. By breaking bread. Sharing a meal. Feeding the hungry. Being fed.

To do this, of course, we need to be connected with each other. How else do we know who is hungry? One out of every 16 verses in the New Testament has to do with the poor. In the gospels, one out of every 10 verses addresses the needs of the poor, and calls the community of faith to care for those in need. To know Jesus, this gospel tells us, is to know the needs of our neighbors. To be nourished and filled by the Holy One is to nourish and feed each other. Bread and community are basic requirements for life and for faith.

Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdaev says, “The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the bread for my neighbor, for everybody, is a spiritual question.”

Whatever our differences, we have hunger in common. And, together, we have food to share.

Eucharist means thanksgiving. Giving thanks for the life giving power of God, broken apart, shared freely.

Communion, with God and with all other humans. The great gift of our faith, giving life to everyone who shares it.

So. I return to Michael Pollen’s prescription for eating. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollen traces the ways real food is disappearing. Substance falling prey to superficial and synthetic. Meals are now to be marketed, the faster and cheaper and more convenient, the better, rather than something to be shared, and savored. For the first time in humanity’s millennia of eating, food is becoming consumer and commercial driven, rather than community creating.

Real food is being pushed aside for high fructose, partially hydrogenated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, polyphenols, flavonols, carotenoids, and plytochemicals. In much the same ways as real connection, human community, is being pushed aside for Tivo and iPhone apps and Wii and Blackberry and Twitter and tweeting and texting.

Jesus is teaching that food and community are intertwined. One cannot exist without the other. When we push real food and real connection to the side to make way for the synthetic, contrived substitutes, we neglect these two core components of our Christian faith.

What we eat matters. How we eat matters. Who eats, and who we eat with matters.

Back to bread. The simple substance of life. The sacrament of our Christian faith. Bread. Flour, water, yeast, and a pinch of salt. Or, if you visit Lynn and Glenda Peaster over at Kountry Kupboard, and buy a loaf of their fresh baked bread for $3.25: flour, water, milk, brown sugar or honey, yeast, and a pinch of salt. Connection. Real food.

Compare that to loaves manufactured and shipped from far away. I went to the store and picked up a loaf of bread. Bread that costs a little more than the loaf at Kountry Kupboard. Listen to its list of ingredients: enriched unbleached flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine hydroclorade, riboflavin, water, high fructose corn syrup, potato flakes, liquid soybean oil, yeast, wheat gluton, salt, dough conditioners, monoglycerides, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, calcium sulfate, calcium peroxide, enzymes, vinegar, monocalcium phosphate, and calcium propionate. What??? It’s not even clear this is real food.

Disconnection—from the food we eat and the people we share this one earth with—can be destructive, even deadly.
I want to end by sharing an excerpt with you, from a book called Take this Bread, written by Sara Miles. The subtitle is A Radical Conversion, and this book is her story of coming to faith, her conversion into Christianity and Christian community, through communion. In this excerpt, she traces the history of this sacramental practice. As you hear her words, recall the warning from Ephesians: immature people of faith, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. And remember the call of Ephesians: I beg you, lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called—a calling to bear with one another in love, speaking the truth in love, and building the human body up in love.

Sara Miles writes: “Early Christians, worshipping in houses, shared full feasts, following Jesus’ promise that he would be among them when they ate together in his memory. They ate believing that God had given them Christ’s life and that they could spread that life through the world by sharing food with others. Later churches, reducing the feast to bread and wine, wrangled over the right way to understand Jesus’ presence: Was God physically there in the meal or conjured up through the repetition of particular words? And they began to license and control the distribution of the elements central to the faith. Bread then became stylized wafers, [a chalice of] wine became [tiny plastic cups of] grape juice, and church officials—much like the temple authorities Jesus had ignored—imposed rules about who could and could not receive communion. Different denominations made their own restrictions: No communion for Catholics or Orthodox in each other’s churches; no communion for the unbaptized or children below a certain age; no communion, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, for anyone living “a notoriously evil life…who are a scandal to the other members of the congregation.” Instead of being God’s freely given gift of reconciliation for everyone—the central point of Jesus’ barrier-breaking meals with sinners of all description—communion belonged to the religious authorities.

The entire contradictory package of Christianity was present in the Eucharist. A sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, it was doled out and rationed to insiders; a sign of unity, it divided people; a sign of the most common and ordinary human reality, it was rarified and theorized nearly to death. And yet this meal remains, through all the centuries, more powerful than any attempt to manage it. It reconciles, if only for a minute, all of God’s creation, revealing that, without exception, we are members of one body, God’s body, in endless diversity. The feast shows us how to re-member what had been dis-membered by human attempts to separate and divide, judge and cast out, select or punish. At that Table, sharing food, we are brought into the ongoing work of making creation whole.”

May it be so. Amen, and amen.