And here's why

A sermon for Sunday, August 4, 2019

Would you pray with me?

Living God, we trust that you meet us here and now. Be with us as we come to find you in light, word, water, bread, and cup. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

We have arrived at our final sermon in our series on the five symbols we use in worship. We’ve talked about light, word, and water, and today’s a two-fer: bread and cup. We’ve talked about why we light candles in worship, why we keep Bibles around, why we use water, and today, we’ll talk about why we set a table and eat during church.

Now, I love communion. That’s why I saved bread and cup for last. But it wasn’t always this way. I still remember the look on my college pastor's face when I told him that I thought communion was pointless. "Baptism I get," I told him, "but I don't understand why we waste our time on communion." He was flabbergasted, to say the least.

Now, I've been raised a Methodist my whole life, baptized and confirmed, but for a long time, communion was mostly an inconvenience for me. It was the Sunday once a quarter where church went over by at least 15 minutes, and when I did my usual move of sneaking out at the beginning of the last hymn to tell my mother in the nursery that it was time to get the kids ready for pickup, I would walk into a chaos. In those extra 15 minutes, the toddlers' pent up energy would bubble over and they would tear up the place. Communion Sunday for me meant dozens of extra toys to pick up and a late lunch.

Now, when I went to college, communion started to mean something a little different because I started to volunteer as a communion server. I liked being useful for the communion part of the ceremony. I even learned--and this is important-- that if someone drops their bread in the cup, you don't go fishing after it, only to have to hold a grape-juice soaked bread in your hand while the rest of the line cycles by. Nope, you just let that bread float and get them a new piece of Jesus.

But even after years of helping with communion, I still didn't understand why we had a snack during the service. I mean, I knew that we did it to remember Jesus, because he told us to, but outside of that, I didn't see much point to it. We remember Jesus every Sunday. It's kinda hard to forget him when we've got these big crosses up everywhere. Why waste time and money on grape juice and bakery bread?

Well, I could give you a long, theologically-dense and nuanced answer or I could give you the "mom" version of the answer ("Because Jesus told us to, that's why"), but what I really want to do is give you a few ways to understand the bread, cup, and what happens during communion. I want to talk about the bread of life, the cup of promise, and the presence of Christ. Some of it may sound new to you and some of it may fit right in with how you think about communion, but your job during the sermon this morning is to expand your idea of what communion might mean to you, whether you delight in coming forward to receive or whether you, like me, don’t really know why we do this.

So. Bread and cup are our symbols for this morning, but I think it’s important that we look at them separately, because that’s how Jesus’ first followers would have seen them. Let’s start with the bread.

Jesus’ last supper with the disciples was a Passover meal, the meal that Jewish people use to remember the flight from Egypt, when the angel of death, the bringer of the tenth and final plague, passed over the houses of the Hebrews who were enslaved in Egypt. (We find this story in Exodus 12.)

Now, meals are a much more fundamental part of Jewish ritual than they are for us Christians, I think. Don’t get me wrong, Methodists put on a good potluck and our community dinners here at Whittier are a sight to see, but as Christians, we don’t celebrate shabbat dinners together on Friday nights. We don’t feast together as a Christian community on our feast days. We know how to gather over food, but we don’t understand why our gathering is sacred.

And so, we miss part of what Jesus means when he offers the bread and the cup after the meal. Because it was always understood that bread, when it’s mentioned in the Bible, means life. Bread is one of the simplest ways we as humans have learned to sustain ourselves. Nearly every culture has some form of bread that it’s developed over time, especially if it’s agrarian, if it’s learned how to farm. It might look different, but it’s there. And bread is a hearty food. It’s simple carbs, energy in a basic form, to give our bodies what we need to sustain work throughout the day.

That’s why the Hebrew people used unleavened bread on the night of the Passover. They already had bread in the making for the next day, because it was what they needed to survive the work they would be put through, but they didn’t have time to let it rise. The cycle of breadmaking was interrupted, the cycle of life was interrupted, on the day of the last plague in Egypt. When Jesus raises bread and breaks it, he is giving us the bread of interrupted life, the bread of life on the verge of freedom. When we eat this bread, we too are partaking in the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life.

When we receive the bread, we’re receiving new life. We’re receiving what we need to in order to do the work that we’re called to do as Christians. This bread is the body of Christ, broken for us and for our salvation, yes, but it is also life-giving for us, broken so that we can share it. Jesus breaks into our lives, interrupts into our lives, and calls us to live differently. This is what we see over and over again in the gospels. Jesus doesn’t just leave us alone. He’s not a prophet with a word for us to follow but no way to follow it. Jesus gives us the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life, so that we can be fed for the road ahead of us. And Jesus breaks the bread, that we might share it.

This is Jesus’ body, broken for you and for many. Take it. Eat it. Receive the sustenance, the new life, that you need so that you can give to others.

Bread of life, cup of promise.

The cup, in a way, is a little more straightforward, or, at least, our liturgy makes it feel straightforward. Jesus tells us that the wine in the cup is his blood, the blood of a new covenant, and we’re all pretty familiar with the history of blood and covenants.

Covenants are legally-binding agreements. What we find in Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers are a series of terms on which God agrees to interact with Israel. Honor me, God says, above everything else that you want to put your trust in. Your own power, your own smarts, your own wealth, your alliances. None of those matter as much as me, God says. Don’t get caught up with the lies those peddling false idols will sell you. Money, Riches, Fame, Security, none of those idols compare to being in relationship with the living God. (Exodus 20:1-4) Honor those who came before you. (Exodus 20:12) Don’t murder, don’t misuse people for sex, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet. (Exodus 20:13-17) Don’t let your rage overpower you—take only an eye for an eye, not a life, as the other people around you do. (Leviticus 24:19-21)

This is how the people of Israel covenanted to live with the Almighty as their God.

Covenants are sealed with blood. Covenants, when they’re broken, are mended with blood.

And so, the Church over the centuries has understood Jesus’ death on the cross as the beginning of a new covenant, sealed with his blood. The Church understands that Jesus brings us into another way of being with God, another set of promises between us and God.

God promises us life and life abundant.

God promises us freedom and power to resist all that’s wrong in this world.

God promises us community.

God promises to bring together people from all over this world who seek to live as Jesus taught us to live, people who want to love God and love their neighbors as themselves, people who have an unlimited idea of who their neighbor is and seek to be a neighbor to everyone who crosses their path.

In receiving the cup, we receive these promises from God. Not only that, but we renew our promise to live as Jesus taught us to live. That’s part of why we confess our sins before we come forward to receive, so that we can come with a clean slate to take part in God’s promise.

This is Jesus’ blood, the blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of the things we have done that have broken our covenant. Receive it. Receive God’s new promises to you and in return, give your promises to God.

Bread of life, cup of promise, presence of Jesus.

Now, this part does get theological. Not apologizing, just giving you a heads up. We Methodists, despite having gotten used to doing communion once a quarter, actually have a lovely theology about communion. We don’t get into the weeds of the debate over whether the bread and cup become the actual body and blood of Christ, as the Catholics believe, or whether Christ is above and below and in front of behind and to the left and right and in the bread and cup, as Lutherans do. We don’t do transubstantiation or consubstantiation. We believe in real presence. (Read more by clicking here.)

Real presence means that when we have communion, Jesus shows up.

When we receive the bread of life and the cup of promise, Jesus is here in a way that we don’t experience at any other time. Communion is where we meet Jesus. Jesus meets us in the bread and in the cup.

That is what I was missing when I sassed off to my college pastor ten years ago. I did not know that Jesus was just as present here as he is in the sunlight of a beautiful morning or the story of the woman who reaches out for the hem of his cloak or the water of the mountain’s bending rivers. I did not know that just as we can be reminded of God in a visceral way through light, word, and water, Jesus meets us here, in bread and cup, in the promise and sustenance of new life.

This too is why we repent before we come to the table. Who wants to meet Jesus when they’re holding a grudge against their sibling in Christ? Who wants to meet Jesus with regrets on their hearts? Who wants to come meet Jesus while still dragging the guilt of their mistakes and the harm they’ve caused others behind them? This is what Paul is arguing against when he talks to the Corinthians. Don’t gather together as if one sibling in Christ doesn’t matter to you. Instead, join together and let there be no excuse for bad blood between you, for in this meal, you meet Christ.

More than that, this is when we get to interact with the other members of the Body of Christ, not just those who are here with us this morning but also those who are far from us and those who have gone on before. Those saints who led you to faith join you each time you come to the table. More than that, those who will one day think of you as saints meet you here as well. The Body of Christ gathers at the table, before being broken once again to be sent back out into the world, blessed by covenant of God’s grace.

And I believe that this is true. I believe that when I receive communion, I am not only connected to my savior, but I’m connected to the twelve who followed him, to the women who supported him and told about him, to Paul and the early generations who spread the gospel, to the saints throughout the centuries, even to the present day. I’m connected to my first-grade Sunday School teacher, who died last week, and to the kids that I picked up after in the nursery. I’m connected to my grandmother and grandfather who did all they could to raise three powerful women who had families of their own and I’m connected to families that I haven’t even met yet. I’m connected to my college pastor who opened my eyes to new ways of understanding the faith and I’m connected to those who I hope to speak a new word to in the days to come. I’m connected to you all this morning and to every new soul who will walk into this church and experience Christ through the love and care that y’all give. In receiving the bread and the cup, I am connected to the Body of Christ in a real and powerful way. And so are you.

The body of Christ, the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life.

The blood of Christ, the cup of new promises.

The presence of Jesus and all who are gathered with him.

I want you to remember these things when you come forward in a few minutes. Because what happens at the table is not some esoteric theological debate. It is the gift of life that gives you the strength you need to live as Christ calls you to live. It is the promise God will be with you and that you will seek to be with God. It is the presence of the living God and all who Christ has touched.

It is new life and all you need to live it.

Amen.

A sermon for Sunday, July 28, 2019

Would you pray with me?

God, giver of life, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

We are entering the home stretch on our sermon series about the symbols we use in worship. If you remember, we’ve talked about light and word and now we’re on to water, before we tackle bread and cup next week.

When you think of water in worship, you immediately think of baptism, right? A friend of mine, who works at an Episcopal Church, sent me this picture this week, with the comment, “At least we know the bug is in heaven now.”

If you look, you can see it had gotten into the baptismal font and died, making it a holy bug, if a dead one.

Now, that’s not what we, as United Methodists, actually believe about baptism. It’s not your ticket to heaven. There’s nothing magical about the water we use or the place we keep the water. It’s important, don’t get me wrong, but not magic.

We believe the sacraments, baptism and communion, are outward signs of an inward grace. Augustine said that first, in the early centuries of the church, and it’s stuck around since. What we do in baptism and communion, how we use our symbols of water, bread, and cup, don’t fundamentally change the water, bread, or cup, but it does remind us of a change that God has brought about in us.

And in light of that, water is the perfect symbol to remind us of the new life God is shaping and forming in us. When we think of water, we tend to think of the water that is outside of us: rivers, lakes, creeks, streams, oceans, the rain. We sometimes forget that we’re made of water too. Just as there is water out in the world, shaping and forming landscapes, enabling life, there is also water inside of us, essential to our lives. And just as water works outside and inside of us, so does God.

Water is essential for life as we know it. When we look for planets in other solar systems that might be capable of sustaining life, potentially habitable planets, we look for Earth-sized rocky planets in what we call the Goldilocks Zone—the range around a parent star where it’s not too hot and not too cold for liquid water. Venus and Mars are actually on the edge of the Goldilocks Zone in our solar system and that’s why evidence of water on Mars makes the news: where there’s water, there’s the potential for life. We think Mars may have had liquid water oceans until its atmosphere thinned and the water evaporated. There’s a chance that Mars was a watery planet for millions of years. It’s enough to get our imaginations going because we know that where there’s water, there’s a chance of life.

That’s something that the Biblical writers knew as well. We find the idea that water means life throughout the Old Testament and into the New, but it first makes its appearance in Genesis 1. “In the beginning when God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” “The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,” the King James says. The Hebrew word is actually closest to hovering or brooding, like a hen over her eggs. The Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters, where life is about to spark from.

Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? God hasn’t made anything yet. No light, no land, no life, but there are waters?

To find the answer to that, you actually have to look at the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish. In it, the storm god Marduk defeats the water goddess of chaos, Tiamat, and uses her body to make the world.

The Hebrew word for deep, תְה֑וֹם (te-hom, or in the plural, תְּהֹמֹ֖ת (te-ho-mat)), is close enough to Tiamat that some scholars think the writer of Genesis 1 was making a point. See, Marduk, the Babylonian god, has to fight Tiamat and kill her. It’s a violent struggle for dominance. But here, in Genesis, all our God has to do is hover and speak and the chaotic waters obey. Our God doesn’t have to use violence to make the world. All our God needs is breath and the Word.

And then, creation begins.

It’s a beautiful story, even if it doesn’t pan out with how we understand the world. The Hebrew worldview is that water is primordial, before everything, but we know that the Sun and the Earth existed long before water cooled on the surface of the Earth. There’s also the business of the domes on the second day. The writer of Genesis tells us that there’s a dome above us, keeping waters above us at bay, and a dome below us, keeping waters below us down. When it rains, holes have opened up in the upper dome and when we draw up water from a well, that’s a hole in the bottom dome. The earth is held up by pillars. It’s a different picture than we’re used to, right?

Like I said a couple weeks ago, Genesis isn’t a science textbook, nor was it meant to be. Genesis 1 is actually a poem, with verses, stanzas, and a parallel structure to make it easier to memorize. It’s a story about what we understand God to do in the world. God speaks light into existence on the first day, then separates the waters into sky and sea on the second, then brings vegetation on the third. On the fourth, we’re back to light again, where God makes the Sun and the Moon, then on the fifth, the birds of the sky and the creatures of the sea, and on the sixth, we’re back to the land, where creatures begin to live on the land.

So what should we notice from this?

Well, what jumps out at me first is that the picture of God is not some warrior entrenched in a battle from time immemorial with evil. God is above that. And God has an order for creation. God sets the scene and then brings life into it. And third, God has the land and the waters and the sky participate in creation. We see in verses 20 and 21: “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind.”

Where there is water, there is life.

And, lest we get too proud of our scientific knowledge, let’s remember that we know more about what’s in outer space than we do about the depths of our own oceans. I think Genesis 1 holds a truth for us. There is deep in our world, places where everything seems dark and chaotic, where creatures like the anglerfish are the norm. That is what te-hom is. That is what God hovers over at the beginning. But then, God brings light and life. God takes that which was formless and dangerous and lifeless and brings a world out of it, a world that continues to change and grow and evolve. And that world is entirely dependent on water, the substance that God transformed from chaos into life.

Of course, the Old Testament’s discussion of water doesn’t begin and end with Genesis 1. Rivers flow out of Eden in Genesis 2, the rivers that make the Fertile Crescent such a vibrant place for humans to thrive. There’s the cleansing waters of the flood, where the earth was given a new start. And every patriarch left and right is seen building a well. That’s even true for Hagar, the woman that Sarai had enslaved who bore Abraham’s child, Ishmael. Hagar is the only woman in the Old Testament to receive a theophany, an experience of God appearing to her, and it happens by a spring in the desert, which is later enshrined as a well.

Where there is water, there is life.

It makes sense, then, that we find Jesus sitting by a well in our lesson from John today. It’s actually a well that was dug by Jacob, one of the patriarchs I mentioned before. But here, we see the distinction between physical water that gives physical life and living water that gives eternal life. See, this woman comes to the well in the middle of the day, when it’s hottest. We don’t always pick up on that, because we have indoor plumbing and we don’t have to go draw the water we need to survive, but it was a task that had to be done every day and as such, you would typically do it in the morning. The fact that this woman comes in the middle of the day means that she’s avoiding other people. There’s something shameful about her existence.

And then Jesus names it for us. She’s had five husbands and the man she’s with right now isn’t her husband. I think we’ve been trained to think of her as a woman who can’t keep a husband, but think again about the times in which she lived. Men didn’t always make it to twenty, much less thirty or forty. Maybe she’s not a woman who struggles with faithfulness. Maybe she’s a widow five times over. And maybe the man who has taken her in wouldn’t marry her. After all that loss, she’s stuck living on whatever others will give her. Maybe this man won’t even give her the dignity of marriage, and the shame of that is what brings her to the well at the hottest part of the day.

And yet, this is the person who Jesus offers living water, new abundant life, to, the person who he reveals his messiahship to, a woman in desperate need of new life, of someone to see her as God had seen Hagar by a well all those years ago. Jesus sees this woman and knows who she is and offers her a new life as the one who would tell her entire village about Jesus. Jesus takes her from a tired woman, asking how it is that Jesus can change anything, to the first person to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.

When we use water in worship, we use it with this double-meaning, as the water that gives our bodies life and the water that brings new life to our souls. Yes, it is a life-giving part of the creation we’ve been entrusted with but it also symbolizes for us our new life in Christ. Water cleans us and water revives us.

Now, I said before, there’s nothing magical about this water. It’s an outward sign of an inward grace. As United Methodists, we believe in a thing called prevenient grace, the grace which goes before us, the grace that works in our life to turn us toward God even before we know it. I think prevenient grace reaches us often through nature, through God’s general revelation to us. The joy and wonder we feel at creation can aim us back toward God. And since we believe that God is at work in our lives even before we know it, we baptize infants, trusting that God will work a new life in them throughout their lives. Baptism for us is a sign that God’s promise of new life is true and is working in us.

If we were baptized as babies, though, we have to claim that promise for ourselves as we grow up. That’s what confirmation is for, which I understand y’all just had a class go through. It’s claiming the promise of new life through Christ and understanding what that means. John the Baptist’s baptism was to clean people of their sins so that they would be prepared for the coming of the Lord, but the baptism that we Christians do is a sign not only that we are free from the things that keep us from God but also that God is working a new creation, new life in us.

In a minute, we’re going to turn to the renewal of baptism service. Martin Luther, when he found himself in the midst of a struggle, would say to himself, “Martin, remember that you are baptized!” and found that this assurance helped quell any of the damaging thoughts he was experiencing. Today, we’re going to remember our baptisms and the promises that were made for us, or that we made for ourselves, that we might remember the grace that God has given us to go through this world.

And it is astounding what God has given to us, considering that we’re made of water and dirt. We humans are mudpies that can walk and talk. But despite our limitations, despite our contingency, we are capable of marvelous things through the new life Christ draws for us. Baptism has always been a part of that new life for us Christians. I know that it’s been a large part of my life as a Christian, and my call to ministry.

If you weren’t baptized United Methodist or if you haven’t been baptized at all, I invite you follow along with the renewal service and speak what feels true to you, to see if these promises are ones that you want to keep as well. I think our baptismal promises take very seriously the harm we’re capable of and the freedom and power God gives us in the face of that harm. In baptism, God’s grace works within us and the waters of creation begin their work again, bringing newness in our lives in places that we thought were dark and lifeless. And that is a good and joyful thing. Amen? Amen.

Introduction to the Baptismal Renewal Service

We did a baptismal renewal service at Wesley, the seminary I went to, at the end of our orientation. We said words similar to what we’re about to say and at the end, there was the expectation that we would all go up and dip our fingers in the font and remember our baptism.

And I did. not. want. to go.

For me, in that moment, going up to the font meant admitting to all that God had been doing in my life since the pastor splashed me with entirely too much water when I was three, being baptized with both of my brothers. God had been shaping and forming me and quietly but insistently calling me toward ministry and I was teetering on the edge of not wanting any part of that. The church can be a challenging place to be, and though we love our siblings in Christ, we can also be agitated or angered or hurt by them, sometimes without any chance at reconciliation. Listening to God’s call to serve the church through ministry can be hard when the church is shouting so loudly about so many things that have nothing to do with our call to live gospel-guided lives.

I stood in the back at that baptismal renewal at Wesley, wondering if anyone would notice if I didn’t go up. Eventually, though, I got in line, shuffling my feet the entire time. As I approached the font, I felt all of my unsureness go away. I felt, for the first time in a long time, that God’s grace was actually working in my life and that this was a step toward the new life that God longed for for me. I didn’t dip my hands in the bowl; I splashed in it, spilling the water from the bowl onto the concrete of the courtyard. I went to receive a blessing from the faculty with my hands soaking and my heart full.

So I invite you, even if you’re unsure, even if you don’t think that even God can bring you joy to your life in this world, to come up to the font. You never know what God will do in your heart in the line on the way up. Where there is water, there is life, and I invite you to come a seek that life abundant for yourself this morning.