A Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

So, to become a priest, I of course had to go to seminary first. A three-year master of divinity is the standard education and, just like any graduate school program, it is a concentrated period of intense study and reflection and examinations and internships. And, also like other graduate school programs, it can be a challenge to transition from the high-level theoretical conversations to the everyday practical work of being with people. There is always this period of recalibrating from the classroom to the real world and it is often a very humbling experience.

I remember one of my classmates telling me that she went home on Christmas break one year, and she received a devotion book from her mother. Instead of receiving it as the thoughtful gift and attempt at connection that it was, she proceeded to dissect its contents, harshly evaluate the author’s credentials, and explain every theological point that she disagreed with and why. It wasn’t until she looked into her mother’s eyes which were sort of like a deer in headlights but also like a sad puppy dog that she realized “Oh, I messed up.” Right, a simple “Wow, thanks, Mom” would have sufficed as opposed to this theological hand-waving she’d just embarrassed herself with.

My own learning moment came when I was preparing to preach in a retirement and continuing care facility. The epistle for the week was a section of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians in which he talks about our earthly bodies and what becomes of them when we die, that we will not just be spirits but we will have heavenly bodies and so on and so forth and I thought, “Wow, what a great opportunity to share the conversation from a recent seminary class when we talked about whether or not we will carry the exact state of our bodies now into the afterlife. Like, surely they’re interested in thinking about whether their scars will be with them forever, and whether their heavenly bodies will be like the one they died in or like an earlier version of themselves and like, if they are missing a finger now, will they be missing a finger when they are resurrected.”

And I was sharing my sermon thoughts with a dear friend, and he stops me, literally interrupts me, and says “Kilpy, have you thought about the fact that they might just want to be reminded of the simple but profoundly good news that through the power of God in Jesus Christ they will be resurrected? Maybe don’t get so caught up in the details of how that will exactly happen but just remind them of the miracle that it will happen.”

Right. Duh. Thankfully I had time to course-correct my sermon, but I still often remember how I got caught up in the high-level details and was about to muddle and miss the opportunity to share a beautiful reminder of a fundamental truth of our life in God.

This is always a risk for us, I think. We sort of miss the forest for the trees and can get caught up in the details of the thing and lose sight of the thing itself. And, as we see in our gospel today, it’s not only a modern-day problem. Jesus is in the middle of this huge moment in which he is sharing the nature of who he is and what that means for the people of this world. He says “I am the living bread. My flesh is bread. Partake of me for I give life.” and they immediately go “BUT HOW”? They bicker among each other and probably dig up some old scripture and maybe dispute about the details and can’t get past the question of “How exactly can this be?”, missing the forest for the trees.

It is pretty strange, this idea that Jesus is also bread, and this bread is also flesh, and oh, it has eternal life-giving properties. It’s honestly laughable, that this so-called savior was standing there saying “So the way this is all gonna work out is that y’all are gonna eat me.” It is a concept that puzzled and confused believers and onlookers alike. There are actually historical writings that document the fact that non-believers thought the early Christians were literally a cannibalistic cult.

So, we can’t really blame the audience that day for immediately questioning Jesus with how they are going to eat his flesh, because it is an absurd thing to say, but the fact of the matter is that Jesus doesn’t respond to them with an explanation to satisfy their questions. No, Jesus just reiterates. “It’s true, I’m telling you that if you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will have eternal life.” He says it backwards and forwards, “my flesh, my blood… food, drink…bread came down from heaven, bread gives life, I’m the bread.”

He gives them no high theological explanation, although I’m sure he had one, and he gives no discourse on the details of exactly how it works. Jesus just offers them the plain truth that Jesus is offering himself, and in him there is life.

Somehow, this is the truth. Someway, this is our reality. That God did something extraordinary through Jesus’s flesh and blood those two thousand years ago and that God is still doing it when we partake of him today, here at this table…

Yes, there are many things to wonder about what goes on here, and there is a time and a place to wonder about them, but what we must all remember at times is that, before we get lost in the details of HOW it is true, it would do us good to just remember THAT it is true. Let’s simply sit a while in this beautiful and fundamental reality that Jesus came down from heaven for the life of the world. That Jesus is our daily bread. That he gave us this meal and promised us, in it, he would be present, time and time again.

And every time we commune with him, we are strengthened. Every time we break bread and drink wine together, we are renewed. Every time we abide in him, he abides in us.

It is the great mystery that simultaneously perplexes all generations yet also continues to govern our reality… that God’s love became incarnate in the flesh of Jesus and when we feast on him, our lives are further enmeshed with his.

This meal somehow cuts through time and space, it works without our understanding, we need only be present to the One that is present in it.

So come, feast with me on the flesh and the blood, consume him, abide in him, partake of him. Listen anew to the words we will pray and taste afresh the bread of life and let life everlasting and love eternal enfold you.

Amen.

The Rev. Kilpy Singer