August 12, 2012
Pentecost 11
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
(prayer)
The
mission of St. David’s is to welcome all to participate in its nurturing
Christian community and to inspire its people to serve others as Christ taught.
These are the words that
this congregation has used for the last decade and a half to express what it
hopes this church will be about. It
flashes by on the screen each Sunday morning; it is front and centre in the printed
order of service; it is even nicely framed in the south entrance way.
“The mission...is to
welcome all...”
Our church motto is:
Welcoming
In – Reaching Out !
In the dozen years which I
have been minister here, I have witnessed how wonderfully seriously this faith
community seeks to live out (and live up to) this mission. Each time we have encountered a barrier of
exclusion, we have worked to remove the barrier, rather than build the wall higher.
//
Jesus’ Way, the movement of
Christ is not the private domain of the purely righteous, of those who have all
the answers, of those who have achieved spiritual perfection.
In fact, Jesus went out of
his way, to reach beyond an ideology of a perfect faith to find those who were
unsure, those who were questioning, those who not necessarily liked or
respected.
Jesus reached out a hand of
welcome that shocked one lookers, but was pure grace to those on the margins
and beyond the edges.
//
//
The letter to the Ephesians
may have been an adapted form letter that was sent to a number of early
Christian communities. In fact, the
earliest Greek manuscripts the letter is not addressed to a specific
congregation. There are some strong
similarities between the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians, which
suggests that they may be adapted versions of an older form letter or at least
written to express a similar instruction for how one can live out their faith.
In the latter part of
Ephesians chapter four, which is our reading for today, there is a call to
faithful living. A similar call is found
in Colossians chapter three.
//
When we hear phrases like:
Thieves give up stealing; and everyone put away all bitterness
and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, and all malice,
we might wonder how messed up this
little church in Asia Minor was. :)
What I get from this is ...
that the welcome did not exclude people with interpersonal and social issues.
And yet, there was an
opportunity for growth and transformation within the community. And that these changes are not a precursor to
the gift of God’s grace, but in response to it.
The fourth verse of Psalm
number four is a short memorable proverb from Jesus’ and Paul’s faith tradition
that says: When you are disturbed
[or when you are angry], do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent.
This is kind of echoed in
Ephesians: be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your
anger. Maybe the New Testament is taking it a
step further: ‘ponder your anger before you get in your bed’.
It is nice to see that the
letter-writer recognizes that the goal is not having situations where no one
ever gets ‘disturbed’ or ‘angry’, but that angry and disturbing situations are
to be responded to with due reflection – this implies a calm in the midst of
chaos. In 2012, we call this anger
management. People can even take classes
to assist them in controlling the volcano-within. Although, there is still enough of a stigma,
that most of the participants in such courses do so on the direction of a court
of law.
Several years ago, I wanted
to deal with my own personal volcano and was the only voluntary participant in
the class. For me, I try to remember
that essence of the proverb – Angry/disturbed?
Ponder! And do it so that the next day
can bring new and fresh hope.
//
That is the promise of our
scriptures today, that the grace of God welcomes us as we are, who we are, in the moment.
It is this experience of the unconditional love of God that can reach
deep into us and encourage us to live that love out in our lives.
As we are fed, we go out
and feed. I think that is part of what
Jesus mean he spoke about living bread
– the bread of life.
The early chapters of the
gospel of John are meant to paint a picture of the impact of the Risen Christ
on the Christian communities of the late first century. Stories of Jesus’ life are intermixed with
teachings about how they apply to life in the time the gospel was written. I love that John’s gospel doesn’t try to be
strictly an historical record, and is more about the message and the meaning
rather than what exactly happened where and when.
In John chapter four, Jesus
meets an ostracized Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. In the midday heat, they talked about ...
water of course, but Jesus moved deeper and invited a discovery of what it
means to be truly alive in the flesh and in the spirit. To her, Jesus spoke of living water to
quench the thirsts of the soul.
Today in chapter six,
sustenance is the topic. In the early
part of the chapter John relays a story of a mass feeding that was seen as
nothing short of miraculous. This was
such a significant event in the life of Jesus that it is one of very few
passages (outside of the Good Friday and Easter accounts) that is repeated in
all of the four Biblical gospels in one form or another.
Our passage for today is
part of the discussion about the meaning and message in that act of physical
feeding. Some on-looking scholars took
offense to Jesus’ liberal use of the story of Moses and the gift of morning
manna; which was an edible, flaky, bread-like substance that appeared with the
morning dew during the people’s years in the desert of the exodus – it was call
bread from heaven. And here was Jesus
(who had offered actual bread to eat) going deeper and speaking about bread
of life (living bread). They really
didn’t like Jesus, himself, being described as bread from heaven that feeds the soul.
They tried to convince the
crowds that Jesus was nothing special – “we know his parents. His father is a carpenter from Nazareth. Jesus did not descend, like manna, from
heaven.”
//
John chapter six also
includes some of the developed beliefs of that late first century church for
which it was written. By the year 90AD
or so, they we convinced that, in Jesus, the Risen Christ, they had life beyond
the physical. Living water and bread of
life were not just for this world, this existence – but spoke of ‘eternal life’
– a theme that the gospel had developed back in chapter three, when it says
that “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed,
God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that
the world might be saved through him.”
Like a crowd groaning with
hunger or a woman in need of water on a hot day ... to the early church, Jesus
was the source of all safety and security – in this world and the next. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats
of this bread will live forever.
The bread of life is given
to us as a gift. We are invited to
respond by ‘loving as Jesus loved’ or as Ephesians puts it: be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another (as
God in Christ has forgiven you). Therefore be imitators
of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.
//
We all come into this faith
community (just for this Sunday or as part of an on-going journey) with our own
stories, our own histories of the good and the bad, the hopeful and the
regretful.
//
But in the welcome of
Christ, we welcome each other and we are not who we were. Well, we are ... but we’re more. We are enveloped by the love and grace of
God. And so we can be more – we can be people
of love with all kindness, who work for justice and fairness and who know the
gift of humility that allows us to let God be our companion on the Way.
Let us pray...
Holy God, may your peace
fill our minds and hearts. We are
grateful that we are not alone. Amen.
***offering***
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