Ephesians 6:10-20, Psalm 34:15-22 & John 6:56-69 on August 25th, 2024
Above is audio of the sermon pulled from the video and amplified.
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Oh, all you children of God. Yes, smiles on your faces. You are doing just fine this morning. Grace, mercy, and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
So for five weeks, we have been reading John chapter 6. For five weeks, we have been reading Paul's letter to the Ephesians. At this point, some of it is starting to sound a little bit redundant. I am the bread of life. I am the one who gives you food not like the man of your ancestors ate, but my bread goes on for I give you eternal life. Have you heard it before?
Sometimes it's like, remember the old came art? Blue light specials, right? And the time the Bible was written, there were no blue lights to go off. So they just repeat it stuff. Truly, truly I say to you. Verily, verily I say to you. John says it in chapter 6 a lot. Jesus words, I am the bread of life. Or Paul writing to the Ephesians and spelling out what that means, how we are to be the body of Christ on earth, how we are to treat one another and treat all of God's creations.
It has been a rich month of readings. But now I feel like we're at the end. And it's a little bit like Martin Luther and his catechism saying, so what does it mean? What does it matter that Jesus is the bread of life and we the church, Christ's body, on earth? Or in the words of Stephen Sondheim, this is the day for putting it together. Step by step, putting it together. How does it impact us? How does it affect us?
If you go back over this past month, you remember that chapter started with Jesus miraculously feeding the multitudes. And though we think things are never enough, even a child's lunch of fish and bread was more than enough to feed the crowds, to keep them sustained, to have leftovers for others. And then Jesus begins to teach and Paul begins to teach how this bread that is from above helps build bodies 12 ways. That like wonder bread, we are given this meal from a loving God to sustain our growth and our care for the world.
And then we hear that this food that we eat is not just some symbolic meal, but it is the very body of Christ so that Christ is in us. And as a three-year-old might say, how can you treat me like that? You have Jesus in you. When we receive the body of Christ, we are infused with the blood of Christ when we leave this place and go out and mix it up with all kinds of people, some kind, some not so kind. But the face we show has Jesus in it.
Or how this eternal life we are called to share is not just something we wait for at the end of our earthly lives. But the spirit works in us to give us life with the eternal one. And that life with the eternal one brings a glimpse of heaven and allows us to experience God's kingdom here on earth. Indeed, we are called to participate in building up the kingdom of God.
Such rich lessons. But here's what I would want to leave you with today. Every time you worship, every time you go forward for holy communion, please keep in mind the fourfold action of the communion service and Jesus' words. Those four actions are Jesus takes the bread. Jesus blesses the bread. Jesus breaks the bread. Jesus gives the bread.
Now, don't stop at thinking only of the bread. For the bread is the body of Christ. And oh, we the church are the body of Christ. So what does that fourfold action have to do with you and me? What does it mean? Let's put it together.
Jesus takes us. God chooses us. Don't ever think you're here by accident or that your faith doesn't matter in the big picture because God chooses you and you and all of us and takes us long before we choose God, long before we take God, like that baby who is loved simply because that baby is God's created, beloved, long before the baby ever hugs back. God takes us.
And then God blesses us. The word blessing is to offer thanksgiving. Can you think about that? Now, back when God takes us, I want you to think of a time when you were taken, a time when you were chosen. Can you remember something? Maybe you were chosen for an award when you were in school and it made you feel good. Maybe you were chosen as a prom date or as a partner in life and that felt good. Maybe you were chosen of all the applicants for a job and that felt good. You were chosen, you were taken because God has blessed you and gives thanks for you and for the very gifts you have to share.
Benediction, good words. Jesus speaks good words over the church that together we can be, what none of us alone can be. That in the same way as depending on God, we can depend on each other and come into this holy communion to offer something good to the world. We are taken, we are blessed.
Uh oh. We are broken. Broken. That's not really a nice action word, is it? Not when you think of broken bodies or broken spirits or broken dreams or broken promises to be broken doesn't sound like it's a good thing, but yet Jesus takes us and breaks us.
I had a colleague, Pastor Jean Gardner up in Maryland. Jean told the story about how he came to do communion at one worship service. Now that church's practice was for the members of the church to bake bread and offer that to be the communion bread and the pastor would break the loaf as the pastor went distributing communion. The altar guild on a Sunday morning would take the offering of the bread, put it on the table, make sure everything was right, turned out one Sunday whoever was to bring the bread for God. No bread for communion, back in the day when you didn't just go to the supermarket because the supermarket was closed on Sunday and Jean said luckily realizing that could happen, there was always a loaf of bread kept in the church freezer.
So the altar guild went to the church freezer, they got the bread out, they put it on the table to thaw. By the time they got to the communion part of the liturgy, Jean had this nicely thought, so he thought, loaf of bread on the table and he went to say the words, he took it, he blessed it, he broke it. Could not break that bread, finally got it to break only that he had in one hand crust and in the other hand this loaf with a big bowl to frozen bread in the middle and he looked at it and he thought, isn't that how it is for the church, for the body of Christ to be broken?
We get into our habits, we get into our attitudes, we get into our absolutely rights and sometimes friends we have to be broken. Sometimes those attitudes do not fit in with the heart and the mind of Jesus. And if we're frozen in time or frozen in what we think is right, we leave no room for the spirit to break us anyway. Whether we're crust or bolds of frozen bread, we are broken because only then can we be given away.
And the last action is that Jesus takes you body of Christ and gives you away to a world that so badly needs the salvation Jesus brings. We are the instruments of peace. We are the resurrected living Lord and the midst of a population that may never enter these doors to see the face of Jesus but we'll still see that face on you and on me. We are broken and given away to care for all people, not just the ones that fit with our ideas, and our likes, to stand up for those who are being unfairly treated, to share with those who are in need.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son and God so loves the world to give the body of Christ over and over and over again. You see, Jesus is putting it together when He takes us and blesses us and breaks us and gives us to do the work of the church. It is our privilege. We don't do it alone. No more than we could just clothe ourselves with all of the salvation Paul talks about in his letter to Ephesians. We are clothed again because we are chosen and God initiates it. Blesses us with the forgiveness and the mercy and the strength and the enthusiasm, enthusiasm in the spirit in God to do this holy work.
It's been a month of Sundays in John, but we're only beginning. God bless you in the work, in the work of God.