Sunday, August 18, 2024

 

FaceBook Sunday Morning Reflection 
August 18, 2024

Good Sunday morning, children of the Bread of Life.


We're almost done with this summer cycle of John's Gospel and Jesus torturing the metaphor of Bread until we say, "Stop! Okay! I get it! You are the Bread of Life. If I eat this bread, I'll know Life Eternal. Got it!'

Well, you must admit, it IS a difficult concept to get your head wrapped around, even if you are well-acquainted with metaphors and similies.

It's the stuff about "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" that really pushes the envelope, I think.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just left the Metaphor Zone.

I often wonder what it must be like to be a person who has not really been exposed to Christianity except, maybe, little snippets here and there about "love your neighbor," and "love one another" and then decides to walk into church one Sunday morning and hears:

"Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them."

Whoa, Nellie! Mic drop. Mind blown. Where's the door?

Actually, I know this is going to sound sacrilegious and close to heretical, but I can't imagine that when we get to heaven there'll be two lines - one EZ pass lane for Christians and one TSA, take off your shoes, laptop out of the suitcase, only 3-ounces of liquid, full body scan lane for anyone who hasn't been baptized or received Holy Communion.

I think John might have been exaggerating just a teeny-tiny bit to convince The People of The Way to take a right turn away from The Temple and toward Jesus.

I mean, c'mon.

Do you really think that when Gandhi got to the Pearly Gates he got turned away? Or Buddha? Actually, I think Jesus came right out and greeted Buddha at the gate and brought him in himself and the two of them are walking together around heaven even as I write this.

Then again, I can say all this because I'm not a rector and I get a pension that no one can take from me, so I've earned the right to be a little heretical. Especially if I err on the side of generosity.

I think Rachel Held Evans has it absolutely right (and she was an Evangelical who became Episcopalian, so, you know, she's got the creds) when she said:

"The church is God saying, 'I'm throwing a banquet and all these mismatched, messed up, people are invited. Here, have some wine."

Anyway, just this week and next and we'll be done with the metaphor of Bread. The Gospel will be gluten-free once again.

I can't leave you without noting a very important date on today's calendar and Thee Best story that goes along with it - especially since we'll soon be learning to say, "Madame President."

On this date in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.

The first national constitutional amendment had been proposed in Congress in 1878, and in every Congress session after that. Finally, in 1919, it narrowly passed both houses of Congress and was sent to the states to be ratified.

Most Southern states opposed the amendment, and on August 18, 1920, it all came down to Tennessee. The pro-amendment faction wore yellow roses in their lapels, and the "anti" faction wore red American Beauty roses. It was a close battle and the state legislature was tied 48 to 48.

The decision came down to one vote: that of 24-year-old Harry Burn, the youngest state legislator. He had been expected to vote against it, but he had in his pocket a note from his mother, which read:

"Dear Son: Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt. I noticed some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification. Your Mother."

He voted in favor of the amendment.

In your prayers, please remember one Harry Burn who was a good boy and did what his mother asked and changed history to include herstory. It's not like changing bread and wine but it's pretty damn near miraculous. I think Jesus is well pleased.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Wonder Bread




St. John's Episcopal Church, Milton, DE
Pentecost XII - August 11, 2024
Proper 14, Year B, Track I


In my mind’s eye, I can still see my grandmother’s kitchen as clearly as I can see my hand in front of me. I can see her kitchen table  -  the place where we ate breakfast together every morning - which also served as a banquet table of sorts when the whole family was together. 

 

Of necessity, it was a large table. Like many immigrant families, hers was large. My grandmother had twenty pregnancies and twenty-two children. Only nine made it to adulthood - five girls and four boys - but when you add spouses and their children, my grandmother’s kitchen filled up very quickly. 



The table was also the place where meals were prepared - meat, poultry, and pork were tenderized and fish and shellfish were seasoned with generous amounts of salt, pepper, onion and garlic (lots and lots of garlic) as the basics and then, depending on the menu, with fresh or dried seasonings like sage, basil, oregano, thyme, parsley, and saffron.

It was the rare occasion that meat was served alone. It was always in a casserole or a stew, in a pot roast or a loaf, a soup or a pot pie, and always surrounded by tons of vegetables, fresh out of her garden or from large jars which she had put up: potatoes, carrots, squash, turnips, beets, string beans, tomatoes, broccoli, etc.

The menu varied, depending on what the butcher had on sale or what my grandfather and uncles and boy cousins  (“the boys” as she called them) had caught on their fishing trip when they took my grandfather’s boat off the coast of New Bedford, MA or had gone into deeper waters off the island of Cuttyhunk.

The one item on her table on which you could also depend was bread. Now, my grandmother was an excellent cook - I can’t think of a thing she made that I didn’t like - and at the risk of sounding like Oprah in that Weight Watcher commercial, I’m going to say it anyway, “I love bread.”  Probably more than Oprah, I love bread.

Now, if you’ve ever had real bread - especially if you’ve made or been part of the process of making real bread - you know the difference between real bread and processed bread. I’m probably going to date myself, but I’m now old enough that I don’t care anymore, but I remember the first time my mother brought home something called “Wonder Bread”.

How many here will admit that they remember Wonder Bread?

How many still eat it?

Mother was sooOOoo proud, sooOOoo pleased to be able to bring home to her children bread that was different from anything she had been fed as a child. This wasn’t some recipe created by some peasant in a fishing village in the old country. This was wasn’t some ancient recipe but something created by smart men, modern men - actual scientist in a real laboratory - that was made from a scientific formula. 

 

Not a recipe, a formula, see? It wasn’t ancient, it was modern. Not from a kitchen but a scientific laboratory. Not heavy and dark but white and light as a feather. Why, it was a miracle of modern science. It was a wonder, is what it was.

And so, it was called WONDER Bread. 

Except, we hated it. I mean, we kids didn’t say that, of course. Not to her face. We must have had a sense that one day, it would be our turn to be the parent, longing to please our children in a way that our mother or father never could.

As my mother hovered over us at our kitchen table, we each took a bite of the bread on which she had slathered margarine - not the pale, creamy, sweet tasting butter from our grandmother’s house, but that deep yellow spread that didn’t taste or smell or feel anything like real butter.

She seemed so eager to please us, so excited to be so different from her own mother and establish herself as a mother in her own right, that, well, we smiled and then oohed and aahed until she clapped her hands with joy and turned her back to head into the kitchen.

Once her back was turned we kids looked at each other around the table. Our eyes silently conveyed our chagrin and a resignation to our mother’s romance with the miracles of modern science.

We knew that whenever we wanted real bread we could just head downstairs to our grandmother’s apartment and she’d always give us a thick slice of her bread - sometimes slathered with real butter and her strawberry preserves or dripping with orange marmalade; other times, depending on the season, we would have a real treat of fresh warm bread, right out of the oven, slathered with butter and then topped with fresh slices of peaches or pears or apples from the fruit trees in her yard. Sometimes, as a special treat, she would take some of her freshly ripened figs, mashed and cooked with honey, which would become a fig jam.

It was no wonder to us that Wonder Bread could never hold up to the weight of real butter and slices of fresh fruit or a thick layer of fresh fruit preserves. Or, in the summer, a thick slice of beefsteak tomato. There was simply no comparison. But, Wonder Bread was not created for that. It was created to make more bread available to more people at a fraction of the cost. It was a utilitarian ethic at its finest, efficient best: The greatest good for the greatest number.

Wonder Bread may have been a miracle of modern science, but we kids had already tasted something that was a mystery.

Somehow, someone, somewhere way back in time had figured out that taking a living thing - a fungus called yeast - and added it to ground flour and sugar and water - the basic elements of life - and if you had the patience to watch it rise and fall and then rise and fall again and then if you kneaded it with the strength of your arms you didn’t know you had, and then baked it in in an oven - could create something that, mysteriously, would sustain and nourish life.

It was the difference between tasting a scientific wonder and entering the deep mystery of the alchemy of the very stuff of life.

Earlier in this sixth chapter of John, we read that Jesus had just finished feeding 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fishes. The people were so astounded by this miracle that they followed him out on the Sea of Galilee to see what other miracles this prophet could perform.

But Jesus pointed them beyond their present reality and toward the mystery of life. He told them that His life was the central ingredient of Life. He said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Our bodies are still nourished and sustained by the bread of this world, but our souls - ah, but our souls - require a different kind of substance and nourishment.

We were born into this world, as Teilhard de Chardin says, not as human beings to have a spiritual experience - No! - but as spiritual beings to have a human experience. We need the bread of this world for our bodies, but we need the Bread of Life - Jesus - to nourish and sustain our souls.

Every Sunday, we gather together as a community of faith and listen to the ancient stories of God’s intervention in the drama of our lives. We sing the old, old songs which tell the story of Jesus and his love. We profess our faith in the ancient Creeds, and confess and receive absolution for our sins, offering prayers and petitions for ourselves, one another and the world.

It is then the job and the privilege of the priest to gather up all these various ingredients - the elements of our worship that act as flour, sugar, salt, yeast and water - and offer prayers of gratitude over them and make what we call “a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” over the simple, basic elements of creation so that we - together, people and priest - our work - the sacred liturgy of our lives of faith which we call Eucharist - the words of our faith become flesh and call forth the true presence of Jesus,the Bread of Life, that our souls may be nourished from the bounty of creation for this life and the life to come.*

We are spiritual beings who are here, on this fragile earth, our island home, to become human beings so that, when our work here is done, we may return to our Heavenly home as spiritual beings with the One who creates Life.

How any of that happens - how the simple elements of creation - bread and grapes become wafers and wine - become the Body and Blood of Jesus, the Bread of Life - is a deeper mystery than even the mystery of how the simple stuff of creation becomes the Bread of the world.

It is more than a wonder; it is a miracle of faith in which we are privileged to participate each and every Sunday, being the day when we remember and celebrate the gift and the mystery of the Incarnation, the Miracles and Wonders and the Resurrection of Jesus.

Hear again the words of life which feed our very souls: “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

I don’t pretend to understand it. I just embrace with deep gratitude the wonder of it all so that our faith, our souls, may be nourished and sustained in this life and the next.    

Amen.

*I must say, I think I out-St-Pauled St. Paul with that sentence that is, itself, a full paragraph. I think he would be proud of me.