A Sermon in Lent

Wonder. Bread!

Exodus 16:1-15

John 6: 24-35

Those of you in the Howdy Doody generation – you know who you are – will remember the commercials for Wonder Bread: You know: “builds strong bodies 12 ways.” It was enriched with vitamins and it was soft and white, fluffy almost – in our house the complete opposite of the substantial biscuits and cornbread that were the usual fare. In fact, in my part of the South, white slices from a bag are still called light bread.

But whether our daily bread is soft and white, or biscuits, pita, or pumpernickel – we still call it the staff of life. Even the cruelest diet contains bread and water. And despite all our sophistication and abundance, the prediction of a big snow storm still sends hundreds of people out to stand in line to buy milk and….bread.

If you doubt the wonder of bread, think for a moment about the feeling you have when you smell a freshly baked loaf of bread. If you think bread has become unnecessary, try to imagine all your Sunday dinners with no fresh rolls, Mexican food without tortillas, March 17 without soda bread. If you think bread is not important, consider this Table without it. Bread is essential for life – the life of the body and the life of the soul.

It has been this way for thousands of years, all the way back to the wilderness and even before that. Bread is strength for the journey. So it is not surprising that when the children of Israel found themselves out in the middle of nowhere without any bread, they were anxious, upset, and angry. They were hungry. And they complained about it. In Egypt, they were slaves and they were forced into backbreaking labor, but at least they had known what to expect. At least, they had something to eat. Not like this.

In Egypt, the people were dependent on Pharaoh for bread. In the wilderness, they had to become dependent on God. It was a hard transition.

But just as God had noticed their slavery, so God noticed their hunger and sent manna. It was strange stuff, like nothing they had ever seen before. "When [they] saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?"" (Exodus 16:15a). "What is it," which in Hebrew is man hu. And so this bread from heaven was called manna. It covered the earth like dew in the morning. Moses told them what it was, bread from God, and they ate it.

Think about the courage to do that, the act of faith it took to eat this stuff that they had never seen before, this stuff they could not even name.

But they had no choice, really. They were hungry, they were in the wilderness, they ate, and it satisfied their hunger. It was sufficient. It was enough for the day.

But it was not to be hoarded. When they tried to save it up, stockpile against the future, it bred worms and was spoiled. This wonderful manna was food for the present. And if it required an act of faith to taste it for the first time, it also required an act of faith to believe that there would be enough for tomorrow without hoarding what was offered today. After all, they needed this bread to live. And it was hard to leave it there, hard to be confident that there would more in the future.

There in the wilderness, they had to accept what God would offer, on God’s terms. They had to trust that what God offered was life itself.

To be given bread when you are really hungry is to be given all you need. As Mother Teresa once said: "We give dying people bread because they hunger and perish not just for bread but also for love. When we hand them bread, we are also giving them love." ." (Sunday Dinner, Willimon, p 65) That is what God did with those hungry, complaining people in the wilderness. God gave them food – and love.

And Jesus did the same thing, multiplying the loaves, feeding those who had followed him into the desert. They thought they understood the power he had. He had them eating out of his hands, after all. They thought he was a second Moses, sent from God to give them bread. But they were wrong. They misunderstood his power. His power had little to do with their stomachs and everything to do with their souls.

The bread that mattered was not the bread from his hands but another kind of bread, something new and wholly different. It was the bread of life. It was his own life.

Remember: To be given bread when you are hungry to the point of perishing is to be given love. It was true for those in the wilderness, it was true for those with Jesus in Capernaum, and it is true for us, too.

We, too, may know something about the wilderness. It is a place where the fear of scarcity can easily turn to complaining. It is a place of hunger and emptiness, sometimes of anger. The wilderness is a time of being pushed out of all that is familiar, of being uprooted, of having nowhere to turn -- except to God. The wilderness is that experience of learning to depend on God because you can no longer depend on anything else. The wilderness is the place where you live from day to day, and there is enough, just for today. In the wilderness, you have to trust and obey God.

And whether we know it or not, we are praying a wilderness prayer every time we say: “Give us this day our daily bread.” What we are asking is this: God, give us enough for one day. Give us what we need for the present moment. Keep us from hoarding your gifts. Teach us to trust that you will provide.

This is not easy. We live in a world where every message is about being self-sufficient, taking control, maintaining independence. It is a hard transition to move from the message of the world to the message of the Word. It is a hard transition to give up our reliance on ourselves and what we have stored up, and learn instead to rely on God. It goes against so much of what we have been taught: don't be a burden, pay your own way, save for retirement, be responsible. Those actions are worthwhile, of course, until and unless they get in the way of God. We can become so focused on looking after ourselves that we forget to look for God. We can become so intent on saving ourselves that we miss out on life.

Life comes from one source: Jesus, sent by God to satisfy the deepest hungers of the world, for those in the wilderness, for the starving, for those who are afraid and angry with God; Jesus, offering his life to us and for us, and showing us the way to receive the gift. Not by hoarding what we have as a hedge against the future, not by longing for the old days of Pharaoh’s plenty, not by becoming paralyzed with the fear of not having enough. We receive the gift of life by reaching out in faith and obedience, seeing that God in Christ is giving us what we need, but also recognizing that it may not look like anything we have ever seen before.

It may raise more questions than it answers. It may make us wonder. Like those in the wilderness and those around Jesus, when we are confronted with God's strange provision, it will require an act of faith to take it in.

The bread we share here comes from the hand of God – God who gives us all we need for life, God who gives us Jesus Christ. This bread builds a strong body, the body of Christ, in more ways than we can even imagine. And that is cause for thanksgiving, for trust and gratitude, for awe and for wonder.

And Jesus still says to us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

And may it be so. Amen.

(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Volunteers

When I teach prospective pastors about leadership in the church, I have urged them to find terms other than "volunteer" to use for those in their congregations who do the work of the church. That word has always implied to me something optional, voluntary, rather than an irrevocable calling (Romans 11:29). But I may be rethinking all that. You see, in my garden, I have had these amazing volunteers this year. I have three tomato plants that have just appeared -- the seeds sowed by last year's plants, coming to life in the new season, and growing as well as the plants that I bought last month. My neighbor has an amazing vine, huge and green, that might be a pumpkin but could be a squash -- we will have to wait to see. It was born from her compost, from the fruit of last year that has now put forth its own fruit. And a planter in my yard that sat outside all winter has produced a pink petunia from two years past.

These are all volunteers. And these experiences make me wonder if we are doing enough self-seeding in our churches. Are we raising up the right leaders, helping them bear fruit in their own generation, and then allowing the seed of that fruit to ripen and mature into a new crop that can provide nourishment in a subsequent season? I'm not sure. I think we all too often wear out our lay leadership so they have nothing left to pass along that will create volunteers for the future.

I will probably eat tomatoes this summer from plants that I set out in another summer. I am hoping that might be the case in some of my churches: that the work I have done in a past season will bear fruit for the future, that there will be volunteers that sprout up to nourish a new generation.

Jesus Is Not A Mother Squirrel

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time (and money) watching the “Eliminate ‘em” guy remove a baby squirrel that had fallen down my chimney and was stuck in the area that surrounds the gas fireplace. Apparently, a mother squirrel had made a nest in the top of the chimney. The pest removal man attempted to get her out of the chimney by leaving the little guy in a big trap in the yard. The baby squirrel cried and called but the mama did not come. She remained perched on the side of the chimney watching the whole thing. Either she was afraid of the man or worried about leaving the other babies. Either way, she left the little squirrel on his own and did not attempt to rescue him.

This whole episode made me think about the story of the lost sheep:

What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. (Matthew 18:12-13)

In this wild world where we live, there is strength and protection in numbers. But in the realm of God, when I am lost -- one alone -- Someone will come and find me.

That is comforting, but now this morning there is another squirrel in the fireplace……

Thrift Supervision

At the corner of 17thStreet and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, is the Office Thrift Supervision. As federal buildings go, it is pretty nondescript – no soaring columns, lofty domes, or splashing fountains -- just a kind of blank façade suitable for housing an anonymous bureaucracy. The purpose of the Office is to oversee savings and loan institutions, which are known in the financial industry as “thrifts.” But I find myself thinking that maybe we ought to have a federal agency actually charged with supervising thriftiness. What if all government spending had to pass a thrift test? Such scrutiny would certainly cut down on bridges to nowhere and special projects benefiting lawmakers’ hometowns. Federal employees would work long and hard, being thrifty with the money the government pays them. Programs to serve the poor would bypass all the red tape, eliminating the expense of multiple hands to pass the money along.

And what if this Office of Thrift Supervision had services for private citizens as well as the public sector? What if we could have our own expenses supervised by a wise and thoughtful entity, one that might whisper in our ear as we are considering buying yet another pair of shoes, or avoiding the car pool because it is slightly inconvenient, or getting a $4.00 cup of coffee instead of filling up the travel mug? And what if our personal thrift supervisor encouraged us to be thrifty with ourselves so we could be generous with others?

I heard a story on the radio recently about a man in England who had saved carefully his whole life. With interest rates slashed to compensate for an economy tanked by greed, at worst, and overextension, at best, he cannot rely on his savings for the income he needs to support his retirement. He was bemoaning the fact that there is no reward for the thrifty. It certainly seems that way, as institutions and industries that have blown through millions now get in line to be bailed out. But it isn’t just the “economy” because, after all, we are the economy. So I’m planning to supervise my own thrift, to watch over what I spend, what I save, to put my money in the places were it will be most useful (whether that is the offering plate at church or the drive-through window at the bank).

Maundy Thursday

We call this Maundy Thursday. It is a strange phrase, because of that unfamiliar word—Maundy—not one that we use in any other context. It means commandment and is similar to words that we do use—mandate and mandatory.

But what is there in this Thursday that is mandatory for us? Is it just that we must walk through this sad time of betrayal to get ready for what will come tomorrow, and the next day—and the next? Maybe. Is it necessary somehow for us to feel abandoned, to suffer at the hands of those closest to us, just as Jesus did? Maybe. Are we required to confront our own capacity for betrayal? Maybe that, too.

In some ways, I find Maundy Thursday the hardest part of week before Easter, in some ways even worse than Good Friday. By Friday it is all done, or at least set in motion in some irretrievable way. On Saturday, he is dead and in that moment it seems so final. But Thursday -- Thursday, it could all have been changed. At least, it seems there was that possibility. It did not seem so irreversible. It is the point in the chain of events where there are still choices, decisions to be made, options available. Maybe Judas could have changed his mind on Thursday night.

Yes, it seems there are options, and even so, we know how this will turn out. And maybe those who gathered around the table with Jesus knew it, too. This was not the first time they had shared a meal. They must have eaten together hundreds of times. Heaven knows, he would eat with anyone, he was not picky about that. That was part of what had stirred up all the trouble.

But this was not just any other meal. It was different. There was something not right, a heavy, nameless anxiety, and even though they could not have said exactly what it was, it must have weighed on them, settling in the pit of the stomach like a stone.

He knew. He knew that God had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God. And so he got up from the table, laid down his robe and wrapped a towel around himself. He poured some water and began to wash their feet and wipe them with the towel.

He had done some strange things, but nothing like this, at least not to them. He had touched the untouchables, he had raised he dead, he had confronted the religious leaders, he had restored sight to the blind and multiplied the loaves. And they had watched, they had been with him. But they had not been the recipients of his action in quite this way—until now, at the end.

And wasn’t it just like him to take this simple little ritual of welcome and stand it on its head? Of course, they were used to washing their own feet. Any good host would provide the necessary container of water and a towel. It was almost a habit. But it was the most menial of tasks, something not even the lowest Jewish servant could be ordered to do. And here he was, down on his knees, taking their tired dusty feet in his hands and washing and drying them, the towel around him becoming soiled with the dirt from their feet.

He washed them all – the faithful who would follow him to death, the doubting who wanted to believe but could not, the one who would deny him, the one who would betray him. He washed them all. He poured out the water on all of them; just as he poured out his love. No exceptions, no test of worthiness, just the service of love from their Lord on his knees.

But it was not what they had hoped. It was not what they wanted. They did not want a savior who would be kneeling down before them. They wanted a savior who would cause their enemies to kneel down before them. They wanted their savior to come in the world’s way of power and might, and instead he came in God’s way, on his knees. It must have seemed that he had betrayed them, that his taking the form of a servant was somehow a reversal of roles that almost mocked their hopes and dreams.

No, it was not what they wanted. And truth to tell, it is not what we want, either. We, too, want a God who will conquer our enemies, one who will affirm that we are entitled to the power and might that we claim as our own, who can make things turn out the way we want, or at the very least, solve our problems. Instead we find ourselves confronting the One who kneels at our feet.

Our Lord does for us what he did around the table that night. His love is poured out on us like sweet water. He cradles our lives in his hands, soothing hearts that have grown tough and hard and callused, cleansing the places in us that have been soiled by the journey of life. He kneels at our feet and he pours out his life for us. He kneels in obedience, in obedience to the Holy One who sent him to this work, but also in obedience to us.

Because the choice is ours. This is Thursday and we have time to change our minds. There are still options available. We can receive love from his hands or we can nail those same hands to the cross. And the terrible part of his love for us, almost too much too to bear, is this: he will honor our decision, even if it is our will to reject him.

But know this: even if we deny him, if we doubt, if we desert him, if we betray him—he loves us still. Even in our rejection, his love is poured out for us. He empties himself, giving us all he has, all he is, until it must seem there is nothing left. But the love he gives comes from an endless supply, endless because it is of God and endless because it is always being multiplied in the world.

He has set us an example, that we also should do as he has done to us. We also should lay down our robes, that which gives us identity and status and protection. We should allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable. We should lay down our lives. We also should kneel down in service to those whom we love and to those who have deserted us and those whom we know will betray us. We should pour out our love for each other. And in order to do that, we must empty ourselves of judging and power and pride and disappointment and anything that is not Love. Then we can do as he has done.

This is his mandate to us: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is his mandate. It is not easy, sometimes not even possible, unless. . . unless we know in our heart of hearts that we are loved and loved to the end. And then, of course, all things are possible.

Our Lord and Teacher kneels before us. The grit and grime of our journeys cling to our lives. He pours out love over us. He is tender and gentle with us, with the places in us that are bruised and sore, with the parts of our lives that have grown hard and callused and unfeeling. He lays his hands on us, his wounded hands, on the places that have grown weary, the parts of ourselves where we feel the effects of the hard traveling that has brought us this far.

He washes us as a service of love. He takes the stain of our sin upon himself. And bathed in his love, we are refreshed, restored, made clean.

Do you know what he has done to us? Do you know that we must do the same?


(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Thirty Pieces of Silver

Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What will you give me if I betray him to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him. (Matthew 26:14-16)

Judas is our scapegoat this week. He is the one who bears the guilt of all of us. We have made him a kind of monster in our minds, someone who did something unthinkable, who committed the scandal of selling out and doing in his friend and companion. But, if we are truthful with ourselves, we know in our hearts that we have all betrayed Jesus, we have all taken our own thirty pieces of silver.

Our thirty pieces of silver are those things we have wanted more than we wanted to follow Jesus. Sometimes our purse of betrayal holds “ambition” or “fitting in and being popular” or “failure to forgive” or “lack of compassion” or “blindness to the needs of another.” I will spend some time this day naming thirty things that I have sought instead of seeking to follow Jesus. And (God have mercy) I don’t think I will have a hard time coming up with the list.

What is on your list? Can you name your own pieces of silver? Try it and then .... give it up. We keep careful accounts, but somehow it seems Jesus does not. Consider this story (from Madeline L’Engle, in The Rock That is Higher):

There is an old legend that after his death Judas found himself at the bottom of a deep and slimy pit. For thousands of years he wept his repentance, and then the tears were finally spent he looked up and say, way, way up, a tiny glimmer of light. After he had contemplated it for another thousand years or so, he began to try to climb up towards it. The wall of the pit were dank and slimy, and he kept slipping back down. Finally, after great effort, he neared the top, and then he slipped and fell all the way back down. It took him many years to recover, all the time weeping bitter tears of grief and repentance, and then he started to climb again. After many more falls and efforts and failures he reached the top and dragged himself into an upper room with twelve people seated around a table. “We’ve been waiting of you, Judas,” Jesus said. “We couldn’t begin till you came.”

And maybe this is the ultimate scandal -- not what Judas did but rather what Jesus is still doing. No matter what we have done, no matter how we have sold out, Jesus is waiting for us, ready to welcome us back as his friends and followers. Let us look at our lives honestly this day, but do that knowing that when Jesus looks at us, it is with unbearable love.

Epiphany

Not Much to Go On?

Matthew 2:1-12

It seems especially fitting to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany in a place like this doesn’t it? Think about it: Many of our usual number include travelers who have gone afar bearing gifts. As I was hoofing it through several airports over the last couple of weeks, I was remembering the days when going someplace on an airplane seemed a glamorous thing to do, exciting, almost luxurious. There was a time, some of you may remember, when the folks -- even those sitting in the back – got a hot cooked meal served on a little china plate. Nowadays, if you don’t bring your own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you’re probably not going to eat. And, of course, you have to be prepared to stand in long lines, take off a lot of your clothes, and unpack your bags for inspection. Travel these days is anything but glamorous.

But despite all the headaches and hassle when we set out on our holiday trips, we generally know where we will end up. Yes, it might take some delays and detours but eventually we will get where we intended to be. For the most part, for us, travel is inconvenient, a kind of necessary evil. We don’t usually consider it a life threatening or life changing adventure. We don’t do our traveling like the wise men.

It’s hard to know who they were exactly. They came from the East, perhaps from the country we know as Iraq. We picture them as kings, but it is more likely that they were scholars, those who studied the stars, the movement of planets and moons, the path of comets, the timing of meteor showers. They consulted both their ancient texts on earth and the celestial texts written in the heavens above them for whatever messages might be revealed. Would this be a year of drought or flood? Look to the heavens. Would there be times when the sun would be darkened and, if so, what would that mean? Could they predict the tides on their small stretch of coastline by looking to the moon? Was it possible to understand earthly events by the lights of the heavens?

These were scholars who had devoted their lives to such questions. And when they saw something new in their heavens and something ancient in their writings, and the two things came together in an unusual convergence that suggested the rise of a new ruler, they decided to go and see if their research was right. So they set out on a trip that would have likely been six or seven hundred miles over rough terrain, leading them into a land whose language they did not speak and whose customs they did not follow. Travel for them was not just a hassle. It was a daring and dangerous enterprise.

When you set out on a trip like that, you have to entertain the possibility that you may never return home, or that it will cost you everything you have, or that it will turn out to be a fool’s errand and instead of a pot of gold at the end, there might be nothing. They took a big risk without much to go on.

Would you do it? Would you set out on a trip like that? It is hard to imagine, at least for me. I want things planned out in advance. I want reservations made along the way. I want comfort and security and certainty. I want to know where I am going, how I will get there, and what will happen when I do. I am usually full of plans for how to get things done. Part of that is the nature of my work, and part of it is just my nature.

But the kind of journey the wise men took was not the kind that can be planned. They had no itinerary, no reservations. All they had to go on was their reading of their sacred texts, the ones written on parchment and the one written in the heavens. Interesting, isn’t it, that we call these men “wise.” What they did doesn't seem wise at all, does it? They left all they knew to go in the direction of something that might not even exist. They had no idea what they were really looking for. And there was a good possibility that they were wrong in their interpretations. In reality, at least our kind of reality, theirs was a journey of foolishness.

But that kind of foolishness is the foolishness that faith produces. To live a life of faith, a wise life, means living without much to go on. It is to watch the signs, to see what is revealed in the sacred – both on earth and in heaven – and then to act on that, to seek, to risk. It is to find yourself finding God, not in the places of power and might, but in a stable, in a crib, on a cross. To live a wise life is to go without reservations, to be willing to leave everything behind and set out for the unknown. And, oh, that is so hard for me – and maybe for you, too. I want to know, I want to be sure, I want to have a plan.

But here is the wisdom revealed in the light of the morning star – it isn’t about what we want at all. It is about what God wants. And our journey of faith means traveling in the direction in God’s direction – even when we have no idea what that is, where it leads, and what we might find along the way. This is a risky way to live. It threatens everything. The old way of life gets left behind and, in the process, all of life is changed.

And we don’t have much to go on to know the way, do we? Just an ancient set of writings, and a sign from heaven. That’s all. But that sign from heaven is the Light of the world. And that is enough to go on.




(c) Martha C. Highsmith