A Special Bread Promises Endless Life?

11 Pentecost Cycle b  Proper 14 August 9, 2015
1 Kings 19:4-8  Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25-5:2  John 6:35, 41-51

 Lectionary Link

  One of the dominant and repeated themes of the Gospel of John is the persuasion about what is called eternal life.  In the Greek language there are at least three words used for life in a variety of ways.  bios=physical or biological life, but also can mean ethical life as related in the prefix for biography.   psueche=the life of the soul or psychological life.  Zao or Zoe=eternal life or abundant life or divine life is used in the Gospel of John.  We use zoe as a prefix for the science of the study of animals.  The writer of the Gospel of John uses the words zoe aionius multiple time.  Life of the eons....eternal life.
  I believe that the life of faith is often misunderstood because we make starkly separated the perception of what is outside and what is inside.  With the rise of modern science we practiced the further division of the observing subject who observes the external objects.  And so we look at events in external linear patterns of causation.  We can easily regard the Bible to be a story of how a God exterior to us, caused this world and then dwells somewhere physically in a heaven from where the divine Being makes strategic interventions in the history of humanity.  This in fact expresses the naive perceptual view of the relationship between God and this world and this is how the Bible is most often read.  We naively read the Bible as those who make absolute a division between what is perceived out there and what is in here.  And we are the subjective viewers who observe from within here.  
  But if we live and move and have our being in God, then events are the events which arise from living and having our being within God.  So we do not have external causation; we have an internal arising of events and people.  We cannot rightly separate what is inside of us from what is outside of us.
  When the Gospel writer says that we have eternal life; it means that we have come to a place of awareness and a place of interpreting our participation within a quality of spiritual life which is always there.
  The preservation instinct in our lives is a feature of eternal life.  We may feel that we want to preserve our lives and live forever but there are manifestations of physical life which persuade us that living forever in our bodies may not be ideal quality of living.  I have spent many of my ministerial hours in hospitals and in skilled nursing centers to witness people who live very long lives but who spend the end of their lives without significant quality of life in mind, body and spirit.
  We should not be quick to really think that we know what eternal or ever lasting life is.  What do you want?  A good young healthy body but without wisdom of age and experience?  Or do we think eternal life must be some sort of static state of being consisting of the best strengths of each stage of human life?
  The Gospel writer of John understands that Jesus declared himself to be the living bread and if people eat of this living bread they will live forever and have eternal life.  In the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus claimed that he can give us a fountain of living water within us so that we will no longer thirst.  In John chapter eleven Jesus claims to be resurrection and life.
  Let us understand the significant mysticism of the Gospel of John.  You and I live and move and have our being in God and we are blessed if we can recognize this and not be alienated from knowing our true location in God.  We are located in God and God is located within us but the very energetic presence of God within us can be misinterpreted as the energy of desire directed toward making idols out of the things in our lives.
  If we understand Desire with a capital D as the basic life force of the gift of God whose proper object is God, then we can learn in our lives of faith to come into progressive realization of the effects of this eternal life, this abundant life, this conscious sense that there is something basic to us which will have some continuity in some form forever.
  But when we limit the Gift of God's Spirit within us to simply energy for other people, we can reduce the energy of Spirit to mere lust or envy.  When we limit and interpret basic life  of Spirit as the desire for food, clothing, shelter, fame and power positions, then we use the very energy of God to allow idols to be created which have power over us even to the point of addiction.   If we think that idols of food, clothing, shelter, fame and power can last forever then we will truly know the harsh corrections of pain, loss and death.
  The writer of the Gospel of John believes that Jesus Christ came to show us how to be related correctly to God and to ourselves and to the original blessing of God's image upon our lives.
  We have abundant life, eternal life, when we realize how profound the basic blessing of the life force of Spirit is in our lives and how it should not be abused or quenched by allowing its energy to focus wrong upon objects which can become idols of addiction.  In our soul we have the mind to process the words to educate ourselves and to educate our power of choice to achieve the self knowledge about being made in the image of God and knowing that image of God as the very powerful force of life itself.
  The writer of John's Gospel believes that each of us is made out of eternal life because we were created by the Word of God, but we can live our lives unaware of our basic nature.  We can live our lives not choosing correctly because of ignorance about access to the basic image of the divine upon our lives.  We literally have the sinful power to use the gift of God and the energy of God in wrong ways.
  The bread of heaven discourse is about understanding the nourishment of spiritual bread which awakens us to the nutrition and growth of the awareness of God's Spirit in our lives.  It is a warning not to limit life simply to our biological and physical lives and miss the spiritual enrichment of our existence.
  The entire Gospel of John is about being awakened to the original condition of our eternal life and the bread of heaven discourse is an invitation for us to realize this.
  Next week, we will look at how John's Gospel expounds the liturgical practices of the church within this bread of heaven discourse to show how liturgy is another art in the practice of being aware of God's presence in our life.
  But for today, let us feed our souls with the bread which nurtures the awareness of the eternal life as a current quality of our lives.  If we embrace the gift of the eternal life of the Spirit, we may have the faith to accept all of the changes which our bodies and souls must face in the aging processes of time.  Jesus Christ invites us to experience the anchoring living personal force of the Holy Spirit as the promise that we can survive all that the effects of time will throw at us.  In this way we can know Jesus Christ as the "soul food"  or bread of life which  gives us the realization of eternal life.  Amen.

Sunday School, August 9, 2015 11 Pentecost, B proper 14

Sunday School, August 9, 2015   11 Pentecost, B proper 14

 

Sunday School Themes

In the Epistles there is good advice on how to live together well with other people:

1-Don’t be bitter.  What does that mean?  It might that we might get angry and disappointed when we don’t get our way all of the time.   How can we keep from getting bitter?  We need to learn how to share and we need to learn that sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we don’t and we need to learn how to accept not getting everything that we want when we want it.  If we learn patience, then we can avoid being bitter.

2-Don’t be angry.  Anger often happens because we don’t have patience.  We don’t know how to wait our turn.  When we live with other people we have to share lots of things.  And if we learn sharing then we can learn not to be anger.  You may want to talk about good anger and bad anger.  What would good anger be?  We might be mad when people are hurting someone.  That is a good anger.   Bad anger is when we get mad because we don’t want to share or take turns.

3-What is wrangling?  Wrangling is always arguing about things.  Sometimes we are always arguing because we don’t want to share or we don’t want to agree with other people or we don’t want to accept the good things that they have to do and say.

4-Don’t slander.  Slander is when we say something bad about someone which is not true and we say it in order to hurt them.  We might call someone a “cheater” because we might  be jealous when they win a game.

5-Put a way malice.  Malice is when one might wish bad things for someone or do things purposely to hurt another person.  If we can accept that God loves us for who we are, then we don’t need to wish bad things for anyone.

There is also a list of good and recommendable attitudes and behaviors

1-Be kind to one another.  Think about what kindness is for you and for others

2-Be tender-hearted.  This means that we don’t treat each other harshly or rudely but being tender means that we try to please other people by doing things for them which we know that they enjoy.

3-Forgive one another.  Each of knows that we are not perfect and we still need to grow and to learn how to be better and so we need to forgive each other as we are trying to be better each day.  If we think that it is hard to forgive then we need to remember that people did some very bad things to Jesus and he still forgave them.  We need to look to Christ as the example of forgiveness.

4-We need to live in love with one another and love means that we make sacrifices.  The sacrifices which we make means that we share and we help each other do our best and we do it all together.

The Gospel is again this week about the riddle of how Jesus is the bread of heaven.  We eat bread and food to grow strong but we know that by eating bread it will not prevent us from dying some day.  We know that there are parts of our life which will die.

Jesus reminds us that there are parts of our lives which will not die.  It is the inside part of ourselves the Spirit.  And we need to feed the part of ourselves which will never die, the part of ourselves which will live forever.

That is why Jesus said that he was like bread that one could eat and live forever.  When we hear and follow the words of Jesus we are eating the words of the bread of heaven which will help us live forever because those words of Jesus are the words which build our spiritual lives, the part of us that will live forever.

Here is a children’s sermon about relating the Holy Eucharist to the feeding of the five thousand and understanding how our communion is related to giving all people enough to eat.

  What if I were to order pizza today for everyone but I only ordered one kind of pizza, all pizza had anchovies on them.  Would you eat my anchovy pizza?  What are anchovies?  They are little fish and many people like them but many more people don’t like them.  But what if I said, everybody has to eat anchovies, would that be fair?  You might say, well more people would eat just plain cheese pizza so why can’t we have that?  But even if we had cheese pizza some people might not like that.

  If I took a food survey do you think that I could get everyone to agree about a food?   How many people like candy?  Not everyone does and some people cannot eat it.  How about cake?  How about broccoli?  How about pickled herring?  How about fish?  How about ham?  How about rattle snake?  How about bread?  Well, not even bread is liked by everyone? 

  If I cannot get us to agree about what food we like, what can I get us to agree about?  How about this?  Will you agree that everyone needs food to live?  Great we can agree on this.

  A baby needs food but how does a baby know that he or she needs food?  Parents have to teach a baby to eat and provide the baby with food to eat.

  So we agree that everyone needs food to eat.  Does everyone in the world have enough food to eat?  No.  And they didn’t have enough food to eat in the time of Jesus.

  Jesus had a great idea about how to get people enough food to eat.  If people eat alone in their own homes only with their own families, they would not see that some families and some people did not have enough to eat.  So Jesus thought, “What if we had a meal for everyone and what if we had meals in every neighborhood where people would be invited to eat together, then that would be a way to make sure that everyone had enough to eat, because everyone would be seen eating something.  A hungry person could not be hidden anymore if all hungry people were invited to eat.”

  So we have the Eucharist, this meal of bread and wine.  This was the meal that Jesus gave to solve the problem of hungry people in the world; because Jesus believed that if everyone ate together, then hungry people would not be hidden and unknown.  If everyone ate together in public then we have a way of checking that everyone would have enough food.

  We have lost something today in our church meal of bread and wine.  It has become more like a religious meal and not a real meal to feed hungry people.  But even though it is a religious meal, we should not forget that Jesus ask us everyone to come and eat together in public as a way of making sure that everyone had enough food to eat.

  We still have a hungry people in our world today.  And hungry people are hidden from us.  And we don’t see them.  Let us remember that Jesus gave us the Holy Eucharist as a way to remind us that hungry people are invited to have food.  The Holy Eucharist is a Meal that Jesus gave to us to remind us to love and care for everyone in world.  So let us remember why we have the Holy Eucharist today and let us pray and work for ways to feed all of the people in our world.  Amen.

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

August 9, 2015: The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Gathering Songs:Hallelu, Hallelujah!;  The Foolish Man and the Wise Man; Change My Heart; Hosanna

Song: Hallelu, Hallelujah!  (Christian Children Songbook  # 84)   

Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!  Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!  Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People: And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Litany Phrase: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, 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 and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

 

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 34

I will bless the LORD at all times; * his praise shall ever be in my mouth.

I will glory in the LORD; * let the humble hear and rejoice.

Proclaim with me the greatness of the LORD; * let us exalt his Name together.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John

People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said to the people, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, `I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, `And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 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."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People: Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon:  Fr. Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (chanted)

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

 Liturgist:        The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:            And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering.

Song: The Foolish Man and the Wise Man (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 250)

O the foolish man built his house upon the sand.  The foolish man built his house upon the sand.  The foolish man built his house upon the sand.  And the rains came tumbling down.  O, the rains came down and the floods came up.  The rains came down and the floods came up.  The rains came down and the floods came up.  And the house on the sand went crash.

O, the wise man built his house upon the rock.  The wise man built his house upon the rock.  The wise man built his house upon the rock, and the rains came tumbling down.  O the rains came down and the floods came up.  The rains came down and the floods came up.  The rains came down and the floods came up and the house on the rock stood firm.

So build you house on the Lord Jesus Christ.  So build you house on the Lord Jesus Christ.  So build your house on the Lord Jesus Christ and the blessings will come down.  The blessings will come down as the prayers go up.  The blessings will come down as the prayers go up.  The blessing will come down as the prayers go up, so build your house on the Lord.

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

All may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

The Prayer continues with these words

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. Amen.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

(Children rejoin their parents and take up their instruments)

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:        Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song:  Change My Heart, O God (Renew!  # 143)

Change my heart, O God, make it ever true; Change my heart, O God, may I be like you.  You are potter, I am the clay.  Mold and make me, this what I pray.  Change my heart, O God make it ever true; Change my heart, O God may I be like you.

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: Hosanna (Renew!  # 71)

Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest!  Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest!  Lord we lift up you name with heart full of praise; Be exalted, oh Lord my God Hosanna in the highest.

Glory, Glory, Glory to the King of Kings!  Glory, Glory, Glory to the King of Kings!  Lord we lift up you name with heart full of praise; Be exalted, oh Lord my God. Glory to the King of Kings

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God! 

Honest Anachronism about the Holy Eucharist

11 Pentecost Cycle b  Proper 14 August12, 2012
1 Kings 19:4-8  Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25-5:2  John 6:35, 41-51

 Lectionary Link

  Anachronism is the presentation of history with chronological inconsistencies where an artifact or idea is inserted out of its originating context.  In some ways the practice of anachronism is unavoidable.  How so?  If I were to present the Palm Sunday story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem in something like the so-called “Pope-mobile;” that would be a rather blatant anachronism:  Taking cultural practices and products from a later era and using our imagination to introduce them into a previous era.

  But why is anachronism unavoidable?  In some way we are always prisoners of the “present” because in actuality we can be nowhere else.  The past is but a present “reconstruction” and so the past reconstruction cannot be free of our present concern.  As “true” to the past as we think that we are or want to be, we were not there and so our reconstructions are but present imaginations.  And yet we have standards of judging what is regarded to be a “reputable” reconstruction of a previous era.  We also know that propagandists will present the past in a way to support what they want us to believe in the present.  Film makers sometimes seek authentic costuming and artifacts in their cinematic reconstructions of a particular period but sometimes they will also try to present, for example,  a “modern” version of Shakespeare as a deliberate attempt to find correspondences between Shakespeare in his time and Shakespearean meaning in our time.

  Fundamentalists read the Gospels as a mirror image reproduction of what happened during the life of Jesus.  And even if we assumed that were the case, how would we avoid being ourselves in our time in interpreting this “mirror” image?  Fundamentalists have a naivete about there being a self-evident meaning that would be obvious to you the reader, if you have the right spirit to know that self-evident and obvious meaning.  If it’s obvious to me and not to you, then you don’t have the Spirit. 

  The writer or writers of the Gospel of John wrote like all of us do about the past, “they wrote anachronistically.”  We write about the past from the present.  And yes, I am preaching about the writer of John’s Gospel from my present time and I do not deny that but I am trying to make the case as to why I think that what is written in John is relevant to our lives today.

  What was one thing that the writer of John’s Gospel was anachronistic about?  The community of John was a Eucharistic community; they practiced the community liturgy of the Holy Eucharist.  This Eucharist had its root in the Jewish religious meal practices but since the church became increasingly Gentile in congregational participants, the Eucharist attained a significance beyond the significance of the Passover Meal and other meal traditions of Judaism.  If the writer of John’s Gospel was teaching the catechism to the community, how did the writer teach the importance of the Holy Eucharist?  The writer of John used the bread of heaven tradition from the Hebrew Scriptures and the oral traditions about Jesus to present a teaching about how the Eucharist became regarded to be important to the practice of the Christian community.

  In Judaism the Torah or the inspired writings were regarded to be like the gift of manna from heaven.  Torah or Word of God was regarded to like bread from heaven.  In the Gospel of John, Christ is regarded to be the new Torah or Word of God but in actual human form.  And so Christ is the living bread that came down as a gift of God’s word from heaven.  Reading God’s word was the way to integrate the teaching about God into the depth of one’s life and practice.  So reading and eating are modes of consumption whereby one receives sustenance for one's life.  There is natural bread and spiritual bread; Manna was the gift of physical bread that the people of Israel collected and ate for their survival.  Torah was the spiritual bread that Moses gave them for their spiritual lives.  These teachings were expanded in the community of John.  Christ was presented in metaphor to be the eternal Word of God in human form.  And as we partake of Christ through his words then we partake of the life of God as our spiritual and everlasting life.  In this way the Church that produced John’s Gospel taught about Jesus as the living bread of heaven.  The Eucharistic bread and Christ as Word of God cannot be separated; if they are separated then we can be involved in making physical bread but an idol.  In Holy Eucharist we understand a real presence of Christ because we understand the fullness of Word of God that is associated with the receiving of the bread and wine of communion.

  The writer of John’s Gospel understood how important the Eucharistic gathering was in the experience of the church.  They believed deeply that Eucharistic practice was inspired and taught by Jesus who expanded a family Passover Meal or Jewish meal tradition to become the constitutive meal of a community of people that would invite people of all ethnicities throughout the world.

  Let us practice Holy Eucharist today as both constituting our social identity but also bearing an important aspiration of our lives.  Do we want to be fearful people eating alone behind closed doors?  Do we want to be exclusive in regulating who is worthy enough for our fellowship?  Or do we want to be a welcoming community?  Do we aspire for peace and reconciliation among all?   Did you ever think about how much the food of the world divides us?  Many people have but regional stomachs; they tolerate only the diets of their own familiar upbringing.  We in our global world have the delight of being exposed to so many different foods from many different cultures.  And fortunately we can be delivered from our very provincial tastes in what we like to eat.  Fortunately we've been introduced to new cuisine.  But even in our appreciation of variety, we know that we will never unite the world over one taste in food.

  The Holy Eucharist is an aspiration that beyond our local and individual taste there is something that can unify us as people of this world.  That we all need food, is “catholic” or universal to all humanity.  Heaven as the goal and aspiration is imagined as a great banquet.  Imagine all the people of the world sitting down at meal together in a feast of peace and love.  If one can grasp this image, one can understand why we put our bodies, minds and spirits through the ritual play of the Eucharist each Sunday in our gathering.  This is our aspiration for world peace.  This is what we want to be expressive of human relationship.  This is why the Eucharistic bread is living bread.  God in Christ tells us that humanity is valuable.  What is a greater statement of value than to say God became human in Christ?  And if humanity is raised to incredible value in Jesus Christ, we as human beings need to respect the dignity of value that God has placed upon and within all of us.  And we respect that human value by living in peace and in fellowship.  If the entire world lived Eucharistically, we would make sure that everyone had food, clothing, shelter and health care, whether through the public sector or the private sector.

  We gather for Eucharist because it is a confession that we need living bread from heaven, even Jesus Christ, to coax beyond our egotistical tendency to hoard regular bread to the exclusion of others having enough.  Let us live our Eucharistic aspirations and be as sure as the writer of John’s Gospel was, that the Eucharist was worthy of Christ’s Real Presence.  Amen.