The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
August 16, 2009
11^th Sunday after Pentecost¹
Scripture Readings:
Hebrew Scriptures – Proverbs 9: 1-6²

¹Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. ²She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. ³She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, ⁴“You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says, ⁵“Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. ⁶Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

Gospel Lesson – John 6: 51-58³

⁵¹I 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.” ⁵²The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

“Am I Going to Change the World,
or Am I Going to Change Me?”

When I was still in the first decade of my ministry as an ordained person, I remember hearing a heart-wrenching story – a true story – about Cardinal Basil Hume, the Benedictine archbishop of Westminster in England, that seemed to starkly illuminate the essential meaning of “living bread” – of what must truly make communion “holy.” It happened in Ethiopia. Cardinal Hume had been asked to visit a settlement where, sadly, much like today, starving people were waiting for the arrival of food that wasn’t very likely to come. A Russian helicopter had been put at his disposal; and as he got out of the helicopter a small boy came up to him and took his hand. The boy had nothing on but a loincloth around his waist. He looked about eight years old, but probably was at least ten. The whole time that the cardinal spent there that child would not let go of his hand. He kept making two simple gestures: with his free hand he pointed to his mouth to show that he was hungry; with the other hand he would take the cardinal’s hand and rub it on his cheek.

Cardinal Hume came to recognize that this child was completely lost, absolutely on his own – totally alone – and starving to death. The archbishop wrote about this encounter later:

I have never forgotten that incident and to this day wonder whether that child is still alive. I remember when I boarded the helicopter he stood and looked at me reproachfully. An abandoned, starving ten-year-old child. I realized in quite a new way those two profound and fundamental needs: for food and for love. With one gesture he showed his need for food, and with the other his need for love.⁴

What may have been an even greater tragedy, it seems to me though, was that a prince of the church wasn’t able to give this little boy either one.

This must be the reason why the word “bread” is repeated over and over here in the sixth chapter of the Gospel According to John: people didn’t get it then, and they don’t seem to be getting it today, so people are still starving for bread every bit as much as they are starving for love.

Curiously enough, the word “bread” has as many meanings as the number of different times that it appears in the Bible. The author of John’s Gospel was a bit of a poet, I think, because other poets before and after him have appropriated that word for meanings of their own – like Denise Levertov⁵ who writes about being glad to be a woman (“no savor more sweet, more salt”); she wrote:

If I bear burdens
They begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
My shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.⁶

So it’s to those without common sense – the simple, the unwise – whom Wisdom invites to a banquet. “Turn in here!” she says; and then, “Lay aside your immaturity, and live, …walk in the way of insight.”⁷

All around us some really beautiful “words of wisdom” are being both shouted and whispered at us every single day. We should be listening for them. I hear them, often, come across the deck of my kayak. You may hear them, too – during a walk in the woods as much as you might from your mentor, teacher or friend. One author remembers this encounter:

Do you know the last words my old mother said? She’d been baking earlier in the day – the day she died. Then she was taken to her bed, but she still wanted to see how the fruit cake was doing. And it was flat. The bloody thing forgot to rise, Morse! And she said, “You know, life’s full of uncertainties.” Then she closed her eyes – and died!⁸

The message that the image of “living bread” also so powerfully proclaims to us, I think, is to say to us that reality is filled with paradox. In the ordinary way of life each of us wants to move quickly to resolve contradictions, to flatten out paradoxes, to try and find explanations for everything. Ordinarily, we know bread can’t become flesh! But in all too ordinary ways each one of us dies, and that’s the end of that. What Jesus might have been up to before he died – in his life and teaching – is to lead us out of the “ordinary way” into a new dimension – a richer, fuller dimension where the reality of the Sacred, the Spirit, the Holy…God is seen to be fully present everywhere. It’s also where paradoxes might be endured and the miraculous can and often does happen. Bread becomes our link, then, a kind of bridge between our own limited vision of what we think reality is and what reality really is. If we can eat a bit of both humility and that kind of wisdom, as well as learn to put up with the tension that goes along with both, we just might be able to move into a new way of life. Right there might lie the beginning of wisdom.

A colleague of mine once told me of a dream that a woman had shared with him. In her dream she’d entered a room in which a rich banquet was spread out on a huge table. She looked at all of the food but felt like she couldn’t sit down and eat. It’s an instructive image. All too often you and I are gorging ourselves on food that gives us no real nourishment at all – it’s all icing and no cake. We stuff ourselves with things that are sweet and addictive, but that can’t sustain us for very long and never really satisfy us. As we in Faith Partners⁹ have learned, for some of us this is literally true. We try to feed with physical food (or drugs or alcohol) a spiritual hunger: a hunger for love, for forgiveness, for acceptance, and for knowing the presence of the sacred in our lives. We gain weight but still we’re starving. We hunger for “living bread” and thirst for “living water” – the kind of food and drink that will, finally, bring real healing and wholeness. For most of us there is a deep hunger within our spirits, a hunger for a feeling of being valued, for a sense of purpose, for true refreshment and sustenance, a hunger for love that’s always being tantalized but seldom ever satisfied.

From a rabbi named Jesus (who loved to eat and drink, himself, by the way!¹⁰) we’re being told that the table is spread, the invitation’s have gone out; all we need to do is sit down and eat. But like that woman in her dream, something holds us back and keeps us from eating. In her dream at least she’d gotten as far as seeing that the banquet had been set. This is what Jesus has been trying to tell us over all of these years, even if it is sometimes hard to see. Many of us can’t believe that it’s that simple. We think that there’s a perpetual famine of forgiveness, recognition, affirmation, acceptance and love. We can’t believe that these things could ever be meant for us.

In C.S.Lewis’ book, The Last Battle,¹¹ there’s this chilling scene involving food. Some dwarves, who’ve convinced themselves that all of this stuff about the Lion and his Kingdom is ridiculous, have nonetheless gotten through the door that separates the worlds and are inside – in what amounts to the foothills of heaven. They all still believe, though, that they’re in a dark and dingy stable with nothing but pig-swill to eat. They are surrounded by beauty, and a wonderful meal is set right there in front of them. But they’ve convinced themselves that the food is terrible, inedible, and nothing can convince them otherwise. Their lack of trust has become a permanent condition, a terrible possibility.

In P.D. James’ novel Original Sin, a cynical character says sardonically, “It’s easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It’s only necessary to live long, speak little and say less.”¹² The Delany sisters, however, would not agree. I remember a delightful book that they wrote together, Having Our Say, that chronicled the lives of these two sisters – Sadie, who was 105, and Bessie, who was 103. Very independent women, they wrote of their childhood in Raleigh, North Carolina, as the daughters of a slave who became the first African-American to be made a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States. With wry humor and consistent grace they recount how Bessie struggled to overcome the obstacles posed by her race and gender to become a dentist, and how Sadie quietly integrated the New York public school system as a high school teacher. When she was asked for the secret of her long life, once, Bessie replied:

“You have to decide. Am I going to change the world, or am I going to change me? Or maybe change the world a little bit just by changing me? It took me a hundred years to figure out I can’t change the world. I can only change Bessie. And, honey, that ain’t easy, either.”¹³

Confronted as we are today by the one who dispensed “living bread” and “living water” to those who are keenly aware of their hunger and thirst, we’ve become known and loved in this community by the knowing and loving of that one who knows our limits as well as our potential as human beings – our innate capacities for both good and evil and our persistent self-centeredness that all too often tries to control or manipulate the lives of those around us. In the life and witness of one Jesus of Nazareth we’re offered the gift of knowing this about ourselves, but at the same time we’re being offered the kind of unconditional love that has a power to liberate us to live, not just for ourselves, but for God and each other.

We can live such lives. We can change our diet. It shouldn’t have to take us a lifetime – and I do agree with Bessie: it “ain’t easy.” But it is the only Way, the only Truth – that I know of – that will lead to a truly abundant life.¹⁴

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