This sermon is based on the Gospel According to John 6:51-58. It was offered at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Sunfish Lake, Minnesota.
For
a couple of weeks I’ve wanted, no NEEDED to watch a favorite movie: The Princess Bride. It’s a cult classic movie of adventure and
magic…and true love. Have you seen
it? It’s the familiar boy meets girl,
boy loses girl, boy gets girl theme, but set in medieval times with sword
fights, a masked hero, a kidnapping, a torture chamber and an entitled prince.
The
“farm boy” Wesley and the beautiful farmer’s daughter, Buttercup are in love.
But Wesley leaves the farm to travel in a ship, vowing to love Buttercup and
asking her to wait for him, which, she promises to do. When Buttercup receives word that Wesley has
died at sea, she goes into eternal mourning, vowing to never love again. Enter in the entitled prince who can choose
whatever maiden he wishes to marry and his choice is predictably Buttercup. Boy meets girl and loses girl within the
first ten minutes of the film…
I
love this film because it is filled with quirky characters who go on a ridiculous
journey. The script is filled with redundancy, the scope of the story filled
with unbelievable creatures like R-O-U-S—rodents of unusual size—and the
appropriately named Pit of Despair.
People appear to die, but don’t, there are battle scenes and dreams,
hunchbacks, magicians and magic pills. The
Prince has an evil henchman with a sordid past, the prince lies and cheats and
always looks handsome and charming. And
there is undying love, love worth any sacrifice, love that will overcome all
obstacles including death. And there is
a classic question, “What do you need to live for?” And an even more predictable response? “True love.”
What
is true love?
Is
it like the tree in the book The Giving Tree? The tree that loves the boy so much that is
willing to give up its apples, its branches, and then its trunk to provide what
the boy-turned-man wants and thinks he needs?
Is it in ultimately giving its stump so the old man can rest? Is the love the tree has for the boy proven
by its many sacrifices?
Is
true love found in the life of seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels, one of this
week’s saints found in the book Holy Women, Holy Men? John, a white man, left seminary to be a part
of the march on Selma. He lived in the
homes of black families, easily earning the trust of the adults, but sometimes
finding the children harder to persuade.
But when the kids were with him, and cameras were taken out, those kids
beamed with love and affection for this Northern seminarian who felt called by
God to be in the midst of the protests.
This was the man who sacrificed his life protecting young Ruby Sales by
stepping in front of the gun pointed at her while going into a store to buy a
cold drink during the Civil Rights Movement 50 years ago. Is this true love?
Is
it captured in silly love songs?
Poetry? Terms of endearment?
Yes,
but true love is more than all of this.
We
learn about true love in the series of Gospel readings we have been reading for
the past few weeks.
What? I bet you thought we’ve been reading a lot
about bread, right? Well, yes…and
no.
- · We’ve been learning about the depth of what a staple like bread can mean to people from all cultures and that Jesus is the bread of life, so we can deduce that Jesus is the standard, the staple, the foundation of our Christian life.
- · We are reminded that the Gospel according to John was written about 70 years after Jesus was crucified and it was written for Jesus followers, not for Jews. It was written with the intent to secure their faith in Jesus. This is expressed in John 20:31: But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.[1]
- · We’ve learned that the Jews have a different understanding of their relationship with God, but it isn’t any more or less credible or relevant than those of Jesus followers. They understand that dead means dead. We believe that Jesus is the bread of life, the son of God, the foundation of our faith, so we understand that dead is only the beginning of eternal life with God.
- · We’ve learned that God chooses people to come to Jesus; that through our relationship with Jesus, we have an eternal relationship with God.
- · We’ve learned that to be in relationship with Jesus we must share in the communion; share in the eating of the bread of life and drinking of the cup of salvation as outward signs of our inward devotion and love of God.
And
then we come to today’s reading. Let me
tell you that this has been a hard series of verses to consider. Thankfully, I know not to read the words literally.
And even more thankfully, the translation we are using today is much more
pleasant than the original, where the language is more graphic, like munching
and crunching and swallowing the flesh and blood of Christ. Reading these words out of context certainly
would raise eyebrows and turn the stomachs of people who are not Jesus
followers. Let’s just make this
clear: Jesus is not promoting
cannibalism.
In
the Episcopal Church we believe, as stated in the 28th Article of
Faith found on page 873 of the Book of Common Prayer, that we do not believe in
transubstantiation, which is defined as the change of the substance of bread
and wine into Christ’s body; rather we believe it is a holy meal where we
receive Christ in Faith. Another way to
look at this? Worship Christ. Not the sacraments. It is
through the sharing of the meal that we are bonded as followers of Jesus. This is what sets us apart in our faith.
I
like to think of it this way: by
receiving Eucharist we affirm our relationship with God through Jesus. We
receive the sacrifice as a symbol of Jesus love for us. And yet, there is more to it than this. We celebrate the Eucharist in community. We celebrate our community of faith as
seekers of God, or as worshippers of God, no matter where we are on our
individual faith journey. We do this
together, not alone.
I
read a blog by a former Evangelical preacher named Jonathan Martin who so
succinctly wrote about what weekly Eucharist in the Episcopal Church means to
him that I want to share it verbatim. He
wrote:
“Whatever
respective traditions we do find ourselves in and however we get there, I
become only more convinced that the practice of coming to the Table together in
the Eucharist is the only hope we have for any sort of unity, cohesion, and
renewal in the Church as a whole.”
In other words, we build relationships with our friends, our
enemies, our neighbors, our families at the Table. By doing something we have
in common, the need to eat and drink, we open ourselves up to the opportunity
to develop relationships with one another and with God. At the Eucharist, we re-connect with our God,
we re-establish our relationship with Jesus, we re-new our-selves through this
act of true love, of ultimate sacrifice, of communion
with one another.
Jonathan Martin goes on to say,
“But the practice
of the liturgy from The Book of Common Prayer in
general, and the shared experience of the Eucharist in particular, is what
holds us together. Beyond that, there is plenty of room for difference. The
emphasis is not on sharing dogma so
much as it is sharing the cup.”[2]
Martin tells us to put aside how you
believe this is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and go and share this meal
with someone, engage in your differences and embrace what you share. Love one another through the experience of
the meal.
So
when Jesus tells us in this Gospel that we must eat of his flesh and drink of
his blood, what he is expressing is that he loves us so much he is willing to
give himself to us, like Wesley to Buttercup, like the tree to the boy, like Jonathan
the seminarian to the Civil Rights Movement.
No,
the words “I love you” are not specifically spoken here, but the implication
that we eat of the flesh and drink of the blood of Jesus is an invitation into
deeper relationship with Jesus and ultimately, with God.
True
love.
The
giving of oneself to another: emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It is the act of joining together, of mutually
sacrificing part of oneself to the benefit of the other. It is not about losing oneself, or becoming
slave to another. It is about a mutual
giving and receiving, a rhythm where heartbeats provide the foundation for the
notes playing above. It's the
every-day that shows us how to love. It's the mundane, methodical and magical;
the little things that make us stop and show another that we care. It's doing
things together when the world seems to make us separate and automate. It's a
touch, a tear-wipe, a prayer. Its knowing what is needed when or helping the
other know what is needed.
It is the bread for the journey; the foundation
that fills us when we hunger. It is
Jesus.
When we take and eat and drink of the holy food
of the most precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we affirm our
loving relationship with Jesus and with God.
When we share the bread and the wine we affirm
our place in community with other Christians, bonding us in the love of Jesus
and, therefore, God.
We do these things in community. We do them to identify our place in that
community. We do them because they are
expressions of true love.
Let us pray. Dear Jesus, accept
our love for you as it is today. Hold us
in your loving arms and strengthen us to receive the gift of your sacrifice:
your body and your blood. Help us to
understand that through sharing in this holy meal we are binding ourselves to
you and to one another through faith. To
you, we pray. Amen.
[2] https://medium.com/@theboyonthebike/on-going-to-an-episcopal-church-428781564139 Retrieved 8/15/15 at 5:33 p.m.