So...it's been a while, but here is some catch up. Here is a sermon from August 5th.

Here is a link to the readings:readings

And here is the sermon.

Sometimes there are Sundays in our lectionary where I feel like my role as the preacher is to try to explain some overly complicated, obscure, difficult to understand out of context, bit of history that makes very little sense to our customs, or understandings of God or human relationships. Other Sundays are like this one, where at first glace all of the readings make sense, and seem to have a very easy to access interpretation. In the reading from Exodus we have the story of manna from heaven. The complaining Israelites get God to provide for them while they are in the wilderness. In Ephesians we have a reading about the roles we each play as a part of the Body of Christ . Many of you in the almost four months that I have been here have shown me your skill as pastors, apostles, prophets, gardeners, ushers, Sunday school teachers, alter guild members, choir singers, and vestry people. You are all integral in our church community and you are counted on. And it makes perfect sense to me that though each of us are doing our separate but overlapping parts we must ensure that we grow up into Christ, and that we are each working properly to promote the body’s growth in building itself up in love. I think everyone here at St. Ann’s would like to see a little more growth of our collective body. I suspect that there are ways in which we could be knit together more closely, or even ways in which we could work together better. And finally, the Gospel from John is perhaps the most difficult to understand, even though at first blush it too has a fairly simple message that is perhaps fairly easily understood as a metaphor.

When we turn to today’s gospel we see the same people of the crowd that Jesus just fed. We heard it in the Gospel last week, but in case you missed it, Jesus fed 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. So this crowd has been following him about, hoping to be fed again. Jesus accuses them of only following him around for the food, and he’s not wrong. They also remind Jesus of the story from Exodus that we read this morning about the manna from heaven. But Jesus says that the crowd is wrongly pinning the manna on Moses. Jesus fed them one meal, but Jesus thinks the crowd is forgetting the bigger picture: that God is really the one who gives bread, not any particular leaders.

Underneath this is the fact that they are following Jesus around after just one meal of bread and fish suggests that the lives of the members of the crowd were lives of hunger, desperation and poverty. It is not as if Jesus served them a giant fancy meal in a banquet hall, he gave them bits of bread and bits of fish while they sat in the grass. But to these people in the crowd, there was some potential here for a reliable place to eat. People who are hungry and poor are often looking for some reliability. At twilight the Israelites ate quails, and in the morning they ate the flaky substance. There was food morning and night. So the crowd who he feeds is hoping for this sort of reliability from Jesus, hoping for quails in the evening and manna in the morning. Instead Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Of course, there is an element to this statement which is immediately untrue. The crowd gathered around him is already hungry which is why they are there.

Perhaps the best way to enter into this statement is to think of not just physical, actual hunger for food but something bigger and deeper, spiritual hunger. It is important to think of other types of real hunger too, hunger like the hunger to have more human relationships, hunger to have a clearer sense of purpose, hunger to be more connected to other people, hunger to do good in the world, hunger to be filled with God’s love.

These are all important types of hunger to consider, but I think they do get in the way a little bit of the reality that Jesus (even Jesus!) couldn’t as the leader feed the crowds day and night. Surely it might have been possible (all things are with God), but I think hearing this reading along side our lesson from Ephesians has me thinking about the ways that with Jesus as the head of the church, as the bread of life Jesus is feeding us by giving us our different gifts and ministries. Surely then one of our the things we must do as the church is find ways of continuing to go out and feed those that are hungry. Some times literal hunger and other times some of the other sorts of hunger that the human soul might feel.

I want to take a few minutes to explore below the surface of the reading from Ephesians in order to understand our roles as it relates to the bread of life and the Body of Christ. I wasn’t sure there was much more to this passage until I was reading an article in the New Yorker this week. It was not the most obvious article for understanding the letter to the Ephesians.  The article by Evan Osnos is called “The Burmese Spring” and is about how and why the brutal military dictatorship in Burma (also called Myanmar) started shifting toward democracy with out and particular event pushing them towards it. The author speaks to a man, Ko Ko Gyi, who was jailed in protest when he was a college student. He spent 18 years in prison and was released in January of this year. When thinking about his political future, Gyi explained, “people here don’t know they can stand up for themselves. Again and again, we must say it: politics is your job; its not only for the politicians.” While this makes sense for me, it was this next quote that made me suddenly see the letter to the Ephesians in a new light. Gyi says, “For such a long time under dictatorship, each and every citizen lost a role in society. Trust disappeared. They tried to escape the crisis, to find their own way. They couldn’t care who suffers or who loses. They had to focus on themselves.” Ah, I thought as I read this, I get it. That crucial line, each and every citizen lost a role in society. The radicality of the gifts of God that some would be apostles and others would be pastors and teachers is particularly meaningful in a community where there is little freedom and each and every citizen lost a role in society. Life under the Roman Empire, was for the early Christian community in Ephesus, one where they had lost a role in society. By being a part of this new community they had to learn to play their parts for the first time, really.

This letter is directed at a church community that is set up under a brutal dictatorship where the people are afraid for their lives and fear persecution for their involvement with the church. So the fact that they are given gifts, and roles to play both puts their life in real danger and gives their life new meaning. The letter to the Ephesians divvies up the leadership roles, and makes it clear that all of the members of the community have a role to play, but that Christ remains the head of the church community. Through we do not live under a brutal dictatorship, the way in which our high unemployment rates, particularly in communities like Detroit where nearly 20% of people are out of work, I think there are many among us who might feel that lack of a role sort of feeling. We, and those we love may indeed feel at a loss for what our role is in society. Some of those at a loss may be recent college or high school graduates, unsure about what the next step is a tough economy when no one seems willing to take a change on them. Others at a loss may be older Americans, out of work in their 50s or 60s when they did not expect it, and having a hard time convincing employers that they are able to learn new skills and start a new job. Still others may be those who are under-employed, who seek meaningful full time work that pays a living wage. This out of a role feeling is not easily mitigated. Like the Burmese and the Ephesians, at this time of our election cycle we are looking for some answers from our leaders.

There is little doubt that the community at Ephesus, like the community in Myanmar, was having a hard time with leadership. As Gyi says, politics is everyone’s job not just the politicians. For the Ephesians, and for us, church is everyone’s job, not just Jesus’. Their leadership problem is evident in the letter. The Ephesians are told “we must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” Clearly there have been some leaders who have blown through town and confused these Ephesians. They have been tricked and deceived. By each taking up their part in the ministry of the church, the letter writer suggests that they will be less likely to fall victim to an outside leader. Back in Myanmar Ko Ko Gyi thinks that too many of the Burmese are focused on finding a new leader as the solution. However Gyi explains that if Myanmar is going to recover from years of repression, they people will need to learn to trust the system. He says “The most important thing is institutionalization. We cannot depend on any one person.” Like the Ephesians learned by the distribution of gifts of ministry, so we too see that the institution of the church is one that relies on Christ at it’s head, and on each of us, knitted together, acting as one unit.

The abundance presented to us by thinking of Jesus as the bread of life is an invitation to find our gifts as a part of the body of Christ. By participating in our worship life here, by taking part in the Eucharist—this alone qualifies us as members of the body of Christ. Being here we know that we have a role, have a place, and have plenty of opportunities to grow into all sorts of other roles. There is plenty to do here, I promise. The abundance of roles we can play as a part of the Body of Christ is a gift given to us, and we are nourished by being a part of this community, by taking part in the Eucharist and by being in relationship with people here we are fed, and sent out again to feed others.

We are given gifts from God to help feed people on a number of different levels. Among the many feeding programs here at St. Ann’s are our food pantry helps any and all who come by and need something to eat, our trip to the baseball game this afternoon will feed those of us who desire closer relationships to one another, our book of the month group might feed people’s intellectual hunger, I would like to think our summer crafts is providing some food for the creative hunger of our kids here, and our music and in particular our Wednesday Organ Concerts feed a hunger for art, and there are certainly many more hungers and many more ways in which we can and do feed them. There is always more to do, and thanks be to God, there are always more Sundays where we can walk through these door, be fed by the worship and Eucharist, and be sent out as a fully functioning part of the Body of Christ, out the doors again to do God’s work in the world in our all of our important roles.