Bread of Life

8/12

Gott ist die liebe

 A straight ride up the 2 train to the Williamsbridge  neighborhood  of the  Bronx. Back to St. Peter's Lutheran Church. I continue to be intrigued by this church. By the fading German  letters above the door declaring Gott ist die liebe...God is love.  There are German words inside too.  There must have been a German population here once although the official history seems to be Jewish and Italian. And many of the current membership have roots in Africa and the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. And I would still love to know how they got  a full immersion baptistry pool.

The beginning of the service with its praise songs led by a Ghanian feels almost separate from the traditional Lutheran liturgy. But soon enough it is time for my sermon, even as I feel I'm losing my voice.....

Ready to preach

Good morning.  Its good to be back again. We're getting into that deep part of summer. When the city feels so quiet. It's a time to enjoy the city in ways we normally can't. Last night, for example, I went to Outdoors at Lincoln Center's Americana Festival. The featured performer of the night was Mavis Staples. Not sure how many here know her but the Staples Family Singers first hit the stage 68 years ago. And now Mavis keeps that legacy alive. Her music takes us through decades of freedom riders and civil rights marches and protests and back to a today that has many of us uneasy and concerned. But when she lifts up her voice and sings, "I'll take you there," there's something transporting. Uplifting. Healing. And sustaining. 

I know a place
Ain't nobody cryin', ain't nobody worried
Ain't no smilin' faces, mmm, naw, naw
Lyin' to the races
I'll take you there......

Reaches though decades of struggle to touch us today...

I'm thinking about what keeps us going. What keeps us going. I keep hearing Jesus say over and over again, he is the bread of life. There's lots more that's kind of convoluted and hard to follow and doctrinally complex, but this is pretty straight forward. 

Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

Hmmmmm.  What's that mean?  I mean there's lots of literal hunger out there....

There's a lot of hunger out there..the figures are harsh...
1.2 million New Yorkers live in food vulnerabiity...42% of our citizens don't have enough income to meet basic needs...(how are you doin?)
41 Million Americans are hungry
769 Million world wide are without adequate food(Feeding America/New York Times)

At the same time, each of us Americans are estimated to waste between 300 and 360 pounds of food a year, that's 165 billion pounds...(Christian Science Monitor) 
So that's actual literal hunger.  But there's lots of other hungers around the world as well...

I'm asking myself what does hunger feel like? Have any of us here ever felt hunger? For food itself......?

But what of other kinds of hungers?  What gnaws at us? Drives us...Some of us here had a hunger for a better life...for political reasons...or economic reasons...which are no less political....and so we left our home and came here to New York City, to the Bronx....to begin anew...has our hunger been satisfied?

What hunger stays with us? And what does Jesus mean he is the bread of life? Does Jesus feed those who are literally hungry? Well it was just a few weeks ago that Jesus facilitated the feeding of 5000 hungry people. And remember what he said to his disciples, You feed them...No magic tricks, rabbits out of hats, sandwiches out of thin air. He says, Start with what you've got. See what happens next. 

I am the bread of life....hmmm....what does he want us to do?  I thunk there's two sides to this. Maybe one is to believe. To make a commitment to believe in Jesus. (Have you already done that? If you can imagine it, you can understand that...) You, in a sense, bring him inside of you to travel with you, to sustain you, guide you...

But if the believing part is hard, there's another way to the bread of life. I'd call it following. See where he's going and follow along. When he says 'You feed them," well you feed then and soon you will be fed as well as you enter into an ongoing relationship of participation in the presence. 

Might I  add that this means being able to be explicit and concrete about your hungers. You  must be able to name them, if you want Jesus to respond to them. 

I want you to notice one other reality here. The neighbors question Jesus' authenticity because they  know him. They know his family. He's spent the last 30 years among them as a should have  been married by now singe guy working in his father's shop. Bread from heaven, seriously?

Point being...there may be within your community one with special gifts who can help in the feeding of God's children. Especially as we share Eucharist this morning. The reformer Zwingli believed it was not the bread and wine that was transformed but the people who share it.
As we share the one loaf, the one cup, the bread of heaven, let us be open to allowing ourselves to become that sustaining bread for others. Together as the body of the risen Christ

In the sharing of Eucharist, they use traditional thin wafers but use the small individual cups I always associated with lower liturgical traditions. (Like the folks at Beverley) For health reasons they say. 

After the service, we go downstairs for lunch. (Like Beverley again.) But the one white man in the congregation stays behind, plays the organ.

Downstairs, we talk.  When I touch that setting, it's just like Radio City Music Hall, he says. He sees what's going on in the world today as "Biblical prophecy." He's been here over 40 years, and still misses the former pastor, who layed hands on him and healed him. 

There are other conversations. About the class issues of who has teeth and who does not. And answered prayers for parking spaces. It is a good lunch. 




Gospel John 6:35, 41-51

35Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42They 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'?" 43Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It 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. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 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."