Flesh and Blood

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

August 27, 2006; 12 Pentecost, Proper 16, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 6:56-59) – Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This 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." He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, "Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father." Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
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This flesh and blood language is pretty coarse and earthy. Nice people, proper people didn't talk this way in Jesus' day. They still don't. "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, ...whoever eats me will live because of me." Some stomachs turned when Jesus said these things. We get a polite version of their reservations: "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" Somewhere behind these public words someone was saying, "Gross. I'm outta here."

I quit using one of the chants for the breaking of the bread at the 8:45 service. Some parents complained. Their children were bothered and asked uncomfortable questions when we chanted, "My flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed, says the Lord." One child didn't want to risk drinking from the chalice at communion. Children are very literal.

The language in John's Gospel is intentionally blunt. He's challenging people who would like to clean up Jesus' story. John insists "the Word became flesh." God gets down and dirty into our real flesh and blood material, and that is the way the Spirit is manifest through Christ. Jesus takes on our human lives in all of their earthy reality, including personal death, and in Jesus all of that becomes eternal life. Eat and drink of this material reality and you will live -- truly live. Forever.

The disciples saw Jesus' flesh torn and his blood poured out in his painful and humiliating execution on the cross. It was gross. Horrifying. Human beings can do terrible things to the bodies of other human beings. The disciples got outta there.

And yet, just a couple of days later, while they were breaking bread and sharing wine, they knew him to be alive. He appeared to them in the breaking of the bread. Jesus had transcended all of the limitations of flesh and blood. He was no longer limited by the time and space of location. Yet he showed them the marks of his wounds. He was the same Jesus who had suffered so much physically and mentally. Now it meant something different. It was not just meaningless pain. Everything was taken up into the resurrection. Flesh, blood, pain, suffering, injustice, death. Everything was raised to new life. Eternal life. Forever.

I have a friend, Larry, whose grandmother was a great blackberry picker. He says she seemed born to blackberry picking. If you've ever picked blackberries, you know that it is hard work. The chiggers bite and the blackberry briers scratch. Sometimes the tips of the blackberry thorns will embed themselves in fingertips. Larry remembers his grandmother's berry picking dress that his grandmother kept at their house because there was a field packed with wild blackberries right next door. She would take Larry's sister outside in the middle of July to go pick blackberries. Like most kids, Larry's sister complained about the heat and ate more berries than she put in the bucket. But his grandmother would fill her own bucket and then his sister's bucket as well. "She could strip a blackberry brier clean in no time at all," Larry says. She knew about thorns and blood and berries.

The cotton berry picking dress was "a faded print whose hem was ripped after years of crawling through barbed wire fences to get to the berries, and it was stained with blackberry juice and a few little spots of blood where she had wiped her hands, blood that is inevitably pricked from the fingers of every efficient berry picker." Larry writes of her, "This was the garment of her humanity, a tangible sign that there are many thorns in life, and that life can be simultaneously hard and nourishing, paradoxically imperfect yet grace filled. She kept the dress ready, for she knew that to feed her family she would need to stand among the briers."

Though Larry's grandmother is long dead, his "mom still has that dress packed away in her cedar chest. I don't think my family will ever get rid of it," he says. "It has become a symbol ...of what life looks like -- life as stained, marked occasionally with our blood, scarred, looking oh so plain in a world where excess is the desired norm." For his family that dress is their "symbol that God and nourishment are present in hard times, and that we will be fed. It is good news, a reminder of where God will be the next time calamity might come. And where God will be is in the picking of the berries, in the thorn in the flesh, in the brier that surrounds." *

It is important that the Christian gospel proclaims that God is encountered in the real flesh and blood of earthy human life. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In Jesus, God embraces all of our earthiness and raises it to eternal life. John's gospel makes those claims in explicit language. "I am in the Father and the Father is in me," says Jesus. "I am in you and you are in me," says Jesus. "I pray that they may be one even as I am one with the Father," says Jesus. He goes out into the human berry field and picks a fruitful and nourishing life from it, and he is bloodied by the thorns in the process. All of it is raised to eternal life.

This "eternal life" business is not delayed. Eternal life is here and now. It is the quality of resurrection life here and now. Jesus says those who eat of this flesh and blood live, right now, right here. They abide in him and he abides in them, right now, right here. They are living forever.

They are all around us, these living risen beings. You and I are among them. Because Jesus has entered fully into the flesh and blood of human life, every human being is an encounter with Jesus; even the thorniest of human beings is still an encounter with the risen and living Jesus. It takes some courage and intention to work around the thorns, to survive the finger pricks, and to find the fruit and sweetness sometimes. But it is there. In every person.

In some sense, each of us is creating our own berry picking dress. Maybe you remember the parable about the royal wedding feast and the wedding garments. Everybody's invited to the wedding feast, but you need to wear your wedding garment. For Larry, his grandmother's dress is a symbol of her heavenly wedding garment, "a tangible sign that there are many thorns in life, and that life can be simultaneously hard and nourishing, paradoxically imperfect yet grace filled."

In Ephesians we heard another version of a spiritual garment, being clothed with the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace and the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and a sword that is completely non-metallic, the Word of God, who is Jesus the wounded healer. The writer calls this the armor of God. But note how totally non-aggressive is this armor. In these garments we simply stand, says the writer, because Christ has already won the victory, and we are completely safe in his resurrection life.

I want you to know one more thing about Larry. He's somebody I know fairly well -- he's a colleague, a priest. And he's a lot like his grandmother. He doesn't mind crossing a bit of barbed wire to do a little hard, hot work. He's had to brave some briars and thorns, and he's worked hard to collect some good fruit to share with others. He's a lot like his grandmother in those ways. Which of course means he's a lot like Jesus in those ways too.

For all of us, flesh and blood has become the Spiritual garment of eternal life. God is in it all. God is in your flesh and in your blood. Here in this Eucharist, we eat the flesh and drink the blood and know ourselves to be one with God through the life of Christ poured out for us. We are invited to put on our spiritual clothing -- like Larry's grandmother's berry picking dress -- to go out into the thorns and berries in the fields of our own lives, and to bring home some fruit for everyone to enjoy. That is how eternal life continues. Forever.
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* Larry R. Benfield, Rector of Christ Church, Little Rock, a sermon preached on July 9, 2006, from the Christ Church website.

Sacred Meals

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
August 13, 2006; 10 Pentecost, Proper 14, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 6:35, 41-51) -- Jesus 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.

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."
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As part of the pre-meal blessing, my mother will look around the table and spend a moment making eye contact with each person. Silently she offers an inward smile of blessing for each one there. That's a mindfulness technique that she picked up from a book by the inspiring Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn. As a way of inviting us to eat with more mindfulness, he teaches us to be aware of the people who are at our table as well as those who are not at our table. To be mindful of the miracle of interbeing that has brought this food to us for our health and enjoyment -- the farmers and the workers who cooperated with the earth and sky to produce the food, the labor that harvested it, those who transported and prepared it to make it available to us. A plate of food is a global event. To eat with mindfulness is to be grateful for the whole earth, acknowledging our complete interdependency, our organic union as a planet.

Eating together has always been a sacred event. Sometimes we recognize that; sometimes we don't. A shared meal is a profound act of union. As we eat from the same foods, our lives are being constituted by the same substances. Ancient cultures acknowledged this mystery by practicing certain strict customs. In Medieval Saracen tradition it was forbidden to kill anyone with whom you have sat at table, for you would be killing part of yourself. In the Jewish practice of Jesus' day, to have a meal with another was a public announcement of your lifetime acceptance of that person.

That is why the radical table fellowship that characterized Jesus' movement was so scandalous. Jesus welcomed to his table people who were known to be unclean, notorious sinners. People who were not even trying to live by the Biblical laws sat with him openly. He dined in their homes. No good rabbi would behave this way.

When Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God he often used the metaphor of a great banquet. It is like a royal wedding banquet where everyone has been invited, both good and bad. At his most remembered meal, Jesus took off his robe and washed the others' feet as though he were their servant. He took the bread and the wine, blessed it, broke the bread and gave it to his companions with words that identified that act of table communion with his immanent death. That following Easter Sunday, they knew him in the breaking of the bread. The disciples experienced his victory over death, his resurrection, as they repeated the familiar activity of eating together. Christians have known Jesus to be present in precisely the same way for nearly two thousand years. The church knows itself to be nourished by Christ in the bread broken and the wine poured out. We become what we eat, the Body of Christ, taken, blessed, broken and given for the life of the world.

We call that a sacrament. It is our word for the experience of the spiritual within the material. Maybe you remember from your Confirmation classes -- A sacrament is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." Traditional Christian spirituality recognizes seven sacraments, but we also have a tradition of recognizing the sacramentality of the whole of creation. Every table, every meal can be "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." Being aware and awake to that reality is the purpose behind the mindfulness practices that Thich Nhat Hahn teaches. Every enduring religion has practices that intend to cultivate our awareness of the spiritual depths present in every place and in every moment, especially when we eat together.

There is a profound connection between eating and listening to God. The story of the first sin is a story of wrong eating. Adam and Eve were tempted to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because "it was good for food, and ...a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise." Their desires deafened them to God's intention for them, and they suffered terribly for their choice. The first temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness happened after he had fasted for forty days, and he was famished. The tempter said, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." Jesus' answer makes explicit the connection between eating and listening to God. "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."

His ministry continued to be marked by teaching and feeding. His first miracle in John's gospel was to turn water into wine at a wedding feast. The feeding of the multitudes is the miracle that is repeated most frequently in our four gospel accounts. The radical hospitality of his table is the most characteristic feature of his social relationships. The prayer that is uniquely identified with him has at its center a petition for our "daily bread."

Those lessons weren't lost on the early church. A ritual meal, the Eucharist, has been the central act of worship for the Christian church since Easter Sunday. At least one Roman official complained of the food charity that the underground Christians practiced, writing a report to his superiors saying that these Christians "feed their own widows and ours." The order of deacons was created to distribute food and necessities to the poor. Our church stands in that long tradition as we prepare a hot, balanced meal every Monday and Wednesday for anyone who comes and as we distribute hundreds of boxes of quality food monthly through our Angel Food ministry. It doesn't take much imagination to connect those feedings to the Eucharist we will share in a moment. We are trying to reclaim the radical table hospitality of Jesus when we offer our Eucharistic invitation saying, "No matter who you are or where you are in your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place and at God's table."

But, we cannot eat mindfully while listening to God without being profoundly impacted by the fact that daily bread is a daily anxiety for at least one-fifth of our fellow human beings. Over a billion people try to survive on less than $1 a day. Before this day is over, more than 20,000 of them will die because of their extreme poverty. You remember our horror at the massive death toll of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 that killed over 220,000 people. Global hunger and poverty today is like thirty-one tsunamis of death every year.

Yet, there is good news. For the first time in human history, our generation has the technology and the means to end extreme poverty. Next month Bob McMath will lead for us a Sunday morning study of the Millennium Development Goals, an achievable plan to end extreme poverty. We'll explore what one person, one congregation can do to make a difference.

There is another related tidal wave that hits a little closer to home, and that is all of the illness and death in the first world caused by our overeating and poor eating. Food choices are killing us now, even as they did in the Garden of Eden. Some have said that our planet's food-related woes are deeply related to our spiritual hungers. Centuries ago, Isaiah asked in the name of God, "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live." (Isaiah 55:2-3) Isaiah said that listening to God and feeding on God are deeply related. Centuries later Paul advised his congregations, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God."

As we pray for daily bread, we make that a prayer of hope grounded in faith. Today as you come to this table of open hospitality, take a moment a look around this room. Let your eye make contact with each person, and give each person here an inward smile of blessing.

Come to this table with open hands, open hearts, and receive the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Know yourself to be the welcome guest of God at this festive banquet. As you eat and drink, experience yourself as completely acceptable of God. Let the mutual delight of this holy table fill you with thanksgiving. The food of this communion unites you with all who dine here. This meal unites you with every human being in all the world, for everyone is created in the image and likeness of God. Claim your gift of intimacy with God. For this meal is how we experience that we are the Body of Christ, given for all the world. We are a Holy Communion. Indeed, through this sacred meal we become the gifts of God for the people of God.

Transfiguration Moments

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 6; the Feast of the Transfiguration, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 9:28-36) – Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

I remember the first time I ever put on swimming goggles and dipped my head below the surface of the ocean to look at a tropical reef. I was so struck by the cacophony of colors, the iridescent profusion of fish, the wondrous patterns of corals and sponges and anemones -- I started to laugh underwater. It seemed like the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

And then to remind myself of the contrast, I climbed up out of the water. I looked down to where I had just been swimming. With the refraction of sun and sky and the turbulence of the waves, it only appeared to be an uninteresting shadowy gray rocky formation below the beauty of the rolling sea. I never knew before, what wonders lay just below the surface. It seemed to me like God had saved the most extravagant paints from the divine palette and assigned them to an angel with the spirit of Monet to color the floor of the ocean. The beauty takes my breath away.

There are moments when it seems like something falls away, and we see deeper, below the surface of everyday attention, and we get a glimpse of an unseen beauty and wonder that seems to expand our consciousness. Those moments can be so full that they seem self-authenticating.

Peter, James and John were with their friend Jesus on a mountain. Something happened, and it seemed like Jesus glowed with a dazzling light. What we know is that for a moment, these friends saw more deeply into the reality of Jesus than they had before. The saw more clearly into his deeper identity as God's Son. And then it passed, and they weren't sure what to do with what they had experienced.

I have an acquaintance, Earl, who takes hikes with his wife. She is an amateur botanist and a rather outgoing extrovert. On their hikes, she likes to point out things to Earl and tell him their botanical Latin names. They were walking along a mountain path one day, she a couple of steps in front, when suddenly Earl was grasped by a small violet blooming by the side of the trail. For a moment, everything stopped. It was as though the little flower had seized all of Earl's attention. He saw its velvet texture, the complex network of veins feeding the earth's nurture into every molecule of the plant, the rich variation of colors. It seemed like nearly every shade of the color wheel was present in the subtle hues of this small flower. All was silent. All was still. It was like everything in creation had been concentrated in the beauty and being of this little plant.

Then, like a blink it was over. His wife was several yards ahead of him on the path, still talking and pointing things out to him. The violet had shrunk into its place as a small, inconspicuous flower on the side of a large mountain. "Honey, what's this flower?" "Oh, that's a..." and she gave the Latin name for it. "It's a common variety of mountain violet." But for Earl, the air fairly tingled with some alive possibilities for some time.

I remember watching my daughter Allison play soccer during those early years when kids play "herd-ball." You know how it is, when all of the players crowd around the ball trying to kick it, little legs and feet all in one big jumble. Away from the herd and the ball and the action of the game, on the far side, Allison ran across the field with joyful abandon, her hair flying behind her, running as though she were filled with delight at the simple freedom to run. To me, she looked so happy, so beautiful, so free. The image is permanently fixed in my emotional memory. Several times when the complications of growing up left her appearing not so beautiful and not so free to my eyes, that memory could remind me of who she really is.

Who hasn't been moved by the peaceful beauty of a child asleep in a crib. Or felt the privilege of watching the little signs of love shared between a couple that you may not even know. Or been surprised by the joy of a butterfly that suddenly interrupts whatever is happening, adding a lightness and spontaneous beauty that seems to stop time for a second.

We were at dinner with some friends the other night, and our hostess was having so much fun putting together the complicated elements of the meal. Her excitement and joy was a contagious energy that seemed to trail behind her as she worked.

These moments seem to me glimpses of Transfiguration, when the veil is lifted, and for a moment we see below the ordinary surface into the wondrous depths of unseen realities around us. It is seeing with the eyes of the artist, the poet or the saint. Life is glorious. Or as Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." (from God's Grandeur)

It is possible to open our awareness of this "dearest freshness deep down things." It takes a bit of willingness and expectation. Artists see deeply because they are looking. Poets hear deeply because they are listening. We typically see and hear whatever we expect to see and hear. What are your expectations? What might it take to suspend your expectations just a bit?

Ken Kaisch is an Episcopal priest who was raised in Alaska, where on some days the sun shines only a few hours each day. One day in elementary school his teacher asked the children, "Class, what color is the snow?" Thinking her question a little daft they all answered, "The snow is white." "No, class. The snow is not white. What color is the snow?" Now that caused a little confusion for the class, because their teacher was a good one, and usually knew what she was talking about. But here she was, telling them that snow wasn't white. Her credibility was at stake.

Then, a quiet girl, the artistic one in the class piped up from the back. "You're right. The snow isn't white. It's purple." Shocked jaws dropped. Purple? They all looked out their window simultaneously. And that's when Ken saw it. The snow was purple. And others saw it too. They started shouting. Lavender. Pink. Gray. The snow wasn't white. It was lots of colors. Ken said his walk home that day was a wondrous one, full of colors and amazement he had never seen before.

We will celebrate baptisms this morning at our 11:00 service. Some people who are willing and awake to the possibility may see the heavens open and the spirit of God descending upon the baptized like a dove, and a voice from heaven saying, "This is my child; my beloved." They might remember that same thing happening to them at their own baptism, and they might feel embraced as God's own beloved child.

We will break bread and share wine this morning. Some people who are willing and awake will sense the presence of the risen Christ and feel themselves to be nurtured on his divine life, renewed and forgiven, and made one with heaven and with all humanity.

Some people observe that most folks are doing about the best they can most of the time, given the limitations of our human finite creatureliness. Some others observe that we are fallen, selfish creatures who will walk a false path whenever it is presented. Each will probably see what they expect to see. What do you expect to see?

For just a moment, Peter and James and John glimpsed into a deeper reality about their friend Jesus. I wonder what they did with that, back again when the four of them were fishing or walking from town to town. Did they sustain that memory as a deeper sense of reality, or did they dismiss it as an odd anomaly, the product of their overactive imaginations?

Look around you. Every person here is a glorious beloved child of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, and grafted into the Body of the Transfigured Christ. You are simply glowing with the fire of divine life. Can you see it? Class, snow is not white. People are not just people. Bread and wine are not just bread and wine. Just under the surface, there is something more dazzling than a tropical reef. Divine life is being expressed in the creaturely. Will you be weighed down with sleep, or will you see the glory, "the dearest freshness deep down things"?

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