The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scripture: John 6:59-69
Put on your rubbers and you won’t catch cold.
Here’s hell, there’s heaven. Go to Sunday School.
Be patient, time brings all good things—(and cool
Strong balm to calm the burning at the brain?)—
Behold, Love’s true, and triumphs, and God’s actual.
In my current favorite book, Zero to the Bone, which you already heard me talk about a few weeks ago, Christian Wiman is discussing this stanza from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, The Womanhood. He is particularly talking about this line:
Behold, Love is true, and triumphs, and God is actual.
He writes, “To say that God is actual…in the context of this poem, is not necessarily to say that God is "real." It's to say that God is so woven into reality that the question of God's own reality can't meaningfully occur.”
What he’s saying is, God is woven into the air we breathe. God is woven into the tree in front of our house that we walk past everyday to get the mail. God is woven into the coffee we drink in the morning. If we were fish, God would be woven into the water we swim in. Which is to say, as Wiman does, that God’s presence is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget God’s there at all. “The question of God’s own reality can’t meaningfully occur.”
I think this is why Jesus has been talking about being the bread of life for five weeks now. Because Jesus’ very being calls our attention to God woven into everything—into bread and indeed into this human flesh. Because Jesus was our faith’s first sacrament.
The catechism at the back of our Book of Common Prayer defines sacraments as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” In baptism, water is the outward and visible sign. In the Eucharist, bread and wine are the outward and visible signs. But the first outward and visible sign was Jesus himself.
Which isn’t to say that God wasn’t woven into the reality of our world before Jesus came. God created all this, separated the light from the darkness, the sea from the land, gave us plants and animals and well, ourselves, humanity. God is woven into this very reality, the reality of these bodies, this flesh, this breath.
But, as the disciples say in the reading today, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” And maybe it’s our inclination to say, “What’s so hard about it? OF COURSE Jesus is the bread of life and the one who eats this bread will live forever.” Of course Jesus is the incarnation, the sacrament brought into this world to show us God in this flesh.
But again, I bring you back to the definition of the sacraments: outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. The inward and spiritual grace is always there in all the outward and visible things, but we have the sacraments because it is so easy for us to forget that. We need clear reminders, regular rituals that point us toward that reality. We need Jesus telling us that he is the bread of life six different times in this chapter of John. Because this teaching IS difficult.
Do we really see God woven into everything around us? When we see a spider skittering across the floor when we’re watching tv, do we see God’s creation, the very life of that spider infused by God? When your neighbor’s dog won’t stop barking at 11:30 at night, when your cousin starts talking about a politician you strongly oppose, when a classmate humiliates your child on the playground, do you see God’s creation in them, their very lives infused by God?
This teaching is difficult.
Just as much as the enormous atrocities we hear about in the news, the tiny acts of destruction and meanness we’re capable of convince me that original sin just might be a real thing. The thoughtlessness with which we crush that spider. The scorn with which we respond to that cousin. The quickness with which we demonize our child’s classmate, a young child himself.
When we forget that God is woven into everything, it’s so easy to treat the world around us as objects subject to our domination, to our will, rather than as God’s miraculous creation.
Which is why we practice every single Sunday remembering that even the simplest objects of this world are God-infused.
The Altar Guild buys the pita bread we use for communion from the grocery store. They buy a lot of it at once and freeze it, taking one out the day before worship to thaw. The gluten-free wafers are rice crackers. The same kind you might buy to snack on. You have to tear open plastic packaging to reach in and get them. The juice is Welch’s. We get the little bottles. The wine, however, comes in a giant bottle, and we buy several at a time. It’s port, and not the fancy kind. A little bit higher alcohol content than regular wine, so that it preserves longer once it’s opened.
But on Sunday morning, we place these everyday, mass-produced objects in silver containers. The greeters take them and process them reverently to the altar and hand them to the acolyte. The acolyte then brings them to me, and when they hand me these objects, both the acolyte and I bow to them. When I set the table, I put out a special cloth called a corporal on which these objects are placed. I pour the wine and juice into their chalices, with a bit of water, being very careful not to spill a drop.
Then, together, we sing over these objects. We pray over these objects. We spend a significant amount of our worship remembering that it’s not just pita bread or a rice cracker, it’s Jesus who is the bread of life. Remembering that it’s not just cheap port or Welch’s grape juice, it’s Jesus who is the cup of salvation.
Then you come to the front, each one of you humble, taking a posture of reverence, and you know that it’s Jesus in your hand when I give you the bread or cracker. You know that it’s Jesus when the Eucharistic Minister serves you the wine or juice.
And then, when you swallow, you are reminded that you, too, are the Body of Christ. You, too, have God woven into you.
Some of you come up for a blessing instead. When you do, I always remind you that you are part of and held with great love in the Body of Christ. And that blessing extends to those of you who, for whatever reason, can’t or don’t come up for communion.
I see in each of your faces what Simon Peter says to Jesus in this gospel when Jesus asks him if the teaching is too difficult, if the disciples want to abandon Jesus. Simon Peter replies, “Lord, to whom can we go?” I hear in that question an echo of the Psalm, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”
But communion isn’t where we stop. It’s where we start. Communion is practice. A deep practice, for many of us a moving practice. But it is practice, a way to intentionally teach our bodies, our minds, our hearts what to do when we actually get into the game. And the game starts when we walk out those red doors.
And by game, I don’t mean a game at all, of course. I mean each encounter we have in our lives. With spiders, barking dogs, opinionated cousins, and bullying classmates. Can we treat them the same way we treat pita bread, rice crackers, grape juice, and port? Can we recognize Jesus in them, God woven through them? Can we remember that we are the Body of Christ, called to love and create belonging?
And just a reminder: loving and creating belonging don’t mean going along to get along. Authentic love holds people accountable for the harm they cause. Authentic belonging recognizes the fear and insecurity that drive people to hurt others, that drive us to hurt others. Love and creating belonging mean telling the truth, however difficult, with deep and abiding care.
Yes, this teaching is difficult. Which is why we come here every—or most—Sundays: to practice. To practice with a community where sacramental love already comes easily, so that when our lives get hard, when we’re afraid, when we’re angry, we’ll have the strength and muscle memory—or heart memory—to remember that God is woven into every situation we encounter.
Amen.
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