Listen to Sermon
Sermon by Rev. Dr. Douglas Groll
Introduction: In Jesus’ Name, Dear Friends
For several years now WTTW, Channel 11, has hosted a program called Check Please produced here in Chicago….and, I understand has achieved quite wide distribution. Each week the moderator interviews three or four men and women who have all visited the same three restaurants. One week it might be Asian Fusion or Caribbean coladas……Sometimes the restaurants are moderately priced….sometimes exorbitantly expensive…and a little bit repulsive when they show the chef with his bare fingers gingerly dropping an olive on a cube of raw salmon or of a delicate square of flounder that has been cooked by pouring liquid nitrogen or some esoteric condensed gas over it. It is usually served on a white plate….three bites…$47.00 not including drinks. The program should be about food…but often it says more about guests…especially when they strain to tell you that the duck is almost as good as what they had eaten in Peking….being interpreted…”I’m international…I visited Peking” Perhaps they consider themselves cynosures….a very small elite group….a select few.
I don’t buy that…because after living for 30 years in Chicago, I am convinced that Chicago is a metropolitan area composed of millions of select tasters…cynosures if you will.especially because of one delicacy…bread. CHICAGO HAS GREAT BREAD….THE BEST ANYWHERE. Think about it for just a minute… What makes your favorite restaurant? It might be the beef..or the fish or the shrimp….but what do you reach for first? The Bread….It could be Olive Garden’s bread sticks…the heavy thick crusted loaf you have to break with your hands at the Gale Street Inn …or the Chicago hot dog bun,….or the bun they use at Jonny’s Italian Beef on North Avenue…and they dip it in juice….(I can’t stand that) Italian loaves, Mexican tortillas (flour or corn)? Pretzel buns, Columbian or Venezuelan arepas, sourdough….bojillas, Pita, hamburger buns, Flat Bread, Pizza bread….…..it could come from Rosens on North Avenue or Reuters on Grand. It could be baked in the kitchens of Jewel or Whole Foods….The variety is endless….the tastes are boundless. Bread is the one metaphor for the universality of human existence… Our attitudes toward it bring out our best as well as the very worse of our humanity. At our worse we get the picture of the Children of Israel …out there in the wilderness…..remembering the fleshpots of Egypt….tired of the quail by night and the mana by day…..griping…..but eating…. Or the drive that had the new Israel of Jesus’ day hounding him around the Sea of Galilee….hungry….trying to be the new and free Israel behind a new national Messiah who could give them bread. Give us bread….give them bread…..feed us and we will be satisfied….as though what really counts in life is the size of the loaf….the sound of the crust…the softness of the dough….Give us bread and we will be content…give them bread and their needs will be met.
NOW A CHANGE OF SCENERY
How often over the past five or six weeks have we not seen the filming of the mothers and chidren in line…..in Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo…waiting for food a Church immigration center giving out what they have …..a tortilla, a spoon full of beans, a fruit cup….a slice of bread…?. And then on our side…somehow the at the ICE detention center…the bread looks better…the children separated from their parents have bigger trays….the orange juice is a deeper orange….the tray is shinier….the fruit cup is better refrigerated….. it is food ….it is bread…? What more could they want? .It’s what they need…. It is the American answer to the Children of Israel in the Sinai…or the 5000 who had just been fed by Jesus up there around the Sea….. Just give them the calories and they will be content.
Or….take a look at the food trucks on the South Side…or the schools that stay open in the summer…not necessarily because the teachers want to teach…but to somehow keep the breakfast and lunch programs going so that the thousands of children that would not otherwise get a meal……at least eat once a day….. Here we are in the New Israel… Keep the calories coming…. Keep the juice cold….. Make sure the milk is pasteurized….. that is all they need….that is what we want…. Bread is enough… If we truck in enough surplus milk, and government issured orange juice…. We can forget about poor schools, endemic unemployment, a broader separation between economic classes. We are the new Israel.
So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
And it is not just the government….or the public in general….. We have to ask where we as a people of God fit into this. Our District and Our Synod has remained virtually silent these months about the plight of separated children. Synodically issued prayers are studies in pablum…showing neither anger or despair at injustice or systemic repression of human rights. . If you look at the Reporter or the NID newspaper you would never get the idea that there are children in Separation sites in the Chicago area…or even in Texas….that there is a crisis of violence in our city……..legitimate questions about deadly use of force…Our publications show legitimate acts of good will of well intentioned Christian Lutherans…and that is certainly important….. But we have to ask ourselves again..”Isn’t this just making sure there are enough calories to sustain life? Isn’t this just the bread that those people by the Sea were looking for from Jesus? Is this what real living is about? Where do I see myself in this picture? How am I a part of the drama? Am I still thinking only about my self, my privileges….still content to make sure all of us and maybe the rest of them have enough calories just to sustain life or am I interested in real living?
HERE COMES A DIFFERENT ANSWER
Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
And then…Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
John’s Gospel…and all of the Gospels for that matter are there to show God’s action in and with men. And everything that happens in them and in all of history is “bookend” with the great “I AM” of scripture. When Moses asks “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” When John speaks to us and announces that the “Word Became Flesh” he is telling us that the creator God who said “Let There Be” actually takes on humanity to be our brother. That moves us beyond only a spiritualizing of our human God-Man relationship. And that means that we look beyond the signs to the reality. The big error that the children of Israel in the desert…or the Jewish nation of Jesus’ day was that they saw the signs of God’s presence the Mana or the loaves and fishes of the feeding of the 5000 as ends in themselves….instead of loving action of a God who is able to do much more than provide calories.
And that is also a big challenge for us…..We celebrate every act of Christian kindness. Thank goodness for people who organize food drives and bread lines…..but those are calories….they in and of themselves only point to signs where the real I AM THE Bread of Life points us to a totality of life way beyond the calorie count.
Instead. He basically says that in the incarnation he entered the totality of human life and that the one who is believing in him allows Him to pull us along into a relationship of trust…..and that relationship of trust in Christ is the true Bread….which empowers us to live confidently.
How does this play out in human life? If the Incarnate one has entered our world it is a total entering….into the sinful state of human existence. It listens to cries of the baptized and unbaptized separated children (and if they have come from Central and South America there is a pretty good chance they are are little brothers and sisters in Christ)…..and that means that we have to care….. We have to rethink what are the implications of political theologies…. We have to ask, “How will the incarnate Christ lead to new action…..systemic action that takes us beyond bread lines….and basic calorie counts and stuffed toys for tots. We have to understand that many of our actions will be wrong….poorly thought out…full of our own self centeredness…downright sinful…but He will pick us up and bring us along.
We have to let him drag us through the messy dirty world of local, state and national concerns to care enough to pull us out of the church and into the street to act individually and corporately….Christ died for the world…not just the Church…and the great I AM would remind us that the Church in him…must now die for the world. That is scary. That is threatening…. That challenges our comfortable way of life. But he does not just give us calories.
Take and Eat…Take and Drink…Here is food for the journey…Here is bread for the road…Here is the hand that will lead us through the valleys we fear and the roads unchartered…in our different ways of life…that will continue to remind us….. I AM….Alpha and Omega…Beginning and end…. The final bookend of your life…. Don’t be content with just the bread line…. Let Him lead us into real living. Amen.
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