Bread for the Journey

John 6:24-35

1 Kings 19:4-8

Life can do that in an instant, can’t it?  We can go from sitting on the top of the
world, to scraping the sides of the barrel as we try to crawl out of it in the
blink of an eye.  Things can go from the
best of times to the worst of times before we even know it.  The doctor walks into the room with a worried
look on her face and grim news to deliver.
A friend, a spouse, a child, or a parent who has always been there could
suddenly be gone.  The simple dreams of
children who grow up, find jobs, find spouses, and have children fly away when
things happen in a different order.
Friendships crack under pressure, relationships fracture under betrayal,
the person we thought would always be by our side suddenly isn’t and on top of
that we begin to doubt if what we thought was true ever really was. 

Or maybe the plummet from mountaintop to the lowest point on
the earth is harder to see on the outside.
Maybe the relationship we are losing isn’t that of a friend or family
member, maybe it’s our relationship with Christ.  Faith in God who is mighty, who is strong,
who has done miracles for the world and before our very eyes for others,
suddenly doesn’t seem to matter, doesn’t seem to stand up in the face of the
danger that is before us.  Faith in Jesus
who promises his yoke is easy and his burden is light, feels like a heavy
weight on our shoulders when we struggle to understand his love for us, his
call to us, his presence with us.  Faith
in the Holy Spirit that others seem to recognize as active and moving in their
lives is absent in our own. 

Maybe the faith in God that we see in other people, faith
that looks strong and unwavering, faith that sees God’s presence at every turn,
faith they can talk about, sing about, pray for hours and hours about, just
seems out of reach, mind-boggling, unreal.
Maybe it all just seems too preposterous to fake anymore.  Maybe it all seems way too important to be
entrusted to our untrustworthy hands.  Maybe
holding onto the mystery of faith seems more trouble than it’s worth, and we
just want to walk away from it all, walk day’s journey or more away, and just
lay down and sleep.

Have you ever felt like that? 
Have you ever just wanted to sleep, to stop thinking, to stop wondering,
to stop worrying about whether you’re doing all of this right, or praying often
enough or strong enough?  Have you ever
gotten tired to listening to voice coming from someone you can’t see?  Have you ever wanted to just lie down under
the broom tree and sleep to get away from everything that is plaguing you, your
worries, your grief, your brokenness, even your struggles with your faith in
God?

I have.  And not just
once long ago after which I had this amazing youth group camp conversion experience
which solved all my faith problems forever.
I have, as a teen.  I have as a
20-something graduate student - - a 20-something SEMINARY student no less.  I have as a 30-something wife and mother of
three kids, a pastor of a church.  I
have, and I do go through times like this when like Elijah I just want to go to
sleep instead of face my fears, my doubts, my crises of faith, my empty
relationship with God.

A day’s journey away from anyone he knows, Elijah has
successfully withdrawn into the wilderness.
A lone tree dots the desert, a lone place of shade and shelter in the
stark landscape of his faith.  Satisfied
that he has withdrawn far enough, he surrenders to the sleep he craves… even if
just for a moment.

“Suddenly,” it says in 1 Kings, suddenly an angel appears,
not letting him sleep for even an instant, not letting him disengage from the
divine presence.  “Get up!” the angel
commands.  “Get up and eat!”  At his head Elijah finds a cake baked on the
hot stones of the desert, and a jar of water, not much different than the jars
he used to intensify the miracle  God
performed at the sacrifice just days before.
Elijah ate and drank, his physical needs satisfied, and lay down to
sleep again.

But again, the angel, this time also touching him, urges, “Get
up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”  God’s persistence in the relationship is
relentless.  God’s desire for even this
one prophet to continue on the faith journey is so strong, even the heavenly
beings are employed to bring him back into the call.  God’s trust in Elijah’s potential as one who
will point to truth in the midst of a world that follows too easily what is
false, is so high that Elijah can’t be left to just sleep.  God’s desire to remain in relationship with
Elijah is so deep that Elijah can’t be lost to fear and loneliness, and
feelings of inadequacy.  His call, his
journey onward is a given; it’s assumed that there is more to his tale, more to
his walk with God.  That Elijah has
farther to go is not in question for the angel, for the agent of Yahweh, so
strengthening Elijah for what comes next is her purpose, reminding Elijah of
the persistence of God’s grace and providence her mission.

Elijah feeds on the cakes provided.  Elijah eats what is given to him by God.  It’s some pretty impressive cake because apparently
it is enough to sustain him for the forty days and forty nights ahead has he
continues his journey, his destination finally clear to him, to the mount of
God at Horeb.


Cakes that strengthen him
for forty days…

I want some of that.  I
want some of that sustenance, some of that proof, some of that taste of God’s
grace, God’s promise, God’s presence.  When
I am lying listlessly in the deserts of my faith, a cake baked on the hot
stones that will fill me for as long as I can imagine sounds absolutely perfect,
so perfect in fact that nothing else will do.

But have you tried to eat such rich and heavy food on an
empty stomach?  Have you ever indulged
too much when you’re coming out of a time of fasting, either forced or by
choice?  Have you ever experienced the
discomfort, the dissatisfaction that comes when your eyes have been too big for
your stomach?  How about when your
spiritual eyes have been too big for your spiritual stomach?

Or the problem I more commonly face is wanting all or
nothing.  Sometimes the cakes that fill
for forty days aren’t just lying there when I wake up.  For me, anyway, they are RARELY sitting there
waiting for me to feast, be filled, then continue on my journey.  Rarely, OK never, have I been able to move
from the lowest desert of spiritual loneliness to the tip of the mountain in
the presence of God on just one serving of cake.  And sometimes that frustrates me so much that
I just want to give in.   Where can I
find this cake that will sustain me for FORTY DAYS?!?!?!  And when I can’t, with exhaustion and defeat,
I ask “If I can’t have it all back at once, if my emptiness can’t be filled in
an instant why should I even try to fill it at all?”

But once as I sat under the broom tree in the desert, a
friend, an angel of Yahweh sent to point out the food in front of me, reminded
me of something different.  We don’t have
to worry about the days.  We don’t have
to worry about how long the cake will last, how long the food will sustain us,
how long it will reinvigorate our bodies and spirit, how long it will
strengthen us for the journey.  We don’t
have to wait for the biggest cake of faith on which to feed, because the Bread
of Life is with us all the time.  Our bread
is provided not forty days at a time, but daily, our daily bread is set before
us.  “May don’t worry about how many
days,” my friend wrote to me once.  “Can
you be fed by the bread of life at all?”

Like manna in the wilderness that rained down from heaven for
the Hebrews to gather as they left Egypt and made their way toward the Promised
Land, the bread of life is available in perfect serving sizes for us to eat and
be filled every day.  The bread of life
doesn’t need to be stockpiled or rationed; it doesn’t need to be shoveled hand
over fist into our famished bodies in order to last for forty days, forty
nights, for as long as we can imagine, for eternity, because the bread of life
will never leave us.  The bread of life
is God’s gift the endures forever, that can fill our bodies and spirits, that
gives life to the world.

The goal is not to consume it once and for all.  The goal is not to feast on it in one
sitting, in one stage of our life, in one moment of baptism or confirmation or
conversion so that it will last forever.
The bread of life is what we chew when we devour the Word of God with
the people of God, like in the Story small groups that are forming for the
fall.  The bread of life feeds our faith,
again and again, not just when we are children, but when we come back to the
Scriptures with new eyes, new experiences, new challenges in our lives.  The bread of life, eaten little by little,
day by day, gives us strength to live again, to trust again, to believe again
tomorrow.

The bread of life is what we feed our children when we talk
with them about the lessons they learn in Sunday School, when we read Scripture
together as families, wondering aloud about what it means, not being fearful of
not having all the answers.  The bread of
life is what we ingest when we gather as the body for worship, for reading and
hearing the word, for celebrating with simple gifts of water, bread, and juice,
for praying and hearing the good news of God’s grace.  The bread of life is what break and share
with the world when we speak words of peace, when we touch others with
compassion, when we work with love for justice for all.

The bread of life is meant to be eaten and enjoyed day after day,
sitting at the table in companionship with God, giving energy for our walk, giving
strength for our life.  The bread of life
is a meal for the road.  The bread of
life is bread for the journey.  “Get up
and eat.”

In Joy and Disbelief

Luke 24:36-48

During my second year of seminary I was selected to participate in the Middle East Travel Seminar, a three week study tour of biblical and archaeological sites in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, the occupied territories of Palestine and Greece. The application and interview process was rigorous as sixty seminary students from five schools were chosen for this almost fully funded trip of a lifetime. One thing that was reiterated over and over again throughout the process, in the way that only happens when someone has previously complained about their own experience, this was NOT going to be a spiritual pilgrimage.

All around the land we call the “Holy Land,” for thousands of years, people have been making pilgrimages. There are churches and chapels and monuments scattered everywhere, some of them 15- and 16-hundred years old, marking THE mountain Moses climbed in order to receive the tablets of the ten commandments from God, THE mountain on the east side of the Jordan where Moses died, the underground cave-like stable where Jesus was born, even THE very rock that served as a table for the fish breakfast that Jesus shared with his disciples in another resurrection account from the gospels. There are plenty of places to which someone could make a pilgrimage, but it didn’t take long to figure out why our trip organizers warned us that is not what we would be doing.

My leader, Dr. Jerry Mattingly, was kind of a character. As a local, state-required tour guide would be making her speech about the holy site we were seeing, Jerry would hold up fingers in the back row. Five, ten, fifteen. We thought at first he was grading her tour guide skills, but eventually we discovered he was correcting her assertions.

“This is the site where Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law.” Or according to Jerry, somewhere within 10 miles.

“This is the site where Jesus’ body was buried” Or according to Jerry, somewhere within 500 yards.

“This is the site where Jesus was baptized.” Or according to Jerry, 15 miles up or down the river. Give or take.

This is why they warned us. Instead of developing in us a sense of awe at the innate holiness of each site we saw, Jerry put questions into our minds about the accuracy of the claims of the churches which were built on top of the holy ground on which Mary delivered Jesus. He let doubts creep into our minds about the HUGE STORMS that supposedly threatened the lives of the fishermen on the mere lake the Scriptures call the Sea of Galilee. Obviously, this could not have been a spiritual pilgrimage, because doubts are not very spiritual right?

The story we heard this morning took place on Easter evening or maybe the day after. In Luke’s gospel the resurrection is discovered by the women, then confirmed by Peter when their account is thought to be an “idle tale.” But two disciples, Cleopas and his companion didn't stick around for Peter’s confirmation. After the women discovered Jesus’ missing body and heard the witness of angels at the tomb, these two hit the road out of town. They aren't present when Peter shares his apparently NOT-so-idle tale, but instead they get an up-close-and-personal encounter with Jesus as they are walking to Emmaus, a town seven miles from Jerusalem. After eating dinner with Jesus they turn around and head back to Jerusalem, even in the middle of the night, to tell the rest of the disciples what has happened.

When they arrived, they told their story. Presumably they also heard about Peter’s trip to the empty tomb and then right in the middle of all this story-telling and confusion, Jesus finally appears! Not stolen, not lost, not buried, but resurrected. Whatever THAT means. Right in the middle of them.

They've all been talking about resurrection for a while, but obviously this is their first experience with it. The Pharisees and Sadducees, the dominant religious “parties” of the day, fought about it all the time – would there be a resurrection or not? Would it be bodily or just spiritually? Is it going to be when the Messiah comes or at the end of time? Who will be included? People were used to talking about when, how, and who will be resurrected, but really, when it came down to it, nobody REALLY knew what it would look like, what it would be like when someone actually WAS resurrected. So here was Jesus, right in the middle of them, and as if he could hear their questions running a mile a minute through their heads - - “Is he real? Is he a ghost? Can we touch him? Can we see through him? Does he sleep? Can he fly?” - -

He interrupts them, offering them his hands and feet as proof that he is real. He invites them to touch him and feel his skin and bones so they can know that he isn’t a ghost. And then while they are still caught between both rejoicing and wondering, he asks them what seems like a really ridiculous question, “Does anyone have anything to eat?”

It answers some questions (Yes, he has a body and it needs nourishment. No, he isn’t a ghost. Yes we can touch him. No, I sure HOPE we can’t see through him to see what eating looks like on the inside.). And joy, what joy it brings! But at the exact same time this simple act of eating also leads to so many more questions, doubts, even disbelief. (The dead don’t walk around. Bodies don’t just stand up after dying. What is the end if being killed and sealed in tomb isn’t the end? What in the world does any of this have to do with what God is doing?) So yes, his presence brings joy in their midst, but just like Luke said, it brings confusion, doubts, and even disbelief.

But this can’t be right, can it? Because everyone knows that doubts are not very spiritual, right?

Doubts have a bad name in the version of Christianity that seems dominant in our culture. Doubts are dismissed by some of our traditions as unfaithful, disrespectful, disingenuous. People who ask questions about how things happened in Scripture, people who are willing to say Scripture tells us less about “how” the world was made and more about “why” the world was made, people who wonder about the need to believe every detail written down between the covers of the Bible are literally and factually true are put down by many of the Christians who are holding the microphones on television and the radio, who are typing what is in print and on the internet. Thinking for ourselves is encouraged in pockets of faith, but the loudest voices, the ones way too many of our non-Christian neighbors can hear are the ones who say this is a take or leave it faith. You’re all in or you’re not in at all. Doubts are not very spiritual.

But guess what - - That’s not the viewpoint Jesus holds in this story. I love, love, LOVE the way this resurrection appearance takes place. I love, love, LOVE the way joy and disbelief are held right next to each other. I love, love, LOVE the way the disciples who were closest to Jesus still can’t quite figure out what’s going on. And I love, love, LOVE that Jesus doesn’t abandon them because of it.

Jesus doesn’t turn right around and walk out the door when the disciples can’t wrap their minds and hearts around what has taken place. He doesn’t give up on them and go find the Roman soldier who was able to declare with full faith and conviction in Luke’s gospel “He was innocent” and in Mark’s gospel, “Truly this man was God’s son!” He doesn’t stop them in their tracks and demand that they choose sides, that they sign on the dotted line, that they affirm a set of specific beliefs and understandings about every little thing that happened. Jesus doesn’t do it!

Jesus goes to great lengths – even COMICAL lengths – to show them his body is real because it’s so unbelievable, but even when they still don’t believe he doesn’t stop believing in them. Jesus doesn’t give up on his disciples. He doesn’t chastise them. He doesn’t get angry with them. He sits down, he eats with them, and he teaches them, in the middle of their joy and their disbelief. In the middle of their excitement and their wondering. In the middle of their celebration and their confusion.

We forget sometimes, that THIS is what the church is about. We forget sometimes that the questions are as welcome as answers. We forget that there isn't any one tradition or denomination or theological leaning that has it all right all the time. We see church marketing plans that ask us "Have you found Jesus?" because they claim they have a hold of him. Well, I'd love to start a different kind of campaign, one that puts signs out in front of churches saying "Got questions? We do, too." I'd love to start a different kind of campaign in which we don't have to pretend we know it all, that we understand it all, that we believe every last thing, but a campaign that is bold enough to say we gather with joy and disbelief, with reverence and wonder, with excitement and questions to see Jesus, eat with him, hear the Scriptures and how they tell of God's working in the world, and to be his witnesses in the world. That's a campaign I can get behind.

They told us before we went on the Middle East Travel Seminar that we weren't going on a spiritual pilgrimage, or more accurately, that they weren't leading a spiritual pilgrimage. They must have assumed like so many others that we might think questioning the tradition wasn't very spiritual. For me it was the exact opposite. For me the questions led me to think about what I was learning, what I was hearing, what I had heard for years and years in the church. For me the questions forced me to decide whether it mattered if I knew exactly where Jesus' feet had touched the ground, exactly where Moses encountered God, exactly where words of blessing and beatitude were spoken. For me the questions, the doubts invited me to enter into a relationship with God that wasn't based on geography and historical fact, but was based on the witness of people of faith who have gone before me, the witness of people of faith who struggled just as much as I do with what it means to follow this resurrected Jesus.

Here’s the thing - - Jesus isn’t scared of our questions. Jesus isn’t scared of our doubts, our disbelief, our confusion, and our wondering. He doesn’t get mad at them, he doesn’t look down on us for them, he doesn’t tell us they have to be wiped away before we are loved. And he definitely doesn’t tell us we have to have them all worked out before we can work in his name. The same disciples who stood there in disbelief are the same disciples who are equipped and sent as witnesses. The same disciples who are tentative about jumping into the pool of faith with both feet are the same disciples who are called to the ends of the earth to tell the story.

And thankfully they didn't wait until they totally get it all, until all their questions are answered and they know and believe and trust in exactly what's going on. They jumped in with their questions and doubts and disbelief, too, and apparently that's OK with Jesus. He came to where they were and commissioned them to serve with all their joy AND their disbelief. And he comes and commissions us to witness in the same way.