Good Morning!
Last Sunday, my dear friend and mentor, Rev. Hartshorn Murphy,
led us through his reflection on our salvation history,
from the Exodus Story of manna in the wilderness,
to the Passover sacrifice,
to Jesus and what is sometimes called the Lord’s Supper,
or the Mass, or Communion, or the Eucharist.
He explained how differently the Sacrament of bread and wine
is understood and worshipped.
For our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers,
there is the certainty of transubstantiation;
it is a Sacrament where the bread and the wine are not only made sacred
but become the living body and blood of Jesus.
For many of our more conservative Protestant sisters and brothers,
the bread and the wine are onlysymbols of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples.
For us, as Episcopalians, we hold open a big tent, offering a third way, a middle way.
We believe that during the sacramental prayers over the bread and wine,
something happens, something sacred happens,
where God sanctifies the bread and the wine to be the “holy presence” of Jesus,
given to us as the body and blood of Christ.
God is present in the Mystery of that Sacrament.
I remember my confirmation class at age 11, so very long ago,
learning about the Mystery of God in the Sacraments.
We memorized that it was an outward and visible sign
of an inward and invisible grace.
We struggled to understand this “presence” of Jesus that enters the bread and wine,
and we tried to imagine how it is that we abide in him and he in us.
We asked the same questions the disciples asked:
how can this be and what does it mean?
And as we took communion for the first time,
some were sure they felt the “presence”
and some weren’t sure they felt anything.
But because it meant something to those we admired and loved,
and because we so wanted it to mean something to us, we kept at it.
We were practicing our faith before we understood that we were.
What is this “presence” and how does this happen?
The honest answer is: we don’t know.
It is the Mystery of God beyond our knowing, that is forever,
for all time, for everyone, all, ‘believers’ or not.
Glimmers of this ‘presence,’ however, is not beyond our experiencing.
Sometimes when we enter into the mystery of the bread and wine,
it overtakes us; we feel it deeply.
Hartshorn shared with us who he brings to the table with him,
that he thinks about his parents, his loved ones,
and his favorite saints on the other side, with Jesus,
and he shares with them the bread and wine.
Who and What will you bring to the table?
What is in your heart today that needs to be fed by the presence of Jesus?
How might this mystery strengthen you as you continue
The good work of ‘Doing the Loving Thing.?”
Two themes emerge in our readings this morning that make vivid our
encounter with the Mystery of Faith:
The Generous offerings of Wisdom and the Surrendering to Trust.
In Proverbs 9:1-6 we meet Lady Wisdom
who invites us with enthusiasm and joy to her banquet.
She has built her house, set her table, prepared her food
and sends out her servants to invite everyone to
“come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”
God awaits you. God awaits everyone…. God’s gift is abundance!
And how does Lady Wisdom summon us?
“You that are simple, turn in here!
“To those without sense, come eat of my bread and wine”
“lay aside immaturity and live and walk in the way of insight.”
There are no requirements, no IQ tests, there are no exceptions; all are invited.
How often does God offer us a banquet?
Even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death…..
God preparest a table before us…..
In contemporary language, Wisdom might say,
Those of you who are skeptical, cynical or judgmental or fearful,
come and see.
Come to the party.
Those of you who have been hurt or are ashamed or need to be sure,
come and see.
Come to the party. All are welcome.
I have been one of those too skeptical, too reluctant, too much in my head
and too afraid of my heart to come to the party.
I have hidden behind sophistication, education, and peer pressure.
I was a cradle Episcopalian. I went to college in 1964,
in the midst of all that was the sixties,
and I hid my belief in God from my colleagues and friends
who were out to change the world through activism and hard-hitting art.
I didn’t have the courage or the wisdom to speak up.
I was a closet believer.
Years later, as I tiptoed back to church, I bought myself, at a street fair,
the smallest gold cross there was, and I wore it around my neck.
It was so tiny you probably had to squint to see it,
but that was my first step out and back.
So I understand the skeptical and the reluctant,
and I understand a world where caution is not always a bad thing,
but it can become a habit, a wall of resistance,
or you become a dabbler, showing up every once in a while for a few minutes,
missing the best parts of the party—
the food, the laughter, the stories, the truth, the pain, and the love.
I think Jesus is trying to say, again and again, I am the party,
I am the food, the laughter, the stories, the truth, the pain, and the love.
I don’t want you to miss it. I want you to live in abundance,
sharing in the love and joy of now.
Today in Ephesians we hear,
Be careful then how you live …..
making the most of the time ……
Make the most of the time, to come to the table,
To eat your fill. Receive nourishment and strength
Well, how are we to do that?
When the world is full of so much pain and despair?
How are we to surrender ourselves to the Mystery of Faith,
Trusting in the power of God
to transform ourselves and the world?
Trust is the key. Trust bridges the gap over what we do not know.
Henri Nouwen, prolific and powerful writer
of our relationship to Christ,
Our struggle and suffering with Christ,
And our longing for unity in Christ
Wrote often of two very powerful images of God that sustained him all his life:
The first was the image of the gentle, loving father
in Rembrandt’s painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son,
so unlike his own father.
The second came from his fascination with the Trapeze artists
he witnessed again and again at a circus in Germany:
The Flying Rodleighs.
He was transfixed by the free flying and the catching—the sheer beauty of it and the connection between them.
In conversation with them, the flyer said,
“it may seem to the public that I am the star of the trapeze,
but the real star is Joe, my catcher.
The secret is that the flyer does nothing, and the catcher does everything.
When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands
and wait for him to catch me.
The worst thing a flyer can do is try to catch the catcher;
it could break both our wrists.
The flyer must trust with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.
Nouwen was profoundly moved by that image, of God as the catcher,
always in place, always ready, as we fly into the unknown.
I like that image too, of God as the catcher,
but then I wonder about the times I wasn’t caught or didn’t think I was.
Times of trauma, crisis, terrible grief and loss.
Those times when I felt more of God’s absence than God’s presence,
or to complete the image, when God’s hands must have slipped because I fell hard;
I wasn’t caught. I struggled and I suffered.
Only later, as is so true for so many of us,
could I see and understand that there was always a net,
that indeed I was caught and held and strengthened and led slowly to new life.
I experienced again and again the vastness of God, the utter mystery of God’s love.
And so I have returned to the image of God the catcher, whose net holds us all.
We come to the table today with our memories,
our broken lives, our joyous celebrations,
and we humbly offer them to God as God feeds us with God’s presence
to give us strength and courage for the days ahead
to live our lives to the fullest, in abundance.
We revel in this Mystery of faith in a God bigger than religion.
We share in the bread and wine grateful for the life blood it gives us.
And we step out in little leaps of faith all the time,
trusting that God the catcher will catch us,
in whatever way God knows we most need.
Let us accept Wisdom’s invitation to the party.
Let us trust that God’s net is firmly in place!
AMEN