The Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo
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Monthly Archives: August 2024
Where do you come from? A Sermon for Proper 14B, 2024
Where do you come from? It’s a question one hears from time to time, often especially when you’re new in a place, or just getting to know someone. If you hear someone with a strange accent, you may want to ask them that question—and if you’re just a bit brash or rude—you will go ahead and blurt it out. It happened to me from time to time when I lived in the south—and it still happens occasionally to Corrie in Madison. The question may be well-meaning, but it can also be off-putting. It can underscore difference, it can remind the recipient that they are outsiders in a place or a community, reinforce their otherness.
Coincidentally, I was asked this very question after our early service today. We were chatting in Vilas Hall and someone dropped by to say hello and chat. She and I started talking about a venerable New England institution, and as we were talking she asked, “Where are you from?”–thinking I must have been a native of New England. I told her to hang around for our 10:00 service when I would answer that question.
We see all this playing out on the national and international stage. Questions of identity—whether that has to do with issues of gender, nationality, or ethnicity are hot topics right now. And so often it is the group with power and privilege seeking to categorize, marginalize, define others to exclude them from the larger community, to render them powerless and speechless and irrelevant.
I know exactly where I come from. A small town in northwestern Ohio, where Griesers have lived since the 1830s. My first ancestor who came to that area operated a mill in Montbeliard, Alsace before immigrating to the US. On the other side of the family, my roots go back to Lancaster County PA in the 18th century. There’s no mystery on either side of the family, no reason to take one of those DNA tests that have become so popular. When I used to return to my hometown regularly, I would often identify myself by my dad’s name, so people could place me comfortably in that community.
In today’s gospel reading, as we continued the discussion of the meaning of the feeding of the five thousand, and now, the meaning of Jesus’ statement that we heard last week, “I am the bread of life” we are introduced to questions of identity and origin.
It all begins with a significant shift in today’s reading. To this point, Jesus has been in conversation with “the crowd.” They had followed him across the Sea of Galilee, to listen to his teaching, and for healing. He had fed them miraculously, and they had wanted to proclaim him king.
They had followed him again, across the sea to Capernaum, where they addressed him as “Rabbi”—“teacher”. But suddenly the term shifts and the crowd becomes “the Jews.” It’s another opportunity for us to remind ourselves of the Gospel of John’s anti-judaism and its attendant legacy in the antisemitism in Christianity and in larger Western culture. That being said, we should also note that the word translated as “Jew” here would be literally translated as “Judaean” in other words, residents of the Roman province of Judea, not necessarily a reference to the religion. Further, remember that when the Gospel of John distinguishes between Jesus and “the Jews” it is overlooking the reality that Jesus, and all of his disciples, were themselves Jews.
Still, in the literary context before us, “Jews” is an important marker of identity. Earlier the crowd had responded to Jesus “our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness.” They are asserting their identity and their privilege. And now, they are questioning Jesus’ identity and authority. Who does this guy think he is? We know him; we know his parents. What gives him the right to say that he has come down from heaven?
There’s the question of authority and there’s the question of identity. Another way John is drawing on the traditions of the book of Exodus is in Jesus’ self-identification. Here, he says, “I am the bread of life.” It’s the first of his “I am” sayings in the gospel. He also says, “I am the good shepherd”; I am the vine, you are the branches, as well as others.
“I am”—it’s the response God gives Moses at the burning bush when he asks God, “Who shall I say sent me?” God answers: “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” Throughout the Hebrew Bible, God will be identified as I am—usually with a description of what God has done for God’s people—“I am the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”
Here, however, there’s a different dynamic. The I am sayings are symbolic—I am the bread of life, I am the Good Shepherd, I am the vine… They use ordinary imagery to say something about Christ’s nature but also about the kind of relationship that is being offered. Jesus is not distant, speaking far off from a mountain, but near at hand, and emphasizing the life-giving relationship that is being offered to those who follow him.
That offer is an opportunity to adopt and live into a new identity as a follower of Jesus Christ, welcomed into a community where status and background don’t determine your place, where your previous life and choices don’t limit the possibilities of new life and new experience.
We see something of that vision in the reading from the letter to the Ephesians. The author urges their readers to give up every manner of sin, anger, evil talk, wrangling and slander—all powerful reminders in these days of the vitriolic discourse on social media and the demonization of one’s opponents. More importantly, though, is this “Live in love as Christ loved us”—it’s another version of one of my favorite offertory sentences: “Walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.”
To bring it back to the gospel. The bread of life that Christ offers us, or as he says at the end of our passage: “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” That bread is offered to us; that flesh is offered to us, and as we participate in eating the bread, we are entering into the life of Christ, the body of Christ. And we ourselves, being bonded to Christ, enfleshed to Christ, become the means by which others enter into that same relationship with Christ. In becoming Christ’s body, we become the bread by which others are nourished. When we walk in Christ’s love, when we receive Christ’s love, we become the means by which others receive that love as well.
The Bread of Angels (Panis Angelicus): A Sermon for Proper 13B
April 4, 2024
One of the lovely things about growing older is the way in which ordinary things can evoke memories. It might be a smell that can inspire a mental image of a memorable meal. It might be a popular song from decades ago that reminds us of our high school or college days. For me, that’s true of hymns or scripture verses. There are hymns that I associate with my dad or the church I grew up in. And there are scripture verses.
One of those verses is in today’s Psalm portion: 78:25 “So mortals ate the bread of angels; *he provided for them food enough.” Whenever I read that verse, during Morning Prayer or on Sundays, an image of Larry Proli comes to mind.
Corrie and I came into the Episcopal Church back in 1992, at St. Paul’s Newburyport, Mass. Among the unique characters in that parish—every parish has a few, was Larry Proli. Retired, in his 70s probably, Larry was a quintessential New Jersy Italian-American. Straight out of central casting. He could have been an extra in a Scorsese movie. He had the accent, the gestures and mannerisms, the personality of an Italian-American grandfather. There was just one thing that didn’t fit. He was an ordained pastor in the Dutch Reformed (Christian Reformed) Church. As a child, growing up poor in a New Jersey city, somehow, he had begun attending Sunday school in a Christian Reformed Church and went on to get ordained.
He and his wife Jan—who by the way was straight out of central casting for a Dutch woman in her 70s organized the parish’s monthly meal for single moms and their kids. They helped out in lots of other ways, small and large. Larry, though it was against the canons, distributed communion alongside the Rector, and that’s where my memory of him is fixed.
It was Easter Day and we came up to the altar rail. As he gave me the host, Larry said “Panis angelicus, the bread of angels.” It broke me. We left that parish in 1994 and have never been back; I never saw Larry again, I’ve never seen anyone from that congregation in the decades since. But every time I read that psalm in Morning Prayer or on Sunday, I think of Larry, of the bread of angels, and of the banquet where he and Jan are now feasting with all of the angels and saints.
The bread of angels.
Funny thing, that, because the hosts we use in our Eucharist bear little resemblance to real bread, let alone to whatever the bread of angels might look like.
Bread. Think about all the different types of bread there are—the mundane, for example, the ironically-named “wonder bread.” Or what passes for bread in our celebrations of the eucharist—little discs of hard, tasteless, baked wheat. Think of the best bread you’ve ever had—home-baked right out of the oven, or crusty French baguette, eaten with olive oil and a glass of wine. Bread comes in many shapes and sizes, made with thousands of different ingredients, deriving from vastly different cultures and culinary traditions. Life without bread is unimaginable, even for those who are gluten-intolerant, or have celiac disease. There are breads made for them as well. Like wonder bread or the hosts we use in the Eucharist, bread can be industrialized and standardized. But at its best bread reflects the baker, the ingredients, the oven, and the community in which it is baked and which, when it’s broken, it creates.
In the first lesson, the reading from Exodus, we encounter a very strange kind of bread. The Israelites have fled from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and now they are camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai (called Horeb) in this text, where they will receive the 10 commandments and other laws. But they aren’t happy campers. Things are rough, and some of them are looking back with nostalgia on the life they left behind in Egypt. Yes, they may have been slaves, but at least they had food, drink and shelter. Never mind that the God who called them out of Egypt had unleashed a series of deadly plagues, fought on their behalf at the Red Sea drowning the Egyptian army. The present was difficult, the future uncertain, and the people were hungry, thirsty, and tired. No doubt if you’ve ever been camping with your family, you know this dynamic.
In response, God provides them with their daily bread and with quails for sustenance. The bread is called manna, which is derived from the Hebrew words for “What is it?”—the question they asked when they saw it for the first time in the morning. The manna appeared six days a week, with enough on the sixth day to provide food for the Sabbath as well. When the Hebrews experimented by gathering more than they needed for one day, they discovered that it spoiled overnight. Thus, the theme in John 6 about the bread that perishes and the bread that lives forever.
In the ancient world, where what we call food insecurity was the reality, not for 20 or 30% of the population, but probably for 90%, the notion of having enough food to eat, eating and being filled, was a powerful image indeed. The petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us today our daily bread” was not pious platitude; it was necessary. In John 6, the crowd had good reason to follow after Jesus—it wasn’t just their desire to see another miracle, or get a free meal, it was the prospect of once again, eating until they were full—perhaps something they had never experienced before, and might never experience again.
Bread and Circus. In ancient Rome it was said, if emperors provided bread and circus, food and entertainment, the mob wouldn’t revolt. So it’s hardly a surprise that as we read in last week’s gospel, their stomachs filled by the loaves and fish, the crowd wanted to proclaim Jesus king, he gave them bread and entertainment. Food, by feeding them, and entertainment, by the miraculous feeding as well as the many healings he performed. So often we’re like that too. We want the miracle, the spectacle. We want to be awed. We want the earth to move.
Today marks the 15th anniversary of the beginning of our ministry together in this place. Over the years, we’ve been through a great deal: renovations, pandemic, the passing on to the larger life of so many of our friends and loved ones. We’re going through a great deal right now, enough perhaps to shake our faith. And we gather to listen to God’s word, to be nourished by the body and blood of Christ, to taste and see Christ’s presence among us. Over the years, I’ve presided at more than 2000 Eucharists—some of them have been spectacular with a full church, choir musical instruments. More than a few have been tiny, intimate, sometimes with no more than one person besides me. Sometimes, I go through the motions, barely noticing. Sometimes, I am moved to tears.
And sometimes it’s just not enough. The meager host, the sip of wine seem little more than a trace of the sustenance we need, the presence we crave. Our disappointment lingers, we yearn for more. And yet it may be that the stranger next to us, unbeknownst to us is receiving what she desires: a taste of heaven, the bread of angels.
Among the mysteries of our faith is that Christ can come to us in many ways, in the spectacular, the miraculous, and in the mundane, the every day. For us to be open to Christ’s presence can mean being open to the grace of the ordinary. It can also mean feeding on the bread of angels. May our hearts be open to that presence, may our eyes see that presence, may our mouths taste that presence, in bread and wine, in the conviviality of a meal or the gathering of God’s people. May we be nourished by the bread of angels, panis angelicus.
Preaching Grace on the Square 