A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — November 1, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Mark 6:38-44;  Mark 14:1-72 — COMMUNION

And all ate and were filled. — Mark 6:42

[Jesus] took a loaf of bread, and after blessing

“Take;this is my body. — Mark 14:22

Things are most definitely coming to a head in Mark 14.  As we’ve read our way through the Gospel According to Mark, perhaps you noticed a pattern.  Jesus heals and teaches, and then he ends up in conflict with the authorities.  At first they accuse him of blasphemy.  Then they begin to conspire with each other against him—Pharisees and Herodians and Sadducees, each of whom would see the others as enemies.  But united in opposing Jesus, they work together, posing “trick questions” in hopes of destroying his reputation.  When that fails, they want have him arrested, but his popularity with the crowds stymies them.  Finally they begin looking for a way to kill Jesus, but they will need to do so by stealth, for they still fear the response of the crowds.

 

That’s where things stand at the beginning of Chapter 14, as Jesus and his disciples make plans to celebrate the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread in Jerusalem.  How ironic that this time set aside for celebrating freedom and community is filled with plots and plans for betrayal and death!  And the new community of disciples, this new family Jesus has called into being and nurtured will be fractured by fear and denial.  In Mark’s telling of the story, all will fall away except (as we will see in Chapter 15) a few women who will look on from a distance as Jesus dies.

Yet near the middle of the swirl of events in Chapter 14, in between betrayal and denial, something extraordinary happens.  And it’s all the more extraordinary because it begins with ordinary, common things.  Jesus and his disciples are in the middle of the Passover meal.  Whatever liturgy they said—and we don’t know what it would have been at that time, since a formal Passover Haggadah for the Seder Meal only comes much later—whatever ritual they used, it is over.  Now they’re eating together.  It’s a little tense, perhaps, because Jesus has just said that one of the disciples there will betray him.  And Jesus sees before him some bread and a cup of wine—not necessarily a fresh, whole loaf, but more likely with one or two pieces torn off, and the cup probably not freshly poured.  Ordinary things, but for Jesus at that moment they are more.  He sees a deeper connection—bread to physical body, cup to lifeblood.  And in his telling of the story, the author of Mark connects all this to the two miraculous feeding stories where Jesus also blesses, breaks, and gives food in great abundance to those in need.

In that moment, the bread and the cup become a sacrament.  By the word “sacrament” I do not mean some specific religious ritual.  We make it that when we reenact the event as the Lord’s Supper.  But I am using the word in its broader sense—“sacrament” as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual connection.  The word “sacrament” comes from the Latin word used to translate the Greek word for “mystery.” As such it referred to things that point beyond themselves to something more. Language tends to break down when it comes to speaking of this “something more,” so we resort to words like “spirit” or “sacred.”

According to Barbara Brown Taylor in the book we are studying in the Adult Sunday school class right now, An Altar in the World, anything can become a sacrament for us in this sense.  What it takes is time and paying close attention—even to the most ordinary of things.  Some people seem to have a special gift for doing this.  One such person I recall was Charles Kuralt, who used to do regular “On the Road” segments for CBS News.  He would travel around the country in a motor home and report on ordinary people doing ordinary things.  It was like he looked deeper, listened closer, and was more aware of something lying below the surface or beyond it all.  And he was able to open our eyes and ears, sparking our awareness a little to help us to appreciate just how… well, I’d like to say how “special” or “extraordinary” these people and activities and places were.  But the point is they weren’t special or extraordinary, but ordinary.  They were “sacramental.”  And Charles Kuralt was able to help us see them as sacraments. 

I think we all know times when this greater awareness of the height and depth and breadth of reality breaks in—by way of a sudden warming of the heart perhaps, or a sense of wholeness or homecoming, or unexpected joy or tears.  Seeing the ocean can bring it, or hearing a piece of music, or recalling a few lines from Robert Frost.  I was raking leaves a week ago, sweeping this golden carpet into piles, when this one brilliant, all-red leaf caught my eye, and I thought I’d never seen anything so red.  This was what God meant in saying, “Let there be red!”  And there was red, and it was good!  Sacrament.  (But then yesterday I was up on the second story roof cleaning out the gutters, and not one of those wet, mucky leaves was a sacrament for me.)  Still there are so many potential sacraments—walking in the rain… or seeing a child learn something new… or smelling chocolate chip cookies baking… or smelling Crayola crayons… or tasting pumpkin ice cream.  Who knows?  You can never be sure what will spark it.  But you can be sure that it is a sacramental moment.  As Frederick Buechner writes about sudden tears:

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay closest attention.  They are not only telling you about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where… you should go next.

Theologian Leonardo Boff speaks of the world—of all of creation—as “a sacrament of God,” and he says faith is our “awakening to the mysterious but concrete presence of grace in our world,” even in (or especially in) the most ordinary of people, places, and things.  Yet it seems to me that whenever we speak of our faith journeys, give testimony, or whatever we call it, we usually talk about special, extraordinary moments—high points like a magnificent sunset, the birth of a child, a great love; or low points like cancer, the death of a loved one, or depression.  But what about the ordinary days, the things we do day-in day-out, the everyday stuff of most of our lives?  Do you suppose God is around on just a regular, old day?  During ordinary, forgettable moments?  Oh, yes!

Again and again the Gospels tell us of Jesus revealing God in and by way of the common, ordinary, everyday, regular stuff of his world.  He takes common food, five loaves and two fish… blesses, breaks, and distributes them; and God is revealed as all in the crowd eat and are filled.  Jesus makes up stories about common people, places and things—shepherds and farmers, women and day laborers, vineyards and highways, mustard seeds and yeast.  And two thousand years later we still turn to these stories seeking meaning.  And of course in a time of both threat and promise, Jesus took some food off his dinner table, a cup of common wine and a loaf of ordinary bread, and helped his disciples (and us!) to see them not so much as something special or extraordinary, but as sacramental.

Two thousand years later we take simple foods symbolic of our daily need for sustenance—a loaf of bread and a pitcher of…  Well, it’s not even wine; it’s grape juice.  Not so long ago the juice sat on a grocery store shelf in a glass bottle, and the bread was put in a paper bag at the bread store.  A couple of our deacons bought them, brought them to church, and set the table.  Ordinary things, the bread and juice, yet sacraments of God—“This is my body.  This is my blood.”  The words and the communion elements point beyond themselves to something more—to the presence of God in the ordinary.  God is present with us in each and every regular, old day—365 days a year, 8760 hours (of which we may spend only 50 or so in worship), 525,600 mostly forgettable minutes.  Yet God is ever present

The Rev. David Steele, a pastor I met in California 20 years ago when I was a seminary intern and who liked to refer to himself as a “parson on the loose,” wrote a poem called “Communion” that reflects on the ordinariness of the Lord’s Supper.

This table now is simply spread
With little loaves of common bread,
Not pumpernickel, corn, or rye—
To spark the taste or please the eye,
Just bread—it’s sold in any store,
I’ve had it many times before.

I am accustomed, when a guest,
To being rather more impressed.
I might expect a gracious host
To brown the bread and make some toast,
Or see his table was arrayed
With butter, jam and marmalade.
Danish pastries filled with jam,
Some scrambled eggs with lots of ham.
This would impress me more.  Instead,
The Lord shares common, daily bread.

I’ll eat this bread, but I will find
It’s taste won’t linger in my mind.
This bread is easy to dismiss.
I’ve had ten thousand bites like this.
This bread, I think, in many ways
Reminds me of my common days.

Some days are vivid in design,
Resembling an exotic wine:
Days of joy and days of sorrow.
(One may well arrive tomorrow.)

But nearly all the days I’ve led
Are more like this plain, common bread—
Like, say, last 19th of September.
(A day I simply can’t remember.)
It’s gone, slipped from my memory.
Just as this bread is bound to be.

At this table I shall praise
The God who gives me common days.
And I shall live these days with pride,
Knowing God moves by my side.
For at this table God has said:
“I share with you this daily bread.”
And by this Word we all are fed.

Yes, indeed, we eat and all are filled.  Amen and amen.