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Bread of Life: A Tomorrow 9-2-18

Bread of Life: A Tomorrow

Rev. Leta Arndt Behrens

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 6:60-6960When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” 61But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? 62Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. 65And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”
66Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. 67So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” 68Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Video: Thad Story Youth in Global Mission
Sermon Text:
Our ELCA story today opens with an acknowledgment and the deep truth that the young adults who go into global mission know they can’t change the world… but they really want to change the world anyway. And isn’t that beautiful? And isn’t that the story of hope and the story of the heart of faith as well? We come to these scriptures, to this promise from God that there is bread for all, that there is life for all, and we know that what we see doesn’t always match this promise, AND that the promise for tomorrow is still there and the spirit is still calling.
Back in the day, I had a seminary professor, Peter Kjesth. There is a special place in my heart for this professor. On the first day of class he made it a point to state that I was his first student who was of the age of his grandchildren instead of his children-and he said it not with reluctance or grief but with joy and pride. He was a man who taught, who led mission trips to Namibia for 40 years, who got into the depths of suffering, the dirt of injustice to the poor and into the grace of living each day with the knowledge of the grit of the world and the hope of the promise of this grace in the bread of life from Jesus. I learned a lot from Peter, from his classes and from traveling with him and the thing that I learned from that repeats in my head almost daily and most certainly every time I encounter the gospel and attempt to put it in relatable words to you is how he started and ended each class. At the start of any class with Peter, we would begin with singing dona nobis pacem–which means, grant us peace. Then we dive into any number of theological topics, questions, and discussions on how these ideas get lived in the real world. Then at the end of every class he would step back, take a deep bow from the waist and say-”and now my friends, we have come to the place where we must simply bow to the mystery of God and go forth in peace”
In these final words from Jesus on the bread of life and throughout this chapter of John’s gospel, there is frankly, a lot of mystery. Jesus doesn’t actually make complete sense throughout this discourse–not to our ears and not to the ears of the disciples either.  and this comes to a head here in these last verses where Jesus is turning not towards the past and not towards the present but facing the disciples firmly into the future, into a tomorrow they cannot see and that they cannot comprehend. Some of the followers have given up. Some are probably staring, lost in confusion. Some followers only hear words of death not life and they turn towards disbelief. And yet, there is still Jesus, promising that there is more to the spirit of God than we can see or hold and there are words of confession even in the middle of that mystery– Yes, Jesus, we know you are God, we come to this mystery by faith.
Thad described trying to avoid faith–keep that talk at a distance from what he was encountering in his mind and his heart throughout the experience. And then he says, that faith came and punched him in the gut. Sometimes it happens that way. Sometimes avoidance leads to an abrupt change of reality and perspective and realizing you don’t know what you don’t know but that you have the chance to pay attention and to be led by something beyond yourself. That is the spirit of God. And as he practiced faith and as he kept walking with the people — in their joys and in their suffering–he saw more than his own experience and saw into the community of the body of the Christ, which is where Jesus says the promise lies.
This is where Pastor Miriam Schmidt’s words bear repeating, “We are all living lives that face suffering and are in communities with suffering and somehow in the middle of all that Christ comes and raises us up to new life and that is how we keep moving forward.”
The bread of life is a sign, a necessity, a connection, and a sacrifice. And, perhaps even most of all, the bread of life–God creator, God in Jesus, God as spirit, is a tomorrow. This promises of grace and life, even when we can’t accept it, even when we can’t hear it or taste it or see it or feel it is still there. We can analyze every word and we can dissect every nuance in the language of scripture and in the meaning for the people of John’s time and the meaning for us today and still we come to this promise-that God comes to us in every place of brokenness and in every place of peace and gives us a story to claim as our own–that we are God’s children and we are promised to be a part of this bread of life from the beginning of time and creation to the end of the tomorrows we cannot see or fathom. In all that we hope for and in all the places where we long to change the world, we will, step by step in hope come to the table, gather at the font and hear again and again the promise that Jesus will raise us up to new life and in that my friends, we lean forward into all the spirit promises and calls us to .. and take a deep bow into the mystery as we go forth with the assurance of peace.
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Bread of Life: A Sacrifice 8-26-18

Bread of Life: A Sacrifice

Pastor Michael Stadtmueller

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 6:51-58

[Jesus said,] 51“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Sermon Text:

Hollis cried to his parents, “Mom-Dad, I really messed this up!”

The murder happened hundreds of miles away from my hometown at Texas Tech, but Hollis was a boy from Seguin.  A boy my family knew. He was confronted by a police officer who discovered he had drugs in his possession. He panicked and grabbed the officers gun.  That moment changed two families lives permanently. Absolute brokenness.

Floyd East Jr., a campus police officer left behind two daughters and a wife who desperately want their dad back.  There will certainly be righteous anger and many communities mourn his passing, but today i want to talk about Hollis.  A 19 year-old who committed murder. My God-daughter who goes to Texas Tech now as a freshmen had talked about sharing rides to Seguin with him.  My brother is friends with his dad. Hollis is 6 years older than my son Gabriel. It’s all very real.

He messed up bad.  Real bad. He took someone’s baby.  He took someone’s husband. He took someone’s dad.  Yes, Hollis you really messed up. Now his parents have to reconcile the fact that their child if he doesn’t get the death penalty, a real possibility in Texas, will spend the rest of his life in jail.

Now the reason I share this awful story –  The world will say he deserves it. Legally it’s cut and dry.  You even had a confession in the moments after the shooting. And of course beyond that there is a family that has been pierced by this brokenness in such a profound way that it is easy to be enraged with Hollis.  But when Hollis called home he heard from his mother and father who loved him. He broke down confessing his sins to them and they told him they loved him. At this point he didn’t deserve their love, but he still received it…..

We can’t stop the pain of the world.  But i believe sharing this bread of life in Christ Jesus will help us to ensure that we surround pain with Grace.  And i believe the more we surround brokenness with Grace the more we can stop some of this brokenness from happening at all.

The world needs a voice of Grace that can remind our world that our brokenness is not beyond God’s love. Now most of us are not in the place that Hollis finds himself.  We haven’t committed a crime that would send us to prison for the rest of our lives. But we have all messed up. We have all found ourselves crying out to God like he cried out to his parents. “Mom I really messed this up.  Like his parents we have a God that promises unconditional love.

A love that at times we can’t even imagine it’s depth.  That is the love of Christ that we share in the bread and wine of communion.  A love that’s depth of sacrifice is greater than all of the crap of our lives.

The language in our scripture today can be puzzling.  Body and Blood? Our minds go to cannibalism. But the first century mind went to sacrifice.  When you mess up….Make a sacrifice to God for forgiveness was the way they understood their relationship with God.  Kill an unblemished lamb. And there were specific instructions on how to deal with the body and blood of the animal sacrificed on the altar.  It sounds barbaric to us, but Christ’s language of being the bread was the new covenant speaking through the terms of the old covenant. Transforming the moment from what you must Sacrifice to God into What God has sacrificed for you.

We eat the bread and the wine and trust in God’s presence because we know our lives continue to need a power beyond ourselves to bring the holy into our messed up world.  God empowers us to share this Grace. This Hope. This love. It doesn’t erase brokenness. It doesn’t stop it from happening. But it does surround with love.

Hollis’s story reminds us that we need a God who can fix what we cannot.  We need a love that is greater than that which we can give alone. For Karoj’s story from our video we see that sometime those who have sacrificed so much in their lives can have their life transformed by others so that they no longer have to sacrifice.  For our story we have a God who loves us in whatever we face.

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Bread of Life: A Connection 8-19-18

Bread of Life: A Connection

Pastor Leta Arndt Behrens

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 6:35, 41-51

35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Sermon Text: 

Jesus says, many times,  throughout this section of the gospel , “ “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” What bread then is Jesus talking about?

    1. According to ELCA World Hunger even though there is an abundance of food resources–enough actually to feed the world one and half times over we still in 2018 live with these numbers as well:

  • 815 million people around the world – that’s more than 1 in 10 – can’t access the food they need to live active, healthy lives. [1]

  • According to the most recent estimates, 766.6 million people live in extreme poverty on less than $1.90 per day. That’s 10.7% of the world’s population. [2]

These are worldwide numbers, there are numbers for the US as well:

  • At some point in 2016 (the most recent year available), more than 41.2 million people in the United States were unsure where their next meal might come from. [3]

  • 40.6 million Americans were living in poverty in 2016. For a family of four, this means their annual household income was below $24,563. [4]

And numbers for our own community according to the Larimer county foodbank:

  • 14% Larimer County residents live at or below the Federal Poverty guideline.

  • 40,200 Larimer County residents are food insecure.

  • 8.4% of seniors are food insecure.

  • 30.8% of single mothers live in poverty.

  • 33% of school-aged children in Larimer County receive free or reduced meals.

Hunger is real right here in our community, in our own church. Weekly there are those who stop by for food from the cart, who rely on this community’s collections and gifts. Daily our schools offer nutrition that is not available elsewhere. We have hunger right here and we gifted to live in a community that cares and tries to face this issue together with food banks and the FoCo cafe, food backpack programs and education in our schools, Homeward Alliance and the murphy center as well as countless churches, synagogues, mosques and nonprofits working indivudally and  together. And we have a church who responds on the local and global levels to raise awareness, educate, and work to create sustainable living for all God’s people, and let’s remember they-we are all God’s people.

And yet, we still may ask, what is this bread of life that Jesus offers and what does it have to do with the reality and the numbers we live with today? Jesus in this gospel is taking on those who do not see, do not want to know or believe that he has come to cross the lines into feeding and bringing life to all people. The Judeans who are against him, are not able to wrap their heads around the idea that God has come in person to be in this world and to offer this life beyond one set of people, beyond one set of rules, beyond one set of culture norms. Maybe they too, were blinded or disillusioned by all the numbers of their world or the reality that surrounded them. Perhaps that is why Jesus keeps repeating, I am the bread of life–God’s abundance is for all–and all means all–the ones struck by poverty and the ones who’s plates are full, the ones who have grown up in a faith and the ones who have never heard a word of grace, the ones who hope for more to come and the ones who cannot see past the next hour.

These stories from ELCA world hunger are like pretzel stories that we shared with the children because as we connect to God, as we pray and sing and talk together, we are more able to have full openness to engage and know this world around us. . They are stories that we need to hear because they build connections in a variety of ways: connections with people we may never meet but serve, connections to our money-how it moves from our individual bank accounts to the church to the national church back to individual people like Kanchan, connections to one another as we hear this story as those gathered in an ELCA congregation we are connected to something bigger and to one another in our mission, and connections to our faith, our spirituality, the reason we gather and are sent as the light of Christ.  

Kanchan’s story and the story of this place in India is striking to me because it goes beyond what we might typically think of as bread for life. Yes, this woman was cared for with bread–with nutrition and medication for her child. And she was cared for with education, time, and resources to not just be fed once, but to be fed and to offer living bread again to others in her community. And she was also fed by the connections of a community–of a communal way of living and understanding what bread of life is and how it expands into our ways of living, our call as followers of Jesus and how we interact in our faith with the numbers of this world.

Jesus promise of bread of life is about the abundance of God and the promise of God to take action and draw us close to her. It is not up to us to entice God to come. We don’t have to convince God to be in this world. God is here. The holy spirit is moving in the words of this scripture, the videos we see, and our stories together  to help us see that as we come together in the name of the triune God–the one who creates who comes as emmanuel-God with us- and the one who continues to live and breath as the spirit today–we come together in a communal way around the bread of life for the sake of the world.

Think about this communal aspect of bread in your own life for a moment. What are some of your favorite memories with loved ones? What are the times that you gather and what do you gather around? Often times the answer is food–it’s a connecter. It’s something we all have in common as a need in some way. I was talking with a member this week and asked if she liked seafood–and she answered, ‘sure, when i see food, i like to eat it!’ Food is for life and celebration. Food is brought for comfort and support of those in need. Around a table is where we check in as a family, where we connect with neighbors and friends, where we meet strangers and they turn into friends. It’s why we have donuts and coffee each week. It’s why we create community lunches and picnics and potlucks. And it’s why we are called around a table each week, as a community, to hear again the words of life and promise–this bread, my body, this cup, my blood, this promise of grace, love, forgiveness and mercy is for each and every one and connects us in a tangible and spiritual way to God and one another.

And it’s from this place of gathering around a table that we are formed as community and sent out to be that promise, that bread, that mercy for someone else. This the bread of life. The promise that this love of God will feed and nourish beyond our own selves and into the world. This promise that we carry the bread of life in us and we are so loved that we can connect others and gather and invite them around this bread of life with us.  Amen. May it be so.

 

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Bread of Life: A Necessity 8-12-18

Bread of Life: A Necessity

Pastor Michael Stadtmueller

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 6:24-35

24When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were [beside the sea,] they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” 28Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” 32Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

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Bread of Life: A Sign 8-5-18

Bread of Life: A Sign

Robin Ferree

 

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 6:1-21

1After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people? 10Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”

15When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
16When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.